A Climate Study Retraction for the Ages

A much-hyped study in the journal Nature turns out to have been full of errors

WSJ editorial. Excerpts:

"The study . . . projected that climate change could cause $38 trillion in economic damage a year by 2049. To put that number in perspective, the GDP of North America last year was about $31.4 trillion."

"forecast that rising CO2 emissions would cause a 62% reduction in global GDP by 2100"

"scientists flagged problems with its methodology and errors in its data. In July 2024, Nature issued a correction noting that rows of data were “wrongly printed as a decimal, rather than a percentage point.”"

"Other scientists [said] the study “underestimates uncertainty . . . rendering their results statistically insignificant when properly corrected.”"

"“data anomalies arising from one country” in the “underlying GDP dataset, Uzbekistan, substantially bias their predicted impacts of climate change.” 

"the economic harm from climate change no longer exceeded the costs of the government interventions"