The Daily Sceptic's Environment Editor, Chris Morrison, is one of my primary go-tos when looking for solid information about the "climate crisis." He's even-handed, objective, and so good at debunking the claims of the climate scolds that I can forgive his publication's funny British spelling of the word "skeptic."
I'm just kidding, Chris. You're the man.
In his latest, Chris Morrison discusses the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and their fondness for the RCP8.5 ‘business as usual’ model, and as usual, Mr. Morrison hammers it into the ground - with the actual data.
When the story of the great turn-of-the-millennium climate science fraud comes to be written by future historians, the central role of the RCP8.5 ‘business as usual’ model scenario, much featured in recent IPCC reports, will be obvious to all. This ‘pathway’ has polluted climate model predictions for years with its wild and improbable claims of carbon dioxide emissions and soaring temperatures. A huge number of science papers incorporating the pathway are published by obvious Net Zero activists, and their ‘scientists say’ climate psychosis-inducing fairy tales are sped on their way by blinkered journalists in the mainstream press. The science writer Roger Pielke Jr. notes that RCP8.5 has been “falsified” – most knew it was fake, historians are likely to conclude, but the Net Zero addiction was too strong for it to be given up.
By “falsified”, Dr Pielke explains in a recent Substack article, he means that the pathway’s emissions trajectory is already well out of step with reality. To prove his point he offers up the 2021 evidence contained in Burgess et al. highlighted in the graph below.
I love the play on words: "...polluted climate model predictions."
Here's the graph:
— Ward Clark (@TheGreatLander) June 12, 2025
The data speaks plainly; the assumptions of RCP8.5 aren't just unlikely; they're impossible. But IPCC keeps citing them, and until recently, so did the United States government. That last part, at least, has changed.
According to Pielke, the gap between the black arrow (RCP8.5) and the blue arrow (reality) indicates that RCP8.5 is not just unlikely but impossible. Since the paper was published, Pielke notes that the gap between RCP8.5 and reality has only grown larger. RCP8.5 also assumes that global temperatures will rise by a possible 4°C in less than 80 years, a heck of an ask given temperatures have risen by barely 0.25°C over at least the last 25 years. Recently President Trump’s executive order titled ‘Restoring Gold Standard Science’ effectively outlawed the use of RCP8.5 for scientists on the US federal payroll, noting that it uses highly unlikely assumptions such as end-of-century coal use exceeding estimates of recoverable reserves.
As Mr. Morrison notes, the Trump administration's EO on science defines RCP8.5 and essentially abandons any attempt by the United States government to take it seriously.
President Trump's EO states in part:
Similarly, agencies 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.
This, folks, is how you do it. This is how you fight bad information: With good information.
See Also: Liberal Seattle Paper Cries About Climate Change Causing Flooding. They're Wrong.
Here Are Some Ideas on Making Your Diet Climate-Friendly. Problem: They're Hot Garbage.
If climate scolds were actually interested in science, in the scientific method, in facts and reality, they would look at the data summarised here and presented in the chart above, and say, "Gosh, our hypothesis was wrong. We need to go back to the drawing board, take a hard look at this new data, and develop a new hypothesis." That's how science is supposed to work, and the fact that the climate scolds don't do this speaks volumes about their intent. It's not science. It's not the climate. It's not the future of our little kids. It's about control. It's about forcing us into shoebox-sized electric cars and 15-minute cities, because bear no doubt about this, if given the authority, these things are what they would do.
Chris Morrison is dedicated to fighting this fight on his side of the Atlantic, and may he know every success. We'll try to keep up our end here in the New World. We'll counter bad information with good information, bad data with good data, falsehoods with facts. That's how you do it.
You can see more of Chris Morrison's great work at the Daily Sceptic here.
