Climate Change Checkup
15th April 2021
If you have the misfortune to follow the dreary climate change business, you’ll know that one of the fine points is which long-term emissions forecast to plug into your model. Never mind the accuracy of the models for now—even a good model is vulnerable to the age-old GIGO problem—”garbage in, garbage out.” In climate model forecasting, if you have an absurd emissions forecast, you’ll get absurd (but headline-grabbing) results.
People who follow this subject have long known that the emissions forecast that generates most of the scary headlines of the last few years is known as RCP 8.5 (short for “Representative Concentration Pathways”—never use plain language when you can use forbidding jargon), and most experts agree that its very high emissions forecast is bunk.