Study warning of massive climate-driven economic crash gets pulled back
A headline-grabbing study that claimed climate change could shrink the world economy by 62% by 2100 has just been retracted after researchers found big mistakes in their data.
The study had linked rising temperatures and rainfall changes to impacts on things like farming and worker productivity.
Small data glitch, big impact
Turns out, a handful of economic stats from Uzbekistan (1995-1999) threw off the entire calculation.
Once those numbers were removed, the predicted global loss dropped to 23%.
The authors said these errors were too major for a quick fix, so they pulled the whole study.
Why this matters
Even though it's now retracted, the study had already been cited by groups like the World Bank in their climate risk assessments.
The researchers plan to redo their work with better data but still warn that climate change will seriously hurt economies—just maybe not as much as first feared.