Editors’ Note: Multiple mainstream media outlets such as The Washington Post, Bloomberg, Fox News, among others, have reported on the retirement of the worst-case emissions scenario, Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5, from UN climate committee analyses, and President Trump’s reaction to it. This is a great victory for Climate Realism, as realists like those writing here have long explianed that RCP 8.5 is unrealistic, likely impossibly, and used exclusively to generate terrifying headlines. It will not be missed.
SCHAUMBURG, IL (May 19, 2026) – President Trump last weekend on Truth Social said “good riddance” to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) most-alarmist climate model called RCP 8.5. Trump wrote: “The United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG! For 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.”
For years, the IPCC has relied heavily on a global warming scenario that assumed energy absorption in the atmosphere would reach 8.5 watts per square meter by 2100. This worst-case scenario has been used in countless academic papers and the media to predict a climate catastrophe soon if the use of fossil fuels is not dramatically reduced. The IPCC announced in April that this outcome has become “implausible.”
The following statements from environment and climate experts at The Heartland Institute – a free-market think tank – may be used for attribution. For more comments, refer to the contact information below. To book a Heartland guest on your program, please contact Executive Vice President and Director of Communications Jim Lakely at media@heartland.org or call/text 312-731-9364.
“President Trump is RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT! RCP 8.5 is and always has been a scam. We at Heartland have long critiqued RCP 8.5 noting it was implausible if not impossible, yet academics kept using it in hundreds of supposedly peer reviewed studies. They used it because it produced alarming results that they and the climate activists then used to demand both more money, for research, and an end to fossil fuel use.
“Now what Heartland has said all along has been confirmed. RCP 8.5 has been withdrawn by the IPCC, citing the very reasons we’ve touted for more than a decade. Those hundreds of papers pushing false alarmism should be rescinded with prejudice.
“It’s time to base policy on real science and data not computer-generated end of the world scenarios.”
H. Sterling Burnett, Ph.D.
Director, Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
hsburnett@heartland.org
“RCP 8.5 became the climate establishment’s favorite tool because it generated the most frightening headlines, not because it reflected realistic energy or economic trends. For years, policymakers, media outlets, and activists treated this extreme scenario as ‘business as usual,’ even though it assumed wildly unrealistic coal consumption, stagnant technological progress, and population trajectories detached from observed reality.
“The damage from this manufactured panic extends far beyond climate science. RCP 8.5 was used to justify costly regulations, energy restrictions, attacks on reliable fossil fuels, and endless taxpayer funding for speculative research built on worst-case assumptions. Entire industries of climate litigation, ESG investing, and government intervention leaned heavily on projections that even many modelers privately acknowledged were improbable.
“President Trump deserves credit for calling attention to what many independent analysts have argued for years: public policy should not be driven by exaggerated computer simulations masquerading as settled science. If climate researchers want to restore public trust, they should begin by acknowledging how extensively RCP 8.5 distorted both scientific communication and public debate.”
Anthony Watts
Senior Fellow
The Heartland Institute
awatts@heartland.org
“President Trump is absolutely right to celebrate the downfall of RCP 8.5. It was never an accurate model of the future.
“Now comes the next problem: There are hundreds if not thousands of studies in journals spanning biology, medicine, atmospheric science, and others, that used RCP 8.5 as their high end and even business-as-usual emissions scenario. These studies claimed this scenario represented a realistic forecast that would lead to imminent species destruction, human deaths, and increasing natural disasters, none of which came to pass, and never were going to happen at all. All the most extreme studies were breathlessly reported in the media as though they were inevitable unless the world made extreme lifestyle changes to justify authoritarian government measures to crack down on farmers and energy producers.
“It was always nonsense and it is fantastic that President Trump advocates for good science over agenda-driven modeling.”
Linnea Lueken
Senior Fellow
Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy
The Heartland Institute
llueken@heartland.org
“Why does it take the president of the United States to spell out today the decades-long scams of the many impossible scenarios of future atmospheric carbon dioxide planted by the UN IPCC? How can a future insisting of burning five times more coal than available in proven reserves be even entertained in the first place? President Trump should tell all the crony ‘scientists’ and fear-mongering science organizations: ‘You are all fired!’ More importantly, all their scientific research funding must be immediately terminated to prevent further thefts from the American taxpayers.”
Willie Soon, Ph.D.
Astrophysicist and geoscientist
CERES Science
Policy Advisor, The Heartland Institute
media@heartland.org
“The computer models upon which the RCP 8.5 conclusions were drawn are highly flawed. First and foremost, they assume that carbon dioxide is the principal driver of recent climate change, ignoring or improperly assessing natural drivers to the system. These include solar variability, cloud and water vapor feedback loops, and changes in oceanic geothermal forcing. Second, they assumed exponential growth in coal use that exceeded known reserves.
“The highly implausible products of these computer ‘ensembles’ were then transmitted to the scientific community via a biased system of communication, the ‘peer-review’ process. Peer review lends itself to groupthink by rewarding certain perspectives while excluding others. In the case of global warming, promulgating causal mechanisms that can be taxed and/or regulated – i.e., anthropogenic emissions of weak greenhouse gases – are the preferred drivers.
“I’m glad to see that the president has finally put an end to this nonsense. It’s time for us to follow the science and stop following the money.”
Arthur Viterito, Ph.D.
Policy Advisor
The Heartland Institute
media@heartland.org
The Heartland Institute is a national nonprofit organization founded in 1984 and headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois. Its mission is to discover, develop, and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. For more information, visit our website or call 312/377-4000.
