The media have been pushing hard on the idea that we're living in the worst-case RCP8.5 IPCC scenario. The article that particularly annoyed me was the Atlantic

The media have been pushing hard on the idea that we're living in the worst-case RCP8.5 IPCC scenario. The article that particularly annoyed me was the Atlantic one which based this claim on a Twitter thread that, if you actually clicked through to it, showed us right in the middle of the middle two IPCC scenarios plain as day on the graph. (The tweet actually claimed that we were closer to RCP8.5 than he'd like, which is of course true since all the emissions scenarios are relatively close together early on and he wants us on the best one.) It's not true, of course. Similarly, RCP8.5 is not the "business as usual" scenario that happens if we don't take action, as the media also likes to suggests - it actually requires a rather improbable combination of events. The media are actively making people less informed on this stuff in order to sell fear and a narrative.