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

• climate
• weather
• meteorology
• global warming
• CO2
• Nitrogen
• environment
• research

The Study /// In early 2006, a study in Nature published surprising results that plants were giving off trace amounts of methane.

The Fallout /// We know that methane is a far more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, so the suggestion that it comes from plants led to a blizzard of headlines suggesting that trees could be contributing to global warming.

The Truth /// The researchers balked after the media coverage of their study broke. The scientists said they were widely misinterpreted when it was reported that plants contribute to global warming. Rather, if plants do give off methane, they've been doing it since long before humans were on the scene and their emissions aren't connected to today's anthropogenic climate change. Schmidt says the findings were controversial among scientists from the beginning, because plants had never been known as methane emitters. "Subsequent work has dialed down the magnitude of this new effect tremendously," he says.

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The Study /// A catastrophic rise in sea level is one of the worst consequences that some climate scientists predict for a warmer world. A study in Science in 2006 noted that temperatures by the end of the 21st century could be comparable to those 130,000 years ago, when global sea levels were about 20 feet higher.

The Fallout /// Unsurprisingly, given the implications of the sea level rise, this study was sensationalized with headlines like "London Underwater by 2100 as Antarctica Crumbles into the Sea." In his world tour, Al Gore also picked up the statistic, which led to much backlash both among scientists trying to get the science corrected and among climate skeptics.

The Truth /// There's a big gap between saying something is possible and predicting that it will occur, Schmidt says, and the authors didn't predict that climate change would turn London into Atlantis by 2100. As Science's editors said in the same issue, past climate changes should be taken into account when trying to predict future climate change, but they won't be exactly the same. When media and others used the study as a predictive measure‹to say the sea will rise 20 feet in less than 100 years, Schmidt says, that "was a pretty egregious mess-up."

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The Study /// In 2007, scientists found the oldest authenticated DNA ever, gathered from 400,000-year-old tree and insect samples entombed in the bottom of a Greenland glacier. About half a million years ago, the study concluded, Greenland was a pretty warm place.

The Fallout /// When the study came out, Schmidt says, many people responded to the DNA find itself. But the others keyed onto one sentence in the press release, in which the lead author suggested that the finding meant the Greenland ice sheet was more stable than scientists had previously thought. Because these seeds and DNA specimens were found in the ice sheet, the ice must have been intact for at least a half-million years and survived the warm period 130,000 years ago. This could mean that Greenland is more stable than scientists thought and in less danger from current warming.

The Truth /// Schmidt isn't impressed with the claim. The fact that Greenland was hot so recently (geologically speaking) shows that the ice isn't that stable at all, and the latest satellite evidence contradicts the stability claim and shows that Greenland is steadily losing mass.

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