RCP 8.5 and Climate Anxiety: How a Generation Was Misled

Skip to content A Generation of Kids Thinks They Have No Future. Science Just Admitted Why A Generation of Kids Thinks They Have No Future. Science Just Admitted Why RCP 8.5 has been given its official death certificate. The generation of children who grew up in its shadow, who were told the world was ending before they’d turn thirty, deserve to know the truth. Let’s make sure the message reaches them, says Anthony Watts. Anthony Watts 11 May 2026 SHARE: For nearly two decades, a single climate model scenario haunted virtually every apocalyptic headline you read about our planet’s future. Vanishing coastlines, catastrophic droughts, mass extinctions, cities underwater — almost all of it was built on a scenario called RCP 8.5. And now, in a development that climate scientist Roger Pielke Jr. is calling the “most significant development in climate research in decades,” the international committee responsible for producing the official scenarios that feed into IPCC climate assessments has …