The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations body for assessing the science related to climate change, has revised its climate scenarios, with the most catastrophic now removed as renewables surge.

The SSP5-8.5 high-emissions scenario used in IPCC reports, projecting a future with rapid economic growth based on fossil fuels, or the ‘worst-case’ scenario is to be ‘retired’.

This would have seen temperatures rising by 5C, large sea level rises and crops failing globally.

However, since first being published in 2011 sharp declines in emissions, greater energy efficiency and mass deployment of renewables mean that the window of outcomes has narrowed. Moreover, the scenario, although always unlikely has been misused or misunderstood by media outlets, politicians and campaigners. The next generation of climate scenarios, AR7, will take a more plausible set of futures into account.

Not that it means everything is perfectly fine, far from it, and current would not be enough to limit warming to below 2C and could reach 3C, with similar, if slightly less dramatic. results.

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