Two Retractions Raise the Question: Is Climate Science Really Settled?
The retractions mean we will just be inundated with more propaganda.
by David R. Legates
December 17, 2025, 10:20 PM
Sometimes papers are published that overturn the conventional wisdom. Other times papers are retracted since what they purported to be true turned out to be false. Such is also the case in the climate change literature. In the last quarter of 2025, we have seen two important papers in each of these categories change the narrative by either providing new information or being retracted outright. They provide interesting fodder for contemplation.
Back in late September of 2025, a paper was published in the journal Nature Communications that shed new light on melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet. As the authors wrote, climate models traditionally assume that all meltwater that arises from bare ice in Greenland simply enters the ocean, thereby increasing sea levels. However, the study concludes that bare ice acts more like porous firn in which some meltwater is retained within the ice pack and is stored in either liquid or solid form.
The upshot, of course, is that much of the meltwater does not contribute to rising sea levels; rather, it is stored in ice which has not yet melted. This is akin to snowpack dynamics whereby melting snow simply refreezes within the snowpack, thereby increasing the density of the snow, but does not immediately lead to runoff to lakes and streams.
Consequently, the take-home message is that since climate models assume that meltwater from glaciers in Greenland immediately enters the oceans, they overestimate ice sheet runoff and the consequential rise in sea levels. According to the study, “direct measurements of supraglacial runoff are overestimated by twenty-one to fifty-eight percent during peak summer melt conditions” and “Ice sheet mass changes are overestimated by twenty-one to forty-seven percent relative to satellite
gravity retrievals, and satellite laser altimetry measurements indicate that surface melt rates are overestimated by fourteen to forty percent.”
https://spectator.org/two-retractions-raise-the-question-is-climate-science-really-settled/
