Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen

Boehmer-Christiansen and the “Scientific Alliance”

Boehmer-Christiansen is an advising member of the “Scientific Alliance,” an organization formed by a UK businessman who was fed up with "all this environmental stuff."

The alliance describes itself as “a forum for addressing environmental problems based on sound science.” Other members include Sallie Baliunas and Benny Peiser. According to a July 2001 article, the Scientific Alliance was set up by Robert Durward and a public relations firm called “Foresight Communications.”

Durward, owner of a rock quarry in the UK, formed the Alliance out of frustration over an aggregate tax being proposed for the quarry industry. On top of fighting the tax, the alliance also provided “expert” scientific advice on subjects like transport, climate change and biodiversity. Durward described himself, “as a businessman who is totally fed up with all this environmental stuff… much of it unjustified, such as the climate change levy.” At the time of the alliance’s formation, Durward refused to disclose the names of its financial backers.

In December 2004, the Scientific Alliance teamed up with the ExxonMobil-funded George C. Marshall Institute to produce a paper titled "Climate Issues and Questions."

In January 2005, the Scientific Alliance held a half-day seminar on the "alarmism" around the issue of climate change. Speakers included Fred Singer, Richard Lindzen and Benny Peiser.

Editor of "skeptic journal"

Boehmer-Christiansen is the editor of a journal called Energy and Environment. In a 1995 article written by Paul Thacker, Energy and Environment was described as being a journal skeptics can go to when they are rejected by the mainstream peer-reviewed science publications. Boehmer-Christiansen explained at the time that "it’s only we climate skeptics who have to look for little journals and little publishers like mine to even get published.” According to a search of WorldCat, a database of libraries, the journal is carried in only 25 libraries worldwide. And the journal is not included in Journal Citation Reports, which lists the impact factors for the top 6000 peer-reviewed journals.

After a great deal of controversy involving a research paper published by two well-known climate change "skeptics," Sallie Baliunas and Willie Soon, in a journal called Climate Change, it was Boehmer-Christiansen's Energy and Environment that ran a more extensive version afterwards.

Research Background

According to a search of 22,000 academic journals, Boehmer-Christiansen has published four research articles in peer-reviewed journals mainly on the subject of environmental policy. Boehmer-Christiansen is currently listed as a reader in geography at the University of Hull.