Popular Technology.net: Correcting misinformation about the journal Energy & Environment

A frequent source of contention in the global warming debate is the existence of peer-reviewed papers supporting skeptic arguments. These have been overwhelmingly proven to exist. Once confronted with this inconvenient truth, alarmists have desperately tried to discredit certain journals that dare publish these papers. One of these is the journal Energy & Environment. This is a reference correcting misinformation about this journal.

Table of Contents:

Citations
Cited by the IPCC
Editor
Funding
Impact Factor
Mission Statement
Misinterpreted Quote: "Political Agenda"
Misinterpreted Quote: "Scientific Truth"
Myth: RealClimate Libel Suit
Name Origin
Controversial Papers
(1) 180 years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods
(2) Earth's Heat Source - The Sun
Publication Bias
Peer-Reviewed
"Right-Wing" Journal
Science Journal
Trade Journal

Energy & Environment is a peer-reviewed interdisciplinary scholarly journal
ISSN: 0958-305X
- Indexed in Compendex, EBSCO, Environment Abstracts, Google Scholar, JournalSeek, Scopus and Thompson Reuters (ISI)
- Found at hundreds of libraries and universities worldwide in print and electronic form. These include; Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Library of Congress, McGill University, Monash University, National Library of Australia, Stanford University, The British Library, University of British Columbia, University of Cambridge, University of Oxford, University of Queensland and MIT.

Citations:

Citations are a determination of popularity not scientific validity. Regardless, various papers from E&E are widely cited; "Corrections to the Mann et al (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series" is cited over 250 times, "Reconstructing climatic and environmental changes of the past 1000 years: a reappraisal" over 150 times and "The IPCC emission scenarios: An economic-statistical critique" over 125 times.

Cited by the IPCC:

Editor:

E&E's editor Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen has impeccable credentials,

Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, B.A. (Hons) Geography (Thesis: Geomorphology), University of Adelaide (1962); M.A. International Relations, University of Sussex (1971); Ph.D. International Relations (Thesis: "Limits to the International Control of Marine Pollution") (1981); Lecturer in Geography, Flinders University, Australia (1963-68); Research Assistant, Institute for Public International Law, Ludwig-Maximillian University, Germany (1982-1985); Consultant, Acid Rain Project, Chatham House, UK (1986-1987); Research Fellow, Science Policy Unit, University of Sussex, UK (1985-1987); Senior Research Fellow, Science Policy Unit, University of Sussex, UK (1987-1993); Member, Working Group on Global Environmental Change, International Political Science Association (1991-1994); Referee, Environmental Research Programme, European Commission (1992); Member, Working Group on Environment and Society, International Sociological Association (1992-Present); Reader of Environmental Science and Management, Department of Geography, University of Hull, UK (1993-2007); Consultant, Climatic Impacts Centre, Macquarie University, Australia (1994); Member, International Geographical Union (1998-Present); Editor, Energy & Environment Journal (1998-Present); Reader Emeritus of Environmental Science and Management, Department of Geography, University of Hull, UK (2007-Present); Expert Reviewer, IPCC (1995, 2001)

Funding:

Energy & Environment is falsely accused of being funded by the energy industry or other politically motivated interests.

"E&E is funded by the publisher Multi-Science and I have nothing to do with financial matters. E&E does not advertise, and I do not get a salary."

- Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, Editor, Energy & Environment

Source: Email Correspondence

"E&E doesn't have 'funding'. Like all our journals, it exists on it's subscription income."

- Bill Hughes, Director, Multi-Science Publishing

Source: Email Correspondence

Impact Factor:

Impact Factor is a subjectively devised determination of popularity not scientific validity that is widely abused and manipulated.

The Number That's Devouring Science (PDF) (The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 15, 2005)

Deluged by so many manuscripts, high-impact journals can send only a fraction out to experts for review. Nature, for example, rejects half of the submissions it gets without forwarding them to referees, says its editor in chief, Philip Campbell. [...]

Dr. DeAngelis, of JAMA, says editors at some top journals have told her that they do consider citations when judging some papers. "There are people who won't publish articles," she says, "because it won't help their impact factor." [...]

Fiona Godlee, editor of BMJ (formerly known as the British Medical Journal), agrees that editors take impact factors into account when deciding on manuscripts, whether they realize it or not. ...She says editors may be rejecting not only studies in smaller or less-fashionable fields, but also important papers from certain regions of the world, out of fear that such reports won't attract sufficient citation attention.

European Association of Science Editors statement on inappropriate use of impact factors (PDF) (European Association of Science Editors, November 2007)

The impact factor, however, is not always a reliable instrument for measuring the quality of journals. Its use for purposes for which it was not intended, causes even greater unfairness.

"Quality not Quantity" – DFG Adopts Rules to Counter the Flood of Publications in Research (German Research Foundation, February 2010)

"Whether in performance-based funding allocations, postdoctoral qualifications, appointments, or reviewing funding proposals, increasing importance has been given to numerical indicators such as the H-index and the impact factor. The focus has not been on what research someone has done but rather how many papers have been published and where. This puts extreme pressure upon researchers to publish as much as possible and sometimes leads to cases of scientific misconduct in which incorrect statements are provided concerning the status of a publication. This is not in the interest of science,"

Why the impact factor of journals should not be used for evaluating research (PDF)
(British Medical Journal, Volume 314, pp. 498–502, February 1997)
- Per O. Seglen

Summary points:
- Use of journal impact factors conceals the difference in article citation rates (articles in the most cited half of articles in a journal are cited 10 times as often as the least cited half)
- Journals' impact factors are determined by technicalities unrelated to the scientific quality of their articles
- Journal impact factors depend on the research field: high impact factors are likely in journals covering large areas of basic research with a rapidly expanding but short lived literature that use many references per article
- Article citation rates determine the journal impact factor, not vice versa

The Impact Factor Game
(PLoS Medicine, Volume 3, Issue 6, June 2006)
- The PLoS Medicine Editors

...it is well known that editors at many journals plan and implement strategies to massage their impact factors. Such strategies include attempting to increase the numerator in the above equation by encouraging authors to cite articles published in the journal or by publishing reviews that will garner large numbers of citations. Alternatively, editors may decrease the denominator by attempting to have whole article types removed from it (by making such articles superficially less substantial, such as by forcing authors to cut down on the number of references or removing abstracts) or by decreasing the number of research articles published. These are just a few of the many ways of "playing the impact factor game."

One problem with this game, leaving aside the ethics of it, is that the rules are unclear—editors can, for example, try to persuade Thomson Scientific to reduce the denominator, but the company refuses to make public its process for choosing "citable" article types. Thomson Scientific, the sole arbiter of the impact factor game, is part of The Thomson Corporation, a for-profit organization that is responsible primarily to its shareholders. It has no obligation to be accountable to any of the stakeholders who care most about the impact factor—the authors and readers of scientific research.

Show Me The Data
(The Journal of Cell Biology, Volume 179, Number 6, pp. 1091-1092, December 2007)
- Mike Rossner, Heather Van Epps, Emma Hill

It became clear that Thomson Scientific could not or (for some as yet unexplained reason) would not sell us the data used to calculate their published impact factor. If an author is unable to produce original data to verify a figure in one of our papers, we revoke the acceptance of the paper. We hope this account will convince some scientists and funding organizations to revoke their acceptance of impact factors as an accurate representation of the quality—or impact—of a paper published in a given journal. Just as scientists would not accept the findings in a scientific paper without seeing the primary data, so should they not rely on Thomson Scientific's impact factor, which is based on hidden data.

Irreproducible results: a response to Thomson Scientific
(The Journal of Cell Biology, Volume 180, Number 2, pp. 254-255, January 2008)
- Mike Rossner, Heather Van Epps, Emma Hill

Impact factors are determined from a dataset produced by searching the Thomson Scientific database using specific parameters. As previously stated, our aim was to purchase that dataset for a few journals. Even if those results were for some reason not stored by Thomson Scientific, it is inconceivable to us that they cannot run the same search over the same database to produce the same dataset. The citation data for a given year should be static. In essence, Thomson Scientific is saying that they cannot repeat the experiment, which would be grounds for rejection of a manuscript submitted to any scientific journal.

Nefarious Numbers (PDF)
(arXiv:1010.0278, October 2010)
- Douglas N. Arnold, Kristine K. Fowler

The impact factor for a journal in a given year is calculated by ISI (Thomson Reuters) as the average number of citations in that year to the articles the journal published in the preceding two years. It has been widely criticized on a variety of grounds:

- A journal's distribution of citations does not determine its quality.
- The impact factor is a crude statistic, reporting only one particular item of information from the citation distribution.
- It is a flawed statistic. For one thing, the distribution of citations among papers is highly skewed, so the mean for the journal tends to be misleading. For another, the impact factor only refers to citations within the first two years after publication (a particularly serious de deficiency for mathematics, in which around 90% of citations occur after two years).
- The underlying database is flawed, containing errors and including a biased selection of journals.
- Many confounding factors are ignored, for example, article type (editorials, reviews, and letters versus original research articles), multiple authorship, self-citation, language of publication, etc.

Mission Statement:

"Energy & Environment (E&E) is a scholarly, peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary journal aimed at natural scientists, technologists, social scientists and policy-makers. It debates issues arising from aspirations of 'integrated' policy-making and academic analysis and serves as a forum for constructive and professional debate and the search for solutions in a policy area that remains a focus of politics at all levels and involves major regulatory and investment efforts. Social scientists and policy makers, natural scientists as well as technologists are addressed, indeed everybody concerned with the direct and indirect environmental impacts of energy acquisition, transport, production and use. Our objective is to inform across professional and disciplinary boundaries and debate the social, economic, political and technological implications of environmental controls, as well as interrogate the science claims made to justify environmental regulations of the energy industries, including transport. Contributors are asked to use language that bridges disciplinary divides. Regular issues include submitted and invited papers that are rigorously peer reviewed, as well as shorter personal viewpoints and technical communications that are not peer reviewed and often give controversial voices a platform.

E&E appears eight times a year, including one or two Special Issues that are devoted to a single subject, or select papers from a single conference or institution. For example, E&E has long published a selection of papers from the triennial World Energy Congress. Such issues are prepared by a Guest Editor who is responsible for the selection of the papers, proof reading and an introductory editorial. A recent current Special Issue selected critical responses to recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports and their implications for energy policy, another dealt with nuclear waste disposal issues from a social science perspective. Special issues in preparation include a selection of papers on solar theories of global climate change, fuel poverty and, hopefully, biofuels.

Book reviews, conference reports, and letters are usually included, as is the editor’s regular piece 'Fuel for Thought' which aims to keep readers informed about developments in key issue areas impinging on energy policy: energy policy, new energy technologies, the climate change science debate and intergovernmental battles over access to resources and emission reductions. Nuclear developments are summarised with the help of World Nuclear News, from World Nuclear Association, London.

E&E seeks to encourage communications between the many branches of the policy-making and research worlds that deal with 'energy' and 'environment' issues and encourage excursions into theory and futuristic speculation. E&E has consistently striven to publish many ‘voices’ and to challenge conventional wisdoms. Perhaps more so than other European energy journal, the editor has made E&E a forum for more sceptical analyses of ‘climate change’ and the advocated solutions. We look for contributions that make energy technology a contributor to improving social and environmental conditions where this is most needed.

Some Journal History and Information about the Editorial Board:

E&E has been published by Multi-Science (UK) since 1989. Its founding editor was Dr David Everest, formerly chief scientist to the then UK Department of the Environment. After his death in 1998, Dr Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen took over the editorship. She had previously worked with the Energy Group at the Science and Technology Policy Unit at the University of Sussex with the (late) Professor John Surrey, and Dr. Stephen Thomas, now professor at Greenwich University.

The journal benefits from an able and active Editorial Board that is continuously ‘revitalised’ and remains invaluable through its assistance in the time consuming peer review process. Several former members of the Energy and Environment Groups at SPRU remain involved, as do members from the Fraunhofer Institute in Germany and several American, Australian, Dutch and British universities. Max Beran and Jack Barrett, long involved with environmental science research in the UK strengthen our expertise in the natural sciences as they relate to environmental protection and especially climate change.

We have recently enlarged the editorial board by inviting experts from the carbon fuels industries lest these all-important providers of energy are neglected in the current enthusiasm for ‘renewables’. We have links with many academic departments and encourage contributions from authors working in ‘developing’ countries doing research into energy-environment issues that relate to poverty reduction and development. The editorial team, strongly encouraged by the publisher Multi-Science, is working hard to advance the status of the journal in the research community. The editor remains closely involved with several global fora critically debating the science and policy related to the claim that ‘dangerous anthropogenic warming’ requires rapid, government-driven decarbonisation world-wide. On the basis of these connections and wide reading, she reports regularly on events, new scientific findings and policy developments."

Source

Misinterpreted Quote: "Political Agenda"

An out of context quote of editor Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen has it's meaning frequently distorted, "I'm following my political agenda -- a bit, anyway," ... "But isn't that the right of the editor?" (Origin: The Chronicle of Higher Education).

This is the correct interpretation,

"My political agenda for E&E is not party political but relates to academic and intellectual freedom."

- Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, Editor, Energy & Environment

Source: Carbon Brief Comment

and,

"My political agenda is simple and open; it concerns the role of research ambitions in the making of policy.

I concluded from a research project about the IPCC - funded by the UK government during the mid 1990s - that this body was set up to support, initially, climate change research projects supported by the WMO and hence the rapidly evolving art and science of climate modeling. A little later the IPCC came to serve an intergovernmental treaty, the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. This enshrines in law that future climate change would be warming caused by greenhouse gases (this remains debated), is man-made (to what an extend remains debated) as well as dangerous (remains debated). It became a task of the IPCC government selected and government funded, to support the theory that this man-made warming would be dangerous rather than beneficial, as some argue.

The solutions to this assumed problem were worked out by IPCC working group three, which worked largely independently of the science working group one and consisted primarily of parties interested in a 'green' energy agenda, including people from environment agencies, NGOs and environmental economics. This group supplied the science group with emission scenarios that have been widely criticized and which certainly enhanced the 'danger'. From interviews and my own reading I concluded that the climate science debate WAS BY NO MEANS OVER AND SHOULD CONTINUE. However, when I noticed that scientific critics of the IPCC science working group were increasingly side-lined and had difficulties being published - when offered the editorship of E&E, I decided to continue publishing 'climate skeptics' and document the politics associated with the science debate. The implications for energy policy and technology are obvious.

I myself have argued the cause of climate 'realism' - I am a geomorphologist by academic training before switching to environmental international relations - but do so on more the basis of political rather than science-based arguments. As far as the science of climate change is concerned, I would describe myself as agnostic.

In my opinion the global climate research enterprise must be considered as an independent political actor in environmental politics. I have widely published on this subject myself, and my own research conclusions have influenced my editorial policy. I also rely on an excellent and most helpful editorial board which includes a number of experienced scientists. Several of the most respected 'climate skeptics' regularly peer-review IPCC critical papers I publish."

- Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, Editor, Energy & Environment

Source: Email Correspondence

Misinterpreted Quote: "Scientific Truth"

Another out of context quote of editor Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen has it's meaning frequently distorted, "I do not claim that I or my reviewers can arbitrate on the 'scientific' truth of publications that the IPCC selects as most relevant" (Origin: Letter to Michael Mann).

This is the correct interpretation,

"I stand by this, truth is far too strong a term for any reviewer to claim when judging a paper on something as complex and poorly defined a set of phenomena as 'climate'.

In fact, with reference to the next edition of E&E on paradigms in climate science (edited by Prof. Arthur Rorsch of the Netherlands) I would claim that nobody except people caught inside a fixed paradigm which they mistake for truth, could ever claim to deliver truth by peer review.

Only time and experience will tell the truth…

I do however accept that policy cannot always wait for the truth and rarely does, hence the high risk of policies that get it wrong, and the persuasive power of scaremongers, and the attraction to politics and those with political ambitions of fear. Politics has always been much motivated by fear. coupled with the promise of salvation, or rather being able to solve the problem, in our case by more research and green technology and/or changes in life styles. I am a political scientists and see many motives for the IPCC and its supporters to combine 'alarmism' with grand solutions."

- Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, Editor, Energy & Environment

Source: Email Correspondence

Myth: RealClimate Libel Suit

Gavin Schmidt dishonestly claimed that Bill Hughes, the Director of Multi-Science Publishing threatened to sue him in an email sent in relation to Gavin's smear of the peer-review policy at E&E. The word "lawsuit" does not appear anywhere in the email,

RealClimate’s over-the-top response (Watts Up With That?, February 22, 2011)

From: Bill Hughes
Cc: Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
Subject:: E&E libel
Date: 02/18/11 10:48:01

Gavin, your comment about Energy & Environment which you made on RealClimate has been brought to my attention:

“The evidence for this is in precisely what happens in venues like E&E that have effectively dispensed with substantive peer review for any papers that follow the editor’s political line. ”

To assert, without knowing, as you cannot possibly know, not being connected with the journal yourself, that an academic journal does not bother with peer review, is a terribly damaging charge, and one I’m really quite surprised that you’re prepared to make. And to further assert that peer review is abandoned precisely in order to let the editor publish papers which support her political position, is even more damaging, not to mention being completely ridiculous.

At the moment, I’m prepared to settle merely for a retraction posted on RealClimate. I’m quite happy to work with you to find a mutually satisfactory form of words: I appreciate you might find it difficult.

I look forward to hearing from you.

With best wishes
Bill Hughes
Director
Multi-Science Publishing Co Ltd

To make it clear that there never was any intent to sue, Bill Hughes sent a second email that Gavin barely noted with an update and conveniently posted it in the comments,

From: Bill Hughes
Subject: EE
Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 17:10:24 -0000

Gavin, according to todays Guardian, I am planning to sue you for libel. Nothing could be further from the truth, and if you read that interpretation into my email of last Friday, then I must apologise for not having expressed myself more clearly, and of course for any discomfort you felt.

Your comment of Feb 13th I felt, clearly strayed across the line from insult – with which I am well accustomed in respect of EE – into libel, which puts everyone in a far trickier position So my purpose in emailing you last Friday was to invite you to draw back slightly. I’m sorry that you didn’t take up my offer, for if you had much of this week’s unpleasantness could have been avoided.

So, even though I am convinced you have libelled EE, please be assured I am not actually intending to do anything about.

Best wishes
Bill Hughes
Multi-Science Publishing

Name Origin:

Energy & Environment is falsely accused of being named for a relation to the energy industry.

"The journal's title was devised by me when I started it because (a) there was no other title of the same name and (b) because that was what it was (and is) about. My original interest was sparked by the then reports of Norway (and possibly Germany too) threatening to sue the UK on account of damage to its woodland by acid rain, caused by steel mills in the UK. Specifically I was interested in how that would work, Govt A suing Govt B about the legal activities of a commercial organization in Govt B's jurisdiction. As the idea was talked through, it developed into energy's effects and impacts on the environment, and the political and policy issues which those effects and impacts threw up. And that's been its remit ever since. While it doesn't focus solely on climate change issues, its not surprising they've dominated the journal for the last 15 years, because for the last 15 years what else apart from climate change has been the overriding energy policy issue?"

- Bill Hughes, Director, Multi-Science Publishing

Source: Email Correspondence

Controversial Papers:

Certain papers published in E&E are brought up as controversial,

(1) 180 years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 2, pp. 259-282, March 2007)
- Ernst-Georg Beck

There has only been one published criticism by Harro A.J. Meijer and Ralph F. Keeling which was rebutted by Ernst-Georg Beck,

* Comments on "180 years of Atmospheric CO2 Gas Analysis by Chemical Methods" (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 5, pp. 641-646, September 2007)
- Ernst-Georg Beck

It is falsely claimed that this paper was never peer-reviewed,

"First of all, before the Beck paper was submitted to the journal, its manuscript had been circulated for more than a year for comments among a wide number of people. Among the papers that are published after 'peer review' it is probably the most strongly 'peer reviewed' one over the last 10 years. It was controversial and the appointed official referees by E&E knew about the criticism. That was insufficient reason for them to prevent the publication. The official referees were convinced of the quality of the primarily analyses of Beck of the old data. It does not mean that they unconditioned also supported all his conclusions. These were considered to be the sole responsibility of the author. According to an old tradition in scientific disputes, as performed in scientific journals."

- Arthur Rorsch, Ph.D. Chemical Engineering

Source: NOS (Netherlands Broadcasting Foundation) Comment

(2) Earth's Heat Source - The Sun
(Energy & Environment, Volume 20, Number 1-2, pp. 131-144, January 2009)
- Oliver K. Manuel

This paper did not meet E&E's standards for a peer-reviewed publication and thus could only be published as a viewpoint (opinion piece) not as a refereed paper,

"Just for info, the people i asked did not think much of Oliver's ideas and complained that he has no evidence and mainly cites himself. Hence his paper could not be published as peer reviewed, but as a viewpoint." - Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, Editor, Energy & Environment

Viewpoints are not considered to have passed peer-review in E&E and often give controversial voices a platform,

"Regular issues include submitted and invited papers that are rigorously peer reviewed, as well as shorter personal viewpoints and technical communications that are not peer reviewed and often give controversial voices a platform." - Energy & Environment Mission Statement

This was further confirmed by the editor of that special edition - Bob Foster,

"Two of the authors I sought out for this issue suffered some (not all) negative reviews – to the point where higher authority has felt unable to grant them 'Refereed' status. [...] The first of these ...is by Oliver Manuel, entitled Earth’s heat source – the Sun." - Bob Foster, Special Edition Editor, Energy & Environment

Dr. Manuel's theory while controversial was published in the peer-review literature in the Journal of Fusion Energy, which is indexed in Thompson Reuters (ISI) Science Citation Index.

Superfluidity in the Solar Interior: Implications for Solar Eruptions and Climate
(Journal of Fusion Energy, Volume 21, Numbers 3-4, pp. 193-198, December 2002)
- Oliver K. Manuel et al.

It was also widely reported on in the media, including by CNN, Discover Magazine, Science Daily, The Daily Telegraph, The Sydney Morning Herald and UPI.

Sun Is Mostly Iron, Not Hydrogen, Professor Says (Science Daily, January 9, 2002)
The Strange Case of the Iron Sun (Discover Magazine, February 12, 2002)
Scientist Claims Sun Is Already An Iron Monger (Space Daily, January 11, 2002)
An iron Sun: Groundbreaking or cracked? (UPI, July 17, 2002)
The Sun: A Great Ball Of Iron? (Science Daily, July 17, 2002)
Scientist: Sun composed mostly of iron (CNN, July 23, 2002)
Iron-Rich Sun May Lie at the Core of Solar Flares (Newswise, October 30, 2003)
Scientist Theorizes Iron-Rich Sun May Lie at Core of Solar Flares (AScribe Newswire, October 30, 2003)
Sun's Iron Core May Be Cause Of Solar Flares (Science A GoGo, November 3, 2002)
QED: Robert Matthews asks is the Sun just a white-hot ball bearing? (The Daily Telegraph, November 12, 2003)
Is The Sun An Iron-Rich Powerhouse (Space Daily, November 18, 2003)
White-hot ball bearing (The Sydney Morning Herald, December 2, 2003)

Publication Bias:

It is falsely claimed that only climate skeptic articles are published in E&E. Here are some examples of articles demonstrating that this is not true,

IPCC SRES Revisited: A Response
(Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Number 2-3, pp. 187-214, May 2003)
- Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Arnulf Grübler, Stuard Gaffin, Tae Tong Jung, Tom Kram, Tsuneyuki Morita, Hugh Pitcher, Keywan Riahi, Michael Schlesinger, P. R. Shukla, Detlef van Vuuren, Ged Davis, Laurie Michaelis, Rob Swart, Nadja Victor

Emissions Scenarios: A Final Response
(Energy & Environment, Volume 15, Number 1, pp. 11-24, January 2004)
- Arnulf Grübler, Nebojsa Nakicenovic, Joe Alcamo, Ged Davis, Joergen Fenhann, Bill Hare, Shunsuke Mori, Bill Pepper, Hugh Pitcher, Keywan Riahi, Hans-Holger Rogner, Emilo Lebre La Rovere, Alexei Sankovski, Michael Schlesinger, R.P. Shukla, Rob Swart, Nadejda Victor, Tae Yong Jung

Comment on "180 years of atmospheric CO2 gas analysis by chemical methods" by ernst-georg beck
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Number 5, pp. 635-641, September 2007)
- Harro A.J. Meijer, Ralph F. Keeling

Peer-Reviewed:

1. Thompson Reuters Social Sciences Citation Index (ISI) lists Energy & Environment as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal

2. EBSCO Publishing lists Energy & Environment as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal (PDF)

3. Elsevier (parent company of Scopus) correctly lists Energy & Environment as a scholarly peer-reviewed journal on their internal master list. (Source: Email Correspondence)

4. Scopus lists Energy & Environment as a peer-reviewed scholarly journal

5. "E&E, by the way, is peer reviewed" - Tom Wigley, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

6. "I have published a few papers in E&E. All were peer-reviewed as usual. I have reviewed a few more for the journal." - Richard Tol Ph.D. Professor of the Economics of Climate Change, Vrije Universiteit, Netherlands

7. "Regular issues include submitted and invited papers that are rigorously peer reviewed" - E&E Mission Statement

8. "All Multi-Sciences primary journals are fully refereed" - Multi-Science Publishing

"Right-Wing" Journal:

The editor Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen is a Social-Democrat,

FC: So why does the present approach to global warming and climate change bother you as someone from the social-democratic left?

SC: It’s just my experience in Europe. ...If you look at the distribution of political beliefs I just don’t think the political Right, certainly not in Europe, can win against ‘environmentalism’…. The Right in Europe is actually very green anyway. To oppose climate alarmism you have to have a broad political alliance. You cannot say what somebody just said to me “I’ll be for this.” I’m a bit frightened by what I’ve observed here in America, the anger and the lack of comprehension of socialism. Socialism is not communism and socialism in its stark form is much more individual anti-liberty than social democracy. People know very little of what actually happens in Europe.

Science Journal:

E&E makes no claim to be a pure natural science journal but instead explicitly states that they are an interdisciplinary journal that includes papers that cover both the natural and social sciences. This is effectively stated on their webpage,

"Energy and Environment is an interdisciplinary journal aimed at natural scientists, technologists and the international social science and policy communities covering the direct and indirect environmental impacts of energy acquisition, transport, production and use. A particular objective is to cover the social, economic and political dimensions of such issues at local, national and international level. The technological and scientific aspects of energy and environment questions including energy conservation, and the interaction of energy forms and systems with the physical environment, are covered, including the relationship of such questions to wider economic and socio-political issues. A major aim of Energy and Environment is to act as a forum for constructive and professional debate between scientists and technologists, social scientists and economists from academia, government and the energy industries on energy and environment issues in both a national and international context. It is also the aim to include the informed and environmentally concerned public and their organizations in the debate."

Trade Journal:

Scopus incorrectly listed E&E as a "trade journal" while EBSCO correctly lists it as a scholarly journal. E&E is not associated with any specific "trade" such as "chemical engineering" and it failed to match their criteria for defining a "trade journal",

Coverage of Source Types (Scopus)

1. "Trade Journal: a serial publication covering and intended to reach a specific industry, trade or type of business."

Fail - E&E is not targeted at any specific industry, trade or business. It is explicitly stated that it is an interdisciplinary journal,

interdisciplinary (defined) - "involving two or more academic, scientific, or artistic disciplines."

2. "Characteristics: usually a glossy magazine type of periodical with articles on topical subjects,"

Fail - E&E is not a glossy magazine type of periodical.

3. "many news items and advertisements that will appeal to those in the field."

Fail - E&E has no advertisements.

4. "Trade Journals are seldom refereed"

Fail - E&E is refereed. The word "seldom" implies some are, thus a trade journal listing does not mean it cannot be peer-reviewed.

5. "...and do not always have an editorial board."

Fail - E&E has an editorial board.

6. "Abstracts are usually short or non-existent, and few or no references are given."

Fail - E&E abstracts are average length and extensive references are given. Examples,

A 2000-year global temperature reconstruction based on non-treering proxies (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 18, Numbers 7-8, pp. 1049-1058, December 2007)
- Craig Loehle

Corrections to the Mann et al (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 14, Number 6, pp. 751-771, November 2003)
- Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick

The M&M Critique of the MBH98 Northern Hemisphere Climate Index: Update and Implications (PDF)
(Energy & Environment, Volume 16, Number 1, pp. 69-100, January 2005)
- Stephen McIntyre, Ross McKitrick

7. Finally it is stated, "Trade journals are included in Scopus because users and librarians consider selected articles to be scientifically relevant." Clearly Scopus editors choose to include E&E due to the scientific relevance of some of it's articles, this is contrary to the claims made by it's critics.

Update: Elsevier (parent company of Scopus) correctly lists Energy & Environment as a scholarly peer-reviewed journal on their internal master list. (Source: Email Correspondence)

Update 2: Scopus now correctly lists Energy & Environment as a scholarly peer-reviewed journal.

Conclusion: The criticisms of E&E do not hold up against the facts.

3 comments:

Unknown said...: Good Work!

Of course the demonizing and marginalization of E&E is based not on rationality, but on following consciously or unconsciously the methods of propaganda.

This unfortunately implies that someone of said persuasions would read your article, accept at that moment the truth of it, and then the next day again be demonizing and marginalizing E&E just as before.; 4/15/2010 8:28 AM
Norm K said...: Peer review is critical to maintaining the scientific database free of all known errors, and it only takes one improperly done peer review to contaminate the scientific database resulting in critical decisions being made on faulty science as is the case for human caused global warming.
In 1981 SCIENCE published a peer reviewed paper:
Climate Impact of Increasing
Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide
J. Hansen, D. Johnson, A. Lacis, S. Lebedeff
P. Lee, D. Rind, G. Russell
which contained the critical error:
"Carbon dioxide absorbs in the atmospheric "window" from 7 to 14 micrometers which transmits thermal radiation emitted by the earth's surface and lower atmosphere. Increased atmospheric CO2 tends to close this window and cause outgoing radiation to emerge from higher, colder levels, thus warming the surface and lower atmosphere by the socalled greenhouse mechanism (5). The
most sophisticated models suggest a
mean warming of 2° to 3.5°C for doubling of the CO2 concentration from 300 to 600 ppm (6-8)."
SCIENCE, VOL. 213, 28 AUGUST 1981

CO2 only has an effect over the 13 to 17.5 micrometer range of the Earth's radiative spectrum which is saturated to the point that it is a physical impossibility for a doubling of CO2 from 300ppm to 600ppm to cause any more than 0.4°C of additional greenhouse effect making the model output of 2°C to 3.5°C stated in this paper completely false.
Had a proper peer review been done by SCIENCE the CO2 forcing parameter used by Hansen which is still producing faulty output from climate models would have been identified as being based on energy not available to CO2 and this paper would have been rejected from publication. Without this paper there would be no AGW issue today because human caused global warming is entirely based on a non existant correlation of CO2 emissions from fossil fuels and global temperature increase and the only support for this false conjecture is this false output from the climate models

Norm K.; 2/25/2011 3:37 PM
Unknown said...: This journal is is now in ISI. This fundamentally undermines the warmist argument that this journal is not peer reviewed SO THEREFORE it is not in ISI and THEREFORE it is no good. So now does the opposite apply? It is in ISI so it is THEREFORE peer reviewed and also good? Or are we going to see the grounds of argument shift? Is it now the case that ISI is no good, and not an arbiter of anything?

There is a very disparaging page on Wikipedia about EE, and I urge everyone who understands how wikipedia works to have a go at correcting it. Anyone who does not think that the information Andrew has supplied is sufficient, is welcome to contact me through Andrew for clarification/more info.
Read through the discussion and history pages and you will get the picture
bill hughes; 5/05/2011 5:39 PM

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Correcting misinformation about the journal Energy & Environment

3 comments: