{"id":443164,"date":"2026-05-09T06:15:41","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T13:15:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=443164"},"modified":"2026-05-09T06:15:43","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T13:15:43","slug":"ding-dong-rcp8-5-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=443164","title":{"rendered":"Ding Dong, RCP8.5 Is\u00a0Dead!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Paul Homewood<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, we have been fed a never-ending diet of apocalyptic climate scares \u2013 killer heatwaves, biblical floods, deadly droughts, devastating hurricanes, to name just a few.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And it is not just sensationalism from the media that I am talking about. The language may have been slightly less dramatic, but official bodies from the UN down have been equally guilty, including our own Met Office.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All these scare stories have one thing in common \u2013 they are based on emissions scenarios, which have long been regarded by independent experts as implausibly high. The scenario in question is known as RCP8.5.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RCPs are a set of greenhouse gas concentration trajectories (not emissions scenarios per se) used by the IPCC for climate modelling and projections. They describe different possible future paths for atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations and the resulting radiative forcing (the change in energy balance in the Earth\u2019s atmosphere, measured in W\/m\u00b2) by the year 2100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

RCP 8.5 is the highest, being based on continued, strong growth of GHG emissions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It was described by one of the IPCC\u2019s co-chairs in 2021 as follows:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe high-emissions RCP8.5 scenario has long been described as a \u201cbusiness-as-usual\u201d pathway with a continued emphasis on energy from fossil fuels with no climate policies in place. This remains 100% accurate.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, energy experts have stated that a continuation of the recent growth rate of fossil fuel use simply is not possible, because there are not enough reserves of coal, gas and oil to supply such demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now it has been formally announced that RCP8.5 and other similarly high scenarios, such as RCP6.0, will be eliminated in future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of a sudden, the doomsday projections of 4C of warming have been binned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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That does not mean, of course, that the lower emission scenarios are any more credible. But as Prof Roger Pielke Jr puts it:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The now-implausible upper-end scenarios \u2014 RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5, and SSP3-7.0 \u2014 are not just academic constructs used in esoteric research. They are embedded in the policies and regulations of most of the world\u2019s largest economies, found across the world\u2019s most important multilateral institutions, and used in the climate stress tests that govern hundreds of billions of dollars in bank capital.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\ud83d\udea8RCP8.5 is Officially Dead – by Roger Pielke Jr.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this country, government policy is influenced and even the Bank of England\u2019s stress tests of banks and insurers must take account of these upper-end scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Let\u2019s look at the Met Office, for instance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2022, they published a report titled \u201cUK Climate Projections\u201d, (UKCP18). Innocent enough, you might say.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But right at the start, they tell us that their report focusses on RCP8.5:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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UK Climate Projections (UKCP18) – Met Office<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Sure, you can \u201cextract results\u201d for other scenarios, but it is RCP8.5 that is making the headlines and it is projections using RCP8.5 that form the basis of government policy making.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are some of the plainly far-fetched claims made in UKCP18:<\/p>\n\n\n\n