In a May 16 Truth Social post, President Donald Trump cited updated climate change scenarios to misleadingly claim that experts had “admitted” prior climate change projections “were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” The regularly scheduled revision reflects in part the progress the world has made on moving away from fossil fuels.
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RCP8.5 was the most pessimistic of four scenarios that were selected in 2007 and described in 2011. The scenarios looked at how much the climate might change by 2100, relative to the industrial revolution.
“RCP8.5 was always this low-probability, high-impact case,” [said] Detlef van Vuuren, a climate researcher at Utrecht University and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency ….
Experts said that Trump’s comments on climate scenarios misrepresented their purpose.
“Scenarios are not predictions: they are ‘what-if’ pictures of the future,” Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist and professor at Texas Tech University, [said] ….
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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. “That will bring quite substantial climate damage,” he said.
