On March 30th I sent out a column titled “Now CO2 Is Declining Along With Temperatures.â€Â The column contained an obvious misstatement of the real data trend in atmospheric CO2, which is still rising. We issued a “hold†on the column within hours, and the next day substituted a corrected column. Â
Unfortunately, some websites had already published the column. Apparently a few newspapers did not connect the retraction with the column, and so unwittingly misled their readers, publishing the original column up to a week later. Most ran the corrected column.
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The error was caused by my attempt to be “first†in pointing out a new correlation. I was wrong about it. In fact, Hudson’s role is not to be “first†but to focus on long-term perspectives in the climate change field, such as the moderate, natural 1,500-year climate cycle and the historic expansions and contractions in sea ice and glaciers over centuries. That’s why we have always waited for peer-reviewed publication of climate data. I deeply apologize for the errors in the March 30th column, and will henceforth return my focus to the long-term perspectives.
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Dennis T. Avery
Hudson Institute Â