by Jameson Mitrovich at The Washington Free Beacon
‘If your goal is to try to make the case for climate change, you have crossed the line from scientist to activist,’ economist says, ‘and why would the public trust you?’
The scientific journal Nature retracted a bombshell study—cited by Forbes, the Associated Press, and Reuters—predicting that climate change would cause economic catastrophe, after economists found the report had significant errors.
Nature retracted the study on Wednesday after a team of economists found significant flaws in the data, the New York Times reported. The study, released in April 2024 by researchers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, found that climate change would not only cost the global economy $38 trillion by 2049 but also slash the global economic output 62 percent by the year 2100, a far higher figure than earlier research had found.
“The authors acknowledge that these changes are too substantial for a correction,” the retraction note states. Before the official retraction, a Nature editor’s note posted last month alerted readers that “the reliability of data and methodology presented in this manuscript is currently in question.”
Mainstream media outlets trumpeted the Potsdam Institute’s findings, with Forbes writing that “climate change is on track to cost the global economy $38 trillion a year in damages within the next 25 years” and the AP saying that “climate change’s economic bite in how much people make is already locked in at about $38 trillion a year.”
Reuters, meanwhile, reported that…
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