The Sky Was Never Falling
RCP8.5 RIP
For years, Democrats in the Biden Administration and much of the mainstream media warned that climate change posed an existential threat—heat deaths, floods, stronger hurricanes, wildfires, droughts—demanding immediate, drastic shifts in energy use and generation. Their primary tool: RCP8.5, the climate community’s 2011 “business-as-usual” (no policy changes) projection.
Published on August 13, 2011, RCP8.5 was repeatedly cited as the likely outcome without radical intervention. Yet it was flawed from the start, built on unrealistic assumptions:
A massive “renaissance” in coal use, far beyond realistic supply or economics.
Rapid coal-to-liquids displacing petroleum.
Slowed technological progress in solar and other renewables.
Extremely high global population growth.
In 2017, researchers Justin Ritchie and Hadi Dowlatabadi concluded: “RCP8.5 does not provide a physically consistent worst-case BAU trajectory that warrants continued emphasis in scientific research. Accordingly, it does not provide a useful benchmark for policy studies.”
Despite this, RCP8.5 remained the go-to scenario for alarmist claims. On April 7, 2026, the climate community finally dropped it for CMIP7 modeling, acknowledging it had become implausible.
The sky was never falling. Extreme scenarios drove policy panic based on projections that never matched reality.
