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Author Topic: Climate Expert Asks: What Is a ‘Worst-Case’ Climate Scenario?  (Read 145 times)

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Offline rangerrebew

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Climate Expert Asks: What Is a ‘Worst-Case’ Climate Scenario?
« on: June 05, 2025, 06:45:42 am »
Climate Expert Asks: What Is a ‘Worst-Case’ Climate Scenario?
The IPCC's RCP8.5 scenario isn’t just unlikely—it’s impossible. So why are scientists still (ab)using it?

by Roger Pielke Jr.  June 04, 2025, 2:11 PM in Energy, Extreme Weather, News and Opinion, Politics, 
The implausibly extreme and hugely popular climate scenario RCP8.5 made it into President Trump’s executive order last week on “Restoring Gold Standard Science.” [emphasis, links added]


Ironically, the Trump administration’s characterization of RCP8.5 did not quite reach the “gold standard,” and maybe not even a “bronze standard. “

The EO states:

[Federal a]gencies have used Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) scenario 8.5 to assess the potential effects of climate change in a “higher” warming scenario. RCP 8.5 is a worst-case scenario based on highly unlikely assumptions like end-of-century coal use exceeding estimates of recoverable coal reserves. Scientists have warned that presenting RCP 8.5 as a likely outcome is misleading.

RCP8.5 is not simply “highly unlikely” — it is falsified, meaning that its emissions trajectory is already well out of step with reality.

We showed this conclusively in Burgess et al. 2021, from which the annotated figure below comes:

https://climatechangedispatch.com/expert-explains-worst-case-climate-scenarios/
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Online GtHawk

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Re: Climate Expert Asks: What Is a ‘Worst-Case’ Climate Scenario?
« Reply #1 on: June 05, 2025, 02:01:56 pm »
What’s the worst case scenario?


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=c55PtTyvfE4
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Offline Smokin Joe

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Re: Climate Expert Asks: What Is a ‘Worst-Case’ Climate Scenario?
« Reply #2 on: June 05, 2025, 02:57:59 pm »
The worst-case climate scenario is that some bunch of whackos succeeds in cutting down the amount of sun reaching the Earth and we have an Ice Age.

Next worst is that we do actually have a gob of warming and we will have divested ourselves of the reliable technologies and energy sources needed to cope with the change.

The planet has been around some 4.6 Billion years, humans only a couple million.
Of all species that ever were, over 99% are extinct.

The planet will continue to do just fine, but species (ours included) are far more fragile. We have been successful because of our technological ability to adapt. We need to keep that, every card we have.
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Offline DefiantMassRINO

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Re: Climate Expert Asks: What Is a ‘Worst-Case’ Climate Scenario?
« Reply #3 on: June 05, 2025, 03:06:19 pm »
Doom?

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Offline berdie

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Re: Climate Expert Asks: What Is a ‘Worst-Case’ Climate Scenario?
« Reply #4 on: June 05, 2025, 04:57:42 pm »
Quote from: Smokin Joe on June 05, 2025, 02:57:59 pm
The worst-case climate scenario is that some bunch of whackos succeeds in cutting down the amount of sun reaching the Earth and we have an Ice Age.

Next worst is that we do actually have a gob of warming and we will have divested ourselves of the reliable technologies and energy sources needed to cope with the change.

The planet has been around some 4.6 Billion years, humans only a couple million.
Of all species that ever were, over 99% are extinct.

The planet will continue to do just fine, but species (ours included) are far more fragile. We have been successful because of our technological ability to adapt. We need to keep that, every card we have.




Truer words have never been typed.
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Offline Fishrrman

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Re: Climate Expert Asks: What Is a ‘Worst-Case’ Climate Scenario?
« Reply #5 on: June 05, 2025, 05:48:34 pm »
"What Is a ‘Worst-Case’ Climate Scenario?"

OK, I'll bite:
1. The sun peters out
2. The sun explodes

What could be worse than that?
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