Discussions of climate policy are thrown off track by the widespread misuse of an extreme climate scenario
The misuse of RCP 8.5 involves the transformation of what is more accurately described as a worst-case scenario into the sole “business as usual” or baseline scenario that has become a centerpiece of climate policy discussions. However, when the family of RCPs was initially introduced to the scientific community there were actually three families of baseline scenarios:None of the RCPs was presented as being more likely a future than another.
.” This means that “business as usual” under the RCPs actually spans many individual scenarios within the RCP 4.5, 6.0 and 8.5 families of scenarios.that if any forcing level associated with business-as-usual was to be considered most likely, it was RCP 6.0: “even if the specific RCP6.0 scenario is not necessarily more likely than any other scenario, a forcing level in that order-of-magnitude might be more likely.” Van Vuuren further explains, “RCP8.
and is typically characterized uniquely as the “business as usual” scenario. I’ve spoken to many climate modelers who have explained that using the high emissions RCP 8.5 scenario is useful in their work to better separate the signal of a greenhouse gas forcing from the noise of natural variability and to maintain continuity with past studies that use high emissions scenarios. These justifications make good sense.
But the result of the disproportionate emphasis on RCP 8.5 combined with its mischaracterization as the “business as usual” scenario has been an avalanche of studies and corresponding media coverage that presents a worst-case scenario as the most likely future. At best, this represents a form of cherry picking. Imagine if studies instead focused solely on RCP 4.5 as “business as usual” and concluded that climate change would really not be that big a deal.
The misuse of RCP 8.5 is endemic. In fact, if you see a news story with dramatic projections of future climate impacts, you should expect that it comes from RCP 8.5.
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