President Donald Trump fired off a pointed Truth Social post Saturday after climate scientists backed away from one of the most dire global warming projections ever used in United Nations-backed modeling, a scenario that for years anchored Democratic arguments for sweeping energy restrictions and massive government spending.

The move by researchers, published in the journal Geoscientific Model Development, effectively concedes what skeptics of climate alarmism have argued for more than a decade: the worst-case emissions pathway known as RCP8.5, later rebranded SSP5-8.5, no longer reflects reality. The researchers themselves wrote that "on the high-end of the range, the high emission levels (quantified by SSP5-8.5) have become implausible, based on trends in the costs of renewables, the emergence of climate policy and recent emission trends."

That admission matters. RCP8.5 was not some obscure footnote in climate science. It was the scenario most frequently cited in media coverage, most often invoked by politicians demanding radical policy changes, and most central to the apocalyptic framing that justified trillions of dollars in proposed government intervention.

Trump's response: 'Good riddance'

The president did not mince words. In his Saturday post, Trump wrote:

"GOOD RIDDANCE! 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!"

He followed up by connecting the discredited scenario to a broader pattern of policy failure. Trump posted that "for far too long Climate Activism has been used by Dumocrats to scare Americans, push horrible Energy Polices, and fund BILLIONS into their bogus research programs."

And he drew a clear line between his administration and the climate establishment, writing: "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 president's tone was combative. But the underlying factual claim, that the most extreme UN emissions scenario has been abandoned by the scientists who built it, stands on the researchers' own published words.

What RCP8.5 actually was, and why it mattered

RCP8.5, and its successor SSP5-8.5, projected severe global warming outcomes under extremely high emissions assumptions. The scenario assumed the world would burn ever-increasing amounts of fossil fuel through the end of the century with essentially no policy intervention, no shift to renewables, and no change in economic patterns.

For years, critics pointed out that the scenario was unrealistic, that it assumed coal consumption would surge fivefold, that no country would adopt any meaningful climate policy, and that renewable energy costs would never fall. Those critics were dismissed as "deniers" by much of the political and media establishment.

Now the researchers themselves say the scenario "has become implausible." GB News reported that the scenario is being phased out after researchers concluded it no longer reflects the most plausible trajectory based on renewable energy growth, emissions trends, and climate policies. The researchers noted that future climate scenarios should still cover a wide range of outcomes, but the extreme high end no longer belongs in that range.

The implications are significant. Policy proposals built on RCP8.5 projections, from the Green New Deal to aggressive EPA regulations to international climate agreements, were sold to the public on the premise that inaction would lead to catastrophic, runaway warming. That premise now lacks its scientific foundation, at least as far as the most extreme pathway is concerned.

The Trump administration has already moved aggressively on the regulatory front. A photo caption from February 12, 2026, shows EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin alongside the president in the Roosevelt Room at the White House, announcing the rollback of the 2009 Endangerment Finding on climate-warming emissions, one of several policy wins the administration has secured in recent months.

Zeldin backs the president's stance

EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin defended Trump's climate remarks in a Fox News interview, tying the issue directly to economic harm inflicted on working Americans. Zeldin stated:

"The president is absolutely right and we've seen it in the name of climate change, these left wing policies willing to cause extreme economic pain for people who can at least afford it."

That framing, that climate policy has imposed costs on ordinary people while enriching a class of activists, researchers, and green-energy investors, has been a consistent theme for the administration. And the abandonment of RCP8.5 gives it new force. If the worst-case scenario was implausible all along, the policies built on it were not just expensive but unjustified.

Trump himself made the point bluntly during remarks last September at the U.N. General Assembly in New York, where he called climate policy "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion." He added: "All of these predictions made by the United Nations and many others, often for bad reasons, were wrong."

Clinton fires back with familiar playbook

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton wasted no time pushing back. Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, Clinton dismissed Trump's climate remarks as "total disinformation."

"You know yesterday at the U.N., President Trump said, 'Climate change is a hoax,' because it's just total disinformation. It's a statement that is just not true, and yet being propagated."

Clinton's response is worth examining for what it does not address. She did not engage with the substance of the researchers' findings. She did not explain why the most extreme scenario was treated as a baseline for policy for so long. She did not acknowledge that the scientists themselves now call it implausible. Instead, she labeled the president's remarks "disinformation", a word that has become the left's all-purpose tool for avoiding inconvenient arguments.

Clinton's credibility as a referee of disinformation is itself a matter of public record. Declassified Durham annex materials reported by National Review indicate Clinton approved a July 2016 plan to promote claims tying Trump to Russia in order to divert attention from her email scandal. A purported email cited in those documents reads: "HRC approved Julia's idea about Trump and Russian hackers hampering U.S. elections. That should distract people from her own missing email."

Senator Chuck Grassley said the declassified records support the view that federal agencies failed to properly investigate whether the Russia-collusion narrative was politically manufactured. "Based on the Durham annex, the Obama FBI failed to adequately review and investigate intelligence reports showing the Clinton campaign may have been ginning up the fake Trump-Russia narrative for Clinton's political gain," Grassley stated.

FBI Director Kash Patel, as reported by the New York Post, said: "The American people deserve the full, unfiltered truth about the Russia collusion hoax and the political abuse of our justice system it exposed." John Durham's probe reportedly found the underlying intelligence was "likely authentic" according to the FBI and was not judged by the CIA to be a Russian fabrication.

When the person calling you a liar has her own well-documented history of promoting politically convenient narratives, the accusation loses some of its sting.

A pattern of vindication

The climate development fits a broader pattern for the Trump administration, which has racked up a string of wins across multiple fronts. The administration recently marked a full year of zero illegal alien releases at the southern border, a milestone that drew little coverage from the same outlets that amplified every worst-case climate projection for a decade.

On the legal front, the president has also seen favorable outcomes. The Second Circuit recently granted Trump a stay on the $83.3 million E. Jean Carroll defamation award, and the administration has continued to press forward on trade policy and executive authority.

Former Rep. Devin Nunes, commenting on the broader Clinton-era revelations, told Newsmax that insiders had long known about Clinton's involvement in promoting the Russia narrative. "He just kind of nonchalantly says that, yeah, Hillary Clinton knew about it, which of course, we all knew that," Nunes said. He linked the Clinton campaign's Russia-related allegations to a broader pattern of disinformation and institutional corruption.

The real cost of alarmism

The abandonment of RCP8.5 does not mean climate science is irrelevant. The researchers themselves said future scenarios should still cover a wide range of outcomes. But it does mean that the most extreme projections, the ones that drove the most aggressive policy proposals, the most breathless media coverage, and the most expensive government programs, were built on assumptions that the scientific community now admits were wrong.

Taxpayers funded billions in research, subsidies, and regulatory compliance tied to projections that have now been shelved. Communities watched energy costs climb. Industries were restructured. And the people who raised questions were told they were anti-science.

The researchers who published the correction deserve credit for intellectual honesty. But the politicians, activists, and media figures who spent years treating an implausible worst case as settled fact owe the public something more than a pivot to the next alarm.

When the science changes and the people who built policy on it refuse to acknowledge it, that tells you the policy was never really about the science.