A thread on our new paper in which we argue...

"The misuse of scenarios in climate research means that much of what we think we know about our collective climate future may be incomplete, myopic or even misleading or wrong, and as such, “uncomfortable knowledge”" https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1252615906573692928

Scenario misuse in climate science is a matter of scientific integrity & a challenge to the self-correcting ability of science:

"scenario misuse in climate science offers one of the most significant and underappreciated examples of the current crisis in scientific integrity"

The creators of the Representative Concentration Pathways (RCPs) under the auspices of the IPCC have employed a highly technical & specialized jargon, but which is absolutely necessary to understand to understand scenario use and misuse

One of the most common errors made in discussing the RCPs is between scenarios (a fully articulate description of the future) & pathways (an element of that description, like future carbon dioxide concentrations)

Also frequently misunderstood are baseline & policy scenarios. Each refers to alternative runs of an integrated assessment model & neither necessarily shows consistency with the real world, present or future.
Confusion of models & the real world is endemic.