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Nature magazine, a top British weekly scientific journal, retracted a study predicting climate change would cost an annual $38 trillion throughout the next 25 years after its methodology and staggering economic findings came under scrutiny.
“Readers are alerted that the reliability of data and methodology presented in this manuscript is currently in question,” an editor’s note on the study read Nov. 6. “Appropriate editorial action will be taken once this matter is resolved.”
The study officially was retracted Wednesday, according to Nature’s website.
The study, “The economic commitment of climate change,” originally was published in April 2024. It received media attention for its findings that the global economy could shrink by 19% by 2050 due to loss of productivity in climate change, and global economic output would fall by 62% by the year 2100.
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The study was conducted by researchers from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research.
The study projected there would be an annual $19 trillion to $59 trillion in damages by 2050, with researchers citing an annual $38 trillion by 2049 in “middle-of-the road” estimates.
The study examined 1,600 regions across the globe and relied on 40 years of data to determine the “impacts of average temperatures on labour and agricultural productivity, of temperature variability on agricultural productivity and health, as well as of precipitation on agricultural productivity, labour outcomes and flood damages.”
The data received attention from the media by environmentalists as another warning that climate change could ultimately upend daily life on the global scale. The data was far more aggressive than previous studies, including a 2023 World Economic Forum study that projected climate change would cost $1.7 trillion and $3.1 trillion per year by 2050, including the “cost of damage to infrastructure, property, agriculture, and human health.”
The Nature magazine paper was retracted due to data discrepancies from one country: Uzbekistan, according to the outlet’s retraction note. Economists who previously critiqued the study found that under a high-emissions scenario, removing Uzbekistan from the data set reduced the projected year 2100 GDP loss from about 62% to roughly 23%, bringing the estimate closer to earlier studies’ findings, The New York Times reported.
The original projected 19% drop in global income was revised to 17%, according to the new information.
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“The authors acknowledge that these changes are too substantial for a correction, leading to the retraction of the paper,” the retraction note stated. “The authors intend to submit a revised version of the paper for peer review. If and when published, this retraction note will be updated to include a link to the new publication.”
Nature provided Fox News Digital with a statement from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, and a copy of the outlet’s retraction note, when approached for comment Friday.
“Following the publication of two critiques as ‘Matters Arising’, and in conversation with the journal Nature, the authors of the study ‘The economic commitment of climate change’ at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) have retracted the paper,” the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research said in a statement. “In response to the critiques, the authors undertook revisions to constructively address the issues raised. Nature determined the changes exceeded those of a correction, so the authors will resubmit a new version of the paper for peer review.”
“The revised analysis shows economic damages from climate change till mid-century are substantial and outweigh the costs of mitigation, they are mainly driven by temperature changes and affect regions with low incomes and low historical emissions most,” the research institute added.
The retraction comes as the Trump administration slams climate change and rescinds strict environmental policies from the previous Biden administration, including on drilling for oil and gas, softening restrictions on gas-powered cars, and the president himself calling climate change a “con job.”
“It’s the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion,” President Donald Trump said at the U.N. General Assembly in New York City in September. “All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong.”
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“They were made by stupid people that have cost their country’s fortunes and given those same countries no chance for success,” he continued.
U.S. Democrats have railed against Trump’s climate messaging, including longtime political foe California Gov. Gavin Newsom claiming at the COP30 climate summit in Brazil in November that Republicans are ceding the clean energy market to China.
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“The United States of America is as dumb as we want to be on this topic, but the state of California is not. And so we are going to assert ourselves, we’re going to lean in, and we are going to compete in this space,” Newsom said during the summit.
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