5 Climate Studies That Don't Live Up to Their Hype

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A leading climate scientist argues that overbroad claims by some researchers—coupled with overblown reporting in the media—can undermine the public's understanding of climate issues. Gavin Schmidt, a NASA climate modeler, author and PM editorial advisor, concurs with the consensus view that the planet's temperature is rising due largely to human activity. But, he says, many news stories prematurely attribute local or regional phenomena to climate change. This can lead to the dissemination of vague, out-of-context or flat-wrong information to the public.

"People think that if there's a trend, it has to be connected to this bigger trend," he says. "You often get this kind of jumping the gun." Sometimes researchers are citing a potential connection to global warming to get noticed, he says, and sometimes journalists are focusing on that connection to make the story more compelling. "There's a bit of a backlash amid people who have a brain," says Schmidt. "It's akin to [the media's reporting on] medical studies. It adds to people's confusion."

Here are 5 studies Schmidt points to that made unfulfilled promises, used loose, questionable climate connections to sensationalize a story or predicted events that never came to be.

The Study /// In a study released to the public last month and set to be published in the Journal of Geophysical Research in August, a team of American scientists found by gathering wind-speed data across the country that average and peak wind speeds in the Midwest and the East had decreased since the 1970s.

The Fallout /// Though the authors acknowledged their study was preliminary, they raised an intriguing possibility—that if dying wind were a true trend, global warming could be the cause. The reasoning was that warming in polar regions, brought on by climate change, would shrink the temperature difference between the poles and the equator, as well as the pressure difference. This would mean that winds would die down, and wind-power generation would be harmed by the very thing its proponents are trying to combat.

The Truth /// Despite the delicious irony, Schmidt says, it's far too early to say that the dying wind is even a trend, much less one caused by climate change. Windiness is a complex phenomenon with different causes in different places, he says, and is not one that can be measured by a singular cause on a global scale. Winds can change in one area, but if they do, expect to see changes in phenomena related to wind, like temperature gradients, as well. The data don't bear that out, he says, and his climate models don't predict wind changes over the North American continent caused by global warming.

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The Study /// The thermohaline circulation is crucial to the Earth's climate, acting like a conveyor belt carrying warm water into the North Atlantic and moderating the climate of North America and Europe. Many studies, however, have suggested that freshwater from melting sea ice might have the potential to shut down that circulation. A 2005 study showed a steep slowdown of the circulation between 1957 and 2004.

The Fallout /// The idea that thermohaline circulation could come to an end, pushing the planet into a new ice age, exploded into popular culture after it showed up in movies like The Day After Tomorrow (2004) and Al Gore's documentary, An Inconvenient Truth (2006).

The Truth /// Schmidt says that what looked like a full-blown trend of the circulation weakening can be explained in part by studies showing that the circulation can vary its strength over many timescales, making it hard to see a real trend in the noise. That doesn't mean that circulation could never be changed, Schmidt says, but the possibility was blown out of proportion. "The Gulf Stream shutting down is such a powerful meme," he says.

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