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RCP8.5 is a problematic scenario for near-term emissions
This Letter has a Reply and related content. Please see:
- Reply to Hausfather and Peters: RCP8.5 is neither problematic nor misleading - October 20, 2020
- RCP8.5 tracks cumulative CO2 emissions - August 03, 2020

Schwalm et al. (1) argue that both historical and near-term (through 2050) cumulative emissions are more in line with Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5) than other RCPs (2), and take issue with our suggestion (3) that the treatment of the scenario as “business as usual” is misleading.
We previously pointed out (3) that International Energy Agency (IEA) World Energy Outlook (WEO) scenarios (4) of near-term fossil CO2 emissions are a more reliable indicator of likely outcomes under current policies than RCP or Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) (5) baseline scenarios, as they account for the global decline in coal use over the past decade and falling prices of clean energy technologies. We found IEA scenarios agree much …
↵1To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: hausfath{at}gmail.com.
References
- ↵
- C. R. Schwalm,
- S. Glendon,
- P. B. Duffy
- ↵
- K. Riahi et al.
- ↵
- Z. Hausfather,
- G. P. Peters
- ↵
- International Energy Agency
- ↵
- ↵
- P. Friedlingstein et al.
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