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<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\nTrump, however, used the update to cast doubt on the reality and seriousness of global warming. \u201cGOOD RIDDANCE!” he wrote<\/a>. “After 15 years of Dumocrats promising that \u2018Climate Change\u2019 is going to destroy the Planet, the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n RCP8.5 was the most pessimistic of four scenarios that were selected<\/a> in 2007 and described<\/a> in 2011. The scenarios looked at how much the climate might change by 2100, relative to the industrial revolution.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cRCP8.5 was always this low-probability, high-impact case,\u201d Detlef van Vuuren<\/a>, a climate researcher at Utrecht University and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, told us. He helped lead the effort to develop both the new<\/a> and earlier climate scenarios. As 15 years have passed and the end of the century has gotten closer, it has become clearer what emissions paths are most plausible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s \u201cuseful to consider possible outcomes that are less attractive, and it doesn\u2019t mean that you were wrong by considering those if they didn\u2019t come true,\u201d van Vuuren said. \u201cUnfortunately, the overall outcome of all of this is that we are in a situation that is actually leading to quite strong climate impact still.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Van Vuuren also clarified that Trump is incorrect to call the international group of researchers behind the scenarios \u201cthe United Nations TOP Climate Committee.\u201d A U.N. group, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change<\/a>, summarizes the existing research on climate change. The scenarios are anticipated to have a \u201cmajor role\u201d in the group\u2019s next climate assessments, he said, but it did not come up with the new scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe paper belongs to the broader body of scientific literature produced by the international research community, under the coordination of the World Climate Research Program, not the IPCC,\u201d the IPCC wrote<\/a> in a May 20 statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We asked the White House if Trump was referring to the IPCC in his post and if he was suggesting that climate change is not a serious problem. In an emailed reply, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers said that “Dumocrats” and others had for years made “bogus ‘climate change’ claims that we would destroy the planet,” leading countries that pursued energy transition policies to be “destroyed” with “blackouts and sky-high prices.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n “The rogue climate activists continue to be \u2018Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!\u2019 and President Trump continues to be \u2018Right! Right! Right!\u2019” Rogers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Experts said that Trump\u2019s comments on climate scenarios misrepresented their purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cScenarios are not predictions: they are \u2018what-if\u2019 pictures of the future,\u201d Katharine Hayhoe<\/a>, a climate scientist and professor at Texas Tech University, told us via email.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe highest-emission scenario serves as a basis for exploring the potential consequences of climate change if everything goes wrong,\u201d a post<\/a> on the new climate scenarios from the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, a Dutch government research institute, explained. \u201cAfter all, it is important to ensure that we are also prepared for undesirable developments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Termed “representative climate pathways,” the older scenarios by design covered<\/a> a broad range<\/a> of climate trajectories, with RCP8.5 representing the 90th percentile of baseline scenarios in the literature at the time. (A baseline scenario illustrates a case where people do not take action to mitigate climate change, but there can be a range<\/a> of baseline scenarios depending on other factors, such as how much fossil fuel use increases.) The most optimistic scenario, by contrast, represented below the 10th percentile of mitigation scenarios in the literature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Van Vuuren likened the scenarios to a range of possible times a person might arrive at a destination on a drive. Initially, a person might want to consider the possibility of a traffic jam or other misadventures. But as the trip progresses, a traffic jam will or will not emerge, and the range of plausible arrival times will become narrower. In the case of the climate scenarios, the destination is the year 2100, and we are now 15 years closer to it than we were when the previous scenarios were laid out.<\/p>\n\n\n In recent years, the world has not followed the trajectory outlined in RCP8.5, van Vuuren said. There are lower emissions and greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere than were laid out in that scenario. This means that a new low-probability, high-impact case will \u201cautomatically\u201d be lower than the previous one, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On top of this, renewable energy became more economically competitive, he said. RCP8.5 assumed high use of fossil fuels, especially coal. When RCP8.5 was developed, \u201cemissions had been growing relatively fast in Asia, and based on coal,\u201d van Vuuren said. In the years since, the outlook has improved<\/a> for the growth of renewables<\/a> and gotten far worse for coal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Between 2000 and 2015<\/a>, “global emissions and temperature change had been reliably tracking” the RCP8.5 scenario, Hayhoe said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But since 2015, reality diverged from the RCP8.5 scenario, due to “massive advances” in clean energy, she said, as well as climate policies that were enacted following the 2015 Paris Agreement<\/a>, a major climate treaty that the U.S. has left<\/a> during each of the two Trump administrations. “And that, in a nutshell, is why the higher of the new scenarios is lower than RCP8.5,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As time passed, some climate scientists began to critique the plausibility of RCP8.5, van Vuuren and his colleagues acknowledged in the new paper. Some also argued<\/a> that it never<\/a> was all that plausible. And some have said<\/a> that researchers, policymakers and communicators have at times misused RCP8.5 by treating it as a likely outcome of the business-as-usual approach to climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But Trump and his allies have overgeneralized these criticisms. We wrote<\/a> in 2018, for example, that Trump administration officials had criticized the National Climate Assessment for being based on the \u201cworst\u201d or \u201cmost extreme\u201d scenario, when it had used multiple scenarios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And last year, a Department of Energy report<\/a> released to justify rescinding the endangerment finding \u2014 the underpinning for greenhouse gas regulation in the U.S. \u2014 similarly used RCP8.5 in an attempt to discredit climate science. The DOE report \u201cselectively focuses on high-end emissions scenarios, like RCP8.5, portraying them as failed predictions, to argue that the risks of climate change are exaggerated,\u201d a comment<\/a> submitted to the DOE on behalf of more than 85 scientists said. (The DOE report was written by five researchers who have long propagated<\/a> contrarian views on climate change. In its final February rule<\/a> rescinding the endangerment finding, the EPA stated<\/a> that the agency is no longer relying on the DOE report \u201cin light of concerns raised by some commenters.\u201d)<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cA tripling of global CO2 emissions by 2100,” as envisioned in RCP8.5, “may never have been particularly plausible even back in 2011 when RCP8.5 was originally published,\u201d a trio of climate scientists wrote<\/a> for the Climate Brink blog on May 18 on the retirement of the high-end scenario. \u201cBut a 21st century of increasing fossil fuel use leading to a doubling of emissions was within the realm of the possible.” It’s a “sign of progress” that the world is not heading toward a doubling of emissions, the researchers wrote, saying that the retirement of RCP8.5 doesn’t undermine “the edifice of all of climate science as both President Trump and some overly excited internet pundits claim.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Trump\u2019s post also incorrectly suggested that climate change is not a serious problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor 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 he wrote<\/a>. \u201cUnlike the Dumocrats, who use Climate Alarmism nonsense to push their GREEN NEW SCAM, my Administration will always be based on TRUTH, SCIENCE, and FACT!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hayhoe said that Trump\u2019s claims follow a familiar pattern of climate denial: claiming that climate change isn\u2019t bad or its impacts aren\u2019t serious. But the retirement of RCP8.5 does not change the fact that consequential global warming is occurring and will continue to occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Van Vuuren said that \u201cby far the most important news\u201d from the new climate scenarios publication is that the lowest plausible emissions scenario is now higher than before, hitting 1.7 degrees Celsius \u201cor slightly higher\u201d \u2014 the equivalent of more than 3 degrees Fahrenheit \u2014 before falling to around 1.5 C by 2100. This would mean the world would substantially overshoot the longstanding goal<\/a> of limiting warming to no more than 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels. The scenario, notably, also relies on a high degree of carbon removal, which as a technology has yet to be deployed<\/a> at large scale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe main message is that because emissions have been increasing instead of decreasing, we have increasingly lost our sight on the climate goals, which were formulated to prevent dangerous climate change,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Currently, the world is approximately following the medium scenario, van Vuuren said, which would lead to around 2.5 C to 3 C (4.5 F to 5.4 F), of warming by the end of the century. \u201cThat will bring quite substantial climate damage,\u201d he said. \u201cIt will mean a substantial increase in extreme [weather and climate] events, it will mean sea level rise, it will mean impacts on agricultural yields, and also substantial increase in the risk of tipping points,\u201d or levels<\/a> of climate change<\/a> that significantly and often irreversibly alter systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The RCP8.5 scenario translated<\/a> to around 4.5 C of warming by 2100, or around 8 F. The new highest scenario includes<\/a> expected warming of nearly 3.5 C, or around 6 F, and temperatures would continue<\/a> to rise after 2100.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Climate Brink post<\/a> also explained that for a given level of warming, certain risks have increased. \u201cSo, even if the high-end emissions in RCP8.5 won\u2019t materialize, the damages projected in these earlier climate simulations remain very much in play,\u201d the researchers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Van Vuuren added that the temperature increases in the new paper are based on a \u201cvery simple\u201d climate model but that further climate modeling will be done to understand how conditions will affect the climate system. In the past few years, he said that \u201cwe actually saw temperature increase going up much faster than in our scenarios.\u201d The meaning of this is not yet known, but some research has suggested that this indicates the climate system is more sensitive to greenhouse gases, he said, which could mean much higher temperatures from those gases than previously thought. If that’s the case, \u201cthe temperature rise could still easily exceed 4\u00b0C,\u201d or more than 7 F, the PBL post<\/a> said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The positive news, Hayhoe said, is that the scenarios show people can affect the trajectory of climate change. \u201cThe most important thing that these scenarios — both the older RCP ones and this newer set — show, without a shadow of a doubt, is that WE are the biggest uncertainty in terms of future impacts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Editor\u2019s note:\u00a0FactCheck.org does not accept advertising. We rely on grants and individual donations from people like you. Please consider a donation. Credit card donations may be made through\u00a0our \u201cDonate\u201d page<\/a>. If you prefer to give by check, send to: FactCheck.org, Annenberg Public Policy Center, P.O. Box 58100, Philadelphia, PA 19102.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n The post Trump Misrepresents Climate Change Scenarios<\/a> appeared first on FactCheck.org<\/a>.<\/p>\r\nWhy Climate Scenarios Have Narrowed<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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Major Impacts of Climate Change<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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In a recent Truth Social post, President Trump incorrectly claimed that updated climate change scenarios show prior projections were wrong. He misinterpreted new emissions scenarios published by scientists, suggesting they undermine the seriousness of global warming. Experts clarified that scenarios like RCP8.5 served as “what-if” models rather than predictions and that emissions projections have narrowed due to advancements in clean energy. Despite lower emissions than RCP8.5, serious climate impacts remain likely, with medium scenarios estimating significant warming by 2100. Experts emphasize the importance of human actions in shaping climate outcomes, reiterating that climate change remains a critical issue.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a May 16 Truth Social post, President Donald Trump cited updated climate change scenarios to misleadingly claim that experts had \u201cadmitted\u201d prior climate change projections \u201cwere WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!\u201d The regularly scheduled revision reflects in part the progress the world has made on moving away from fossil fuels. Trump was reacting to a new set of seven scenarios of…","protected":false},"author":109,"featured_media":2609,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_analytify_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2608","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2608","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2608"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2608\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2609"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2608"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2608"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wokeantifa.org\/topics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2608"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}