The description of Scientific American is misleading. Sure, it's technically a "scientific publication," but it's actually a magazine aimed at the layman that you can find at checkout counters and airports -- not a peer-reviewed scholarly journal that one would typically be associated with that term.

To put it in a better perspective, using Scientific American as a source for making decisions on the future of energy would be like using reprinted Associated Press articles to make decisions on US involvement in Libya.