For years, the most extreme climate scenarios shaped headlines, policy debates, and public fear—despite growing evidence that many of those projections were increasingly detached from real-world energy and emissions trends. Now, in a major shift ahead of the IPCC’s Seventh Assessment Report, climate modelers are quietly abandoning some of their most dramatic assumptions. 

In this episode of Sanity Check, David R. Legates breaks down the rise and fall of RCP8.5 and SSP5-8.5, the “worst-case” climate pathways that came to dominate public discourse, and explains why CMIP7 is moving in a different direction. From coal projections and emissions trends to media narratives and scientific self-correction, this episode explores what these changes mean for climate science, public policy, and the future of the climate debate.

https://gmd.copernicus.org/articles/19/2627/2026/

https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/rcp85-is-officially-dead

https://www.theclimatebrink.com/p/emissions-are-no-longer-following

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-51281986

https://www.carbonbrief.org/explainer-the-high-emissions-rcp8-5-global-warming-scenario/

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360544217314597

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