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 if carbon emissions push global temperatures up by

8.5 degrees Celsius, global output would be reduced by 23 percent.

Of course, erasing more than 20 percent of the world’s economic activity would still be a devastating blow to human

welfare. The paper’s detractors emphasize 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 skeptically.

“Most people for the last decade have thought that a 20 percent 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 percent is off the chart.”

Retractions have become more common in recent years, according to Retraction Watch, an organization that tracks

corrections in scientific journals. But they are still rare, amounting to about one in 500 articles published.

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