Renewable Revolution

 
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With a name so mundane it’s practically impossible to Google, the journal Energy and Environment has been the “journal of choice” for deniers who want to try and slip something into the peer-reviewed literature. The journal is held in exceptionally low regard by the academic community and considered heavily biased in favor of industry. (And to be clear, it’s entirely different from the energy and environment news outlet E&E.)

Pieces published at Energy and Environment seemed to lack a quality peer-review process, but hopefully that will change. Mat Hope at DeSmog UK broke the news on Friday that the journal has been acquired by peer-review-giant SAGE publishing. With this change in leadership, the journal has adopted a new “double-blind peer review policy for the journal” as well as an online submission system. 

After the transfer, denier Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen resigned from the journal’s editorial board. The new ownership and the vacuum of denier power at the top editorial levels means we can expect to see fewer denial papers published there.   


Let’s take a quick trip down memory lane to see the sort of content Energy and Environment is (hopefully) leaving behind.

When deniers compiled a list of journal articles in 2011 that bucked the climate consensus, Energy & Environment published more of the articles in the list than any other academic journal.

That same year, the publication sent a thinly-veiled threat to sue Real Climate after a post that claimed papers that fit with a particular political point of view sail through peer review, implying that deniers could get things published with ease.

In 2009, Boehmer-Christiansen was also responsible for soliciting and publishing a opinion piece by Oliver manuel in the journal, advancing what we’ll call a very creative idea that the Sun is actually made of iron.

In part of the pal-review scandal of 2003, a paper attacking Michael Mann’s 🕊 work was published in Climate Research. Its failures were so severe that half the journal’s board resigned in embarrassment and shame. Naturally, Energy and Environment  decided to publish an extended version of the faulty paper.


That study was co-authored by Willie Soon of fossil fuel 🦖 funding fame. Unsurprisingly, Soon 🐲 has published a bunch of other papers in Energy and Environment.

Best of luck to Energy and Environments new owners in improving the journal’s reputation. We have high hopes: if anyone can clear out the ghosts of denier papers past, it’s got to be the group named SAGE.