" ... science has momentum, and that momentum can be hard to change, even when obvious and significant flaws are identified.
This is particularly the case when the flaws exist in databases that underlie research across an entire discipline.
In 2020, climate research ... evidence indicates the scenarios of the future to 2100 that are at the focus of much of climate research have already diverged from the real world and thus offer a poor basis for projecting policy-relevant variables like economic growth and carbon dioxide emissions.
A course-correction is needed.
In a new paper of ours just out in Environmental Research Letters we perform the most rigorous evaluation to date of how key variables in climate scenarios compare with data from the real world (specifically, we look at population, economic growth, energy intensity of economic growth and carbon intensity of energy consumption).
We also look at how these variables might evolve in the near-term to 2040.
We find that the most commonly-used scenarios in climate research have already diverged significantly from the real world, and that divergence is going to only get larger in coming decades.
... As Zeke Hausfather and Glen Peters write in Nature, the highest emissions scenario commonly used in research to represent a “business as usual” trajectory into the future “becomes increasingly implausible with every passing year.”
... While it is excellent news that the broader community is beginning to realize that scenarios are increasingly outdated, voluminous amounts of research have been and continue to be produced based on the outdated scenarios.
... the high-end emissions scenarios that are favored in physical climate research, impact studies and economic and policy analyses.
... the highest emission scenarios comprise about 30% of all applications in studies over the past five years ...
... Evidence is now undeniable that the basis for a significant amount of research has become untethered from the real world.
The issue now is what to do about it.
... our literature review found almost 17,000 peer-reviewed articles that use the now-outdated highest emissions scenario.
That particular scenario is also by far the most commonly cited in recent climate assessments of the IPCC and the U.S. National Climate Assessment.
... The elevated role of scenarios across climate research means that there is a huge momentum behind their continued use.
... Make no mistake.
The momentum of outdated science is powerful.
... we should expect to see reactions to uncomfortable knowledge that include:
denial (that scenarios are off track),
dismissal (the scenarios are off track, but it doesn’t matter),
diversion (the scenarios are off track, but saying so advances the agenda of those opposed to action) and,
displacement (the scenarios are off track but there are perhaps compensating errors elsewhere within scenario assumptions).
Such responses reinforce the momentum of outdated science and make it more difficult to implement a much needed course correction."