Nature Journal Retracts Climate Alarm Study After Data Errors Surface
The original paper was widely cited in many recent climate crusade efforts.
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Now, one of the papers used by climate cultists in academia has been retracted after serious data flaws were exposed.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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Comments
Chicken Little hardest hit.
True, but Goosey Loosey is still running these sham “studies” and Foxy Loxy presents them as news.
I’d say Al Bore but he already got his Nobel and made his hundred of millions.
A paper that discusses economic damages does not belong in Nature anyway
If it’s well founded on solid science, as this one proved not to be, then why not?
Maybe because none of the 3 authors are economists? They might as well as asked me what the world economic output in 100yrs would be.
What has that got to do with it? This paper was not founded on science, and therefore it was withdrawn. How does that support the proposition that NO papers that discuss economic damages EVER belong in Nature?
Each journal has its niche. Historically Nature has been one of the most prestigious journals with a focus on understanding physical processes in the natural world. As a science author and journal reviewer, we are asked to evaluate whether an article should be rejected because it does not fit with the journal’s primary subject matter. There are plenty of other journals that handle economic impacts of natural disasters and phenomena, I would recommend rejection of any manuscript submitted to Nature that discusses economic data rather than science data.
So long as the authors provide well researched and well documented projections of what the economic alternatives would be then sure. Simply stating we need to ‘reduce carbon emissions’ down to X level without fully explaining exactly what that would encompass, what daily life would look like in the absence of the things creating emissions and whether existing tech would support current standard of living much less provide reliable power is why most of us object to these sorts of papers.
The proposition we’re discussing is that “A paper that discusses economic damages does not belong in Nature anyway”. No matter how well founded it is, it doesn’t belong in that publication. And I don’t see why. I think the proposition is nonsense. A well-founded scientific article, that discusses economic damages based on solid evidence, is perfectly at home in Nature. This just didn’t happen to be such a paper, which is why it was retracted.
Yes indeed that’s what we are discussing and as I stated so long as the authors go into what the economy would look like on the ground when making the case for reduced carbon emissions then sure. Advocating for closing coal fired electric generation and waving hands saying ‘clean energy’ like an incantation isn’t helpful. Instead they should state % and amount of power provided by whatever they want ended, then state the costs of their proposed replacement…and where there is no viable currently existing tech for a one to one replacement b/c the tech doesn’t exist they gotta lay out the impact when huge % of current electricity generation capacity is removed. IOW so long as they tell the entire story in context then economics can be included. Frankly, the sorts of things I laid out should be mandatory when presenting to general public to avoid unethical lies of omission.
That isn’t science. Such a paper would be just as invalid if it never mentioned economics. So I don’t see how it’s relevant to the topic, which is the proposition that papers that mention economic damage are for that reason not appropriate for Nature. I still haven’t heard even one attempt at an argument for that proposition.
Oh, ok. I see now. How about requiring a realistic, real world, economic analysis to accompany advocacy ‘studies’ touting any ‘benefits’ b/c there’s always another side of the ledger with costs that need to be accounted for. Very often this sort of analysis is missing, sometimes deliberately. An example might be NY net zero ‘plan’ which had lots of benchmarks and timetables but not much substance on specifically how it would be achieved, the true costs or who specifically would bear the costs, despite which coal, nuke electricity generation shut down and new/expanded Nat Gas pipelines/facilities denied. The proponents while simultaneously working towards enacting an ‘all electric’ mandate were reducing the existing electricity generation capacity, pinning hopes on unproven at grid level ‘clean/green/renewable energy’ not to mention the demand side keeps rising, especially with AI/data center additional demand. Then there’s the impact of regional State consortiums beginning to break down as higher production States like PA face political pressure from their constituents/ratepayers for rising utility bills to ship power/Nat gas to other States which refuse to increase their own current generation capacity.
Considering how much of that stuff is paid for with taxpayer funded grants. The people that falsify that stuff should be charged with fraud.
It doesn’t seem to have been falsified. It just used bad data.
Science died in March of 2020.
Science died in the 70’s when the climate cultists claimed we had global cooling and we would all be dead by 1985.
None of their projections has been even remotely accurate in my entire lifetime.
ALGORE should be in jail as one example of the economic effects of global cooling/global warming/global climate change. Getting rich off of snake oil sales.
That never stopped global warming lunatics from continuing to use it – like the Hockey Stick. Leftists have never let proven lies or retractions stand in the way of their use of a “powerful” propaganda piece. “Plastics in the ocean”, “Hands up, don’t shoot”, “fine people”, “solar is cheaper than petroleum generated elec”, “greenhouse gases”, “most secure election ever”, “border is closed”, …
LOL. That is STILL bullsh*t. Complete and utter BS.
There were many problems with the paper starting with the authors. None are economists. Estimating the world economic output in 100yrs as tied to a computer generated climate model is impossible. There is no way, for example, to theorize what the technology will be. The peer review sucked if there was even any. I doubt there was because the confirmation bias was strong enough to just get it published. The idea that data from the economic powerhouse of Uzbekistan would influence global economic output by 40% is so ridiculous someone should have caught that. And so on and so on.
Did you, for more than half a second, believe that they did not know what they were doing?
It is all fraud. They had a message to send and they bent the numbers accordingly.
AGW is a scam
But the policies enacted pursuant to this retracted paper, won’t be retracted in turn.
Any prestige associated with Nature faded long ago.
Was this incorporated in risk management scenarios used by insurance companies? What will this change in the banks and insurance industries now that they have found out?
I am sure that B Obama isn’t paying huge insurance premiums for his mansions on the coast of Hawaii and Martha’s Vineyard. Neither are the rest of the neighbors.
Considering that climate science has an astonishing history of completely forging data points wholesale, and then trying to balance the voodoo science of economic predictions on top of that shaky sand castle, you can produce a study that literally says *anything* you want, up to and including heavenly miracles and alien landings.
But trust the scientists. Right.
Lies, damn lies, and statistics!
Earlier this year there was a great meme that goes (not an exact quote, but close enough), “They told me to follow the science, but when I went where they pointed, I found none. Then I followed the money, and I found the answers.”
Publishing a single variant analysis result of a multi-variant problem is, in my opinion, unethical and non-scientific.
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