A study claiming evidence of the climate crisis is lacking was published in January in a journal by the prestigious Springer Nature group, much to the chagrin of prominent climatologists interviewed by AFP, some going so far as to call for its withdrawal.
“Based on observational data, the climate crisis we are experiencing today, according to many sources, is not manifest“, we read in the summary of this 20-page study, published in January 2022 in The European Physical Journal Plus.
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The study, recently relayed thousands of times on social networks and quoted by several mainstream media, such as Sky News Australia, is presented as an analysis of data on possible changes in the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events – – precipitation, cyclones, tornadoes, droughts…
Four prominent climatologists contacted by AFP all said the study manipulated the data, selecting certain facts on purpose and ignoring those that contradicted its thesis. “The article gives the impression of having been written precisely to demonstrate that there is no climate crisis, rather than to present an objective, complete and up-to-date study.said Richard Betts, head of climate impact research at the Met Office, Britain’s weather service.
“They are writing this article in bad faith”
The authors, four Italian scientists, do not take into account the sixth report of the IPCC, published a few months before the submission of their study, noted Richard Betts. The IPCC concludes that the evidence for human-induced climate change is “are reinforcedsince the previous report in 2014.
For Friederike Otto, climatologist at the Grantham Institute, “they are writing this article in bad faith“. “They don’t even have a chapter on heat waves, for which the observed trends are so obvious“, she added. “We cannot comment at this time.“, was limited to responding Springer Nature to AFP, who questioned him on how such a study could have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Climate skepticism
The main author, Gianluca Alimonti, is a physicist from an institute of nuclear physics. Its three co-authors are Luigi Mariani, an agricultural meteorologist, and physicists Franco Prodi and Renato Angelo Ricci. They “do not work in climatology” and “obviously unfamiliar with the topic and relevant datasaid Stefan Rahmstorf, one of the leaders of the Institute for Climate Impact Research in Potsdam.
The study “is not published in a climate journal — this is a common route taken by climate skeptics to avoid facing scrutiny from genuine experts in the field“, he added. The four climatologists interviewed by AFP believe that the study should never have been published, and two of them asked that it be withdrawn.
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For Peter Cox, professor at the University of Exeter, the studyscientifically not good“, but he fears that the withdrawal”results in additional publicity and may be presented as censorship“.
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