A study saying the sun caused climate change has been retracted
Credit: Mark Garlick/Science Photo Library
A prominent scientific journal has retracted a study claiming that climate change was due to solar cycles rather than human activity.
Last year, Scientific Reports came under fire for publishing a paper that researchers said made elementary mistakes about how Earth moves around the sun.
Today the journal, published by Nature Research, which also has Nature in its stable of titles, formally retracted the paper by a team at UK universities and an institution in Azerbaijan.
The withdrawn study had argued that the average global 1°C temperature rise since the pre-industrial period was due not to humanity’s greenhouse gas emissions but to the distance between Earth and the sun changing over time as the sun orbits the barycentre, the solar system’s centre of mass. In a statement today, Scientific Reports said that was inaccurate.
I have read that some scientists say “the whole solar system is heating up.” They also say that the “human contribution here on earth is minimal and not the main cause.”
I still think we should stop trashing the planet and do our best to mitigate the negative effects no matter what the cause.
Sorry, I do not remember the names of the scientists at this time.