IPCC Buries Doomsday Scenario; Major Climate Outlets Stay Silent
The IPCC declared its flagship doomsday climate scenario implausible on April 7. Major English-language outlets that spent 15 years amplifying the warnings published nothing about its retirement, though a few exceptions emerged.
The IPCC declared its flagship doomsday scenario implausible on April 7. Major English-language media outlets that spent 15 years amplifying those warnings published nothing about its retirement, though The Times and GB News stood out as exceptions. There were no headlines. No corrections. Not even a footnote.
Science writer Roger Pielke Jr. documented the blackout in a May 9 AEI analysis. He called the silence remarkable given that more than 2,600 studies using the high-end scenarios have appeared in 2026 alone. "The outlets most invested in their longstanding promotion of RCP8.5 have the most to lose from a clear-eyed accounting of what its retirement means for science, policy and their own coverage," Pielke wrote. The New York Times, BBC, Guardian, and Carbon Brief all remained silent.
The Coupled Model Intercomparison Project published its new framework in Geoscientific Model Development, formally declaring RCP8.5, SSP5-8.5, and SSP3-7.0 implausible for the 21st century. The paper stated: "On the high-end of the range, the CMIP6 high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends." The new HIGH scenario projects warming of approximately 3.5 degrees Celsius by 2100, a 0.8-degree reduction from the 4.3 degrees that RCP8.5 projected.
Lead author Detlef van Vuuren told De Volkskrant that the world has developed faster than expected. "Renewable energy has become cheaper quickly. And, even if it is still too little, there is climate policy," he said. Pielke disputes this framing, arguing the scenario was always implausible due to fundamentally flawed assumptions.
The ruling exposed a deeper problem: an entire regulatory architecture built on a scenario the IPCC now admits is detached from reality.
The UK Met Office published UKCP18 Headline Findings in August 2022, explicitly using RCP8.5 as the high emission scenario and describing its projections in bold type as plausible. The document projected UK summers by 2070 could be up to 5.1 degrees Celsius warmer, summer rainfall could decrease by up to 45 percent, and London sea level rise by century's end could reach 0.53 meters to 1.15 meters. It concluded that the government would use UKCP18 to inform adaptation and mitigation planning.
A September 2024 Met Office-commissioned report by Professor Nigel Arnell of the University of Reading documented the chaos this produced. UK organizations interpreted RCP8.5 in wildly inconsistent ways. Energy UK called it worst case. National Highways treated it as business-as-usual. The Environment Agency mapped it to a 4-degree world.
Defra's Supplementary Green Book guidance references RCP8.5 as an alternative scenario where RCP6.0 data is unavailable, while designating RCP6.0 as the pathway broadly consistent with a 4-degree warming scenario. Water companies including Affinity Water, Northumbrian Water, Severn Trent, and Southern Water all designed their infrastructure around a 4-degree world.
The damage extended to the financial system. The NGFS Hot House World scenario, based on SSP2 and approximating RCP6.0-level warming, is used by more than 140 central banks in the NGFS network for climate financial stress testing. The global financial system's climate risk models now rest on a foundation the IPCC calls implausible, requiring immediate revision. Network Rail uses the 90th percentile of RCP8.5. The FCA's Climate Financial Risk Forum Guide 2021 references RCP 8.5, and UK government TCFD-aligned guidance for the public sector mentions UKCP18 as an alternative scenario option.
European outlets that were not invested in the old narrative covered the ruling without hesitation. De Volkskrant published a front-page story on May 4 under the headline "UN Climate Panel Drops Doomsday Scenario." Science journalist Maarten Keulemans posted on X: "ALMOST EVERYTHING YOU READ ABOUT THE CLIMATE FUTURE IS WRONG." The newspaper identified 54 articles it had published on RCP8.5 studies. Die Welt ran: "A lobby made RCP8.5 famous: the most sensationalist of all climate scenarios has determined scientific studies, media and politics — yet it is unrealistic." The Times published "Most apocalyptic climate scenario thrown out by experts" on May 11. GB News covered it on May 6.
President Trump posted on Truth Social on May 17: "GOOD RIDDANCE! After 15 years of Dumocrats promising that 'Climate Change' is going to destroy the Planet, the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!" EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin defended the comments on Fox News, stating the president is absolutely right. He noted these left-wing policies cause extreme economic pain for people who can at least afford it. The Trump administration had already signed Executive Order "Restoring Gold Standard Science" on May 23, 2025, which explicitly identified RCP8.5 as a worst-case scenario based on highly unlikely assumptions like end-of-century coal use exceeding estimates of recoverable coal reserves.
Hillary Clinton responded at the Clinton Global Initiative, calling Trump's comments total disinformation. Her reflexive defense echoed the same impulse driving the media blackout: protect the narrative at all costs, even as the architects of the scenario declare it implausible.
The publication machine barely paused. Chris Morrison wrote for the Daily Sceptic that both Nature and Science thrived on publishing RCP8.5 drivel. The publication rate by early 2020 was roughly 20 RCP8.5 studies per day. In 2026 it has accelerated to roughly 30 per day using RCP8.5 or SSP5-8.5. The BBC aired a December 2025 More or Less episode on the RCP8.5 problem, titled "Why did the climate change model get it wrong?" The network published nothing on the retirement.
Many cascading Net Zero regulations on British industry, finance, water, energy, transport, and infrastructure were built on a scenario the IPCC now calls implausible. The logical demand is a full regulatory review and rollback of every Net Zero mandate built on this scenario. The Met Office, Committee on Climate Change, Bank of England, and NGFS have not issued any statement acknowledging the ruling. Their silence speaks for itself.