Here are effective ways to envision and evaluate your personal risks, threat levels, and the true urgency of the escalating global warming emergency on your life. It will help prepare and protect you from what is coming. 

A Useful Story to Help You Evaluate Your Personal Global Warming Risks

A good way to think about the full spectrum of risks and consequences of escalating global warming is to think of a slow-moving but very large comet or asteroid headed directly for Earth, as was depicted in a 1998 Hollywood science fiction disaster film called Deep Impact. The movie explored humanity’s combined efforts to prepare for and destroy a 7-mile (11 km) wide comet set to collide with Earth and cause a mass extinction. (The main difference between asteroids and comets is only their composition.)

To prevent the comet from reaching Earth, Russia and the United States send a spacecraft with nuclear weapons to destroy it before it reaches the critical minimal distance from Earth. The spaceship reaches the proper critical distance in time, but the nuclear weapons’ first attempt fails and instead splits the comet into two smaller masses, both still heading directly for Earth. After the U.S. President announces the failure, he declares martial law and reveals that in anticipation of this possible failure, governments worldwide have secretly been building underground shelters.

The U.S. government then conducts a lottery and selects 800,000 Americans under age 50 and 200,000 secretly pre-selected individuals (government officials, top military brass, key scientists, and powerful corporate elites). Around the world, the selected few go to the underground shelters, which contain seeds for every species of plant, important viable animals, as well as massive food supplies for the would-be shelter survivors.

The first comet mass impacts Cape Hatteras in the Atlantic Ocean, causing a tsunami up to 3,500 feet (1,100 meters) high. The second mass is due to impact western Canada, creating a cloud of dust that will block out the sun for two years, killing all unsheltered life on Earth in a matter of weeks. At the last minute, the damaged spacecraft carrying the remaining nuclear weapons hits the larger second mass in a suicide mission, breaking it up so that most of it burns up in the atmosphere or misses the planet completely.

After the survivors come out of their shelters, the President speaks to a large crowd, telling them they've been blessed with a second chance to call Earth their home. In the preceding story, the most obvious risk parallels to the global warming emergency are two:

1) if we keep going as we are now and somehow survive the emergency, most of humanity will die anyway and there will have to be a massive, difficult, and costly rebuilding of civilization by the few remaining survivors; and

2) as global warming consequences continue to worsen, governments will be forced to declare martial law, and there will be quotas for who will be able to move near or above the 45th parallel north or near or below the 45th parallel south to escape the chaos occurring within that middle zone a little longer.

This movie also depicted many of the consequences that occur within a society when it faces its end. Some of those are noble sacrifices, others widespread panic, chaos, looting, and crime.

As you continue to read this document, please keep in mind the Deep Impact end-of-the-world scenario because of its risk similarity to those of the Climageddon Scenario’s most serious consequences. (The Climageddon Scenario is a model for future global warming consequences and timetables. If you are not certain of what the Climageddon Scenario's main ideas and predictions are, click here now.)

Your current living conditions and escalating global warming's threat and urgency levels  

Here is an additional perspective different from the risk, threat, and urgency described in the previous planet-killer comet story...

Comparative threat and urgency levels are highly relevant to the unfolding Climageddon Scenario. Before we talk about today's global warming urgency factors, let's explore threat levels by comparing escalating global warming to something else we know is catastrophically dangerous at a global level.

Escalating global warming and its unfolding Climageddon Scenario will eventually create a potential threat, hazard, and risk level similar in severity and potential destructiveness to global thermonuclear war. That may seem like a jarring comparison, but it is a highly appropriate one even though it has been over 70 years since the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Because of the enactment of many nuclear treaties and nuclear weapons safeguarding systems, we have effectively managed and controlled an unconscionable nuclear threat level and the frightening outcomes of nuclear war for 70+ years. Unlike the well-controlled and well-managed threat of nuclear war, the escalating global warming emergency is not being effectively managed, despite the fact that it is already wreaking escalating havoc upon greater and greater portions of humanity and it poses extinction-level probabilities. Here's where this comparison disparity in threat management becomes even more shocking.

Most people already know the nuclear powers of the world will go to unbelievable lengths to achieve 100% risk and threat management for all possible global thermonuclear war risks. This is because the consequences from a global thermonuclear war would likely cause the near extermination of the human race, and would make the planet a living hell for centuries to millennia for any unlucky survivors.

No nation or rational political leader would ever allow the slightest risk of global thermonuclear war to go unmanaged and uncontrolled. They would never allow their staff who manage or control nuclear weapons to be inadequately trained or unprepared for any nuclear weapons threat or freak security situations. Far too much is at stake to not take the nuclear threat, hazard, and risk deadly seriously.

Additionally, because of the near-certain extinction-level consequences of a global thermonuclear war, nations possessing nuclear weapons employ vast numbers of people to plan and prepare for every possible scenario where nuclear weapons could be used, damaged, mistakenly fired, lost, stolen, or activated in any possible scenario (including what are called rare tipping point, fat tail, outlier, or Black Swan scenarios.)

When it comes to protecting us against the threats of global thermonuclear war, no amount of national treasure, time or personnel is spared. Excuses are never accepted by our nation's leaders for less than continuous, 100% effective threat, hazard, and risk management.

Over time, (as soon as the next 30-50 years,) global warming is also fully capable of producing a scale of global death and destruction similar to that of nuclear war. Unfortunately, outside of a small group of climate scientists and those aware of the Climageddon Scenario global warming timetable and consequence prediction model, the general public remains nearly completely unaware that the growing threats of escalating global warming now parallel the risk and consequence levels of global thermonuclear war.

These risk and urgency factors are even more compelling for escalating global warming because the consequences are not far off in the future—nor can they be successfully delayed for 70 years in the same way nuclear treaties and nuclear weapons security protocols keep nuclear war at bay. Global warming consequences are already occurring and will escalate as more tipping points are crossed.

After 30 years of warnings from our best scientific minds, we have thoroughly failed to develop the necessary 100% commitment to executing effective threat, hazard, and risk reduction actions for global warming. We have also not mobilized our global resources to manage and control the rapidly escalating global warming threats, hazards, and risks in any adequate manner, as we have done with any and all aspects of nuclear weapons and nuclear war.

Seeing the threat level of escalating global warming from the framework of your normal daily decisions

To help you put the escalating global warming and growing probability of an end-of-the-world Climageddon Scenario into the perspective of your own daily decisions (if we do not act effectively now), ask yourself the following question:

Would you get on an airplane where there was a 10% risk of crashing? a 5% risk? a 1% risk? or even a 0.5% risk?

If you wouldn't take such risks on an airplane and our most powerful nuclear-armed governments wouldn't leave the smallest risk of nuclear war less than 100% managed, why are we allowing a projected 10% or higher risk of going over more global warming tipping points, our existing irreversible global warming and the later phases of the Climageddon Scenario to be so poorly managed?

Your true urgency level for the escalating global warming emergency

Now that you have several ways to view the threat and risk levels of the escalating global warming emergency, it's time to explore the urgency level of global warming using once again to the comet/asteroid analogy. Imagine that a single comet large enough to destroy almost all life on Earth has been just discovered to be on a collision course with Earth and it is 6-10 years away. Now imagine that our best scientists have worked out all of the calculations necessary to send rockets into space to deflect or break up the comet so that it does not hit us.

Next, imagine the scientists tell us we have a window of only 6 months in which we must launch and intercept the comet or all life on Earth will end. In this story, there is a time-limited, critical, life-and-death urgency. If we do not launch our rockets and arrive at the comet within the 6-month window of effective meaningful control, we lose all control over our future and reach the end game for humanity.

Although it is easy to understand the time-limited 6-month urgency for launching the rocket and arriving at the comet, it is very difficult for many people to understand a similar level of urgency to resolve global warming. As global warming continues to escalate and move toward the Climageddon Scenario end phases, without understanding the true critical urgency of this time-limited scenario, most people falsely believe we are making progress, that things are okay, or there is no particular rush.

This is one of the biggest problems we face. If we do not act immediately and make the radical, costly and difficult changes required (as described just below), and we do not do so within this very limited window of remaining meaningful control, we will find ourselves needing to immediately begin moving infrastructure, technology, and as many people as possible to the far north above the 45th parallel and far south below the 45th parallel.

We will also need to prepare for deepening economic chaos, governments declaring martial law, and the suspension of many hard-won freedoms and civil rights. Governments will be forced to maintain law and order as desperate people realize they must migrate immediately or they will soon not be able to cross the national borders they must cross to survive.

The cuts we need to make in fossil fuel use to save the future. Are you ready for this? A 2017 paper in Science lead-authored by Johan Rockström, director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, concluded that all global carbon emissions would have to be cut in half by 2020, then cut in half again by 2030, and then cut in half again each decade out to 2050 to keep us safe. This means that In order for us to keep global temperature anywhere even close to levels where most of humanity can survive, fossil fuel emissions need to be slashed by about 75 percent by 2030, and by nearly 95 percent by 2050 to stay within a safe climate zone.

The "oh so highly applicable" precautionary principle of risk management

It's time to discuss another piece of information about how to manage risk levels wisely and ethically. It should now be clear that there is an extreme level of risk related to consciously or unconsciously to escalating global warming and crossing more global warming tipping points. Accordingly, the precautionary principle of professional risk management must also be considered.

The precautionary principle of risk management states that if an action or policy has a suspected risk of causing harm to the public or to the environment, in the absence of scientific consensus that the action or policy is not harmful, the burden of proof to demonstrate that it is not harmful falls on those taking any proposed action. At the minimum—especially because there is no lack of scientific consensus about the harm burning fossil fuel is doing—this means that fossil fuel companies have a burden to prove scientifically that burning fossil fuels is not harmful to our shared environment and its various inhabitants or be financially and legally held liable for all of global warming damages.

Conversely, when and where scientific investigation has found a plausible to probable risk for some activity, the precautionary principle implies there is both a social responsibility and a legal responsibility for our government officials to effectively act to protect the public from exposure to harm. (In Europe, the precautionary principle is already being used as settled law.)

In the case of global warming, the obligations of the precautionary principle upon our national politicians can be relaxed only if further verifiable scientific findings provide a compelling consensus of evidence that no harm will result. This is obviously not the case. As we continue on our escalating global warming path, we are certain to cross more global warming tipping points and bear the unconscionable harm that will result.

Now that you have reviewed multiple perspectives and comparisons on the threat, risk, and urgency levels for the escalating global warming emergency, it's time to begin exploring what your action options might be to prevent the later very scary stages of the Climageddon Scenario from unfolding. Click here for what you can do.

Still not convinced the Climageddon Scenario is already unfolding? Watch The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See, Version 2. (5)(10 minutes.)

The following was taken from the new book and global warming encyclopedia called Climageddon. Click here to learn more about this book.

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