Last updated 3.7.24

Overview

This page contains everything you need to know about climate change and global warming tipping points.

It contains the following information and sections:

1. Why climate change and global warming tipping points are important to your future.

2. What is a climate change or global warming tipping point?

3. Tipping Points Also Have Points of No Return.

4. The 11 major climate change and global warming tipping points within the climate, human, and biological systems.

5. Why understanding climate change and global warming tipping points is critical to your future survival?

6. What is a keystone climate change and global warming tipping point?

7. Warning signs that a climate change or global warming tipping point may soon be crossed.

8. Which climate change and global warming tipping points are most likely to be crossed soon?

9. What is the most likely major climate change and global warming tipping point to be crossed?

10. What are the atmospheric carbon levels that we should be most concerned about that will most affect crossing more climate change tipping points?

11. Which additional global warming tipping points are most likely to be crossed in the near future?

12, The sequence of how climate change and global warming tipping points are unfolding.

13. The special atmospheric carbon ppm zone that acts as a tipping point.

14. Our exponential risk and threat exposure and vulnerability as we cross more climate change and global warming tipping points.

15. Our estimated total risk and threat level for going over more climate change and global warming tipping points.

16. Why and how we could go extinct. The four most critical levels of climate change and global warming tipping points that we will cross in the near future. 

17. There also are "outside" non-global warming global challenges and contextual factors that directly or indirectly will interact with the climate change and global warming tipping points to significantly worsen or accelerate them.

18. An essential positive perspective on the above disruptive climate change and global warming tipping points and climate change news.

19. Summary.

Prologue

The not-for-profit Job One for Humanity organization provides a unique "big picture" and holistic view of the many inter-connected and interdependent climate systems creating our current global warming emergency. Unlike other climate change educational organizations, we do provide prioritized, critical-path solutions to the climate change emergency built upon the most accurate global fossil fuel reduction targets and the most dangerous global warming tipping point deadlines we currently face. 

Our website focuses on educating individuals and businesses on adapting to what we can no longer avoid! It will help you and your business survive and thrive through the many soon-arriving climate change crises.

Our website illuminates the "big picture" physics and math-determined interactions of the climate's many complex systems in easy-to-understand illustrations, descriptions, and documentation. We know no other website that so candidly presents such a comprehensive window into viewing our global warming future.

If you do not understand the basics of what global warming and climate change are or how they work, we strongly advise you to click here first to view some basic illustrations that explain them. If you are not familiar with the 20 major and worst consequences of global warming we strongly recommend you review this page next, as it will deepen your understanding of how the following climate change tipping points can interact with these other climate change consequences to create a global warming-fueled mass human, animal, and biological extinction scenario [aka the climate extinction emergency, Holocene extinction, sixth mass extinction event, climate crisis, climate emergency, run-away global warming,] within our lifetimes.

This page also explains the basics of tipping point theory that can apply to almost any other complex adaptive system or area.

Introduction

"Crossing a negative tipping point is a mega-consequence that will usually crash an area so thoroughly that it will be nearly impossible to reestablish the pre-crash level. If you are eventually able to recover from a crossed tipping point crash, it will be so expensive, difficult, and slow --- you will curse the day you let any area go beyond its tipping point." Lawrence Wollersheim

While you are learning about key global warming tipping points, it is critically important to understand that no compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs.

This horrific failure to include crossing any global warming tipping points in our current global and national fossil fuel reduction calculations is also true for the world's most recent 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. As you will soon discover this omission of including proper calculations for crossing global warming tipping points as the world continues to warm is the recipe for mutually assured destruction.

Yes, this failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the Paris Climate Agreement targets are also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. In other words, our current global fossil fuel reduction calculations are based on the inconceivable belief that "everything will work perfectly within our rapidly warming climate systems all of the time and we will never cross any key global warming tipping points." Unfortunately, the immutable laws of mathematics and physics also do not work that way, particularly as we simultaneously continue to add massively more carbon and methane to our atmosphere each year. 

We all know how "everything always goes perfectly as planned all of the time," so there's nothing really to worry about here or, is there? As you explore the key global warming tipping points described below, the shocking meaning to your future well-being of our government's not including crossing any global warming tipping points in their calculations for how much we have to reduce our global and national fossil fuel use to prevent extinction will become much clearer to you...

Why climate change and global warming tipping points are important to your future:

• If we can determine where the global warming tipping points are, we can better predict system collapses and future catastrophes and prepare for them, as well as locate other interconnected tipping points.
  
  
• Tipping points can create highly dangerous positive feedback loops. Positive feedback loops—endless, self-reinforcing cycles can speed a global warming process so much that it will jump from a gradual, linear progression to a very steep, exponential progression or a falling off a cliff progression or complete system collapse, which can lead to mass human extinction within our lifetimes.
• The global warming tipping point information disclosed below presents a grave extinction threat for humanity as well as animal and biological species.
• To avoid triggering extinction-producing climate tipping points, we will have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to the levels described on this important page for our future!

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What is a climate change and global warming tipping point?

Tipping points do not occur only within the climate. They can and will occur in almost any area of life, causing large and unexpected changes. Knowing when they're coming is essential if you do not want to be blindsided by catastrophic global warming consequences.

This document contains everything you need to know about global warming-related tipping points. Because of the complexity of tipping points and their initiating processes, this document may be more challenging, but you do not have to understand everything about tipping points perfectly!

By the time you finish this, you will have gleaned enough about the critical and dangerous role of global warming tipping points to understand their high potential impacts both on your present day-to-day life and your future. To make this document a bit more manageable, the most complex science has been placed just before the end, along with a humorous 11-minute animation link to help you visualize important tipping points and principles.

Although this page is science-filled, it is essential reading to understand the depth of our current climate change emergency and the Climageddon Extinction Scenario global warming prediction model.

The simple definition of a global warming tipping point is:

The point where some process or new stimulus causes a sudden and significant change in the status of the ongoing process or system, causing it to jump from one state to a new, significantly different state. This sudden change is not only significant; it is often extreme!

As an example of a sudden and significant change, imagine a wine glass tipping over and going from the state of being full to empty. After the wine glass tipping point has been passed, a transition to a new state quickly occurs.

Like the falling of the wine glass, tipping points can often lead to the sudden collapse of a process. If you think about a tipping point on a graph causing a steep slope change, you will understand why knowing when tipping points will occur is so important. (See the Tipping Points Have Points of No Return graph below for what a tipping point does to the slope of a graph line.)

Tipping points are often also irreversible, comparable to wine spilling from the glass. No matter how hard you try, standing up the wine glass will not put the wine back into it. Similarly, many global warming tipping points are also irreversible or almost irreversible in any time frame relative to a human lifespan!

For example, the West Antarctic ice shelf appears to have passed its tipping point and is now in an irreversible melting process. Once escalating global warming is finally ended, it may take tens of thousands of years to restore that ice shelf—if it ever could even happen.

Tipping Points Also Have Points of No Return

Before a tipping point is reached, there is another key milestone in the process. It is the point of irreversible process momentum toward that tipping point, or what is commonly known as the point of no return. In simple mechanical systems like in the wine glass example, the point of no return can occur very close to the actual tipping point. Even though the point of no return may be close to its tipping point, the two are separate parts of the tipping point process.

In complex climate, human, biological, or geological systems, the point of no return can occur long before the actual tipping point. This is because global warming and our climate are complex adaptive systems. The developmental processes that eventually trigger a tipping point usually involve many factors and many processes beyond a single mechanical balance point or a simple mechanical falling process, as in the wine glass spilling example. (If you're curious, at the end of this document, you will find a section that provides more information about the complex qualities and nature of complex adaptive systems).

In the wine glass example, the point of no return is the moment of directional motion and momentum where the forward-falling glass is no longer able to teeter backward and maintain or return to its original upright position and stability. In the wine glass tipping scenario, the point of no return is quite visible. Once it falls past this last balancing point of still reversible direction and momentum and crosses its point of no return, it can no longer stop itself from falling further and crossing the wine glass’s last balancing point, thus irreversibly tipping and spilling the wine out of the glass.

By contrast, global warming points of no return tend to be largely invisible—i.e., irreversible fates are set in motion before we know they are happening. However, if you can determine the point of no return for any global warming tipping point, you can “buy” yourself critical forecasting capabilities that can give you some warning for approximately when that tipping point will be crossed. Being aware of global warming process points of no return will be extremely useful in preparing for and predicting global warming tipping points and catastrophes.

"Tipping points are so dangerous because if you pass them, the climate is out of humanity's control: if an ice sheet disintegrates and starts to slide into the ocean, there's nothing we can do about that." —James Hansen

Contrary to what many people believe, tipping points are not just rare high-impact events. Knowing global warming, climate, human, and biological tipping points, as well as how and when they will occur, will be the key to creating all future planning as global warming escalates and our global climate continues to destabilize.

The 11 major climate change and global warming tipping points within the climate, human, and biological systems

"You cannot be called an alarmist if there really is something to be alarmed about." Unknown

There are many global warming system and subsystem tipping points within the climate, human, and biological systems. The key process that directly or indirectly causes the global warming tipping points to be crossed is increasing heat, as is implied in the term global warming.

When global warming tipping points are crossed, one or more of them can trigger processes leading to:

• sudden large-scale catastrophes in climate, human, and biological systems,
  
  
• irreversible global warming,
  
  
• irreversible climate destabilization, and/or
  
  
• extinction-level climate destabilization.

To be clear, irreversible global warming, climate change, or climate destabilization means that we will not be able to get the dangerous levels of excess greenhouse gases (like carbon) out of our atmosphere and back down to a normal and human-safe pre-industrial level for hundreds to thousands of years. (As of July 2023, We are currently at the insane atmospheric carbon level of 420 ppm. We will soon enter the generally considered irreversible and second phase of runaway global heating sometime between 2025-2031. This is when we enter into the carbon 425-450 ppm range.)

The major global warming tipping points (other than increasing temperature) within the interacting climate, human, and biological systems are:

1. The total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor is the gaseous state of water. It is the most important natural greenhouse gas. When it condenses onto a surface, a net warming occurs on that surface. In the atmosphere, water vapor increases as heat increases. Increased heat evaporates more water from oceans, lakes, and rivers, which creates more water vapor and heat in an endless self-reinforcing cycle—another positive feedback loop. At some point, this positive feedback loop triggers a tipping point, and the process goes from a gradual linear heat-producing progression into a steeper exponential progression. The result is that the average global temperature increases even faster. Humans cannot survive if the air is too moist and hot, which would happen for the majority of human populations if global temperatures rise by 11–12 °C, as landmasses warm faster than the global average.
2. The total amount of melting ice. Increased heat melts more sea ice, ice shelves, and glaciers, resulting in more water flowing into our oceans and increasing sea levels. This process repeats with each increase in temperature in an endless, self-reinforcing cycle—a positive feedback loop. At some point, this positive feedback loop triggers a tipping point, and the increased heat and ice melting process can go from a gradual linear progression (1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) to a far steeper exponential progression (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, 4,096, 8,192, 16,384).
   
   
3. The albedo effect. The whiteness of polar ice reflects heat away from the planet. This is called the albedo effect. As the polar ice melts, significant areas darken and, therefore, absorb more heat rather than reflecting it outward. At some point in this melting process, a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop occurs, which again reduces the albedo effect’s total heat-reflecting capabilities. This, in turn, further increases global warming. As before, this self-reinforcing cycle of loss of reflectivity and increasing heat will eventually move from a gradual linear progression to a steep exponential heat-increasing progression.
   
   
4. The release of methane from the warming of polar permafrost and tundra. As the temperature continues to increase, a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop triggers a permafrost and tundra methane release tipping point, eventually leading to the exponential progression mentioned before. This could be a very critical tipping point because methane produces 20 to 100 times the heat-creating effect in the atmosphere as compared to carbon dioxide. This increased methane within our atmosphere will also remain there from three years to decades before it decays back into simple carbon. To emphasize how dangerous this is for our future, in February 2013, scientists using radiometric dating techniques on Russian cave formations to measure melting rates warned that a 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) global rise in temperature compared to pre-industrial levels was enough to start a general permafrost melt. (From David Spratt’s Climate Reality Check). We are almost at 1.5° Celsius right now, and even higher temperatures are inevitable. Please also note that melting permafrost in tundra also has the potential to cause local and global pandemics caused by ancient viruses and bacteria being released from the permafrost. Already in Siberia, they have had anthrax and smallpox outbreaks because of melting permafrost and tundra.
   
   
5. The die-offs of carbon-eating and oxygen-producing sea plankton are because of the warming, carbonization, and acidification of the oceans. As this continues to intensify, it also creates a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop, which triggers a tipping point, and the die-off process goes from a gradual linear progression into a steeper exponential progression. This results in sudden and rapidly increasing die-offs in the ocean fish populations that live on this plankton, as well as sudden and rapidly increasing drop-offs in the ocean’s oxygen-producing capabilities. (Oxygen-producing plankton are critical to our future. They produce 50% - 80% of the world’s total oxygen supply).
   
   
6. The ever-increasing atmospheric heat is captured and stored by the oceans and sent to lower levels of the ocean. These captured and stored masses of deep, warm water can suddenly rise to the surface again. This will release a massive amount of additional heat directly into the atmosphere and quickly spike the average global temperature.
   
   
7. The loss of the atmospheric carbon-eating forests because of heat, drought, wildfires, and timber-harvesting or agriculture-related clearcutting. As temperatures rise and droughts, heat, forest fires, and clearcutting kill trees, we lose our essential carbon-eating forests, which increases the carbon and heat in the atmosphere. This process eventually triggers a tipping point, and the forests’ loss of carbon-eating capabilities goes from a gradual linear progression into a steep exponential progression of forest loss and escalating carbon in the atmosphere. This results in a sudden additional spike upward in average global temperature.
8. Soils that normally absorb carbon begin releasing it back into the atmosphere from their previously stored or inherent carbon because of the escalating heat. This increasing heat-induced release of carbon by the soils creates a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop. This triggers a soil carbon release tipping point, and the process goes into a more exponential progression. This also results in a rapid increase in average global temperature.
9. The changes in major ocean currents help to stabilize our weather and seasons. Research is now expanding on how increasing heat will affect currents like the North Atlantic current. Because of global warming, if the North Atlantic current were slowed down or diverted from its presently established pathway, it would create very significant changes in weather patterns, which would affect growing seasons, rain, snowfall, and temperature—all of which have strong effects on vital crop yields.
10. The global warming-caused pandemic potential. When ancient ice, glaciers, permafrost, or frozen tundra melts, it releases still-living bacteria and viruses never seen before. This means we could soon be unleashing the ultimate global pandemic. So many different types of new bacteria and viruses could be released at once that even our best scientists would not be able to create and distribute the vaccines needed in time to contain disease outbreaks or a growing global pandemic.
11. Total weight of rising seas and melting ice shifting. Although research is sparse in this area, it has been posited that the total massive weight change from all ice melt areas (where ice covers land masses), and the heating, expanding, and shifting weight effect on seas caused by global warming,, can move existing tectonic plates. This plate motion could cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at an unprecedented scale. If the shifting of these tectonic plates causes numerous or massive volcanic eruptions around the planet, we could also go into a volcanic winter. If the shifting of tectonic plates triggers a supervolcano-like eruption, the years that the sun would be blocked could kill off most of the human population.

 

There are many other known and unknown tipping points in both climate and biological systems not mentioned above. The 11 above are only the ones that are the most important and the ones we know the most about.

When you are thinking about the collective and individual impacts of the above 11 tipping points, you must also add in their impact on human social, economic, and political systems and the tipping points within those unique systems. For example, as we continue to cross more of the 11 tipping points mentioned above, we will first experience the severe system crashes that normally occur when the tipping point is crossed, and then our social, economic, and political human systems will begin experiencing extreme stress. This will then also push them over their own internal tipping points.

One way this could happen is as follows. As crops fail from droughts, rain bombs, and extreme temperatures, food prices will skyrocket, populations will riot, and then, law and order will break down as more people die. Eventually, the weaker countries will collapse under the weight of these internal climate catastrophes and resource conflicts.

Next, as the weaker nations collapse, they will create more desperate climagees (climate migrants rushing into the stronger nations.) As this happens, the strongest nations will also experience a breakdown in law and order, and, in the later phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario, they, too, will experience a complete social and political breakdown.

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Why understanding climate change and global warming tipping points is critical to your future survival?

To demonstrate why understanding tipping points is so important, it is necessary to also understand the many dangers found within the complex interactions, processes, and consequences of the global warming tipping points. When you understand these additional dangers, you will also understand how the phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario build upon each other.

Overview of the biggest dangers of global warming tipping points:

1. Exponential expansion: Once a tipping point is crossed, its consequences will cease progressing in a steady, gradual, and linear way (1, 2. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) and will typically shift into a steep, nonlinear, exponential progression (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024). Notably, one of the hardest things for individuals to do is visualize real-life scenarios of the difference in results between a linear and an exponential progression. Using the sample above, in just the ten linear steps, the last linear progression number noted is 10. That is about 100 times less than the last and 10th step of the above exponential sample.
   
   
2. Crossed tipping points create more crossed tipping points: As the average global temperature continues to rise, we will cross more of the global warming tipping points. When any interconnected or interdependent global warming tipping point within the system or subsystems is crossed, it makes it significantly more likely that more tipping points will inevitably also be crossed in other interconnected or interdependent systems or subsystems. Once this domino-like process starts, we could eventually cross many of the global warming tipping points. (See the lighted match Keystone Tipping Point illustration below).
   
   
3. Colliding multiple tipping points can accelerate us into the last phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario: Colliding crossed multiple tipping points means that each tipping point’s vulnerability is also subject to the powerful triggering influence of other crossed tipping points. Tipping points crashing into other interconnected or interdependent areas can quickly trigger other tipping points, creating a cascading meltdown across both climate and human system tipping points. Crossing more global warming tipping points may collectively be enough to throw us into irreversible climate destabilization or even extinction-level climate destabilization. (See Climageddon Extinction Scenario.)
   
   
4. Crossed global warming tipping points will accelerate the crossing of vulnerable human and biological system tipping points: Crossed global warming tipping points within the numerous global warming climate systems or subsystems can also unpredictably collide back and forth to create a system-wide, cascading chain reaction of numerous self-reinforcing positive feedback loops. Once this cascading meltdown process begins, crossing more tipping points occurs at a faster and faster rate, and it will eventually accelerate crossing over into our many vulnerable human and biological system tipping points (economy, politics, society, war, and conflict, etc.).
   
   
5. Quick collapse and slow recovery: The greatest dangers of crossing tipping points are that they can suddenly cause severe, unpredictable, and irreversible changes, even complete system collapses. In most cases, if the system or subsystem crashes or collapses, recovery from these crashes or collapses is very slow and difficult, if not impossible!
   
   If recovery is possible, not only will it be slow and difficult, but there is also a much higher likelihood that it will not be adequate to restore the original stability, range, or level of the collapsed system (or subsystem). This difficult recovery leads instead to some new stability range—a level that will likely be significantly different. After we cross one or more tipping points, this could mean that when our temperature eventually restabilizes, it could be at a range or level either unfriendly to life as we know it, or completely incompatible.
   
   
6. Crossed tipping points can have both linear cause-and-effect relationships as well as dangerous and currently unpredictable nonlinear cause-and-effect relationships. These nonlinear relationships can occur between global warming tipping points and human and biological system tipping points (economy, politics, mass species die-offs, war, and conflict) as well as within and between any other part of the climate system and its subsystems. The presence of counter-intuitive, nonlinear tipping points and system relationships means that causes and effects within the climate and global warming systems and subsystems are sometimes not logically connected, clear, or predictable. This means that within a complex adaptive system like global warming and the climate, an area that happens to be a part of its system or its subsystems can create an effect in some other completely different system or subsystem where there seems to be no apparent cause and effect relationship between the two systems or subsystems. The huge danger here is that if a global warming tipping point triggers a nonlinear reaction in another climate or human system or subsystem, we could quickly find ourselves caught in a catastrophic situation without ever being able to predict it or prepare for it.
7. 
   
   
8. A complex adaptive system, such as the climate, reacts with its subsystems in both predictable and unpredictable ways. In the illustration above, an action X in system A causes the obvious linear effect Y in system B, but it can also cause a seemingly unconnected nonlinear XY reaction in system C. It is this nonlinear unpredictability in other interconnected and interdependent systems that also should cause us great concern as we add more fossil fuel carbon to the atmosphere.
   
   
9. Hidden points of no return can occur long before tipping points are crossed: A major factor working against the resolution of the global warming emergency is that with each degree of temperature increase, developmental momentum within the processes of that particular global warming area will push relevant tipping points toward their points of no return, which makes the crossing of such tipping points inevitable.
   

   In the case of global warming systems and subsystems, these points of no return are often hidden, sometimes occurring long before the actual tipping point is crossed. Generally, they are even less researched and understood. Unfortunately, if we want to avoid the global warming tipping points, we not only have to do more research on the actual tipping points, but we also have to do more research on these points of no return.

   A good example of the dangers of crossing any point of no return is found within the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Recent research has shown that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet has already entered the irreversible collapse process. This was caused first by warmer water and, secondly, by the melting of its ice shelves from above and below because of warmer air temperatures.

   At some point, as the warmer water and the warmer air melted the massive ice sheet, the ice sheet’s point of no return was crossed. This then set up the final scenario leading to the tipping point of irreversible melting.

   This crossed tipping point is a huge problem because this particular ice sheet and its shelves contain enough ice to raise sea levels by another 10-13 feet (roughly 3-4 meters). Even worse, these ice sheets and shelves act as essential flying buttresses, keeping the rest of Antarctica’s massive ice stores locked on land instead of sliding off and melting into the sea and passing their own point of no return, which, if it occurred, would spike sea levels massively higher.

10. Invisible momentum and inertia factors: It's important to understand the technical meaning of momentum and inertia to understand their important relationship to global warming tipping points. In classical mechanics, momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. For example, a heavy truck moving rapidly has momentum—it takes a large or prolonged force (generally an engine and fuel) to get the truck up to speed, and it also takes a large or prolonged force to bring it to a stop afterward (brakes). If the truck were lighter or moving more slowly, it would have less momentum, and it would take less force to get it moving or to stop it.
    

    Inertia is defined as the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion (this includes changes to its speed, direction, or state of rest). It is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at a constant velocity or to stay in the state they are in.

    Global warming tipping points can have inherent momentum and/or inertia factors within their processes. These two factors can cause either a time accelerator—pushing a process over a tipping point faster, or a time delay—helping to prevent a process from going over a tipping point.

    Including both momentum and inertia factors is critical to the accurate prediction of global warming, climate, human, and biological systems outcomes. For example, the momentum or inertia factors in global warming tipping points for ocean heat capture or release are regulated by atmospheric heat. Oceans take up and release atmospheric heat very slowly, and they pass that heat to deep ocean layers slowly. There is an inertia-related time lag due to that slow absorption rate. This is due to the ocean’s pre-existing water temperature. It also has an inertia-related time lag as it seeks to maintain its current temperature by changing slowly.

    There is also a momentum factor for how the ocean eventually releases its previously captured atmospheric heat back into the atmosphere, which would once again spike average global temperatures. It appears that once deep, warm water is released, it builds its own momentum, eventually rising to the surface and then quickly releasing its heat. Once a certain temperature or set of conditions is triggered, nothing will stop this inherent momentum from the rising of the warmer water from deep ocean layers.

11. Crossing multiple tipping points will lead to the later phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario. In addition to increasing unpredictability and leading us into the later phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario, crossing multiple tipping points can create a dramatic acceleration of consequence time frames. It will drastically increase the scale, severity, and frequency of the consequences within the related global warming systems and subsystems involved.
12. No compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs. This failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the critical national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the Paris Climate Agreement targets are also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. This means we are using the wrong needed fossil fuel reduction calculations to save us from extinction within our lifetimes.

 

Now that you understand what the main tipping points are and their dangers to our future, there are other essential facts about tipping points important to know.

 

What is a keystone climate change and global warming tipping point?

There is a uniquely important type of tipping point relevant to global warming and the climate. It is called a keystone tipping point.

If you have seen a Roman architectural arch, you already know a little about what a keystone is. It is the central, usually triangular-shaped stone at the top center of the arch. It is also the critical supporting stone that holds all the other stones in place and maintains the integrity and strength of the arch.

If you pull a keystone out of a Roman arch, the whole arch immediately crumbles and completely falls in on itself. Like the keystone in the Roman arch, if we cross any keystone global warming tipping point, all dependent or interconnected global warming systems and subsystems can also begin collapsing faster than we can be prepared for or recover from. If we cross any currently unknown or known keystone tipping point, every projected time frame relating to global warming consequences would suddenly and radically change for the worse. Consequences that were predicted to be many decades away could now become just one or two decades away or less.

You're probably curious about which of the previously mentioned global warming tipping points are keystone tipping points. The difficult truth is that increasing heat itself, as well as all of the previously mentioned tipping points (except the pandemic tipping point caused by melting ice and permafrost), could become keystone tipping points. The painful truth is that if the conditions surrounding any global warming tipping point worsen enough, it could act as and become a keystone tipping point, which could ignite a cascading meltdown and trigger multiple other tipping points, leading to sudden and catastrophic results.

 

A keystone tipping point will also be the most likely trigger and/or deepen the irreversible global warming process

Irreversible global warming (aka runaway climate change or the runaway greenhouse effect) is defined by its processes and what will happen after we cross any keystone tipping point (or we cross multiple important tipping points, which will cumulatively act as a keystone tipping point). The crossed irreversible global warming tipping point then causes the global climate to dramatically change—this is the climate destabilization process in action. But keep in mind that irreversible climate destabilization and irreversible global warming are different things. Irreversible global warming can also be caused by many other factors working together as discussed here.

Warning signs that a climate change or global warming tipping point may soon be crossed

Many times, just before a tipping point is crossed and crashes, it experiences a period of increasing oscillations, “flipping” more rapidly from one state to another. Not only does it oscillate from one state to another at an increasing rate, but the severity of the oscillations also increases. Finally, the frequency of the oscillation swings also begins to accelerate in close time proximity.

We are already seeing these pre-tipping-point oscillation warnings occurring in our more frequent and severe weather swings over larger and larger areas—going from cold to warm, summer-to winter-like conditions, and from droughts to deluges. Whenever you see this intensified oscillation pattern occurring, whether it's in climate system, biological systems, or the stock market, it is the harbinger of big changes.

In general, the further up the local, regional, national, or global climate that climate, human, or biological systems or subsystems are:

1. oscillating,
   
   
2. tipping points are being crossed, or
   
   
3. extreme weather problems are expanding,

the more trouble we are in! If the global climate is oscillating more frequently and severely, we are in a lot more trouble than if it is only our local climate that is oscillating similarly. Additionally, smaller systems and subsystems will move to a state of chaos more readily than larger systems and subsystems due to smaller systems and subsystems usually having less inertia to resist the change.

 

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Which climate change and global warming tipping points are most likely to be crossed soon?

While it is difficult to set specific dates for crossing a tipping point, in general, the melting of sea and glacial ice around the world—particularly in the polar regions—appears to be the tipping point area of greatest immediacy and concern. There are a few key reasons for this:

• At the far north and far south, global warming has seen double the temperature increases as compared to increased temperatures elsewhere on the planet.
  
  
• Ice melting directly or indirectly links to other critical tipping points: the albedo effect, methane releases from melting permafrost and tundra, changes in ocean currents, deep and surface-level ocean temperature increases, die-offs in ocean life, and potential pandemics caused by ancient viruses and bacteria being released from the permafrost.

From the above list of tipping points, shrinking sea ice will cause massive ice shelves in Antarctica and Greenland (that are held in place by the surrounding sea ice,) to quickly slide off the land they sit on and into the sea. This could be one of the two biggest sudden shocker tipping points that hit us far harder than we are planning for regarding our rising sea level.

 

This is because melting sea ice (icebergs) already floating in the sea does not raise sea level. But on the other hand, massive ice shelves currently sitting on land in Antarctica and Greenland, which then slide into the sea, can raise sea levels far faster as well as far more than we are prepared for.

Several times in Earth's history, massive ice shelves have quickly slid off Greenland because the melted floating sea ice that had previously buttressed it up had melted. This sudden sliding of the ice shelf into the sea raised sea level by as much as 3-10 feet in as little as a decade or two. Imagine what would happen to any coastal city in the world with the sea level rising 3 to 10 feet in as little as a decade or two. What kind of economic, political, and social chaos would result from such a sudden sea-level rise across all of our global coastal areas?

Right now, the sea ice surrounding many of the largest ice shelves in the world is melting at unprecedented rates. At just our current carbon levels, the stability of the bellwether West Antarctic ice sheet has already been breached and this ice loss is now irreversible. This rapidly melting West Antarctic ice sheet is an excellent example of another great global warming consequence evolving into a global warming tipping point that the world has hurdled past far faster than anyone had predicted or foreseen.

What is the most likely major climate change and global warming tipping point to be crossed?

There is a tipping point area that is the most likely first candidate to significantly accelerate the beginning of the end of humanity. It is the increased melting of summer and year-round arctic polar ice due to global warming.

It will truly have profound effects not only on worldwide weather but, more importantly, on lowering global crop yields and increasing global crop failures. It will cause an accelerating massive global starvation, which will then also destabilize national economics, politics, and society.

In the summer, when Arctic ice melts, there is less cooling of all of the growing season areas affected anywhere by arctic weather. The more polar ice melts each year, the less cooling and the more heat in and during these critical growing season areas. 

To make matters worse, food crops are more sensitive to heat when there are droughts, and they are more sensitive to heat, rain bombs, and cold spells when they are just beginning to grow. Unfortunately, because more ice is melting in the Arctic Ocean almost every summer and staying melting longer in the year, we are losing more and more critical cooling for our absolutely vital food crop growing season. 

The five major food grains are the largest source of the world's food supply. They are corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, and sorghum.

All of these grains have upper and lower temperature limits. Most of them cannot survive more than ten days during their growing season over 100° Fahrenheit particularly, if this heat comes early in their growing season or when their soils are drought-dry. 

Because of the continually increasing loss of the cooling effect on growing regions below the Arctic because of the continually diminishing Arctic ice, the number of growing season days with temperatures over 100° will continue increasing steadily as more and more Arctic ice melts and remains melted longer throughout the year.

This means that the world will experience more and larger crop reductions and failures as more polar ice melts and stays melted longer. To make matters even worse, corn is one of the largest food staples for humanity, and it is also one of the most sensitive crops to increasing 100-degree-plus temperatures and drought.

Reduced polar ice also reduces the albedo effect, which means that white snow or ice reflects heat back away from the earth and out into the atmosphere, keeping the earth cooler. As more Arctic polar ice is melted, the darker polar oceans absorb the heat and then heat up more; this, once again, causes more global warming.

Already in the growing belt of the United States, we are seeing increased and record-breaking heat, droughts, rain bombs, and other extreme seasonal weather that is having a direct effect on reducing crop yields and crop failures in the most vulnerable areas. This pattern of greater crop yield reductions and crop failures will continue to increase as long as more polar ice disappears and the Arctic remains relatively ice-free into longer and longer summers. 

The following is from Wikipedia:

“Since 1979, the minimum annual area of sea ice in the Arctic has dropped by about 40%, as measured each September. From sea ice models and recent satellite images, it can be expected that a sea ice-free summer will come before 2020. Models that best match historical trends project a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer by the 2030s. However, these models do tend to underestimate the rate of sea ice loss since 2007.” (If you would like to see a video of how more polar ice is melting each summer as the years go by, click here for this NASA video.)

The increasing melting of arctic polar ice is a clear warning sign of increasing global warming and future serious reductions in major future crop yields as well as serious increases in future crop failures. This means not only higher prices but ever-increasing food scarcity and increasing global starvation.

This is not something far off in the future. It is already happening in many areas of the world.

It is also already causing major migrations. This expanding and increasing polar ice melting is a major “canary in the coal mine” for increasing future mass starvation not way off in 2100, as we have been told, but in the near years and new few decades to follow.

As the process of massive crop reductions and failures expands and continues, mass starvation will begin to destabilize all of our other economic, social, and political systems. In general, if temperatures continue rising, the time frames in which we will cross more of the tipping points listed above will get shorter. But that will not be the only significant effect of melting Arctic ice due to global warming.

Because melting Arctic ice also affects and disrupts the jet stream and ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, you will also have radical and unseasonable cold spells appearing during the prime crop growing seasons worldwide. This will also reduce food yields and produce more crop failures during the fragile growing season. Paradoxically, according to new studies, you will also have more extreme cold and heavier snows during the US winters because of ongoing disruptions caused by the continual annual expanding melting of Arctic polar ice. 

Regarding the above two sections, this melting-ice-related cluster of interconnected and interdependent tipping points alone and of itself can usher in the end of humanity or hell on Earth. The next group of tipping points to monitor would be the total global water vapor levels and the carbon-releasing and carbon-eating conditions of trees and soils. The last and slowest developing risk will be from increased earthquakes and volcanoes due to changing glacier-related weight over the Earth's tectonic plates.

More detailed time estimates on when we will cross more climate, human, and biological systems tipping points will be found in the Climageddon Extinction Scenario by clicking here. Estimates for exactly when we will cross the many global warming tipping points will continuously evolve as new research is released.

In general, if temperatures continue rising, the time frames in which we will be crossing more tipping points will get shorter. (There is an easy way to educate yourself about this as new global warming research comes out that can and will affect you, your business, and your nation. If you have not done so already, sign up for the free Global Warming Blog by clicking here. By doing so, you will automatically receive a monthly email update with the latest news on national and international global warming reduction successes and losses.)

What are the atmospheric carbon levels that we should be most concerned about that will most affect crossing more climate change tipping points?

Above and beyond keystone tipping points, there is another important danger level. It exists as a collection of crossed tipping points.

        Monthly Keeling Curving Carbon (CO2) graph courtesy of NASA and Show. Earth⁵⁶

 

A dangerous collective juncture of several crossed tipping points from different areas of the climate system interacting with each other is highly probable once we reach the carbon 425-450 ppm level. This danger level aligns with climate researcher James Hansen’s statements that even a carbon 450 ppm level (which will occur in about 10-15 years at present carbon pollution rates) would eventually correspond to an average global temperature increase of 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) in this century and the end of human civilization as we’ve come to know it.⁵⁷

Which additional global warming tipping points are most likely to be crossed in the near future?

New research and evidence suggest that more systems and subsystems within the interconnected and interdependent climate system may be heading toward global warming tipping points or experiencing worrisome qualitative change toward their points of no return. These global warming-related climate systems include:

1. accelerating ice mass loss from Antarctic ice shelves and the vulnerability of East Antarctic glaciers;
   
   
2. the vulnerability of Arctic permafrost exemplified in part by the proliferation of Siberian methane craters;
   
   
3. declining carbon efficiency of the Amazon forests and other carbon sinks (oceans, soils etc;) and
   
   
4. the slowing of the major sea current known as the Atlantic conveyor, likely as a result of cumulative and significantly increased global warming.

In late 2015, a chilling report⁵⁸ released by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative warned that the 2015 Paris commitments from the IPCC conference:

“... will not prevent our ‘crossing into the zone of irreversible thresholds’ in our polar and mountain glacier regions, and that crossing these boundaries may result in processes that cannot be halted unless temperatures return to levels below pre-industrial.”

And in a similar vein, the Climate Reality Check stated:

“To put it most bluntly, only a new ‘Little Ice Age’ may re-establish some of today’s mountain glaciers and their reliable water resources for millions of people or halt melting polar ice sheets that, once started, irrevocably would set the world on course to an ultimate sea-level rise of between 4–10 meters or more...some of these cryosphere thresholds, including potential fisheries and ecosystem loss from polar ocean acidification, cannot be reversed at all.” —From David Spratt’s Climate Reality Check.⁵⁹

Crossing more global warming tipping points will not happen far off in the future. It is happening right now!

The sequence of how climate change and global warming tipping points are unfolding

What we do know is that:

1. We are already crossing important tipping points in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
   
   
2. As we rapidly approach the carbon 425 to 450 ppm levels, crossing more tipping points and points of no return in global warming systems and subsystems is both inevitable and it will accelerate.
   
   
3. Unknowingly, we may have already crossed key global warming tipping points or points of no return.
   
   
4. In general, with each new global warming tipping point crossed, the momentum increases toward more global warming tipping points being crossed in other climate, human, and biological systems and subsystems. This is the reality of a dangerous tipping point momentum condition we are continuing to allow to happen at our extreme peril.

What we do not know:

1. At this time, no exact sequential order has been researched to show the order in which each global warming tipping point will be crossed other than what has been said previously on this page.
   
   
2. Which specific global warming tipping point will act as the keystone tipping point that will trigger many other tipping points, deepen other already out-of-control global warming processes, and set off the critical end-of-the-world Climageddon Extinction Scenario last phases.

The special atmospheric carbon ppm zone that acts as a tipping point

Steadily rising temperatures will feed and accelerate the processes of crossing more points of no return, positive feedback loops, and global warming, climate, human, and biological system tipping points, pushing us ever closer to the dangerous carbon 425 to 450 ppm range. This range is found in later phase 1 of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario.

The probability of maintaining only a gradually increasing average global temperature after reaching this carbon PPM range without random tipping point-related temperature spikes is highly unlikely (less than 10-20%.) This is because as the temperature goes up, the probability of crossing more tipping points also increases.

It is important to keep in mind that as we continue crossing more global warming tipping points, the 20 worst global warming consequences and the consequences of the tipping points themselves will continue to increase in severity, frequency, and scale. This is again in summary because:

1. The points of no return before a tipping point is crossed as well as the crossed tipping point itself, create "slippery" conditions where it becomes far easier for that condition or consequence to worsen far more quickly and at a far steeper gradient.

2. tipping points when crossed, create sudden and extremely difficult to recover from steep drop-offs or complete system crashes,

3. any positive feedback loop contained within the tipping point processes will also significantly amplify either the positive or negative consequences of that tipping point and 

4. a crossed tipping point within a system or subsystem tends to push other tipping points over their tipping points in the subsystems or systems associated with or interconnected to the original tipping point.

Unless we make the required radical global fossil fuel reductions found here, it is also unlikely that:

1. we can maintain the previous average annual increase of only carbon three ppm. (In part it will probably go higher because of the Earth's population soaring to 9 billion, causing our estimated energy needs to skyrocket by 40% as more of the world’s population enters into the middle class.) And, most importantly

2.) because of our fossil fuel burning momentum and human system inertias, once we hit the 425 to 450 carbon PPM range, we will not be able to keep from rapidly sliding down a much steeper and even more slippery slope into and through the other 5 following Climageddon Extinction Scenario phases. 

At the 425 to 450 carbon ppm range, there will be so much climate system momentum from previously committed carbon and other greenhouse gas pollution of our atmosphere towards moving quickly to even higher temperatures that stopping this momentum will be like trying to stop a gigantic boulder from rolling faster and faster down a hill that keeps getting steeper and steeper.

The terrifying thought that is completely real and critical for you to burn into your brain is that most of humanity will die by mid-century, but our ability to have any real or meaningful control over this looming emergency ends around 2025, sometime after we enter the carbon 425-450 ppm range. But, this will only occur if we fail to successfully execute these global fossil fuel reductions. 

And in case you're still thinking technology will save us at the last minute, no new carbon removal technologies (that we call magical carbon-sucking unicorns) will be able to save us in time because even those who believe they might save us are projecting that they will not even be available at the earliest until sometime after 2050. This will be long after the damage is done and long after anything can be done for the billions of people who will suffer and die!

Because of the preceding, we have no other rational alternative other than to prevent ever crossing into this highly dangerous transitional carbon 425-450 ppm range and tipping point, at which our current rate of greenhouse gas pollution will begin sometime around 2025. 

Do you still have doubts if the 425 to 450 carbon ppm range is safe? Here is some other research that, while we feel that it still suffers from politicizing underestimation errors and lack of factoring in the crossing of any tipping points, is still worth reviewing so you know it is not just us warning you how bad this threshold is.  

“The OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: Key Findings on Climate Change” summarizes predictions by climate scientists’ models: we have a 50% chance of stabilizing the average global temperature at a 2°C increase over the pre-industrial period if we keep concentrations of CO₂ under 450 ppm. A November 2013 report by PwC, Busting the Carbon Budget, says that at our current rate of fossil fuel usage in the global economy, we will exceed that limit by 2034.

Click here to learn more about how another 10 climate scientists view the serious dangers of crossing the 425 to 450 carbon ppm range.

(Special Update on the carbon 425 ppm Climate Cliff because of new climate research: Click here to see the horrible news that the global warming Climate Cliff does not occur in 2025 at carbon 425 ppm. We already went over the climate cliff in 2015 because the temper target was changed.)

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Our exponential risk and threat exposure and vulnerability as we cross more climate change and global warming tipping points

Crossing any global warming tipping point creates extreme vulnerability and exposure because the danger is neither singular nor constant. It is not a singular threat because, at a minimum, many tipping points and points of no return reside within the climate, human, and biological systems and subsystems—any of which could be crossed and feedback into other interconnected systems or subsystems, triggering a cascading meltdown of more crossed global warming tipping points across more and more systems.

There is not just the threat of a single keystone tipping point. There are potentially many tipping points that, if collectively crossed, could act as a keystone tipping point and lead to the final phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario. Crossing tipping points is also not a linear steady threat. With each rising degree of average global temperature, the threat, vulnerability, and exposure boils and rises exponentially! See the boiling pot illustration below.

 

 

Our estimated total risk and threat level for going over more climate change and global warming tipping points

To better evaluate risk, let’s first put the scope and intensity of the irreversible global warming risk in a comparative context. From the standpoint of total cumulative harm to be wreaked, consider that a 40% risk for a series of global warming millennial superstorms costing $1 trillion each actually presents a comparatively smaller risk of harm than a 1/100th of 1% risk of irreversible global warming with its end-of-the-world consequences. Yes, this means that a 40% risk of millennial superstorms poses far less of a risk of destructive consequences than a 1/100th of 1% risk of irreversible global warming.

We’ve already experienced global warming-related extreme storms and know the damage and havoc they leave in their wake. What we are seeing now pales in comparison to irreversible global warming’s full potential for global destruction and chaos. This helps put the enormity of risk into a comparative perspective, which helps drive home how utterly serious and urgent the climate change emergency is.

To further help quantify this global warming tipping point risk level, now consider that one of our most respected climate scientists, Michael Mann, has estimated the current risk level for going over a global warming tipping point at not 1/100th of 1%, not 1%, but at approximately 10%!⁶⁰ If one of our best climate scientists has set a 10% risk level for us crossing more global warming tipping points, how should you begin to think about this level of risk to your future? (Keep in mind that any global warming tipping point also has the potential to become a keystone tipping point).

It’s reasonable to suppose the nations of the world would not allow even a fraction of 1% of a risk level for global thermonuclear war to go less than 100% managed and controlled. So, how should we be managing our tipping point risks? How can we rationally continue to allow a 10% risk level of crossing more global warming tipping points to still go unmanaged when it can quickly lead directly to the extinction of humanity and the end of civilization?

Because of the difficulty of quantifying known and unknown factors involved within developing points of no return and tipping points themselves, the risk of going over more global warming tipping points is likely much higher than 10%.

Understanding the many unique dangers of global warming and crossing its tipping points is critical to your future quality of life. Once you understand tipping point risks are real and how they work, you are hopefully more likely to use the information in this document for managing them.

More about out-of-control global warming, climate destabilization, and tipping points

Global warming causes climate destabilization, but climate destabilization can also cause global warming. These processes can work both ways. For example, already destabilized burned forests and acidified oceans can’t absorb as much carbon. Because they cannot absorb as much carbon, more carbon stays in the atmosphere, causing more global warming heat.

There are also hopeful transition points between the processes of deepening irreversible global warming and the levels of climate destabilization. Climate destabilization transforms into irreversible warming only if there is a cascading meltdown of many tipping points or a keystone tipping point is crossed.

Why and how we could go extinct. The four most critical levels of climate change and global warming tipping points that we will cross in the near future. 

Below are the four most important global warming tipping point levels within our complex climate system, which will involve interacting climate, biological and human systems, and subsystems. Those four tipping point levels are:

1. The carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point level. (This tipping point initiates the beginning of a runaway process for triggering more and more global warming tipping points at faster and faster rates.)

2. The extinction-critical runaway global ice melting tipping point level. (ALL ice and ALL glaciers on Earth will enter a near-unstoppable process of a complete meltdown! (Sea levels could rise up to 10 feet over decades and up to 220 feet over several centuries.)

3. The extinction-accelerating runaway massive methane release tipping point level. (Massive amounts of methane gas start being released from ocean coastal shelves and the world's permafrost.) And,

4. The runaway rising global warming temperature level. (This final global warming tipping point level leads to a near-total extinction event. This is because of our average global temperatures rising so high that Earth's atmosphere is ripped off into space and everything dies.)

(Click here to discover why total human extinction is not realistic or probable and the worst humanity will experience is near-total extinction (50 to 90+% of humanity going extinct.)

You now have a very good understanding of tipping points, but there is one more very important thing to know about how they will unfold and when. Before you continue to read the following tipping point conclusion sections on this page, we strongly recommend first reading our four most important global warming tipping point levels page. As you read about these four major global warming tipping point levels and when they will occur, our current extreme extinction threat will become far more vividly true, frighteningly real, and fully understandable to you. 

This critical tipping point levels page also contains the four most critical reasons why we have only about 6 years left (until about 2025,) to slow down a now unavoidable mass extinction process as well as our crossing the near-total extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points.

(This tipping point levels page is the single most important and regularly updated page on our website! You will not regret taking the time to read it now before continuing.)

Your preparedness, survival, and the speed of crossing more global warming tipping points

Something important to remember is that as we cross more and more global warming tipping points, the worst global warming consequences will increase faster and faster. They will not grow gradually and linearly. They will grow exponentially over time. (In the graph below the red line is an example of a linear gradual growth trajectory.  (Linear progression equals 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, etc.)

The green line is an example of an exponential growth curve and trajectory. (Exponential progression equals 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 264, etc.)

 

 

The exponential growth of global warming consequences after we cross the four levels of tipping points discussed above means that few people or governments will be able to stay up with these escalating consequences for very long, but only if we do not come very close to hitting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. It also means that unless you have made emergency preparations and adaptations, and/or have migrated (where necessary) well before these four levels of tipping points are crossed, you will probably not have the time to do so later as things get worse faster and faster.

This is because the social, economic, and political systems will become more and more unstable and chaotic faster and faster as crossing more global warming tipping points pushes us into a steeper and steeper exponential curve (the green line above) of increasing severity, frequency, and scale in our global warming consequences. If you have not prepared well in advance for what is coming, you will find yourself in a living hell!

One more tipping point super-shocker

You will be shocked by how dangerously global warming tipping points are being mishandled and consequently hidden by the world’s recognized authority on the climate. Click here for more information on this.

What to never forget about the danger of crossing climate change and global warming tipping points

As we continue crossing more global warming tipping points, the 20 worst global warming consequences and the consequences of the tipping points themselves will continue to increase in severity, frequency, and scale. This is because:

1. The points of no return before a tipping point is crossed as well as the crossed tipping point itself, create "slippery" conditions where it becomes far easier for that condition or consequence to worsen far more quickly and at a far steeper gradient.

2. tipping points when crossed create sudden and extremely difficult to recover from steep drop-offs or complete system crashes,

3. any positive feedback loop contained within the tipping point processes will also significantly amplify either the positive or negative consequences of that tipping point, and 

4. a crossed tipping point within a system or subsystem tends to push other tipping points over their tipping points in the subsystems or systems associated with or interconnected to the original tipping point.

There also are "outside" non-global warming global challenges and contextual factors that directly or indirectly will interact with the climate change and global warming tipping points to significantly worsen or accelerate them

The many tipping points of global warming do not take place in a vacuum. They take place within a global context in which there are also 12 other critical global challenges with major consequences that are already occurring.

These 12 critical global challenges will directly or indirectly be interacting with and colliding into global warming tipping points. The additional interactions with the 12 other critical global challenges will make our lives and our global warming tipping points far worse.

Now that you have a better idea of the volatile and dangerous context of other current global challenges in which the global warming tipping points will take place, you are now ready to review the other 12 major global challenges. Each of them also has many tipping points within its systems and subsystems. Click here to review the 12 other critical global challenges. 

(For a great video by a famous English professor with clear illustrations that explain the 12 other critical global challenges and the coming "Great Convergence" and chain of catastrophes please click here.)

Click here to see where we are today on the Climate Change and Global Warming Doomsday Clock.

An essential positive perspective on the above disruptive climate change and global warming tipping points and climate change news

Despite the many types of challenging global warming consequences and past fossil fuel reduction mistakes that we now face, we can still learn from their feedback, and we can adapt and evolve to make life as good and as happy as is possible. No matter how severe the coming global warming consequences might become, if we wisely play the remaining cards that we have been dealt with, we can still achieve the best remaining possible outcomes. 

We can yet make a significant difference to reduce global fossil fuel use to stabilize and save the future of humanity by executing a comprehensive reduction and survival plan like the Job One for Humanity global warming action plan. 

We can still maintain the perseverance needed to succeed in this monumental task by regularly reviewing the many benefits which will occur as we work successfully on this project together. Although we are now in what could be called a Great Global Collapse process triggered by accelerating global warming, this collapse process will eventually offer equal to (or even greater than) long-term benefits in the form of a potential Great Rebirth beyond the coming suffering and loss.

First on this page (that has been read almost 2 million times,) and then this other critical global warming benefit page, you will find the many often hidden surprise benefits of the global warming challenge. You also will find a framework and the possibilities for what could be called a post-collapse Great Rebirth, no matter how bad the collapse process gets.

We can persevere through this time of emergency. We just need to remember that our greatest challenges are also the seeds of our greatest opportunities.

We are engaged in nothing less than the most critical and meaningful evolutionary opportunity, challenge, and adventure in human history! It is our last opportunity to slow down the mass human extinction threat by getting close to these 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. Only reaching these targets will fully remove the near-total extinction threat. In reaching these targets, we also significantly improve many of the world's other 12 major challenges.

Get started today on the Job One for Humanity global warming reduction and survival plan. Help save and salvage as much of humanity and our beautiful civilization as is possible.

Click here if you are a victim of climate change damage or loss and you want to get financial and other forms of restitution for the damages you have suffered.

 

 

A humorous 11-minute tipping point animation

Once you have finished this document, take 11 minutes to watch Wake Up, Freak Out - Then Get a Grip.⁶¹ Pay particular attention to the animation's excellent explanation of the various critical global warming tipping points. This video has been viewed over 1 million times and has been translated into 22 different languages. One note: this video gives temperature degrees in Celsius. A rough Fahrenheit temperature conversion is double the Celsius amount. Near its end, the video presents a somewhat polarized viewpoint. Though the informational and tipping point content is good, the Job One for Humanity organization that is publishing this document puts a higher priority on collaborative approaches in lieu of polarized ones.

A deeper perspective into the science of exponential progressions

We are facing an exponentially rising threat. If you are not fully grasping the critical difference between linear progressions and exponential progressions, it is highly recommended to view this YouTube video⁶² on the nature of exponential progressions. It has been watched 5 million times. It should help you better visualize what “exponential” means in relation to the potential of the coming drastic rise in the magnitude at every level of coming global warming consequences.

A deeper perspective on climate science when seen as a complex system that is adaptive

The following presents some basics of systems theory and complex systems that are adaptive (also known as complex adaptive systems) for those who want a deeper understanding of:

1. the nature of the global climate,
   
   
2. the processes of climate destabilization,
   
   
3. how human, climate and biological systems might react, and
   
   
4. global warming as a complex adaptive system.

Envisioning how complex adaptive systems interact with each other through their many interconnections, interdependencies, nonlinear processes, contexts, relationships, and transformations is indeed challenging.

To illustrate this challenge, imagine each global warming subsystem within the master climate system as a tangle of cooked spaghetti. Now imagine several such tangles of spaghetti interconnected by most of their strands. Sorting out what the connections are would be quite the challenge, yes?

 

Although that's not the best image for the overall complexity and interconnectedness of global warming, the climate, and our human and biological systems and subsystems, it will at least open the door to envisioning the research and prediction challenges climate scientists face. In spite of this inherent complexity, it is well worth the extra effort to understand the context and principles behind these relationships, processes, and transformations within global warming processes, the climate, and our human and biological systems and subsystems.

To better grasp the nature of this “spaghetti,” it is useful to understand global warming, the climate, and human and biological systems as complex adaptive systems.

Complex adaptive systems by nature:

1. Are complex (multifaceted, multilayered, etc.)
   
   
2. Are self-organizing (can organize themselves into new states or make changes without involvement or actions from outside the system. Self-organization occurs in response to some change in the environment or mutation. This also dramatically increases the unpredictability potentials of the system).
   
   
3. Evolve and adapt (they can respond with both reactive and adaptive changes as needed to maintain internal balance and system integrity and stability).
   
   
4. Contain elements of spontaneous emergence (something coming into being that was not predicted or completely unpredictable).
   
   
5. Can contain tipping points (points of sudden significant change or collapse).
   
   
6. Can contain points of no return (where the momentum of some process will sooner or later trigger the tipping point).
   
   
7. Contain linear and nonlinear cause-and-effect relationships between the various parts of the system and its subsystems.
   
   
8. Can change rapidly and are highly unpredictable.

In summary, complex adaptive systems, like global warming, the climate, and our human and biological systems, are highly unpredictable, self-organizing, and often include spontaneous or nonlinear unexpected outcomes. Sometimes they also contain high-impact, nonlinear relationships, and tipping points, causing radical, sudden, and completely unforeseen consequences.

The presence of these often counter-intuitive, linear, and nonlinear relationships and processes as described above means that causes and effects within climate, global warming, human, and biological systems and subsystems are sometimes not logically connected, clear, or predictable. Within a complex adaptive system like global warming, the climate, and our human and biological systems, one area can affect a completely different system or subsystem where there seems to be no apparent, direct or connected cause and effect relationship between these numerous interacting and interrelated systems or subsystems.

(We also recommend you read the following page from Wikipedia on global warming tipping points.)

A big-picture perspective on the challenge before us

The escalating global warming crisis has become the greatest adaptive challenge and evolutionary adventure in human history. Paradoxically, while it is the greatest current challenge, if you step back and look at this crisis from the long evolutionary sweep of human history, this crisis is just another evolutionary challenge like the many we have overcome in the past.

The following Great Bottleneck story should help you better frame the difficult challenge in front of us.

The human species has almost gone extinct at least once before. This occurred about 72,000 years ago. This incident has been called the Great Evolutionary Bottleneck.

A supervolcano called Toba erupted and blocked the sun for about 6 years. It also covered the earth with 6 inches of ash. Because of this supervolcano eruption and the resultant volcanic ash blocking the sunlight, the global temperature was dramatically lowered. This volcano-related temperature lowering occurred on top of an already existing Ice Age.

Under the cold and darkened skies, humanity as a whole was reduced to as few as 1,000 mating pairs. Some research suggests even fewer survivors. Maybe as few as 200 mating pairs were all that survived of humanity.

This supervolcano eruption has been called an evolutionary bottleneck because during this time the total early global human population fell from an estimated 18-26,000 individuals with reproductive capabilities to 1,000 or fewer reproducing pairs. That was roughly a 90% reduction in the total global population. If some other catastrophe had also occurred at the same time, humanity itself might have gone extinct.

Up until now, the Toba eruption has been the single greatest adaptive challenge to the survival of the whole of the human species. Unfortunately, today we are facing a new and far greater adaptive challenge.

This second great bottleneck is different, yet in some ways similar to the first great evolutionary bottleneck. This second bottleneck contains a global warming threat opposite to that of the colder temperatures of the first great evolutionary bottleneck. Unlike the first great bottleneck, which was caused by nature, the second is human-caused due to increasing carbon and methane atmospheric pollution and the steadily rising average global temperature.

This increasing global warming is causing a destabilization of our climate from its previously fairly stable temperature range level. This increasing destabilization will lead to some higher temperature range that may not be suitable for the survival of a majority of the 7 billion-plus people alive today. It may not be suitable for preserving any of the human species over time.

This means that together as a single human species, we are facing a new great adaptive challenge in the form of the second great evolutionary bottleneck. If we are going to come through this second evolutionary bottleneck, more will need to be done faster with more people cooperating on greater levels than has ever been achieved in human history.

Whenever you feel overwhelmed by the global warming challenge in front of us, never forget that humanity made it through the first great evolutionary bottleneck with far less cooperation, technology, and resources. Yes, today’s challenge will still be more difficult than any humanity has previously overcome. But, in the process of overcoming it, we will not only ensure our own future, but our effort will also provide each of us, both young and old, the opportunity to participate in the greatest evolutionary adventure in human history. Participating in such a challenge and adventure will create a deeply meaningful and purpose-filled life.

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”

— Martin Luther King, Jr., American civil rights leader

"There can be no margin of error whenever there is a real and imminent threat of total human extinction." Lawrence Wollersheim

How to keep the difficult and disruptive facts on this page in a balanced and positive perspective

We will be able to avoid or delay some of the coming global warming consequences, while other consequences are unavoidable due to our ignorance, incompetence, inaction, or selfishness. Despite the types of consequences we now face, we can learn from their feedback and adapt and evolve. No matter what we face, we can keep working toward achieving the best possible remaining outcomes. 

We can make a significant difference and stabilize and save the future by executing the comprehensive Job One for Humanity global warming action plan. We also can maintain the perseverance needed to succeed by regularly reviewing the many benefits which we will unfold as we work successfully on this together.

While we persevere, we must never forget that our greatest challenges are also the seeds of our greatest opportunities. We must continually realize that we are engaged in the most critical and meaningful evolutionary adventure in human history! This adventure is nothing less than removing the global warming extinction threat and, in so doing, indirectly improving most of the world's 12 other major challenges.

Summary

• Crossed tipping points can cause sudden and unpredictable severe changes and immediate or complete system crashes or collapses.
  
  
• Crossing global warming tipping points is not as rare as the fossil fuel industry would like you to believe. We have already crossed several global warming tipping points and it is likely we will cross more.
  
  
• In general, when a tipping point is crossed, unpredictability increases along with the speed of change. Our ability to control the disruption of a tipping point and reverse it drops radically as the system tumbles towards collapse.
  
  
• Once a point of no return is crossed, it is just a matter of time before its tipping point is crossed.
  
  
• Because the climate and global warming are complex adaptive systems, when any global warming tipping point is crossed, it makes it significantly more likely that more tipping points will also be crossed in interconnected or interdependent systems or subsystems.
  
  
• Because of inherent pre-existing momentum or inertia factors within one or more of the global warming tipping points, and the possibility that points of no return have already been crossed, we may have already crossed more of the global warming tipping points and be inevitably locked into crossing even more tipping points no matter what we do.
  
  
• At this point, at the least what we must do is prevent our crossing any keystone tipping point, which would deepen irreversible global warming and the later stages of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario.
  
  
• Any global warming remedial plan based on everything going perfectly will become the perfect plan for failure.
  
  
• The most important process that directly or indirectly causes global warming tipping points to be crossed is increasing heat.
  
  
• Humanity successfully survived the first great evolutionary bottleneck. We have many more advantages today, which should be of help in getting us through the current emergency we are facing.
• Understanding the 11 major global warming tipping points along with the Climageddon Extinction Scenario is absolutely essential to understanding how and why most of humanity will die by mid-century if we fail to hit the absolutely critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.
• No compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC,) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs. This failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the critical national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement targets is also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. This means we are using the wrong needed fossil fuel reduction calculations to save us from extinction within our lifetimes.
• We need to execute the correct 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets to save humanity from mass extinction before it is too late.
• Keep in mind that our government leaders have utterly failed to see the coming pain and suffering of the COVID-19 pandemic, nor did they adequately prepare for it. They were not able to manage it or its tipping points. Our government leaders are also not seeing global warming's tipping points or adequately preparing for the global warming extinction emergency, which is already happening and, will be far, far worse than COVID-19!
• Special Update on the carbon 425 ppm Climate Cliff because of new climate research: Click here to see the horrible news that the global warming Climate Cliff does not occur in 2025 at carbon 425 ppm. We already went over the climate cliff in 2015!

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Footnotes:

⁵⁶ Show.earth. "Keeling Curve Monthly CO2 Widget." ProOxygen. Accessed January 17, 2017 from https://www.show.earth/kc-monthly-co2-widget

⁵⁷ Hansen, James, et al. "Target atmospheric CO2: Where should humanity aim?"The Open Atmospheric Science Journal 2, no. 1 (2008): 217-231. DOI: 10.2174/1874282300802010217

⁵⁸ International Cryosphere Climate Initiative. Thresholds and Closing Windows.ICCI.org. December 2015. http://iccinet.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/ICCI_thresholds_v6b_151203_high_res.pdf

⁵⁹ David Spratt. "Climate Reality Check." Breakthrough - National Centre for Climate Restoration. March 2016.http://media.wix.com/ugd/148cb0_4868352168ba49d89358a8a01bc5f80f.pdf

⁶⁰ Micheal E. Mann. "The fat tail of climate change risk." Huffington Post. September 11, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/the-fat-tail-of-climate-change-risk_b_8116264.html (In this article, professor Mann uses the terminology “fat tail” to describe global warming tipping point events.)

⁶¹ "Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip." Vimeo video. 11:34, posted by "Leo Murray," September 11, 2008. http://vimeo.com/1709110

⁶² "The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See." YouTube video. 9:17, posted by "wonderingmind42," June 16, 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

If you are interested in understanding the climate science and analysis procedures we used to present the above information, click here for a technical explanation of our climate research process.