Nature Journal Retracts Climate Alarm Study After Data Errors Surface

Nature Journal Retracts Climate Alarm Study After Data Errors Surface

2025 has been a very bad year for climate cultists, but a great year for those who value personal freedom and efficient, affordable energy.

First, President Donald Trump declared victory over the climate hoax industry. The New York Times declared defeat in what it termed the “Information War”, but which I term “victory of real science over political narrative”.

Now, one of the papers used by climate cultists in academia has been retracted after serious data flaws were exposed.

In April 2024, the prestigious journal Nature released a study finding that climate change would cause far more economic damage by the end of the century than previous estimates had suggested. The conclusion grabbed headlines and citations around the world, and was incorporated in risk management scenarios used by central banks.

On Wednesday, Nature retracted it, adding to the debate on the extent of climate change’s toll on society.

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 earlier research. 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.

🚨 WOW! Trump was right again – a major scientific journal just RETRACTED a climate change study claiming devastating impacts were coming

“Nature is retracting a 2024 study predicting catastrophic economic toll of climate change.”

“Several banks used the report to make risk… pic.twitter.com/fWQPPoEcVW

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 5, 2025

Apparently, once more realistic numbers were used, the range of possible mid‑century climate damages produced by models became wider (the estimated percentage loss in global income spread out more), and the confidence that damages would clearly differ between emissions scenarios by 2050 dropped from “almost certain” to merely “very likely.”

The authors have retracted this paper for the following reasons: post-publication, the results were found to be sensitive to the removal of one country, Uzbekistan, where inaccuracies were noted in the underlying economic data for the period 1995–1999. Furthermore, spatial auto-correlation was argued to be relevant for the uncertainty ranges.

The authors corrected the data from Uzbekistan for 1995–1999 and controlled for data source transitions and higher-order trends as present in the Uzbekistan data. They also accounted for spatial auto-correlation. These changes led to discrepancies in the estimates for climate damages by mid-century, with an increased uncertainty range (from 11–29% to 6–31%) and a lower probability of damages diverging across emission scenarios by 2050 (from 99% to 90%).

The authors acknowledge that these changes are too substantial for a correction, leading to the retraction of the paper.

The original paper was widely cited in many recent climate crusade efforts.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) also mentioned the study in a December 2024 report highlighting the “risks” of climate change to the U.S.

Moreover, the study has also been previously cited by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, and was listed in the top 5% of journal articles tracked by Altmetric, a tool that tracks the attention that research outputs, the NYT reported. Similarly, the U.K.-based climate outlet Carbon Brief reported in January that the original study was the second most referenced climate paper in 2024.

The Nature retraction is a great illustration of a disturbing dynamic in high‑profile climate and policy research. Studies are framed with especially dramatic conclusions that seem designed to shape media coverage, political discussion, and institutional planning. The strongest claims tend to point in the same direction, emphasizing worst-case and global-scale crises, so they gain rapid traction in news coverage, social media, and regulatory planning long before the underlying methods or data have been fully vetted.​

When serious flaws are later uncovered, as happened here with key economic data and model sensitivity, corrections and retractions arrive long after the horse has left the barn and is galloping happily in the fields. By that stage, the technical back‑and‑forth over replication, data handling, and uncertainty rarely receives comparable attention, which leaves early, headline‑grabbing numbers lingering in people’s minds even when the formal record has been updated.

At least, that had been the case until X.com and the new media were able to highlight retraction notices of significance like this one.

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