The United Nations has been regularly releasing apocalyptic reports for decades in an attempt to justify extreme cuts to our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and a major overhaul to our modern way of life. Yet the most cited future forecast, the Representative Concentration Pathway 8.5 (RCP8.5), is fundamentally flawed. This is one of the scenarios (along with SSP5-8.5 and SSP3-7.0) of greenhouse gas emissions that have been used to create dire forecasts and as a baseline in climate change research and policy-making. By forecasting economic growth rate and related emissions of greenhouse gases, the RCP scenarios use computer models to then estimates future warming. Even though RCP8.5 has been officially retired this year due to its implausibility, new studies continue to cite it and so its damaging impact also continues.