In 2015, the world’s nations agreed on a climate deal in Paris, and thanks to government subsidies in countries such as Germany and China, more and more wind and solar power plants were built.
And the more of them were produced, the cheaper they became. Which in turn boosted production. To install one gigawatt of solar capacity, it took a whole year in 2004, a month in 2010 and just one day in 2023. The exponential expansion of renewables ensured that the emissions curve flattened.
Now, climate researchers from around the world have drawn the necessary conclusions and significantly revised RCP8.5 and its successor, SSP5-8.5, downwards. It has become implausible.
New Global Climate Scenarios: Highest Emissions Scenario Revised
Factcheck: Trump’s false claims about the IPCC and ‘RCP8.5’ climate scenario
Quote:Among a flurry of posts on social media last weekend, US president Donald Trump declared “good riddance” to a specific emissions scenario used in global climate projections.
The “RCP8.5” scenario, which envisages a future of very high carbon emissions, was “wrong, wrong, wrong”, the president wrote in block capitals.
This was “just admitted” by the UN’s “top climate committee”, he falsely claimed, referring to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The post was quickly picked up by right-leaning media, amplifying Trump’s misrepresentation of emissions scenarios and the role of the IPCC.
His claim follows the publication of a new set of emissions scenarios that will feed into the next IPCC reports.
While the new scenarios no longer include such high emissions as in RCP8.5, they also show it is “not possible” to limit global warming to 1.5C above pre-industrial levels without significant “overshoot”, one of the authors tells Carbon Brief.
Moreover, projections suggest that the world is still on course for between 2.5C and 3C of warming, another author says.
This level of warming was previously described as “catastrophic” by the UN.
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What Trump and other climate deniers are doing is applying a twisted logic that confuses cause and effect.
You could compare this to someone who slathers themselves in sun cream on a hot day and, because they didn’t get sunburnt, decides the next day that they can do without sun protection.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s worst-case scenario has become less likely because countries have acted together.
