Journal fires editor after publishing research refuting ‘warming climate’

Tl;dr

·Marty Rowland is no longer a special editor at the American Journal of Economics and Sociology after he published a paper challenging mainstream climate change narratives.

·The paper, titled 'Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems,' faced immediate calls for retraction, its authors told The College Fix.

·Scholars expressed concerns about a trend of censorship and retaliation against researchers who question prevailing climate science, asserting that dissenting opinions are increasingly marginalized.

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The American Journal of Economics and Sociology recently removed special editor Marty Rowland from his position for publishing a paper refuting climate change argument about carbon dioxide, according to the paper’s authors.

“The standard response of the mainstream climate science community these days to papers that somewhat challenge the CO2-is-dangerous-narrative is to immediately ask for retraction,” Marcel Crok, a co-author of the paper and director of the climate science group Clintel, told The College Fix.

“It’s a strategy because it gives the signal that the paper is really bad and most people don’t have the time and knowledge to assess the situation,” Crok said in an email Tuesday.

The paper in question, “Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems,” was published in the journal in May 2024. Crok co-authored it with Andy May, a retired petrophysicist and developmental geologist who worked for Exxon and other oil and energy companies.

Rowland, a lecturer at the Henry George School of Science and environmental engineer, was the editor at the journal who approved it.

According to May’s blog, the journal fired Rowland in August, and the reason it gave was “his publication of our paper.”

An archived version of the journal editorial board webpage shows Rowland was the special editions editor at least since 2023. The current page no longer lists him as an editor.

The Fix reached out to Rowland and the editorial team at the American Journal of Economics and Sociology several times by email over the past two weeks to ask about his role at the journal and the reason for his departure. None responded.

Since being published, the paper has been cited 25 times according to google scholar, and scientists David Wojick, Kenneth Richard, and H. Sterling Burnett gave positive reviews, according to May’s blog.

“In short there was no legitimate reason to fire Dr. Rowland for publishing our fully peer-reviewed, and well received, paper,” May wrote.

May told The Fix via email this week that the paper was peer-reviewed prior to publication.

“The two scientists that liked the paper, both are very famous scientists with decades of climate science publications and well over 16,000 citations between them, had many suggestions and I made all their suggested changes to the paper and the changes improved the paper a lot,” May said.

“Post-publication, the response was mostly favorable, but there was a lot of published criticism,” he told The Fix. “But, these critical responses to our paper are swamped by the favorable critiques. The paper is very popular and in the top 0.1% of all papers followed by Wiley… It is also the #2 paper published in AJES.”

Crok told The Fix that others responded to its publication with calls for retraction.

However, May said none of the critics “identified any errors” in their article, which is why it hasn’t been retracted.

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