President Donald Trump is taking victory laps after climate scientists quietly backed away from one of the most catastrophic global warming scenarios used for years in United Nations-backed climate modeling — a scenario critics long argued was designed to fuel public fear and justify sweeping government intervention.
In a fiery Truth Social post Saturday, Trump mocked Democrats and climate activists after reports emerged that researchers are phasing out the extreme emissions pathway known as RCP8.5, later updated as SSP5-8.5.
“GOOD RIDDANCE!” Trump wrote. “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 then accused Democrats of weaponizing climate fears to push expensive energy policies and massive government spending programs.
“For far too long Climate Activism has been used by Dumocrats to scare Americans, push horrible Energy Policies, and fund BILLIONS into their bogus research programs,” he wrote. “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!”
The controversy centers around RCP8.5, one of the most widely cited worst-case climate scenarios developed under the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The pathway projected extraordinarily high greenhouse gas emissions and severe warming outcomes by the end of the century, including dramatic sea-level rise, widespread crop failures, and other catastrophic environmental consequences.
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) May 16, 2026
For years, critics argued the scenario relied on assumptions so extreme that they bordered on unrealistic. The model assumed massive increases in coal usage and emissions trajectories that many researchers now say no longer align with global energy trends.
According to reports citing the journal Geoscientific Model Development, scientists now acknowledge that the highest-end emissions scenario has become increasingly implausible due to advances in renewable energy, changing emissions patterns, and evolving climate policies worldwide.
“For the 21st century, this range will be smaller than assessed before,” researchers wrote. “On the high-end of the range, the high emission levels quantified by SSP5-8.5 have become implausible.”
Importantly, scientists are not abandoning climate modeling altogether, nor are they claiming climate change itself is false. Researchers emphasized that future scenarios will still examine a broad range of warming outcomes, including serious risks tied to emissions increases. But the move away from RCP8.5 marks a significant shift because the scenario has heavily influenced media coverage, activist messaging, academic studies, and political debates for more than a decade.
Trump and his allies see the development as validation of longstanding criticism that climate politics has often relied on fear-driven predictions disconnected from realistic assumptions.
Trump has repeatedly attacked international climate institutions and environmental policies throughout his political career. Last year at the United Nations General Assembly, he called climate change “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.”
“All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong,” Trump said at the time.
Democrats and climate activists fiercely rejected those comments. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accused Trump of spreading “total disinformation” and misleading the public about scientific consensus.
Still, Trump’s allies continue arguing that climate policies pushed by the political left have imposed major economic costs on working Americans, particularly through higher energy prices and restrictions on domestic fossil fuel production.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin echoed that argument during a recent Fox News appearance.
“The president is absolutely right,” Zeldin said. “We’ve seen it in the name of climate change — these left-wing policies willing to cause extreme economic pain for people who can least afford it.”
