'Nature' says climate toll study flawed

Journal fuels debate over climate change

- LYDIA DEPILLIS

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% decline in economic output by 2100 in a world where carbon emissions continue unabated, global output would be reduced by 23%.

Of course, erasing more than 20% of the world's economic activity would still be a devastating blow to human welfare. The paper's detractors emphasise that climate change is a major threat, as recent meta-analyses have found, and that more should be done to address it but, they say, unusual results should be treated sceptically.

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If your goal is to try to make the case for climate change, you have crossed the line...

LINT BARRAGEChair of energy and climate economics at ETH Zurich

"Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20% reduction in 2100 was an insanely large number," said Solomon Hsiang, a professor of global environmental policy at Stanford University who co-wrote the critique published in August. "So the fact that this paper is coming out saying 60% is off the chart."

Retractions have been more common in recent years, according to Retraction Watch, which tracks corrections in scientific journals. But they are still rare, amounting to about one in 500 articles published.