Last updated 7.7.25 (G)
Reason 1. The global fossil fuel cartel is the largest continuing cause behind escalating climate change and global warming. For decades, the extremely well-financed global fossil fuel cartel and its lobbyists have used highly effective climate change disinformation or undue influence campaigns on politicians, national and international government agencies, the global media, and citizens. Most people worldwide now believe the cartel's false global fossil fuel reduction targets, climate change solutions, and false climate change reduction progress claims.
The global fossil fuel cartel is the essential reason or cause behind most of the other problems discussed in this article. It is the hidden, invisible hand that censors, distorts, manipulates, and underestimates the climate change information you are receiving from your government, the media, and the United Nations.
The following will provide the broader framing and context for understanding how our current climate change emergency was created and is being maintained.
It is helpful to cover some history that everyone knows to be true, in order to open your mind to seeing the hidden and invisible hand distorting the climate change information you are receiving.
The global cigarette industry has a proven record of many decades of successful political lobbying, misinformation, disinformation, false cigarette health risk studies, and funding of "independent" think tanks to produce questionable research saying smoking was not dangerous. The cigarette industry also has a record of engaging in undue influence and regulation-delaying tactics.
Like the cigarette industry's tactics, the far better-funded global fossil fuel cartel's disinformation and regulation-delaying practices have successfully kept honest climate change facts and solutions from you, our governments, the media, and the rest of humanity for over six decades!
Does that statement seem exaggerated or not possible?
Remember, for many decades, the global cigarette industry convinced the world's politicians and citizens that cigarettes did not cause lung cancer, health problems, or death. And they did it with only the tiniest fraction of the global fossil fuel cartel's $30 trillion-a-year income and resources.
Because of the global fossil fuel cartel's copycat, super-funded mass disinformation, and regulation-distorting tactics, they have avoided the correct global fossil fuel reductions and regulations for at least six decades.
There is a powerful reason why the global fossil fuel cartel is doing this. If the world's citizens knew the real climate change facts and understood that they had been deliberately deceived for six decades, with their lives under threat, they would angrily demand that their politicians radically cut global fossil fuel use immediately to meet the genuine and honest 2025 targets. And this would be very bad for the international fossil fuel cartels' profits.
This is the main reason we are in such a climate change nightmare.
Click and begin here to see how these fossil fuel industry disinformation and undue influence campaigns have adversely affected the UN's IPCC, supposedly the world's leading authority on climate change. This Critical page will ask you to decide if the global fossil fuel cartel has been engaged in a conspiracy to prevent the fixing of global warming and climate change. It will provide you a wonderful yet overwhelming perspective on what they have been doing over the last four or more decades.
If you still think what we say about the global fossil fuel cartel is untrue. Please click here to view the hundreds of well-documented DeSmog Blog energy articles that outline the various tactics and strategies employed by the international fossil fuel cartel to prevent governments, the media, the United Nations, and the world's citizens from demanding reductions in global fossil fuel use to the required levels. Click here to start reading the DeSmog Blog's well-documented articles.
Reason 2: Our governments and other authorities keep giving us incorrect global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines that will not work in time to save us.
Depending on where you live in the world, your politicians, governments, and even most of the world's environmental groups are giving you different and incorrect fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines. For example, many countries have set a target to become net-zero carbon by 2050. This wrong target issue even includes the US Democratic party. Other governments, the UN, and almost all environmental groups are promoting various conflicting levels of fossil fuel reductions and net-zero carbon levels by either 2050, 2040, 2035, 2032, or 2030.
For example, the UN still uses the incorrect global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines created by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) The IPCC is considered the world's leading authority on global warming and the actions required to address climate change.
The IPCC's most current incorrect target and deadline for global fossil fuel reduction is that we need to reduce total global fossil fuel use by 40% by 2030 and all carbon emissions by 2050. The colossal danger with the IPCC's wrong targets is that these wrong deadlines and targets are now being used to set "the correct" net-zero global warming reduction strategies for the world's governments, NGOs, and the largest non-profit environmental groups.
This makes it even less likely that we will come close to reaching the 2025 legitimate targets because our governments and NGOs are aiming at the wrong target destinations and deadlines. Click here to read the science behind the IPCC's 40% reduction in total global fossil fuel use by 2030 and reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, which is so dangerously wrong!
The many incorrect targets and deadlines mentioned above are inadequate and will not save us from extinction in time. Worse yet, competing incorrect global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines forwarded by recognized authorities thwart and delay humanity's ability to understand or execute the correct targets.
Ironically, if we cannot get the world's recognized environmental leaders to promote the correct 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines, which at least have some reasonable chance of preventing a massive extinction event from occurring within our lifetimes, how likely is it that we will ever achieve the 2025 reductions?
In the reasons below, you will discover additional incorrect IPCC calculations, allowances for nonexistent new technologies, and the many ways those entrusted to lead us with the correct global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines are not doing so.
Until these wrong targets and deadlines are corrected or removed, there is little chance we will reorganize to focus on accomplishing the correct targets and deadlines. The time left until 2025 is running out fast. Only by hitting or coming very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets will we be able to avoid a mass extinction event within the next 30-50 years.
Any entity promoting incorrect or inadequate fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines is certainly not part of the solution to global warming. Entities promoting the wrong targets and deadlines have now become a major part of the problem if we want to prevent a mass extinction event from occurring within our lifetimes.
Reason 3: There is a 20-40% gross underestimation of current climate change consequences and timetables by the authoritative UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) This false sense of security steals the public's urgency to act on the real climate change consequences and deadlines.
The world's leading climate authority (the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]) regularly miscalculates where we are now or where we will be on our global warming consequences and timetables by 20 to 40%. This underestimation causes the public to underestimate our current real global warming status and condition. They do not realize that things today are already much worse than we are being told.
Therefore, the public mentally starts with the wrong starting point and a misguided sense of urgency. The immediate survival of humanity is at stake. We can no longer rely upon the IPCC's climate calculations to survive.
Click here to understand the long-term history of the IPCC underestimating the consequences, timeframes, and the needed global fossil fuel reduction targets by as much as 20-40% or more.
Click here to see precisely how the IPCC literally "cooked the books" and grossly skewed the current IPCC global fossil fuel reduction calculations far lower than they should be by including unproven and non-existent "carbon-sucking unicorn" technology into their projections. This corruption and falsification of the global carbon reduction calculations allowed the primary fossil fuel-producing nations and fossil-fuel industries to continue to do "business as usual."
Click here for the IPCC's Perfect Day problem with its computer climate modeling. This alone will significantly lower the accuracy of the IPCC's predictions of consequences, timelines, and fossil fuel reduction remedies.
Click here to see the eleven key climate change tipping points almost entirely excluded from the IPCC calculations for how much fossil fuel use we must reduce each year globally.
Click here to see the four key reasons the IPCC's 26 global climate conferences have failed to produce results or legitimate global fossil fuel reduction targets.
Click here to see the IPCC's huge atmospheric methane calculation problem. This again results in a considerable drop in the reliability and usefulness of the IPCC's climate prediction and mitigation work.
Click here for the latest 2022 IPCC climate change summary report on the critical climate sensitivity error. Due to this ongoing climate sensitivity error, the IPCC's latest climate consequence predictions, timeframes, and remedial action information may be underestimated by as much as 25% or more. (This 25% does not include the effect of the other IPCC errors described in the links just above.)
The decades of errors, calculations, and polarization problems linked above mean that the IPCC is an unreliable partner for truthful and accurate climate change information. Their total climate consequence predictions, timeframes, and remedial action information may be grossly underestimated by as much as 30-60% and possibly more.
Be sure to also learn about the 20 worst global warming consequences here. Most consequences are expected to continue increasing in severity, frequency, and scale over the next 50 years as we attempt to resolve the problems associated with reaching the 2025 targets outlined on this page. Understanding the consequences of global warming is essential to understanding how most of humanity will die by mid-century.)
The 20 worst consequences of global warming, illustrated below, create a steadily intensifying "vortex" as heat increases. This intensifying heat draws all consequences into closer interaction and collision with one another, ultimately churning them toward ever-higher levels of global destruction.
(Click the following link for more information on the 20 worst global warming consequences.)
Reason 4: At this late date, it is extremely difficult to come even close to making the required 2025 global fossil fuel use reductions. They are so severe they would temporarily crash the world economy and kill much of the worldwide population.
Another primary reason it is unlikely we will make the required cuts soon enough to save ourselves is because of what is called Garrett's Global Warming Dilemma.
Professor Garrett's research suggests that, due to the laws of physics and mathematics, the global fossil fuel-based economy must first collapse in a necessary and steep global recession or depression. Only this will produce the required cuts in fossil fuel use in time to save humanity. Environmental groups around the world often overlook this well-documented climate research by Professor Garrett because it presents a difficult dilemma for which neither answer is acceptable to its members.
The dilemma is that while immediate radical global fossil fuel cuts will prevent near-total extinction in the future by about 2070, they will cause the mass die-off of much of humanity (51% or more) long before then, from starvation and other global warming-related causes listed on this page.
Because of this dilemma, and because there is no public or political will to create a severe but necessary global recession or depression to reduce fossil fuel use adequately, most environmental groups conceal this critical research and ignore it, much like dirty laundry. Because of this economic dilemma, it is hard to imagine that fossil fuel use will ever be cut to anything close to the critical levels needed, at least not until we are faced with massive global financial losses and billions of deaths.
Unfortunately, by then, the worst consequences and higher temperatures of global warming will also be irreversible on timescales far beyond the human lifespan.
(If you're a science person, please click here and read a summary of Prof. Garrett's alarming research on atmospheric carbon, global warming, and the necessary fossil fuel reductions we must make to save the future.)
Reason 5: The horrible agricultural and starvation side effects of cutting fossil fuel use radically to reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction target levels.
The main side effect is that global agriculture will crash when we drastically reduce fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. Agriculture heavily depends on fossil fuels, such as methane, to produce essential fertilizers and other chemicals, enabling mass food production.
Agriculture also depends heavily on fossil fuels to run the equipment essential for creating and processing the mass food production and distribution. Once we approach the crucial levels of global fossil-fuel reductions necessary to save the future, highly fossil-fuel-dependent global agriculture will collapse. Not long after that, up to 50% of the population will die of starvation.
What this means is that if we do not make the required 2025 global fossil fuel reductions, most of humanity will die by mid-century. If we do not make the required 2025 global fossil fuel reductions, as much as 50% of humanity will die of starvation in as little as 20 to 30 years. That is a difficult choice that few politicians are even willing to consider.
Reason 6: Sixty years ago, our governments were warned by climate scientists but did not sufficiently reduce global fossil fuel usage when the needed targets could have been gradual and manageable. How could they ever do it now when the required reductions are radically larger and far more painful?
Reason 7: As of 3.31.2022, we are still not making anything close to the required global fossil fuel reductions to meet or come even close to the 2025 global fossil fuel 75% reduction target. This reduction failure means we cannot avoid major global temperature increases, horrendous climate calamities, and a mass extinction event far sooner than imagined.
As you can see from the C02 carbon ppm graph near the top of the page, we are not making the required cuts in our fossil fuel use to reduce the carbon entering our atmosphere and slow or reverse rising temperatures.
To adequately prepare you for the shocking, real fossil fuel reductions that must be made to save humanity, we must first examine how poorly our previous decades of fossil fuel reduction actions have fared since we were first notified about the climate change extinction danger over 40 years ago.
What has been hidden from you:
1. We have increased fossil fuel use far more this century than in the last two decades of the 20th century. More than half of all fossil fuel emissions released over the previous 25 years are more than those released in recorded history before 1990.
2. Although we have had over 30 international conferences on fossil fuel reduction and international treaties since at least 1993, pledging nations would reduce global warming to agreed targets, we still have about 67% higher carbon emissions than in the early 1990s. (Atmospheric carbon emissions are probably the best way to measure future global warming.)
3. Carbon emissions are projected to increase annually.
Yes, intentionally or through ignorance, our governments, the media, and most of the world's environmental groups have not been telling us the REAL facts about our REAL lack of meaningful progress in reducing the rate of fossil fuel use. As a result, substantive reductions in on-target fossil fuel use anywhere globally have been completely absent.
I want to remind you of the above dismal failure of previous efforts to take fossil fuel reductions seriously and our prior failures to reduce the rates of annual carbon increases. You are now ready to explore the REAL fossil fuel reductions that must be made to save our future.
(Please click here if you still don't believe we are telling the truth about our dismal failure in reducing atmospheric carbon and global warming over the last 40 years. In addition, you can view a short video by climate Professor Kevin Anderson in a recent presentation to the Oxford University Climate Society.)
We must radically and immediately reduce global fossil fuel use to slow or prevent going over the atmospheric carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point. If we cross that tipping point, it leads to crossing several critical extinction-accelerating tipping points.
The absolute minimum total fossil fuel reductions that must occur to prevent about half of humanity from going extinct not sometime after 2100 but by mid-century, are:
a. All industrially developed nations must reduce their total fossil fuel use by 75% by 2025 and continue reducing fossil fuel use to net-zero carbon emissions by 2035. In this solution, net carbon zero emissions mean that no additional fossil fuel emissions are going into the atmosphere that are not also simultaneously being removed from the atmosphere by natural means. (Only about 20 countries produce 70% or more of the world's carbon emissions.)
Think of developed nations like most members of the G20 group: Argentina, Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and India.
b. All developing nations must maintain their total fossil fuel emission levels as they were at the beginning of 2019 and not allow them to increase. By 2045, all developing nations must also achieve net-zero carbon emissions. To achieve this, they must reduce their fossil fuel emissions by 6% annually. This allowance for developing nations to maintain their current level and gradually reduce net-zero carbon emissions by 2045 is part of an essential equation for justice and equity.
The developed nations have created their wealth by producing the majority of carbon emissions in the atmosphere today. As a result, developed countries have contributed significantly to the current global warming and extinction emergency.
The global fossil fuel reduction targets outlined above differ from those established by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This discrepancy is because the current targets presented by the United Nations and used by governments worldwide are dead wrong!
Those calculations have been politically manipulated to allow fossil fuel-producing countries and companies to maintain their sources of income. As a result, they have also been regularly and significantly "cooked" and underestimated.
Some calculations have been "cooked" to allow for "post-2050 atmospheric carbon reduction compensation for a projected and currently non-proven, unscaled, and untested for side effects carbon removal technology. However, even the IPCC says this projected new carbon capture technology will not exist and cannot be scaled up adequately or be ready until maybe sometime after 2050. (The calculations Job One uses (above) are based on current climate conditions and the correct climate mathematics and physics from legitimate and unafraid climate scientists like Professor Keven Anderson.)
To read about the politicizing of science and math in the United Nations calculations, click here.
To learn about the cooked calculations for a 2050 carbon capture technology that does not exist in a usable, scalable form and allows the uninformed to believe that we are safe and secure, click here.)
Here are more details and another way of explaining why the above 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets are crucial to achieving. Suppose we do not engage in the greatest government-driven mass mobilization in human history, directing all necessary resources toward radically cutting our fossil fuel use to hit the critical 2025 global reduction targets; in that case, we will, without a doubt, go over what is called our "last chance" atmospheric carbon tipping point. This last chance tipping point will occur shortly after crossing into or over the carbon 425-450 parts per million (ppm) range. (See the blue Atmospheric CO2 carbon graph near the top of the page to see how close we are to that point already.)
We call it our last chance tipping point because it is our last window of opportunity to avoid crossing the first critical carbon threshold of 425 to 450. Once we cross this tipping point, our average global temperature will inevitably rise well above 2°C, far faster than it has ever done in geological time. (Geological time is measured in hundreds of thousands to millions of years.)
This rapid temperature rise will also generate significant momentum, pushing our average global temperature even higher and faster. This momentum encompasses various factors and processes, including the potential crossing of additional global warming tipping points.
Unfortunately, we will also begin to cross tipping points much more quickly once we exceed the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point.
(Click here to learn more about how global warming tipping points [like those in the illustration above] function, increase global warming temperature, accelerate climate consequences, cause sudden and complete climate, biological and human system collapses, as well as make a recovery from those climate consequences much slower, more complicated and more expensive.)
Now that we have reached the carbon 425 ppm tipping point level, we can expect to lock in an eventual increase in average global temperature of about 2-2.7 °C (4°F-4.9°F) from preindustrial levels. At just a 2°-2.7° Celsius increase in average global temperature, millions more will starve, and millions of additional people from all over the world will eventually be forced to migrate or die.
This die-off occurs in part because of:
a. global warming's systemic and atmospheric carbon accumulation momentum factors,
b. profound human systems inertia and other problem factors (described in part on this page.)
c. more and other crossed tipping points.
Once we go over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and hit the 2.2°-2.7° Celsius average global temperature increase level, the total heat-producing momentum of all of the previous carbon that we have ever put into the atmosphere, along with the other factors previously mentioned (in a, b and c above,) will once again quickly and inevitably push our global average global temperature even higher!
This rising temperature factor means that once we exceed the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and trigger its climate and human system momentum and inertia factors, we are locked into continually increasing temperatures for as long as the next 30 years.
Suppose we do cross the carbon 425 carbon ppm tipping point. In that case, we will then reach the next critical threshold. It is the carbon and temperature transition level where we will be unable to stop ourselves from continuing uncontrollably and quickly to 3°, 4°, 5°, and 6° Celsius average global temperature increases (5.4°, 7.2°, 9°, and 10.8° Fahrenheit.) Once we cross the 2°C carbon 425 ppm tipping point, the higher temperature levels of 3°, 4°, 5°, and possibly 6° Celsius will also be all but locked in due to:
1. )ur continuing to add more carbon to the atmosphere every year (at about three ppm per year)
2. The momentum of ever-increasing heat-producing carbon and other greenhouse gases and
3. Our inability to prevent ourselves from crossing other global warming tipping points and triggering additional positive feedback loops and points of no return within the various systems and subsystems of the global climate, due to human system inertia and other climate-related issues.
Because of the preceding, we have no rational alternative but to prevent crossing into this perilous carbon threshold of 425-450 ppm and the tipping point. At our current carbon (and other greenhouse gas levels) levels, entering this 425-450 ppm range will, unfortunately, begin sometime around 2025.
There is one thing we can be certain of in this emergency. No matter what, and despite all of the challenges and bad outcomes that are possible, the single constant truth for the best possible climate change outcome for humanity in this emergency is that the faster and the more we reduce global fossil fuel use:
a. More of humanity will survive to carry on all kinds of biological life and our beautiful civilization, and
b. Future generations will suffer less from an ever-increasing sequence of escalating consequences of global warming.
The illustration below shows the red vertical "Must not pass, last chance battle line and range of carbon 425 to 450 ppm." As you can see, crossing the carbon 425 tipping point leads us to a very steep and slippery downward slope, ultimately leading to our rapid extinction.
The illustration above also lists at what carbon ppm levels the six distinct phases of the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown occur (CS Phase 1-6.) (After you read the rest of the article, we recommend reviewing the primary and secondary global warming consequence found in the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown.)
Crossing the 425 ppm carbon tipping point will set us up to rapidly cross the next atmospheric carbon extinction-accelerating tipping point, at 500 ppm carbon, where the average global temperature will eventually increase to 4°C. If we miss the 2025 targets, carbon levels of 500 ppm are predicted to occur in 20-25 years, between 2038 and 2042. At a 4°C temperature increase above preindustrial levels, all ice on Earth will melt, chaos will ensue, and today's organized society can no longer exist!
Once we cross the 500 ppm carbon extinction-accelerating tipping point, it is nearly certain that we will also soon cross the 600 ppm carbon final extinction tipping point not too long after that. (Much more will be said about the carbon 500 and 600 ppm extinction tipping point processes and their consequences found elsewhere on this page.)
Crossing the carbon threshold of 425-450 ppm, the so-called "last chance" tipping point, will rapidly lead to the extinction of approximately half of humanity by mid-century. Many of the climate consequences we experience will also be irreversible for centuries to thousands of years. (This page will take you through the almost 80 primary and secondary climate change-related or climate change-triggered consequences that will create an unavoidable process to this mass extinction of about half or more of humanity.)
Unfortunately, our governments have been issuing global warming projections that do not include a 25-40% underestimation factor for compensatory calculations regarding the 11 key tipping points being crossed. When you factor these elements into the prediction calculations to correct them, it becomes evident that we will face our worst nightmares of higher global temperatures far faster than we are even remotely prepared. (Please note that as of 7.7.2025, the more accurate underestimation calculation is 30 to 60%.)
(There is much more information, including our individual, business, and national annual fossil fuel reduction targets, what will happen if we don't hit the above targets, and technical footnotes that will help explain the severity of these fossil fuel reductions. When you finish this article, we recommend you go to this 2025 global fossil fuel reduction target explanation page.)
(Special 4.1.2022 update on the carbon 425 ppm tipping point due to new climate research: Click here to see the horrible news that the global warming Climate Cliff does not occur in 2025 as was previously calculated. We already went over the climate cliff in 2015!)
Getting honest about what must be done to reduce fossil fuel use to the needed levels
To grasp how painful the required global fossil fuel cuts will be, imagine that by 2025, you will have to cut your total home, auto, plane, and business activities that use fossil fuels by at least 75%. After that, you will have to cut back again to net-zero fossil fuel use within the next ten years. Now, imagine everyone else in all developed nations doing the same.
If you live in a developed country, are you doing this now? Is it possible that you would voluntarily change your everyday life? Do you see the governments of the world's developed nations coming together in a great act of cooperation, passing the necessary laws, verification procedures, and enforceable punishments to ensure we make the 2025 deadline?
You probably came up with the same answer we did, which is that it is nearly certain we will not make the required 2025 fossil fuel cuts in time or even get close to them. More likely, the developed world citizens who did not understand the urgency or importance of why they needed to make these painful fossil fuel use sacrifices would throw their politicians out of office. They would most likely overthrow any government that tried to enforce these radical fossil fuel reductions upon their comfortable or subsistence-level lifestyles and livelihoods.
Imagine all individuals, corporations, and governments in developed nations that mainly rely on fossil fuels seeing their livelihoods decline by at least 75% by 2025. How much of a fight and disinformation program would those individuals, industries, and nations put up or create to preserve their existing livelihoods and futures?
It's hard to imagine what the fossil fuel industry would not be capable of doing to preserve a $30 trillion yearly market segment.
When the above 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets (and other reasons described on this page) are collectively considered, the critical 2025 fossil fuel reductions are theoretically still possible but realistically impossible to achieve.
What is most important to remember is that if we exceed the atmospheric carbon 425 ppm level, the primary and secondary global warming-triggered consequences listed on this essential page will inevitably lead to the unavoidable die-off of much of humanity by mid-century.
Reason 8: There is still no verifiable or enforceable international climate agreement that could demand and enforce making the survival-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction levels needed. There is no adequate verification or enforcement of our existing international agreements on global warming reduction. To make matters worse, our existing international agreements do not require anything even close to 2025 global fossil fuel reductions!
The required levels of global fossil fuel reduction could be achieved if all nations made a total government-level commitment and immediately mobilized to cut global fossil fuel use to the 2025 target percentages listed above. There would also need to be some form of an overarching international agency with actual verification, enforcement, and punishment powers over all nations that might violate the global warming reduction treaties or agreements. Unfortunately, that kind of power implies some form of functional global government, which is estimated to be many decades away at the earliest.
Because there are no such verifiable and enforceable international fossil fuel reduction agreements among governments or any current governmental mass mobilization to implement critical reductions, it means that we will be adding carbon to the atmosphere at our current average annual rate of about three (or more) parts per million (ppm) per year for about the next 30- 50 + years. Three additional carbon ppm per year would add at least another 90-150 carbon ppm to our current 421 ppm total, or a total of 511 to 571 ppm carbon. (See the atmospheric carbon graph near the top of the page and imagine the steepness of the graph line as another 150 carbon ppm points are added to it over the next 50 years.)
Reason 9: We already went over the climate cliff in 2015 and have entered the Second Phase of runaway global warming.
Please go to this link. The science and analysis supporting the importance and validity of Reason 8 are too lengthy and detailed to include here. It is one of the scariest links on our website. By the time you finish this long article, it will be very clear to you that we are already in the Second Phase of runaway global warming, and just what runaway global warming means to your future.
Reason 10: The dangerous accelerating effects of crossing more global climate change tipping points, positive feedback loops, and points of no return within the climate system.
As we continue to cross more global warming tipping points, the consequences of global warming will increase in severity, frequency, and scale, and we will move further and faster into runaway global warming.
This is because:
1. The points of no return before a tipping point are crossed, and the crossed tipping point itself creates a "slippery slope" situation. In this "slippery slope" situation, it becomes easier for that consequence to worsen more quickly and become more severe.
2. tTipping 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 global warming 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 related tipping points over their tipping points in the subsystems or systems interconnected to or interdependent with the original tipping point.
Understanding the 11 major global warming tipping points and the Climageddon Scenario is essential to understanding how and why half of humanity will die by mid-century. This horrible outcome will occur if we fail to come close to the critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets mentioned above.
(Please click here to read more about the 11 critical global warming tipping points below and what they will mean to how fast your life will change as more of them are crossed.)
Please also read this Climageddon Feedback Scenario page, which illustrates how the tipping point and feedback loop dangers fuel our current runaway global warming.
Reason 11: The cataclysmic effects of the soon-to-be-crossed two extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points. The general public has been kept unaware that unless we come very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and stay below the 425-450 ppm carbon level, there is no physical or mathematical way to prevent crossing the 500 ppm carbon tipping point, where all ice on Earth will melt.
Beyond the math, numerous climate scientists also believe that crossing the 500 ppm carbon threshold is already inevitable, as we will soon pass the other climate, biological, and human system tipping points discussed on this page (and at this page). This factor of being locked into carbon 500 ppm already does not include the other accelerating global warming positive feedback loops occurring throughout our climate system. (Positive feedback loops enhance or amplify changes; this also tends to move a system away from its normal equilibrium state and make it more unstable. In this way, positive feedback loops are not unlike tipping points.)
Suppose we cross the extinction-accelerating tipping point of carbon 500 ppm. In that case, it is highly probable that not long afterward (about 20-30 years) we will not be able to stop ourselves from reaching the carbon 600 ppm final extinction tipping point.
Some climate scientists who believe that we cannot prevent crossing 500 ppm also believe that, regardless of our actions now, we have already missed our opportunity to avoid 600 ppm. Furthermore, they believe that once we have surpassed the 500 ppm carbon level, we will be unable to avoid reaching the alarming 800 ppm carbon level. (Reaching carbon 800 ppm could also occur because of our adding more carbon to the atmosphere and the total accumulating effects of crossing more and more global warming tipping points, which will happen even more rapidly after crossing the carbon 500 ppm threshold.)
Our reading of the current science indicates that if we do not immediately approach the previously described 2025 radical fossil fuel reductions, we will exceed the 600 ppm carbon level. Even if we achieve the necessary 2025 global fossil fuel cuts, we may still not be able to slow down crossing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point long enough to save a smaller portion of humanity and transfer the necessary infrastructure into safer zones for global warming.
At worst, even if we cannot prevent crossing the 600 ppm carbon level, we can at least slow down some of the other consequences of global warming. However, slowing down the crossing of the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point will be a Herculean task. It will take massive global governmental cooperation and mobilization.
There is some good news here. First, the probability that we can slow and delay some of the 20 worst global warming consequences by getting close to the 2025 targets is still achievable. More importantly, this will allow us more time to prepare for the many global warming consequences we can no longer avoid, no matter what we do!)
What do the two extinction-accelerating tipping points mean to you right now? It is essential to be realistic in your future planning. As you can see, the probability that we will cross the carbon 500 and carbon 600 ppm tipping points is far too high. By 2025, if we have not made significant progress toward the radical global fossil fuel cuts necessary, the final window of opportunity to prevent the passing of the 600 ppm carbon extinction tipping point will close.
This is because of the following:
a. temperature momentum already "baked" into the climate system (the existing carbon 421 ppm level already in the atmosphere)
b. the additional three or more carbon particles per million we continue to add to the atmosphere each year (as we keep failing to reverse our fossil fuel use adequately) and
c. We will continue to cross the additional global warming tipping points even faster if we do not approach our 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets. And finally,
d. We are not just facing a mass extinction event if we fail to meet the 2025 reduction targets. We are facing near-total extinction! This is because we will cross the 600 ppm carbon level. This is the level at which we will also enter the final phases of runaway global warming. (If you are unsure how much worse it can get if we enter the final phases of the runaway global warming extinction phase, click the link in the previous sentence.)
Also, never forget that at the 5°C average global temperature increase, which will occur once we hit carbon 600 ppm and above, an even larger portion of humanity will die of starvation. This starvation will be due to the devastating effect of increased heat on worldwide crops.
This mass starvation will also result from the other consequences or critical tipping points of global warming being crossed. Economies, governments, and societies will also collapse in many areas of the world between the 45th parallel north and the 45th parallel south.
As we reach the carbon 500 ppm and carbon 600 ppm tipping point levels, we will cross into the most dangerous later phases (4 and 5) of the 6-phase Climageddon Extinction Scenario and Countdown model (Climageddon Scenario). At this point, please review the following Climageddon Extinction Scenario illustration starting from the bottom up! (It is a very large diagram, two sections down.) The top of the diagram below illustrates the later consequences of the Climageddon Scenario. The bottom shows you the earlier consequences.
It is necessary to take a slight detour before continuing to discuss why the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets are likely to fail. This detour is necessary because most individuals do not understand how and why it will become out of control if we cross the carbon levels of 425, 500, and 600 ppm.
How the three extinction-accelerating tipping points of carbon 425, 500, and 600 ppm collectively further create the condition where global warming goes out of humanity's future control
Most people do not realize that crossing the above three extinction-accelerating tipping points of carbon 425, 500, and 600 ppm is that, at some point not long after passing them, it will be "too little too late" to make any real difference. As a result, we will be unable to avoid the worst global warming catastrophes until some point in the future when we finally begin making the necessary reductions in fossil fuel use. This loss of control is because soon after we cross the carbon 425 ppm tipping point, we begin to trigger other natural climate system tipping points. After we cross carbon 425 ppm, we trigger more significant naturally increasing methane releases from the tundra, permafrost, and ocean shelves. Eventually, we will trigger massive additional natural carbon releases from our deep oceans, trees, and soils.
Eventually, these natural system tipping points will also enter positive feedback loops with one another. These activated positive feedback loops will further intensify the crossing of more natural tipping points.
These positive feedback loops within the climate's natural systems will rapidly increase the average global temperature. This further triggers increased heat, which releases more naturally generated methane and carbon from permafrost, further increasing the average global temperature in an endless temperature-increasing feedback cycle. Unfortunately, these increasing temperatures will go on and on until the Earth loses its atmosphere or the tundra and finally corrects itself hundreds or thousands of years in the future.
Unlike humanity's remaining ability to control its use or non-use of fossil fuels, if we cross the three previously mentioned natural climate system tipping points, the future is almost exclusively under nature's control. Unfortunately, if we fail to meet the 2025 reduction targets, we can do little to prevent other natural sources of carbon and methane from becoming a runaway train of ever-increasing average global temperatures.
Humanity's inability to control these large and complex natural systems, including tipping points and positive feedback loops, is a crucial reason we must reach the 2025 global targets. If we don't, we will let any remaining control of the global warming extinction emergency slip out of our hands for many human lifespans.
We do not have until 2050 to make the required global fossil fuel reductions to save ourselves, as many governments and fossil fuel companies would have you believe. We do not have until 2040, 2035, or even 2030 to make the critical and required reductions in fossil fuel use, as many prominent but ill-informed environmental groups would have you believe.
We have until 2025 to achieve the required global fossil fuel cuts to prevent exceeding the 425-450 ppm carbon tipping point and losing any meaningful control over our global warming future.
This emergency raises a $ 600 trillion question. Why aren't the brightest minds in the world's intelligence agencies screaming at their national politicians about this nearly out-of-control climate extinction emergency? Why aren't they making our politicians understand this is our last window of control to keep a super-destructive new global warming Pandora from getting out of her box? (Six hundred trillion dollars plus estimates of the total global costs we will incur if we survive and trigger the carbon 500 ppm near-extinction tipping point and the carbon 600 ppm final-extinction tipping point.)
Why aren't our intelligence agencies (and the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations) shaming our politicians into realizing that they have exposed ALL of humanity to a severe, imminent, and irrational climate change extinction risk?
Why aren't these recognized as risk and threat levels that should NEVER be endured or justified?
Let's work together with the appropriate urgency to address this emergency using the Job One Plan and take the necessary steps to fix it before it's too late.
(The above-listed natural climate tipping points and positive feedback loops are complicated, but we have simplified their descriptions and interactions on this page. This page will help you understand how the increasing methane releases from the tundra, permafrost, and ocean shelves occur. It will also help you know how massive new carbon releases from our deep oceans, trees, and soils will happen.)
Why Climageddon awaits us if we miss the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets
The Climageddon Scenario countdown illustration below reflects the unfolding natural progression of ever-worsening climate consequences, tipping points, and human system processes that will accelerate as the climate change emergency continues. These consequences, tipping points, and human systems will interact with each other both individually and collectively.
This will cause adverse effects, multiplying and synergizing many of each other's most harmful consequences. These ever-increasing and heat-fueled cumulative interactions among and between global warming consequences, tipping points, and human systems will exacerbate almost all of them even more rapidly.
The illustration below illustrates the final core processes that led to our extinction and global economic, political, and social chaos. Its three levels of climate change interactions (consequences, tipping points, and human systems) highlight the continuous onslaught of catastrophes we are already beginning to experience.
Start reading this illustration from the bottom because that is how the Climageddon Scenario and countdown will unfold.
More about the carbon 600 ppm extinction level tipping point
When we reach the carbon 600 ppm tipping point, we will trigger the final processes that will bring about the extinction of humanity as soon as 2063-2072, or earlier.) When in that 2063-2072 time range, we will reach carbon 600 ppm, which will be determined by which climate tipping points we cross first and how much we add more carbon to our atmosphere each year.)
But extinction will not begin only when we reach 600 ppm. Global civilization will start collapsing, and mass die-offs will occur long before reaching the tipping point level of carbon, 600 ppm. At or near 600 ppm, any unlucky survivors will enter an ecological and climate hell. To say that the following new dark age will make the survivors of the subsequent centuries curse us and wish they were dead would not be an exaggeration.
(The global warming consequences, tipping points, and human system factors (shown above) will interact and collide in 6 distinct phases and waves. (After you finish this document, we strongly recommend reading about the 6 phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario and the countdown here. It describes the timetables and consequences of our global warming future if we miss the 2025 targets.)
If the reasons alone are not enough to prove that global warming will be out of our meaningful control for centuries to thousands of years, here is another powerful reason.
You can find all the other Reasons below.