{"id":446688,"date":"2026-05-27T00:03:58","date_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:03:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=446688"},"modified":"2026-05-27T00:04:00","modified_gmt":"2026-05-27T07:04:00","slug":"heartland-institute-experts-react-to-president-trumps-social-media-post-about-un-retreating-from-extremist-climate-models","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=446688","title":{"rendered":"Heartland Institute Experts React to President Trump\u2019s Social Media Post About UN Retreating from Extremist Climate Models"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From ClimateRealism<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Heartland Institute<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
Editors\u2019 Note: Multiple mainstream media outlets such as The Washington Post,<\/a> Bloomberg<\/a>, Fox News<\/a>, among others, have reported on the retirement of the worst-case emissions scenario, Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5, from UN climate committee analyses, and President Trump\u2019s reaction to it. This is a great victory for Climate Realism, as realists like those writing here have long explianed<\/a> that RCP 8.5 is unrealistic, likely impossibly, and used exclusively to generate terrifying headlines. It will not be missed.<\/em><\/h5>\n\n\n\n

SCHAUMBURG, IL (May 19, 2026) \u2013 President Trump last weekend on Truth Social<\/a> said \u201cgood riddance\u201d to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change\u2019s (IPCC) most-alarmist climate model called RCP 8.5. Trump wrote: \u201cThe United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! For far too long Climate Activism has been used by Dumocrats to scare Americans, push horrible Energy Polices, and fund BILLIONS into their bogus research programs.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For years, the IPCC has relied heavily on a global warming scenario that assumed energy absorption in the atmosphere would reach 8.5 watts per square meter by 2100. This worst-case scenario has been used in countless academic papers and the media to predict a climate catastrophe soon if the use of fossil fuels is not dramatically reduced. The IPCC announced in April that this outcome has become \u201cimplausible.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following statements from environment and climate experts at The Heartland Institute<\/a> \u2013 a free-market think tank \u2013 may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact Executive Vice President and Director of Communications Jim Lakely at media@heartland.org<\/a> or call\/text 312-731-9364.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPresident Trump is RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT! RCP 8.5 is and always has been a scam. We at Heartland have long critiqued RCP 8.5 noting it was implausible if not impossible, yet academics kept using it in hundreds of supposedly peer reviewed studies. They used it because it produced alarming results that they and the climate activists then used to demand both more money, for research, and an end to fossil fuel use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow what Heartland has said all along has been confirmed. RCP 8.5 has been withdrawn by the IPCC, citing the very reasons we\u2019ve touted for more than a decade. Those hundreds of papers pushing false alarmism should be rescinded with prejudice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s time to base policy on real science and data not computer-generated end of the world scenarios.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/a>
Director, Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
hsburnett@heartland.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u201cRCP 8.5 became the climate establishment\u2019s favorite tool because it generated the most frightening headlines, not because it reflected realistic energy or economic trends. For years, policymakers, media outlets, and activists treated this extreme scenario as \u2018business as usual,\u2019 even though it assumed wildly unrealistic coal consumption, stagnant technological progress, and population trajectories detached from observed reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe damage from this manufactured panic extends far beyond climate science. RCP 8.5 was used to justify costly regulations, energy restrictions, attacks on reliable fossil fuels, and endless taxpayer funding for speculative research built on worst-case assumptions. Entire industries of climate litigation, ESG investing, and government intervention leaned heavily on projections that even many modelers privately acknowledged were improbable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPresident Trump deserves credit for calling attention to what many independent analysts have argued for years: public policy should not be driven by exaggerated computer simulations masquerading as settled science. If climate researchers want to restore public trust, they should begin by acknowledging how extensively RCP 8.5 distorted both scientific communication and public debate.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anthony Watts<\/strong><\/a>
Senior Fellow
The Heartland Institute
awatts@heartland.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cPresident Trump is absolutely right to celebrate the downfall of RCP 8.5. It was never an accurate model of the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u201cNow comes the next problem: There are hundreds if not thousands of studies in journals spanning biology, medicine, atmospheric science, and others, that used RCP 8.5 as their high end and even business-as-usual emissions scenario. These studies claimed this scenario represented a realistic forecast that would lead to imminent species destruction, human deaths, and increasing natural disasters, none of which came to pass, and never were going to happen at all. All the most extreme studies were breathlessly reported in the media as though they were inevitable unless the world made extreme lifestyle changes to justify authoritarian government measures to crack down on farmers and energy producers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt was always nonsense and it is fantastic that President Trump advocates for good science over agenda-driven modeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Linnea Lueken<\/strong><\/a>
Senior Fellow
Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
llueken@heartland.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhy does it take the president of the United States to spell out today the decades-long scams of the many impossible scenarios of future atmospheric carbon dioxide planted by the UN IPCC? How can a future insisting of burning five times more coal than available in proven reserves be even entertained in the first place? President Trump should tell all the crony \u2018scientists\u2019 and fear-mongering science organizations: \u2018You are all fired!\u2019 More importantly, all their scientific research funding must be immediately terminated to prevent further thefts from the American taxpayers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Willie Soon, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/a>
Astrophysicist and geoscientist
CERES Science<\/a>
Policy Advisor, The Heartland Institute
media@heartland.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe computer models upon which the RCP 8.5 conclusions were drawn are highly flawed. First and foremost, they assume that carbon dioxide is the principal driver of recent climate change, ignoring or improperly assessing natural drivers to the system. These include solar variability, cloud and water vapor feedback loops, and changes in oceanic geothermal forcing. Second, they assumed exponential growth in coal use that exceeded known reserves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe highly implausible products of these computer \u2018ensembles\u2019 were then transmitted to the scientific community via a biased system of communication, the \u2018peer-review\u2019 process. Peer review lends itself to groupthink by rewarding certain perspectives while excluding others. In the case of global warming, promulgating causal mechanisms that can be taxed and\/or regulated \u2013 i.e.<\/em>, anthropogenic emissions of weak greenhouse gases \u2013 are the preferred drivers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019m glad to see that the president has finally put an end to this nonsense. It\u2019s time for us to follow the science and stop following the money.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arthur Viterito, Ph.D.<\/strong><\/a>
Policy Advisor
The Heartland Institute
media@heartland.org<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

The Heartland Institute<\/a> is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1984 and headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our website<\/a> or call 312\/377-4000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThe United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! For far too long Climate Activism has been used by Dumocrats to scare Americans, push horrible Energy Polices, and fund BILLIONS into their bogus research programs.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121246920,"featured_media":446690,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[691843293,691843275,691818153,691843294,691838747,691843291],"class_list":["post-446688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-agenda-driven-modeling","tag-business-as-usual-2","tag-climate-models","tag-fear-mongering-science-organizations","tag-ipccs-rcp8-5-model-scenario","tag-united-nations-intergovernmental-panel-on-climate-changes-ipcc","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/climatescience.press\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/Trump.jpg?fit=1440%2C720&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paxLW1-1ScE","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":448614,"url":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=448614","url_meta":{"origin":446688,"position":0},"title":"Climate Fact-Check May 2026","author":"uwe.roland.gross","date":"06\/05\/2026","format":false,"excerpt":"Editor\u2019s note: This compilation serves as a fact check on the top false claims made about climate change by the media in May 2026. 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