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A paper that called into question many central data linking carbon dioxide to the rapidly warming climate has been retracted for “significant concerns,” including “unsupported conclusions” and “inaccuracies” in the interpretation of the data.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.
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The 3,200 ya date for Neanderthal extinction might be an honest typo for 32,000. Everything else in the paper is garbage, however.
In the paper he writes they went extinct around 1200 BCE. It isn’t a typo!
Serves me right for giving them the benefit of the doubt.
In the late Bronze Age!
It’s too bad Nolan didn’t hear that; it could have worked in neatly with The Odyssey, particularly given his take on it. /s
I guess he’d convinced Trump. Everything else is just nuisance.
“…not uncommon among climate science denialists…”. If someone came along with actual evidence of a link to solar radiation (don’t get me wrong – I accept that this paper probably isn’t that), you’re in danger of writing it off as “this is what the denialists say”. That’s a long way from a scientific approach. Beware bubblethink, lest you “become just like them”.
There is a decent amount of good quality research on the issue, with upper limits as the conclusion: variations in solar radiation cannot possibly explain more than XX% of the observed temperature increase, with (from memory) XX something like 20%. I don’t have the references at hand, but they can be found e.g. on the wikipedia climate change page.
Anon Scientist, Sarofum said that the false claim is common among denialists. He didn’t say the claim is false BECAUSE it’s common among denialists. There’s nothing wrong with identifying common tropes.
The full paragraph does absolutely nothing of the sort. To recap:
“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.””
There is an explicit acknowledgement that solar radiation affects the Earth’s climate, so how would they be writing this view off? They have already accepted it to be the case. They are merely pointing to the fact that the role of CO2 is undeniable.
“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.”
Er, ‘tracking emissions’ is different to measuring atmospheric concentration. And the rest of this piece is essentially just an ad hominem bitch.
We can monitor in near-real time the geospatial distribution of CO2 using satellite data, and use known rates of diffusion and wind patterns to accurately measure the rate and locations of CO2 production.