Top Journal Retracts Study Predicting Catastrophic Climate Toll
(Thursday December 04, 2025 @05:10AM (BeauHD)
from the off-the-chart dept.)
- Reference: 0180280499
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/12/04/0430227/top-journal-retracts-study-predicting-catastrophic-climate-toll
- Source link:
Nature has retracted a headline-grabbing climate-economics [1]study after critics found flawed data that [2]massively inflated its predicted global economic collapse . The New York Times reports:
> The decision came after a team of economists noticed problems with the data for one country, Uzbekistan, that significantly skewed the results. If Uzbekistan were excluded, they found, the damages would look similar to [3]earlier research (PDF). Instead of a 62 percent decline in economic output by 2100 in a world where carbon emissions continue unabated, global output would be reduced by 23 percent.
>
> Of course, erasing more than 20 percent of the world's economic activity would still be a devastating blow to human welfare. The paper's detractors emphasize that climate change is a major threat, as recent meta [4]analyses [5]have [6]found , and that more should be done to address it -- but, they say, unusual results should be treated skeptically.
"Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20 percent reduction in 2100 was an insanely large number," said Solomon Hsiang, a professor of global environmental policy at Stanford University who co-wrote the [7]critique published in August. "So the fact that this paper is coming out saying 60 percent is off the chart."
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/business/economy/study-climate-damage-retracted.html
[3] https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/nature15725.pdf
[4] https://policyintegrity.org/publications/detail/methodology-matters-a-careful-meta-analysis-of-climate-damages
[5] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2410733121
[6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421523005074
[7] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09320-4
> The decision came after a team of economists noticed problems with the data for one country, Uzbekistan, that significantly skewed the results. If Uzbekistan were excluded, they found, the damages would look similar to [3]earlier research (PDF). Instead of a 62 percent decline in economic output by 2100 in a world where carbon emissions continue unabated, global output would be reduced by 23 percent.
>
> Of course, erasing more than 20 percent of the world's economic activity would still be a devastating blow to human welfare. The paper's detractors emphasize that climate change is a major threat, as recent meta [4]analyses [5]have [6]found , and that more should be done to address it -- but, they say, unusual results should be treated skeptically.
"Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20 percent reduction in 2100 was an insanely large number," said Solomon Hsiang, a professor of global environmental policy at Stanford University who co-wrote the [7]critique published in August. "So the fact that this paper is coming out saying 60 percent is off the chart."
[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-07219-0
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/business/economy/study-climate-damage-retracted.html
[3] https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/nature15725.pdf
[4] https://policyintegrity.org/publications/detail/methodology-matters-a-careful-meta-analysis-of-climate-damages
[5] https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2410733121
[6] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301421523005074
[7] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-025-09320-4
Has Climate Doom Modeling Turned Into Clickbait? (Score:2)
by kasnol ( 210803 )
Let’s say climate change is real, fine, but some of these papers are drifting into doomsday fanfic territory with a few equations stapled on. Are we meant to treat every climate-catastrophe model like holy writ now? The idea that humans in 2100 will politely sit on their hands while the planet burns is genuinely adorable.
Humans invent things. AI is already chewing through research faster than half the committees publishing these forecasts. We’re developing materials, energy systems, geo-tech and
This is a MAJOR problem (Score:2, Insightful)
Climate sceptics are desperate to be able to reject the results from scientific studies because the conclusions demand actions that they don't want to take. Every time some story like this comes along, they are able to justify their rejections of other, better data.
There are no easy solutions to this problem. We need to be open to admitting errors - that's how science works! But every admission is very damaging...
Re: (Score:2)
There may be no easy solutions, but if the peer-review system worked as intended, a lot more results like this would be picked up before being published rather than after. At the moment, there are few incentives for people to spend their time peer-reviewing others' papers or reproducing others' experiments, and thus there are not enough reviews or time spent reviewing to pick up a lot of errors. Surely it's not beyond the wit of man to find some way to fix that?