Climate science means never having to say you’re wrong. Or that you spent years misleading the public by calling RCP8.5 a business-as-usual baseline rather than an extreme outlier scenario. But instead of fessing up they’re digging in. Bloomberg Green insists that “the end of the RCP8.5 era is the result not of errors, according to scientists, but of recent research on emissions pathways that have made the old worst-case scenario irrelevant.” Which is a significant problem because virtually every word of that statement is false and further undermines the credibility of climate “science” and climate journalism at a time when neither is exactly robust.
For starters, who are these scientists who accord? Well, the people who perpetrated the original error and whose reputations depend on not admitting it:
“‘The statements are incorrect,’ Detlef van Vuuren, a climate modeling expert at Utrecht University, said of Trump’s post. ‘RCP8.5 was not wrong.’ Instead, it has ‘become implausible,’ van Vuuren and his co-authors wrote in the article, because of the world’s adoption of climate policies and the maturing of clean industries.”
Bosh. Not only because “the world” has not adopted any “policies”. Individual countries have, some of them anyway, mostly with minimal impact on emissions. And not only because this “maturing of clean industries” barely even rises to the level of fantasy. What industries? Carbon capture? Carbon credits? Wind and solar? The total amount of hydrocarbon energy used in the world continues to rise.
Besides, the biggest weakness of RCP8.5 was that it projected a massive increase in coal use, an increase incompatible with known reserves, at the same time as a massive collapse of the world economy due to climate heating breakdown thingy. And under what “plausible” scenario can collapsing economies vastly increase their demand for energy?
No. It was never plausible. It was always a blot on scientific integrity that practitioners did not denounce it.
Don’t take our word for it. Ask, um, Bloomberg Green. Because that very same article eventually spits out that:
“Criticism of RCP8.5 first emerged nearly a decade ago, when a Ph.D. candidate at the University of British Columbia named Justin Ritchie found that RCP8.5 was infeasible because it assumed humanity would burn a mass of coal that basically doesn’t exist.”
And what was the result? Well, the article goes on:
“Thus commenced a years-long conversation that spilled out of research journals, into news, and finally into conservative talking points.”
Boo conservative talking points. Even when they’re right and the climate press is wrong. But nothing of the sort would have happened if this alleged conversation in research journals and the press had really happened, and led people to go whoa Nelly, we’re still worried about climate but this 8.5 thing has got to go. And it is worthy of conversation that it didn’t.
As Roger Pielke Jr. rightly insists, it is a far more serious blot on scientific integrity that many people continue to defend RCP8.5 and those who peddled it instead of admitting they weren’t just wrong, they were insolently wrong. Especially as it’s not as if they have other less utterly discredited scenarios with which to sow panic if sow it they must.
RPJ himself has weighed in on the matter and he is not impressed:
“Two weeks ago I wrote about the most significant development in climate science in decades: the international committee responsible for producing the scenarios adopted by the IPCC formally retired RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5, and SSP3-7.0 — labeling them ‘implausible.’ Last week I documented the near-total silence that greeted the announcement from the English-language mainstream press. Then President Trump posted about RCP8.5 on social media, calling it ‘WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!’ (just about the only accurate part of his post!). Within 48 hours, the New York Times, Washington Post, Bloomberg, AP, and Carbon Brief and others published on the scenarios. The main motivation for the coverage centered on Trump, not the new scenarios.”
As it would. And as he would, Pielke Jr. is not impressed with Trump’s online presence either. But he’s easily unimpressed and has much to work with. In his new post:
“I take a closer look at this first wave of mainstream English language media reports. In a nutshell: The overwhelming framing of the ‘climate beat’ is that there is really nothing to see here, and to the extent that there is, what we are witnessing reflects the incredible success of climate policy. Right wing media has focused more on the politics, emphasizing the scenario evolution as a ‘win’ for President Trump.”
Then, being the infuriatingly fair-minded chap that he is, he says “There is also much that is accurate across the coverage, and it is a positive that the news of the new scenarios is getting out.” But also much that is not, including from the New York Times:
“The NYT story was not framed around about a major development in climate scenario science but instead focused on the president’s social media post. I was interviewed for the story and pretty much everything I told the reporter was not reflected in the story, though I was characterized (some what uncharitably) and quoted (accurately).”
He quotes, and shows, the NYT headline and “subtitle” that we in the business call the “hed” and “subhed”:
“Scientists Tweaked the Global Warming Outlook. So Trump Weighed In./ Renewable energy has helped make the worst-case scenario a bit less bad. The president said, falsely, it shows that climate scientists were wrong all along.”
And, he says, the hed and subhed:
“have just about everything incorrect: * It was not a “tweak” (it was a major revision to the entire scenario envelope); * Renewable energy was not the reason for RCP8.5 RIP (as shown here at THB); * It was not a “worst-case” scenario (it was always a baseline/reference scenario); * Climate scientists were wrong all along (the extreme scenarios were always implausible)./ It is true however that ‘Trump Weighed In.’”
It is, to be blunt, a disgraceful performance by the supposed paper of record. Especially since, as your mother may well have told you and certainly should have, it’s not the mistake that gets you in trouble, it’s the coverup.
For instance, we note this rubbish from the New York Times “Climate Forward”:
“Worst-case scenario revised down: Largely because of the growth in renewable energy, a committee of climate experts from around the world has revised down its projection of a possible worst-case scenario for global warming.”
Pfui. What has the minor increase in renewable energy to do with the world not being about to burn more coal than exists?
Instead of dealing with this ominous point, Bloomberg Green gets all political. Including the usual boo Trump! and wait for applause shtick. The article says:
“Climate skeptics, in particular, have seized on the change as proof that global warming’s risks have been exaggerated. Trump’s broadside didn’t come out of nowhere: RCP8.5 has attracted enough criticism over the years to become a regular target on the political right, which views it as extreme and overblown. Getting rid of the scenario was stated as a goal in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 report and in Trump’s May 2025 executive order ‘Restoring Gold Standard Science.’ But what it really proves, according to Germany’s Environment Ministry, is that climate policy works. ‘After all, when an emissions scenario is ruled out due to effective climate policy, it is because past climate policy has had an impact,’ the ministry said in a statement.”
Oh really? How much of one? Germany has wrecked its economy in pursuit of a nose-in-the-air Energiewende, which is nothing to be proud of. And yes, it has seen dramatic decreases in GHGs per capita. But the latter came primarily from shutting down the filthy, inefficient industries of the former communist East Germany. And since developing nations from India to China have dramatically increased their emissions, the total trend is not down.
For Europe as a whole you might think yes, progress, an impact and so forth given that CO2 emissions per capita are down considerably since the late 1970s. Until it occurs to you that climate policy wasn’t a “thing” until much later. Climate policy, whatever it was, cannot be detected in the trend line. (As for Canada, oh, heh heh, ours have barely budged.) Ditto for “World” not least because there it’s been increasing. Dramatically, in fact.
As for “Climate Forward”, it tries to breathe life into the corpse:
“The bad news: Even after the revisions, the planet is still dangerously heating up, increasingly the likelihood of disastrous effects.”
Not a point they argue with evidence. Instead they say never mind RCP8.5, here comes its twin:
“In a paper published in April, a committee of top climate experts from around the world said that now the worst-case scenario would be that the planet could heat up by an average of 3.5 degrees Celsius, or just over 6 degrees Fahrenheit. And it said that a likelier range would be warming of 2.5 to 3 degrees Celsius by the end of the century, based on current emissions trends in the real world.”
Got it now? Down from 5 to 3.5. We are all going to fry. Scientists say. As in:
“Many climate scientists have been arguing for years that the worst-case scenario, technically known as RCP 8.5, is unrealistic and should be scrapped. (RCP refers to a kind of climate blueprint, and 8.5 is essentially a rating of the warming caused by greenhouse gasses in Earth’s atmosphere.) Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, published a paper in 2020 in the journal Nature arguing that policymakers and the media were portraying the RCP 8.5 scenario as an expected outcome rather than a worst-case scenario. At the same time, Dr. Hausfather noted that the lower-end estimate of climate warming has been moved upward, so the likelihood of keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius, a target set in the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change, is now receding.”
Now you can look through back issues of “Climate Forward” in vain for efforts to tamp down the 8.5 panic. Or current issues, where they’re clinging to the high end, cranking up the low end and after a very curt acknowledgement of Pielke Jr. back to boo Trump:
“‘GOOD RIDDANCE!’ Mr. Trump said of RCP 8.5 in a social media post over the weekend. The president, who has long called climate change a hoax, said falsely that the international expert committee admitted it had been wrong.”
But it was wrong. And their feeble half-admission doesn’t improve science, or them.
