Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen

 Credentials

• Doctorate in "International Relations researching into environmental issues in international and also national politics."
• Ph.D. on "marine pollution control in the Law of the Sea negotiations."
• Master's Degree, physical geography.
• Master's Degree, social science.

Source:  [6]

 Background

Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen is currently listed as a reader in geography at the University of Hull.   She is the editor of a journal called Energy and Environment. In a 1995 article (PDF) 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.

She has described herself as "an 'expert' on the science and politics of global warming since the late 1980s." [7]

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.

Stance on Climate Change

"FC: Do you think humans are causing global warming?

SC: To be very honest I’m agnostic on this. I don’t have the evidence. I mean I have lots of contradictory evidence but I do think, from my experience on ocean pollution and all the other pollution hypes, that when it goes to the political phase there are huge exaggerations. Once bureaucracies get regulatory and taxation powers, the exaggerations decline, scares may even be forgotten. So I honestly believe that there may be a problem but that this problem also has beneficial sides. We know how positive carbon dioxide is to life. So I do think there’s much exaggeration (of the man-made warming threat), of the negative aspects, for political reasons. So that’s why I’m here (at this Conference). I do think the skeptical scientists are more honest and more truthful than those funded by governments to support the IPCC." [6]

Key Quotes

"…As editor of a journal which remained open to scientists who challenged the orthodoxy, I became the target of a number of CRU manoeuvres. The hacked emails revealed attempts to manipulate peer review to E&E’s disadvantage, and showed that libel threats were considered against its editorial team…" [8]

Key Deeds

July, 2010

Boehmer-Christiansen was one of those who claimed that Phil Jones had manipulated climate data in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report. Five separate inquiries were conducted to investigate these claims but the conclusion reached was that there had been no scientific dishonesty or misconduct by the IPCC scientists.

The last review, done by the Independent Climate Change Email Review (ICCER), responded to Boehmer-Christiansen's allegations by concluding that she had provided no evidence in support of her claims.

May 16 - 18th, 2010

Boehmer-Christiansen attended the 4th International Climate Change Conference hosted by the Heartland Institute. [6]

 Affiliations

• The Scientific Alliance — Advising member. [3]

• Oil, Gas, Energy Law Intelligence (OGEL) — Contributing Author. [5]

 Publications

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.

She has written numerous articles on environmental politics and climate policy:

• "Global climate protection policy: the limits of scientific advice: Part 1," Global Environmental Change, Volume 4, Issue 2, June 1994, Pages 140-159.

• "A scientific agenda for climate policy?" (PDF), Nature (*Commentary Section), Volume 372 (December 1, 1994).

• "The global environment facility: An institutional innovation in need of guidance?" Environmental Politics, Volume 6, Issue 1 (1997).

• "Science, Equity, and the War against Carbon," Science Technology & Human Values, vol 28, no.1 (January, 2003), page 69 - 92.

• "Investing Against Climate Change: Why Failure Remains Possible," Environmental Politics, Volume 11, Issue 3 (2002).

• "The geo-politics of sustainable development: bureaucracies and politicians in search of the holy grail," Geoforum, Volume 33, Issue 3 (August 2002), Pages 351 - 365.

• "Green Energy Facilitated? The Uncertain Function of the Global Environment Facility," (.doc), Energy and Environment, 1998.

• "Why Carbon Fuels Will Dominate the 21st Century's Global Energy Economy," Energy & Environment, Volume 19, Number 7 (December 2008).

• "Fuel for Thought," Energy & Environment (*Commentary section), Volume 17, Number 2 (March 2006).

 Resources

1. "Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen," SourceWatch Profile.

2. "Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen," Wikipedia.org.

3. "Scientific Advisory Forum," The Scientific Alliance. Accessed November 29, 2011.

4. "Academic Staff," University of Hull, Department of Geography. 

5. "Dr. Sonja Boehmer-Christainsen," Profile at Oil, Gas & Energy Law.

6. "Conversations from the Frontier," Frontier Center for Public Policy.

7. "The unspeakable BBC: biased even when trying to be unbiased?," The SPPI Blog.

8. "How government cash created the Climategate scandal," Herald Sun, March 22, 2010.

9. "Final CRU email review considers, overwhelmingly rejects critics’ accusations of misconduct," Scholars & Rogues, July 29, 2010.