The Alarmist Mirage: Activists Cling to Outdated Climate Scenarios As Science Moves On

Doomsday has been delayed, yet again.

In the West, it has become a tradition of the holiday season for food, family, and festivities to be accompanied by visions of flooded cities, mass migrations, and ecosystem collapse peddled by doomsaying climate alarmists who call for sweeping bans on fossil fuels, air travel, and even meat consumption. But it’s becoming harder each year to take this rhetoric seriously as it clashes with reality. That’s because our best data and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) own modeling now reveal that the catastrophic scenarios underpinning these doomsday prophecies are highly improbable.

This is not a fringe view, but the synthesis emerging from the best peer-reviewed science and echoed by once-unlikely figures like Bill Gates, who now advocates for tech-driven adaptation rather than emissions reduction as the goal of climate policy. Even James Hansen, reverently described as the “father of climate awareness,” now recognizes that in this shifting consensus a full-scale transition to solar and wind energy “is almost the equivalent of believing in the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.”

Simply put, the most extreme climate disaster scenarios have lost credibility, and the large coalition of NGOs, legal firms, and activist academics dependent on this narrative for funding and influence is reluctant to concede this pivotal truth.

Fatally flawed from the start

The divergence began decades ago, rooted in models built on assumptions that have crumbled under real-world scrutiny. Take the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP 8.5), the IPCC’s high-end scenario long invoked as “business-as-usual.” It envisions steadily increasing emissions, driven by a world where coal not only dominates but surges to power everything from factories to family cars—outcompeting oil, gas, and “renewables” throughout the century.

The architects of the original models, dating back to late-1980s IPCC assessments, integrated assumptions such as “virtually unlimited, very inexpensive coal” in regions like China and Siberia. These inherent errors effectively ignored subsequent technological innovations, such as hydraulic fracturing (”fracking”). As detailed by climate policy expert Roger Pielke Jr., these projections have been fundamentally inaccurate: global emissions growth stalled near zero in 2017, and current global policies align with pathways below RCP 4.5, which forecasts warming of approximately 2–3°C by 2100. The International Energy Agency’s 2019 and 2020 baselines fall almost entirely outside the IPCC’s high-end fossil-fuel ranges, confirming that the expansion of natural gas has fundamentally altered the global energy landscape.

For scientifically literate observers, this evidence is well-documented in the literature. Pielke, alongside co-authors like Matthew Burgess and Hannah Ritchie, has published extensively on the topic, including a 2022 study in Environmental Research Letters arguing that plausible emissions trajectories through 2050 cap warming at 2–3°C, rendering RCP 8.5’s extremes obsolete for policy planning. The U.S. National Climate Assessment initially clung to RCP 8.5 for consistency in 2018 but later acknowledged the post-2014 slowdown, with UN projections dropping from 3.1°C to 2.8°C under current policies by 2025.

Even the IPCC’s newer Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) inherit these coal-centric flaws, prioritizing scenarios where this older fuel source eclipses all rivals. It’s a thoroughly unjustified assumption against which informed experts have warned for years. Commenting on their field’s continued reliance on these flawed models in 2021, Pielke and climate researcher Justin Ritchie were unequivocal:

“We view it as one of the most significant failures of scientific integrity in the twenty-first century thus far. We need a course correction.”

Academics cling to their models

Intriguingly, many climate scientists have quietly acknowledged the critical limitations of these existing climate scenarios. This expert concession would likely surprise most news consumers, who have been subjected to a steady stream of alarmist reporting for two decades. They would be further astonished by the fact that mainstream climatology has not abandoned these flawed modeling scenarios. Instead, there is a push for new models that are increasingly disconnected from practical energy policy.

RCP 8.5 and its progeny are now framed as tools for “cool science” as Pielke calls it: hypotheticals to probe impacts and mitigation benefits rather than probable futures. They want to model what could go wrong under extenuating circumstances rather than what is likely to happen. Here’s one team of earth scientists admitting as much, if only in dry academic terms:

In summary, modeling radical climate shifts may be intellectually stimulating, and it may prove useful at some distant future point if global energy use fundamentally reverts to technologies that wildly accelerate carbon emissions. Nonetheless, the academic community intends to continue running these increasingly speculative models, funded, of course, at the taxpayer’s expense.

Climate “nuisance” litigation in jeopardy

This is more than a matter of wasting public funds on unhelpful modeling; it has significant legal ramifications. A substantial number of climate “nuisance” lawsuits have been filed across the U.S. by various states and smaller jurisdictions. Each one hinges on the loaded allegation that energy companies knowingly concealed and misrepresented the putatively severe long-term consequences of climate change, which the plaintiffs claim they are now experiencing through escalating wildfires, flooding, and severe heat waves. To successfully prosecute this case, the activist attorneys employed by Michigan and other plaintiffs are wholly dependent on RCP 8.5 and similar worst-case scenarios.

These suits were always dubious on both factual and legal grounds, and plaintiffs have already come up short in court multiple times. But if the underlying climate models on which they rely are discredited, what ground there is for this litigation will fall out from under it.

Cue the zealots

Faced with the imminent implosion of their central narrative—and a major source of revenue—proponents of the climate “consensus” have pivoted sharply to attempts at narrative control. As Firebreak editor David Zaruk reported last week, The COP30 Declaration on Information Integrity exemplifies this concerning shift: a ten-nation pact that characterizes dissent as “disinformation” emanating from “dark forces” attempting to subvert political truths. It mandates “respect” for “proven” information—effectively codifying climate orthodoxy—while attempting to silence skeptics through algorithms, AI guardrails, and echo chambers that equate disagreement with an attack on scientific integrity. Brazilian President Lula’s “COP of Truth” message underscores the position: question the established wisdom, and you are deemed a threat to the planet.

While this rhetoric is alarming, it is instructive because it originates from ideological true-believers who are explicitly stating they will disregard scientific evidence if it impedes their political crusade. More critically, their brazen attempts at censorship are a clear signal that they are losing the substantive policy debate and recognize the vulnerability of their core arguments.

A similar dynamic emerged last year when the United Nation’s global plastics treaty negotiations faltered, ultimately failing to produce international restrictions on plastic production. Rather than grappling with the impracticality and risk of such a proposal—more pollution and serious harms to public health—the environmental NGO constellation complained about its inability to massage the talks, as the AP reported:

“Many of the groups voicing concerns about the [closed negotiations] have advocated for a strong treaty, one that limits how much plastic is produced and eliminates toxic chemicals in plastics, rather than one that only deals with plastic waste. At such a critical stage in the process, if there are not enough people in the room in Bangkok who want a meaningful treaty, it could set the stage for a weaker document, leaders at the International Pollutants Elimination Network said.” (our emphasis)

The bottom line remains: activists are determined to control the policymaking process. If they can frame their revolutionary proposals in scientific terminology, they will do so. If the evidence refuses to conform to their ideological agenda, they will discard it and attempt to silence anyone who tries to reintroduce it.

Conclusion: climate realism vindicated

What was dismissed as “climate denial” a decade ago—the questioning of runaway warming scenarios and emissions hysteria—stands vindicated today. There is no serious scientific doubt that global climate change is occurring, nor that human emissions contribute to atmospheric warming. However, the most extreme predictions of a catastrophic future characterized by rapidly rising seas and ferocious wildfires have failed to materialize. The mainstream scientific community is beginning to embrace this more restrained reality. It is imperative that climate advocacy groups do the same.