Doomsday Climate Scenarios Were Wrong. That Doesn’t Help Europe.

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This year, climate research seemed to hit a rough patch. Scientists preparing the next generation of global climate scenarios scrapped the most extreme pathway that had shaped years of academic research, financial risk analysis, media coverage, and advocacy. A prominent study estimating that climate change would cost the global economy $38 trillion per year by midcentury was retracted by the academic journal Nature, while a new study argued that meaningful estimates of climate change’s economic damages lie beyond our analytical capabilities, prompting a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined “You Can’t Trust ‘Climate Economics.’”

Many on the right quickly claimed vindication. After the worst-case scenario was retired in May, U.S. President Donald Trump declared on social media that climate research had been “WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado, a longtime critic of the misuse of extreme climate scenarios, wrote in the Washington Post: “The climate apocalypse isn’t around the corner after all.”

This year, climate research seemed to hit a rough patch. Scientists preparing the next generation of global climate scenarios scrapped the most extreme pathway that had shaped years of academic research, financial risk analysis, media coverage, and advocacy. A prominent study estimating that climate change would cost the global economy $38 trillion per year by midcentury was retracted by the academic journal Nature, while a new study argued that meaningful estimates of climate change’s economic damages lie beyond our analytical capabilities, prompting a Wall Street Journal op-ed headlined “You Can’t Trust ‘Climate Economics.’”