Last updated 6.29.23
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 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 to understand how our current climate change emergency was created and is being maintained.
To open your mind to see the hidden and invisible hand distorting the climate change information you are receiving, it is useful to cover some history everyone knows to be true.
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 28 trillion dollar-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 and their lives were under threat, they would angrily demand that their politicians radically cut global fossil fuel use immediately to meet the real and honest 2025 targets. And this would be very bad for international fossil fuel cartels' profits.
If you still think what we say about the global fossil fuel cartel is untrue. Please click here to see the hundreds of well-documented DeSmog Blog energy articles about the many ways and tactics the international fossil fuel cartel uses to ensure that our governments, the media, the United Nations, and the world's citizens do not ever demand reducing global fossil fuel use to the required levels. Click here to start reading the DeSmog Blog well-documented articles.
This is a main reason we are in such a climate change nightmare. Click and begin here to see how these fossil fuel industry disinformation campaigns have adversely affected the UN's IPPC supposedly the world's leading authority on climate change.
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 the target of becoming 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 is still using 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 what should be done about climate change.
IPCC's most current incorrect target and deadline for global fossil fuel reduction is that we need to make a 40% reduction in total global fossil fuel use by 2030 and then reach net-zero 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 correctional global warming strategies for the world's governments, NGOs, and 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 for what makes the IPCC's current 40% reduction in total global fossil fuel use by 2030 and then reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 so dangerously wrong!
The many incorrect targets and deadlines mentioned above are entirely inadequate and will not save us from extinction in time. Worse yet, when you have competing incorrect global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines forwarded by recognized authorities, it thwarts and delays humanity's ability to understand or execute the correct fossil fuel reduction 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 to prevent a massive extinction event from occurring within our lifetimes, how likely is it that we will ever achieve the 2025 reductions?
In the other reasons below, you will discover additional IPCC incorrect calculations, allowances for nonexistent new technologies, and the many twisted ways that those who have been 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 re-organize to focus our efforts on accomplishing the right 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.
At this point, one could easily say that any entity promoting incorrect or inadequate fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines is certainly not part of the global warming solution. 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 security steals the needed public 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 then 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 IPPC'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 major fossil fuel producing nations and fossil-fuel industries to continue to do "business as usual."
Click here to see the IPCC's Perfect Day problem with its computer climate modeling. This alone will significantly lower the accuracy of all of the IPCC's consequence predictions, timetables, and fossil fuel reduction remedies.
Click here to see the eleven key climate change tipping points that have been 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 why 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 produces a huge drop in the reliability and usefulness of the IPCC climate prediction and remedy work.
Click here to see the latest 2022 IPCC climate change summary report on the critical climate sensitivity error. Because of only this ongoing climate sensitivity error, the IPCC's newest climate consequence predictions, timeframes, and remedial action information will 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.)
All of the above linked decades of IPCC error, calculation, and polarization problems 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 50 %+ and possibly more
Be sure to also learn about the 20 worst global warming consequences here. Most of the consequences will continue to increase in severity, frequency, and scale over the next 50 years while we try to resolve the problems with reaching the 2025 targets listed on this page. Understanding global warming consequences is essential to understanding how most of humanity will die by mid-century.)
The 20 worst global warming consequences illustrated below create a steadily intensifying "vortex" as heat increases. This intensifying heat draws all the consequences into closer interaction and collision with each other. This process ultimately churns these consequences 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 states that because of the laws of physics and mathematics, almost all of our fossil fuel-based global economy must first collapse in a necessary and steep global recession or depression. Only this will produce the required cuts in our fossil fuel use in time to save humanity. Environmental groups around the world most often ignore this well-documented climate research by Professor Garrett because it also produces a horrible dilemma for which either answer is unthinkable as well as un-sellable to members.
The dilemma is that while the radical global fossil fuel cuts needed immediately will prevent near-total extinction in the future by about 2070, it will cause the mass die-off of much of humanity (51% or more) long before then from starvation and the 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 adequately reduce fossil fuel use, most environmental groups hide this critical research away and ignore it like dirty laundry. Because of this economic dilemma, it is hard to imagine that fossil fuels 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 that time, the worst consequences and higher temperatures of global warming also will be irreversible for timescales far, 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 radically to reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction target levels.
The main side effect is global agriculture will crash when we drastically reduce fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. Agriculture is heavily dependent upon fossil fuels such as methane to make the essential fertilizers and other chemicals to allow mass food production to occur.
Agriculture also depends heavily upon fossil fuels to run the equipment essential to creating and processing our mass food production and its distribution. Once we come anywhere close to the crucial levels of global fossil-fuel reductions we need to execute to save the future, highly fossil fuel-dependent global agriculture will crash. Then up to 50% of the population will die of starvation not long after that.
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: Forty 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 easy. Why could they ever do it now, when the needed reductions are radically larger and far more painful?
Reason 7: As of 3.31.2022, we are still not making anything even 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 will not be able to 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 going into our atmosphere to 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 see just 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 was released in all of recorded history before 1990.
2. Although we have had over 26 international conferences on fossil fuel reduction, and we have had international treaties since at least 1993 pledging nations would reduce global warming to agreed targets, we still are about 67% higher in 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 rise every year.
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 how our REAL lack of any meaningful progress whatsoever in reducing the rate of fossil fuel use. As a result, there has been a complete absence of any substantive on-target fossil fuel use reductions anywhere globally.
Keep in mind 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 will be able to view a short video by climate Professor Kevin Anderson in a recent presentation to the Oxford University Climate Society.)
We now need to radically and immediately reduce our 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 going 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 then 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 is 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 G 20 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 are at the beginning of 2019 and not allow them to go any higher. Then by 2045, all developing nations must also be at net-zero carbon emissions. They will need to drop their fossil fuel emissions by 6% each year to do this. This allowance for developing nations to stay at the current level and gradually reduce to net-zero carbon emissions by 2045 is part of an essential justice and equity equation.
The developed nations created their wealth by producing most of all carbon emissions in the atmosphere today. As a result, the developed countries have caused almost all of the current global warming extinction emergency.
Please note that the global fossil fuel reduction targets above are not the same as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) global fossil fuel reduction targets. This discrepancy is because the current fossil fuel reduction 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, those calculations also have been regularly and significantly "cooked" and underestimated.
Some of the 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, be able to be scaled up adequately or 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 the 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 describing why the above 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets are critical to getting close 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 truly is our last window of opportunity to keep from going over the first critical carbon 425 to 450 tipping point. Once we go over this tipping point, our average global temperature will inevitably rise well above 2°C, far faster than ever before in geological time. (Geological time is measured in hundreds of thousands to millions of years.)
This high-speed temperature rise will also create a powerful momentum that will push our average global temperature even higher even faster. This momentum comprises many factors and processes, including crossing additional global warming tipping points.
Unfortunately, we will also begin to cross tipping points much quicker once we go over 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, increases 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.)
If we continue only to the carbon 425 ppm tipping point level, within about three years (or less), we can expect to lock in an eventual increase in average global temperature of about 2 -2.7° Celsius (4° - 4.9° Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels. At just this 2°-2.7° Celsius increased 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 for all intents and purposes, once we go over 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 much as the next 30-50 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 also will be all but locked in due to:
1. our continuing to add more carbon to the atmosphere every additional year (at about three ppm per year,)
2. the momentum of ever-increasing heat-producing carbon and other greenhouse gases, and
3. our being unable to stop ourselves from crossing other global warming tipping points and triggering other positive feedback loops and points of no return within the many systems and subsystems of the global climate due to human system inertias and other climate problems.
Because of the preceding, we have no other rational alternative other than to prevent crossing into this perilous carbon 425-450 ppm threshold, range, and tipping point. At our current carbon (and other greenhouse gas levels, entering this 425-450 ppm range will, unfortunately, begin sometime around 2025.
There is something we can be sure 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 more we reduce global fossil fuel use:
a. the 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 global warming consequences.
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, going over the carbon 425 tipping point leads us to a very steep and slippery downward slope 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 carbon 425 ppm tipping point will set us up to rapidly cross with the next atmospheric carbon extinction-accelerating tipping point level of carbon 500 ppm, where the average global temperature will eventually increase to 4°C. If we miss the 2025 targets, carbon 500 ppm is predicted to happen in 20-25 years, 2038-2042. 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 carbon 500 ppm extinction-accelerating tipping point, it is near-certain that we will also soon cross the carbon 600 ppm 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.)
When we cross this carbon 425-450 ppm "last chance" tipping point, it will rapidly lead to the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century. Many of the climate consequences we will 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 of humanity or more.)
Unfortunately, our governments have been giving global warming projections that include a 25-40% underestimation factor as well as not including any compensatory calculations for the 11 key tipping points being crossed. When you add these factors into the prediction calculations to correct them, it becomes evident that we will be facing our worst nightmares of higher global temperatures far faster than for which we are even remotely prepared.
(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 real 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%. Then, after doing that, you will have to cut back again to net-zero fossil fuel use within the next ten years. Now try to imagine everyone else in all developed nations doing the same.
If you live in a developed country, are you doing this now? Does that seem possible that you would voluntarily change your everyday life and fossil fuel use so fast? Do you see the governments of the world's developed nations coming together in a great act of cooperation, passing the needed laws, verification procedures, and enforceable punishments necessary to make sure 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. It is more likely that 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.
Now imagine all individuals, corporations, and governments in developed nations that mainly depend upon fossil fuels seeing their livelihoods disappear by at least 75% before 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 $28 trillion year 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 go over the atmospheric carbon 425 ppm level, the primary and secondary global warming-triggered consequences listed on this essential page will bring about the unavoidable die-off of much of humanity 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 global warming reduction agreements. 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 occur if all nations had a total government-level commitment and immediate mass mobilization to begin cutting global fossil fuel use to the 2025 target percentages listed above. There would also need to be some form of an overarching international agency that had 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 carbon 511 to 571 ppm. (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 have already gone over the climate cliff in 2015 and we have already entered the beginning phases of runaway global warming.
Please go to this link. The science and analysis for why Reason 8 is painfully critically important and true was too long and detailed to add here. This is one of the scariest links on our website. It will be very clear to you by the time you finish it if we are already in the beginning stages 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 crossing more global warming tipping points, global warming consequences will increase in severity, frequency, and scale, and we will go 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. 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 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 the this page which will make it easier to understand how the tipping point and feedback loop dangers fuel 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 carbon 425-450 ppm level, there is no mathematical way to prevent crossing the carbon 500 ppm tipping point; where all ice on Earth will melt!
Beyond the math, numerous climate scientists also believe that crossing the carbon 500 ppm is ALREADY inevitable because soon we also will be passing 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 carbon 500 ppm also believe that no matter what we do now, we have already missed our control window to avoid carbon 600 ppm. Furthermore, they think that once we have crossed the carbon 500 ppm level, we will not be able to keep from reaching the insane carbon 800 ppm 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 occur even more rapidly after crossing the carbon 500 ppm threshold.)
Our reading of the current science indicates that if we do not immediately get close to the previously described 2025 radical fossil fuel reductions, we will cross the carbon 600 ppm level. Even if we get close to the necessary 2025 global fossil fuel cuts, we still may 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 needed infrastructure into global warming safer zones.
At worst, even if we can not still prevent crossing the carbon 600 ppm level, we can at least slow it down and some of the other coming global warming consequences. However, slowing down crossing 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 at least temporarily 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 come close to the radical global fossil fuel cuts necessary, the final window of opportunity to prevent the passing of the carbon 600 ppm 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 get close to our 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets. And finally,
d. We are not just facing a mass extinction event if we fail to come close to the 2025 reduction targets. We are facing near-total extinction! This is because we will cross the carbon 600 ppm level. This is the level where 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 runaway global warming extinction phase, click its 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 come from global warming's other consequences or critical tipping points being crossed. Economies, governments, and societies also will 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 the large diagram two sections down.)
The top of the diagram below shows you the later Climageddon Scenario consequences. The bottom shows you the earlier consequences.
It is necessary to take a slight detour before continuing with why the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets will probably fail. This detour is because most individuals do not understand how and why it will become out of control if we cross the carbon 425, 500, and 600 ppm levels.
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 at some future point when we finally do begin making the required fossil fuel reductions. 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 go into positive feedback loops with each other. 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 caused releases of more naturally generated methane and carbon from the tundra and permafrost, which further increases the average global temperature in an endless temperature increasing cycle. Unfortunately, these increasing temperatures will go on and on until the Earth loses its atmosphere or it finally corrects itself hundreds or thousands of years in the future.
Unlike humanity's remaining ability to control its use or not use fossil fuels, if we cross the three previously mentioned natural climate system tipping points, the future is almost exclusively under nature's control! But unfortunately, if we fail the 2025 reduction targets, there is little to nothing we can do to keep the other natural sources of carbon and methane from becoming a runaway train of ever-increasing average global temperature.
Humanity's inability to control these large and complex natural systems, tipping points, and positive feedback loops IS the crucial reason why we must get close to the 2025 global targets. If we don't get close to the 2025 targets, 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 want you to believe. We do not have until 2040, 2035, or even 2030 to make the critical and required fossil fuel reductions, as many prominent but ill-informed environmental groups want you to believe.
We have only until 2025 to get close to the required global fossil fuel cuts to prevent going over the carbon 425 ppm tipping point and losing any meaningful control of our global warming future!
This emergency creates a 600 trillion dollar 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 is the estimate for the total global costs that we will occur 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?
So, let's work together with the appropriate urgency and do what needs to be done using the Job One Plan to fix this emergency before it is 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 make almost all of them worse even faster!
The illustration below also illuminates the final core processes that will lead 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 that 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 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 only begin when we reach carbon 600 ppm. Global civilization will start collapsing, and mass die-offs will occur long before reaching the carbon 600 ppm tipping point level. At or near carbon 600 ppm, any unlucky survivors will enter into 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 be interacting and colliding 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 countdown here. It describes the timetables and consequences of our global warming future if we miss the 2025 targets.)
If the proceeding reasons alone are not enough to prove that global warming is already out of our meaningful control for the next 30-50 years, here is another powerful reason.
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