The paper refers to air temperature data as “obtained by NASA from satellites” and claims the main areas of warming depicted in this figure do “not fit in with the main industrial centers in the world!”
S.A. Harris/Atmosphere 2023
A paper that called into question many central data linking carbon dioxide to the rapidly warming climate has been retracted for “significant concerns,” including “unsupported conclusions” and “inaccuracies” in the interpretation of the data.
The paper, published in August 2023 in the MDPI journal Atmosphere, was written by Stuart Harris, a former geography professor at the University of Calgary. It has 26,000 views and was mentioned 869 times on the social media platform X, according to Altmetric. It was also covered by the climate skeptic website The Daily Sceptic. The article was cited four times, according to Clarivate’s Web of Science.
“It is a hot mess,” Marcus Sarofim, a climate scientist at Johns Hopkins University, told Retraction Watch. “I certainly don’t think this paper has any business being in the peer-reviewed literature.” He also pointed out the paper was submitted and accepted in under a month, saying the short timeframe “is always a bad sign.”
Harris did not respond to multiple emails requesting comment.
John Kennedy, a climate scientist with the World Meteorological Organization at the time, blogged about the paper shortly after it was published, highlighting a handful of its many errors.
“From a distance, it looks just like a regular paper, but up close it’s chaos,” he wrote.
In one paragraph, Harris claimed carbon dioxide is primarily measured at one observatory in Hawaii. “The increase in this gas is measured primarily at a single station at the summit of Mount Kea on the island of Hawaii, and the increase parallels the change in air temperature at that station since about 1900 A.D.,” Harris wrote in the paper.
But the observatory is on Mauna Loa — not Mauna Kea — and only began measuring carbon dioxide in 1958.
“The contention that carbon dioxide is measured primarily at this single station is also completely wrong,” Kennedy wrote in 2023. More than 221 monitoring stations and many additional satellites currently track carbon dioxide emissions.
Harris also criticized the logic inherent to global heat maps, which illustrate how different parts of Earth have warmed over a given time period.
“An obvious problem is found when examining the map of the distribution of climate change (mean yearly air temperature) obtained by NASA from satellites,” Harris wrote. “The main areas of warming are in Northern Canada and the Arctic, with lesser warming in the Sahara and the Australian Outback! Eastern China and Germany show no obvious warming. Obviously, this does not fit in with the main industrial centers in the world!”
As Kennedy noted, the data are not pulled from NASA satellites but from “weather stations, ships, and buoys.”
Harris also attributed recent climate change to solar radiation, which is not uncommon among climate science denialists, Sarofim said. While solar radiation certainly affects Earth’s climate, “believing that CO2 is not involved in climate change is on par with believing that the Moon is made of green cheese.”
Aside from the misunderstandings and misrepresentations of climate research, the study also claimed Neanderthals went extinct only 3,200 years ago. (The true number is closer to 40,000 years ago.)
A spokesperson for MDPI told us the journal launched an investigation “following concerns raised after publication,” but did not respond to questions regarding specific concerns or where the concerns originated. They found “significant concerns,” “including an insufficient assessment of the relevant literature, unsupported conclusions, inaccuracies in the interpretation of the presented data, and issues relating to the use and attribution of references,” according to the retraction notice. MDPI declined to provide details of the investigation, citing confidentiality.
Harris responded to the investigation but the journal determined the responses “did not adequately resolve the issues.” The journal retracted the paper on September 16.
David Ho, a climate scientist at the University of Hawaii, responded to our request for comment on the paper by saying he was not interested in reading it. “I’m sorry, but I’d rather keep my brain cells,” he said.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a tax-deductible contribution to support our work, follow us on X or Bluesky, like us on Facebook, follow us on LinkedIn, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
Related