Thread by @DACDAC4DAC

Thread:

In 2024, climate scientists published a paper in the journal, Nature, about the economic effects of climate change, asserting that the economic effects would be many times worse than previously reported.

That paper has been cited by politicians, news, and the UN. But..

...it's wrong. Indeed, the results were so preposterous that all three peer-reviewers raised doubts during the peer review process. One said, "I have a major concern on the uncertainty and validity of the empirical...model they built and used for projections."

Another said, "it is somewhat difficult to comprehend the full rationale for the particular econometric specification that is used." The reviewer also noted that the authors needed more tests to support their conclusions.

The same reviewer also noted that "it may be helpful for this paper not to accompany the often hyperbolic narratives in some of the literature." The reviewer observed that even the astounding increase in effects would be modest year over year and statistically insignificant.

The third reviewer was more pointed. They stated, "it is somewhat difficult to fully gauge the robustness of the results when there are several seemingly arbitrary methodological choices being made."

They also asserted that the use of statistics could be improved.

With these comments, any self-respecting journal would have told the authors to go back to the drawing board. But no, this was a paper showing the terrible effects of climate change and it was going to be published. After a few minor changes, two reviewers threw in the towel.

The second reviewer did not. They stated, "several concerns persist and the authors have not addressed some of these."

A fourth reviewer stated, "I find all of this well explained and fairly convincing, yet, purely subjectively, I have a hard time in believing the results, which seem unintuitively large..."

IOW, he couldn't see how the conclusions were correct.

Nevertheless, Nature published the paper and its results. The media glommed onto the doom peddling. It was the second most cited climate paper of 2024.

It is still used by the UN to discuss climate change and "green energy" solutions to mitigate the economic damage of climate change.

It was cited by Sheldon Whitehouse in the Congressional record as proof that the economic consequences of climate change will be catastrophic.

The problem is that the paper was laughably wrong.

In June 2025, the paper "Data anomalies and the economic commitment of climate change," was published in which the results of the original paper were eviscerated. It turns out that someone was able to go through the vague modeling and determined that...

...they had overestimated the effects by nearly 3 times. The actual effects would be a blip in decreased growth - at worst. Nature is now investigating.

Here is the thing. Nature should have pulled the plug when the reviewers were noting the opaqueness of the model.

Nature didn't because it was a climate paper and it had the right results - namely, catastrophic climate impacts.

Bad science leads to bad results. But this wasn't science. It was propaganda.

It was a model with vague assumptions combined with bad statistical analyses to get the worst outcome possible. And it worked because the authors got the paper published and it made a splash. Few people will hear about the retraction, which should happen.

Climate science is filled with this garbage. Yet, few people acknowledge this because the climate change priests won't have any debate in their religion.