César Sinde

Dramatic predictions of a 5.5°C rise by 2100 are now dismissed as 'implausible' - and planet Earth is not even remotely facing runaway warming. The United Nations warming scenario is now widely acknowledged by scientists as implausible. We also live within a cooler ice age regime that has lasted tens of millions of years. Global temperatures remain a full 9°C colder than the 24°C average spanning the past 485 million years (Judd et al., Science 2024). Also, world temperatures have only changed by up to 1.4°C over the roughly 250 years since the start of the Industrial Revolution. This is not sufficient justification for a crisis. First introduced in 2011 to guide policy, this extreme scenario - known as RCP8.5 (and later SSP5-8.5) - served as the primary engine for the terrifying headlines for over a decade. With the retirement of the extreme 5.5°C baseline ahead of the 7th Assessment Report (AR7), the ceiling for high-emissions temperature projections has been dropped. The IPCC's high-end baselines have been downgraded toward a maximum around 3.3°C, and even this is likely to be just as implausible. Perhaps this is why the latest AR7 committee hearings have just been suspended. Changes in CO₂ concentrations do not automatically trigger runaway temperatures. The world is too complex, and too many other factors have been left out. Any analysis of past climate reveals the world does not have a single temperature or a single climate; these are computerised composites, designed to maximise existential dread. A lift in CO₂ has already delivered measurable green leaf expansion across the world, as captured by NASA satellite data. Some cereal crop yields have jumped by 280%. CO₂ is a trace atmospheric gas - around 420 parts per million - which is among the lowest concentrations in all geological history, while the atmosphere is over 99% nitrogen, oxygen, and argon, with water vapor exceeding CO₂ many times over. This deceptive original scenario - promoted heavily through the UN and the media - galvanised Net Zero and unleashed global hysteria. It forced the premature decline of reliable energy systems across the West and deindustrialised heavy industry. The West's arch competitor, China, inherited the title of the world's greatest manufacturing nation in history. Now Beijing provides around 90% of the world's turbines, solar panels and components. Its industrial power is built on the world's greatest volume of coal-fired power stations. It is also the world's largest annual emitter of carbon dioxide, producing roughly 30% to 33% of global carbon dioxide emissions annually - releasing over 13 billion tons per year. This is the greatest transfer of wealth in history - without a shot fired in anger.