As the climate-change landscape evolves, new forms of scientific disinformation emerge. Just this week, President Trump spread one of the latest false claims: that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) announced the world does not face climate catastrophe, and that it’s “alarmism” to acknowledge that currently projected amounts of global heating might be dangerous.
“After 15 years of Dumocrats promising that ‘Climate Change’ is going to destroy the Planet, the United Nations TOP Climate Committee just admitted that its own projections (RCP8.5) were WRONG! WRONG! WRONG!” Trump wrote, quite incorrectly, on Truth Social. “Unlike the Dumocrats, who use Climate Alarmism nonsense to push their Green New Scam, my Administration will always be based on TRUTH, SCIENCE, and FACT!”
Even in light of the Trump administration’s gutting of American science and the president’s well-documented reckless disregard for the truth, this post stands out as patently, particularly absurd. But Trump’s new climate-denial talking point is a weaponized version of new developments in climate science. Trump’s typically bombastic disinformation—if casually combined with a real debate within the climate community about one climate projection—will muddy the public understanding of science enough that Americans on both sides of the aisle might be left with an incorrect and dangerous belief that they no longer need to worry about the climate crisis.
So, what is RCP8.5? And why...
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