Posted on 26 August 2023 by John Hartz

Story of the Week

Scientific journal retracts article that claimed no evidence of climate crisis

Publisher Springer Nature says 2022 article ‘not supported by available evidence’ as editors launch investigation

One of the world’s biggest scientific publishers has retracted a journal article that claimed to have found no evidence of a climate crisis.

Springer Nature said it had retracted the article, by four Italian physicists, after an internal investigation found the conclusions were “not supported by available evidence or data provided by the authors”.

Climate sceptic groups widely publicised the article, which appeared in the European Physical Journal Plus in January 2022 – a journal not known for publishing climate change science.

Nine months later the article was reported uncritically in a page one story in the Australian newspaper and promoted in two segments on Sky News Australia – a channel that has been described as a global hub for climate science misinformation. The segments were viewed more than 500,000 times on YouTube. 

The article claimed to have analysed data to find no trend in rainfall extremes, floods, droughts and food productivity.

“In conclusion on the basis of observational data, the climate crisis that, according to many sources, we are experiencing today, is not evident yet,” the article said.

Several climate scientists told the Guardian and later the news agency AFP that the article had misrepresented some scientific articles, was “selective and biased” and had “cherrypicked” information. 

Click here to access the entire article as originally posted on The Guardian website.

Scientific journal retracts article that claimed no evidence of climate crisis Publisher Springer Nature says 2022 article ‘not supported by available evidence’ as editors launch investigation by Graham Readfearn, Environment, The Guardian, Aug 25, 2023

Articles posted on Facebook

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