New York Times Publishes Story Admitting Climate Doomsday Predictions May Have Been Overblown
The New York Times on Tuesday acknowledged the rollback of an extreme global warming scenario it previously used as headline fodder. The New York Times addressed doomsday model Representative Concentration Pathway…
Reporting · 1 source · Jul 1, 2026Read it
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About Representative Concentration Pathways
Representative Concentration Pathways (RCP) are climate change scenarios to project future greenhouse gas concentrations. These pathways describe future greenhouse gas concentrations and have been formally adopted by the IPCC. The pathways describe different climate change scenarios, all of which were considered possible depending on the amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted in the years to come. The four RCPs – originally RCP2.6, RCP4.5, RCP6, and RCP8.5 – are labelled after the expected changes in radiative forcing values from the year 1750 to the year 2100. The IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) began to use these four pathways for climate modeling and research in 2014. The higher values mean higher greenhouse gas emissions and therefore higher global surface temperatures and more pronounced effects of climate change. The lower RCP values, on the other hand, are more desirable for humans but would require more stringent climate change mitigation efforts to achieve them.
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