This worst-case climate scenario might be the most realistic
A worst-case climate scenario will mean many more severe storms in our future (Artur Aldyrkhanov/Unsplash/)With news every day of environmental protections being stripped away, hotter summers, more powerful storms, and biodiversity in crisis, it’s perhaps easy to assume we’re on a dangerous path for climate change. However, among climate scientists, there’s a surprising amount of debate around the so-called “worst-case” scenario and whether it’s fair to say we’re going down that route.The technical term for this worst-case scenario is Representative Concentration Pathway (RCP) 8.5. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change first used the RCPs in preparing their Fifth Assessment Report, published in 2014. There are four main RCPs: 2.6, 4.5, 6.0, 8.5. The numbers represent different values for radiative forcing, a measure of how much of the sun’s energy the atmosphere traps. Starting with 2005, the RCPs project the trajectory of greenhouses gas into 2100. Each projection has different assumptions...