Of course these are just simulations. The next challenge is surely to establish if any of these scenarios are likely to actually occur : they could conceivably all be highly improbable.
However, as they indicate in their study, there are many possible scenarios in which Proxima b could still support life. What's more, there is a range of uncertainty when it comes to the things that are hostile to life that could provide Proxima b with some wiggle-room. According to Del Genio, these include the possibility that Proxima b formed farther away from its star and gradually migrated inward, which would mean it was not subject to early harsh conditions.
Second, it might have formed with ten times the water that Earth did; so even if Proxima Centauri's harsh radiation stripped away 90% of its water, it would still have enough water to have an ocean. It also could have formed with a thick hydrogen envelop which could have been stripped away, leaving behind a "habitable core" of an atmosphere.
They also found that in the case of a tidally-locked planet, heat transport between the sun-facing side and dark side could also allow the whole planet to be habitable.
https://phys.org/news/2018-09-closest-planet-solar-habitable-dayside.html
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