Climate change has passed a critical juncture. Our global warming future is now far easier to understand and can be put in one sentence!

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Global warming is accelerating. The following survival-critical deadlines should be kept in mind. 

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(At the end of this article, you will find a link to a comprehensive four-part plan for what you can do to help manage the global warming emergency. To counterbalance the disruptive facts in this article, you also will find links to the many surprising benefits that you will experience as we work toward resolving this great challenge and evolutionary opportunity.)

The not so good news. . .

You are about to read some horrible climate change and global warming news. The good news is that there are still many things we can do to improve our global warming future.

The bad news first...

We have already gone over the climate cliff in 2015 and entered the beginning phases of runaway global warming. The climate cliff is the climate carbon ppm and temperature levels you go over, which begins the runaway global warming process. See the carbon [CO2] parts per million ppm graph below.

 

The climate cliff, beginning runaway global warming and complete runaway global warming

For a little bit, we must talk about the concept of the climate cliff and what it is before we detail the first extinction-producing tipping point which is when we cross the carbon 425-450 threshold. For years, our organization had previously called this carbon 425-450 ppm level the climate cliff. (In this article, you will also hear us call the carbon 425-450 ppm level our first extinction-triggering or producing tipping point.)

The original climate cliff 425-450 ppm level was based on the United Nations' decades long-held target of keeping the average global temperature rising no more than 2°C above preindustrial levels. Recently the United Nation's intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lowered their temperature target level based on realizing the consequences of a 2°C temperature increase above preindustrial levels would be far worse than original research indicated.

The UN's new climate cliff level of 2020 is now to stay below an average global temperature increase of 1.5C. This target level has changed because global warming consequences above this temperature are now known to be much worse than previously believed.

One of the other significant reasons now being acknowledged among recognized climate scientists for the new UN 1.5 C climate cliff temperature target level is that there are already considerably more atmospheric carbon emissions than was previously predicted. These additional carbon emissions come from other amplifying carbon feedback loops and carbon sink failures.

Many of these further amplifying carbon feedback loops and carbon sink issues will start to show up just beyond a 1.5C average global temperature increase as soon as 2025. (These amplifying carbon feedbacks and carbon sink failures will be described in detail further below.)

Newer research also shows that staying at or near a 1.5 C of average global temperature increase level is the only temperature level that entirely excludes the beginning level of runaway global warming and continuing to cross additional extinction-triggering global warming tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops.

At this point, it is also essential to understand what is meant by the term runaway global warming. Runaway global warming means that global warming will continue to increase on a runaway course. Imagine a train going down a steep hill with no functional brakes. Once the runaway global warming "train" gets started, in most cases, it will continue to roll on of and by itself with no practical way to stop or control it.

There are several different levels of runaway global warming, beginning level, extinction level, and the Venus effect level. 

The beginning level of runaway global warming is defined as the point where numerous climate change and global warming consequences become catastrophic and unavoidable! For example, the UN's new 1.5 C climate cliff temperature threshold now means that because of what just the beginning level of runaway global warming can do, going above 1.5C level will eventually lead to the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century. (This link will show you how this mass extinction event will happen.)

Extinction level runaway global warming is the level of runaway global warming that will ensure humanity's near-total or total extinction. Venus level runaway global warming will be so bad that it rips the atmosphere off our planet. As a result, the Earth will lose all human and biological life. This level of runaway global warming is believed to have happened to the planet Venus.

In our own internal 2016-17 climate analysis, using existing fossil fuel infrastructure, we calculated the first climate cliff for triggering beginning level runaway global warming (an unstoppable crossing of more amplifying global warming tipping points) would occur between the carbon 425 to carbon 450 ppm levels. These levels of atmospheric carbon would eventually create at least, a global 2 degrees C temperature increase over preindustrial levels. 

Because of the UN IPCC threshold level of 1.5C, the beginning temperature and carbon limits for our former carbon climate cliff level now needed to be updated from its previous carbon level (425-450 ppm) and previous temperature level of about 2 -2.7° C above preindustrial levels to the new 1.5 C climate cliff starting point (about carbon 386.)

The new climate cliff shocker

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has previously calculated that reaching the carbon 420 ppm level is equivalent to a 1.6 C average global temperature increase from preindustrial levels. They made this very low-temperature rise calculation without including crossing any of the many climate tipping points or amplifying carbon feedback loops. But, as you will soon discover, we have already crossed important climate tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops and will quickly cross many more. (Our calculations making reasonable allowances and adjustments for crossed tipping points and omitted amplifying carbon feedback loops show the temperatures will rise much higher than the UN's temperature calculations.)

To have stayed below a 1.5 C target temperature increase, we would have had to have kept our atmospheric carbon level below 386 ppm. But, around 2015, we already had crossed over 386 carbon ppm level and ensured we would hit the 1.5 C level. 

The good news is we can still slow down the extinction of half of humanity by mid-century if we come close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. (It is perfectly normal to reject or doubt the possibility of such large-scale extinction occurring so soon. Therefore, we strongly recommend at some point clicking here to see the detailed sequences of some 80 primary and secondary consequences that will bring about the extinction of about half of humanity.)

All we can do now is slow and delay our partial extinction. But, it will take a government-driven mass mobilization to do it. This government-driven mass mobilization would have to radically reduce global fossil fuel use and get very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets as its first action. 

If the world governments act immediately and get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, more people will live longer and more comfortably. And, maybe we can still save humanity from the only thing that is worse than the extinction of half or more of humanity by mid-century, humanity's near-total to total extinction occurring from about 2050-2080 or sooner. 

And, there is a bit more bad news. Acting only to minimize the current global warming extinction threat is insane! It is insane because any temperature increase of 1.5 C will also trigger the crossing of three more extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops.

If nothing is done by our governments to radically slow and then reverse the average global temperature increase above the 1.5 C level, total extinction will be our eventual future. Supporting this 1.5 C danger is the Siberia permafrost field research (rather than the currently less accurate computer modeling) by Anton Vaks. (Reversing climate change means we need to get back down to at least carbon 350 ppm for some stability and hopefully and eventually back down to carbon 270 ppm where both humans and nature flourished.)

This Siberian research puts a global permafrost "thaw-down" also beginning at 1.5 C. This Siberian research means that when the world's permafrost crosses this 1.5 C average global temperature increase tipping point, the world's permafrost begins a near-continuous meltdown. Furthermore, this research indicates that after we reach this 1.5 C average global temperature increase, all permafrost stored carbon and methane will eventually be released from the permafrost. 

This 1.5C permafrost release point plus other human-made carbon and methane releases put us squarely on the fast track for the worst global warming prediction scenarios. (Click here for more documentation on the permafrost meltdown.)

Our ticking permafrost methane time bomb is further illuminated by the rising atmospheric methane CH4 graph below. When viewing this methane graph, consider that atmospheric methane is about 80 times more effective than atmospheric carbon in increasing global warming. (The atmospheric methane graph below is in parts per billion [ppb].) 

 

It is vital to know how having already crossed the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff will further accelerate the crossing of more global warming tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops

The new carbon 386 ppm tipping point level was our last chance climate cliff because it was our last window of opportunity to keep from crossing the next critical atmospheric carbon threshold, which, when crossed, will significantly accelerate crossing more global warming tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops. Once we go over this 386 ppm climate cliff, our average global temperature will inevitably rise to considerably above 1.5C - 2°C (eventually possibly as much as 3.2 C in eventual equilibrium warming.) Moreover, this temperature rise will be far faster than has ever occurred over previous human-friendly geologically-scaled periods. This means that what used to happen over millennia or centuries within our climate systems will now occur over decades!

Unfortunately, rapidly rising global temperatures are not the worst effect of crossing the carbon 386 ppm level and climate cliff. These fast temperature rises will also create a decisive additional climate momentum factor in addition to the already existing atmospheric carbon momentum. This further climate-related momentum will not only push our global temperature even higher even faster, but it will also force many of the 11 climate tipping points below and more tipping points within the climate's subsystems to be crossed much faster! 

(The illustration below lists the 11 major global warming tipping points. The arrows between the tipping points indicate that these tipping points interact and can also trigger each other's system or subsystem tipping points. Global warming temperatures will soar faster and faster as we cross more climate tipping points, which will cross even more climate and human system tipping points in an endless feedback loop.) 

 

 

At some point, we also strongly recommend that you click here to learn more details about what each tipping point above is and how they will unfold to bring us closer to total extinction. This tipping point meltdown detail page covers what happens when you cross each of the above global warming tipping points, how they accelerate global warming temperature rise, how they accelerate global warming consequences, and how they cause sudden and complete climate, biological and human system collapses. Crossing these climate tipping points will also make any possible recovery from crossing these tipping points impossible or much slower, harder, and more expensive. This expanded tipping point reading will help you "see" the tremendous and dangerous impact that the many additional and soon-arriving crossed global warming tipping points will have on your future.

(At some point, to learn more about tipping point effects, we also strongly recommend that you click here to learn more details about what each tipping point above is and how they will unfold to bring us closer to total extinction. This additional tipping point meltdown page covers what happens when you cross the above tipping points, how they accelerate the global warming temperature rise, consequences, and how they will cause sudden and complete climate, biological and human system collapses if left unchecked. Crossing these climate tipping points will also make any possible recovery from crossing these tipping points either impossible or much slower, more complicated, and more expensive. This expanded tipping point reading will help you "see" the tremendous and dangerous impact that the many additional and soon-arriving crossed global warming tipping points will have on your future.)

What to expect in rising temperatures now that we have crossed the carbon 386 climate cliff into runaway global warming and heading toward the first extinction-triggering tipping point

Since we have already passed carbon 386 ppm level back around 2015, within about five years (around 2025 or less), we can expect to lock in an eventual total minimal increase in average global temperature of about 1.5 C. 

Next, we cross the carbon 425 ppm level by or before about 2025; we can expect to lock in an additional eventual total increase in average global temperature of about 2 -2.7° Celsius (4° - 4.9° Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels. (In January of 2022, we were at about carbon 419 ppm.) 

The distinguished Professor of Meteorology Michael Mann from the University of Pennsylvania recently stated that once we reach the atmospheric carbon 405 ppm level, a 2 degrees C average global temperature increase is already baked in! And, once that happens, the terrible news is that we can do nothing effective at this point to stop those temperature levels from rising for many more decades. 

At this 1.5 -2.7° Celsius increased average global temperature level, hundreds of millions will eventually starve, and hundreds of millions of people worldwide will eventually be forced to migrate or die. 

Once we went over the new climate cliff of carbon 386 ppm, we doomed ourselves to hit the 1.5 Celsius global temperature increase level. Furthermore, we were also condemned by the total heat-producing momentum of all of the previous carbon and other greenhouse gases that we have ever put into the atmosphere, along with the other factors mentioned further down this page. All of which will inevitably and quickly not only push our global temperature even higher but also trigger the crossing of ever more tipping points at an accelerating rate!

Because we have already gone over the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff and triggered this next level of accelerating climate tipping point crossings, we are now locked into continually increasing temperatures for as much as the next 30+ years and crossing even more dangerous tipping points! 

We will reach our next even more dangerous transitional carbon and temperature threshold when we cross the carbon 425-450 carbon ppm tipping point level. This is the extinction-triggering threshold where, because of crossing even more future global warming tipping points being crossed at an accelerating rate, we will be unable to stop ourselves from proceeding uncontrollably to average global temperature increases of 3°, 4°, 5°, and 6° Celsius (5.4°, 7.2°, 9°, and 10.8° Fahrenheit respectively.) 

Once we cross the 2° Celsius (the carbon 425-450 ppm level,) the higher mass extinction accelerating temperature levels of 3°, 4°, 5°, and even 6° Celsius all will be all but locked in! 

According to James Hansen, one of the world's most influential climate researchers, a carbon 450 ppm level would eventually develop into an average global temperature increase of 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) in this century and be the end of human civilization as we've come to know it. 

This uncontrollable continuous rise in average global temperature, which will cause mass starvation, death, and migration, will be due primarily to:

1. the major global warming consequences will continue to intensify and cross-react as heat rises. 

The following illustration will help you visualize how future global warming consequences will intensify separately and together as we cross more tipping points and global temperatures rise. Imagine all of these global warming consequences whirling around, colliding with, and amplifying each other because of the agitation and "boiling effect" of ever-rising heat. This motion is similar to how the rising heat under a steam cooker churns, whirls, and collides the boiling water inside the steam cooker faster and more violently. 

 

 

As increasing heat boils our planet, just like boiling water in a pot, the above global warming consequences will intensify and increase in severity, frequency, and scale! (To learn about exactly how the escalating 20 worst global warming consequences will cause mass starvation, death, and migration as well as social, economic, and political chaos, click here.)

2. more global warming consequences (listed above) will go into positive feedback loops as temperatures rise. Think of a positive feedback loop as a small stimulus that then amplifies a specific effect or consequence, causing it to get bigger and bigger. For example, if you hold a microphone too close to a music amplifier, there will be an irritating scratchy distortion of sound that "feeds back" to the amplifier getting louder and louder the longer the microphone is held closer and closer to the amplifier source. 

3. our being unable to stop ourselves from crossing more global warming tipping points. Crossing more tipping points will again trigger other positive feedback loops and points of no return within the systems and subsystems of the global climate. It will also cause global warming tipping points to interact with each other cumulatively.

4. our continuing to cross "points of no return" within the global warming tipping points processes. Tipping point processes have within them definite points of no return. Once a tipping point's point of no return is crossed, crossing that tipping point is all but inevitable. Once that occurs, things usually collapse quickly, and recovery is typically slow, complex, costly, or downright impossible.

 

 

5. the accelerating heat-producing carbon and other greenhouse gas momentum (we will continue to add more fossil fuel burning carbon to the atmosphere every additional year (currently at the rate of about three carbon ppm per year.)

6. profound human system inertia and numerous other human system maladaptation factors will make it difficult to fix this extinction emergency or recover from it. (Described in detail on this page.)

Because of the preceding, we have no other rational alternative than to prevent crossing into the hazardous transitional carbon 425-450 ppm threshold range and tipping point. At our current carbon and other greenhouse gas atmospheric pollution rate, entering this range will, unfortunately, begin sometime around 2025 if we do not get very close to the correct and honest 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets.

There is something we can always be sure of in this horrible emergency. No matter what and despite all of the challenges and painful tipping point outcomes that are coming, the single constant truth for the best possible climate outcome for humanity in this emergency is that the faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use:

a. the more people we will survive to carry on humanity, life, and our beautiful civilization, and

b. future generations will suffer less from an ever-increasing sequence of escalating global warming consequences.

In the illustration below, you will see a red vertical line the "Must never pass, last chance battle line and range of carbon 425 to 450 ppm." As you can see, going over the carbon 425 ppm leads us to a very steep downward darker red slope toward our rapid extinction. (The illustration below also shows at what carbon ppm levels the six distinct phases of a Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown will occur (i.e., CS Phases 1-6 below.) After you complete the rest of this document, we strongly recommend that you review the detailed year-by-year global warming consequence timetables found in the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown. (As a reminder, the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown will be linked again at the bottom of this page.)

 

 

 

In summary of the first extinction-triggering tipping point, here is what is most important to remember about a failure to get close to our 2025 reduction targets and going over the carbon 425-450 ppm extinction-triggering tipping point:

1. Once we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold, the frequency, severity, and scale of global warming consequences will go from gradual linear increases as they are now to exponential consequence increases! This exponential consequence explosion will begin within 3-9 years (2025-2031) as we cross this critical extinction-producing tipping point.

Once again please see the most current blue Atmospheric CO2 carbon graph (on this page) to see how dangerously close we are to this critical carbon 425 - 450 ppm tipping point already. (As of April of 2022 we are at carbon 421 ppm.)

2. After we also go over the carbon 425-450 ppm range, mass human extinction is assured and unavoidable. The mathematics and physics of atmospheric carbon and other greenhouse gases raising our temperature will climb exponentially after going over the carbon 425-450 ppm level. This additional greenhouse gas rise will drive our temperatures ever higher up to and through at least two more extinction-accelerating tipping points and into the many other global warming consequences described further below. 

3. After we cross the 425-450 ppm threshold, stopping this ever-increasing global warming temperature momentum will be like trying to stop a gigantic boulder from rolling faster and faster down a hill that keeps getting steeper and steeper. 

4. We are in an unacknowledged climate change extinction emergency, and so far, our governments are not even close to reaching the critical 2025 targets. 

5. If we do not come close to the 2025 targets, we lose our last chance to stop ourselves from going over additional and far worse global warming tipping points. These extra tipping points will cause near-total to total human extinction and economic, political, and social chaos within our lifetimes!

If we do not come close to the 2025 targets, our final window of opportunity to effectively control our destiny regarding preventing the other two total extinction-accelerating tipping points from being crossed closes. This unthinkable outcome is also why the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point level is our most crucial next tipping point to understand and respect. (More about what causes this near-complete loss of control of our global warming future will be explained in the following even worse climate tipping point sections below.)

6. The beginning levels of runaway global warming was initiated when we went over the climate cliff and crossed carbon 386 ppm in 2015. We will fully enter the total extinction-level of runaway global warming and climate change when we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold. This is the carbon level where we can no longer stop ourselves from crossing a cascade of more significant climate tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops.

7. Mass human extinction will accelerate as we cross the 3° C level and pass beyond it.  Once we cross the 2° Celsius (the carbon 425-450 ppm level,) the inevitable mass extinction accelerating temperature levels of 3°, 4°, 5°, and even 6° Celsius all will be all but locked in! 

At 4° C, life will be a living hell for survivors. Crossing the carbon 450 ppm level will eventually develop into an average global temperature increase of 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) well before the end of this century and be the end of human civilization as we've come to know it.  

8. In case you're still somehow thinking or believing technology will save us at the last minute, no new carbon removal technologies (what we call magical carbon sucking unicorns) will be able to save us in time. This carbon removal technology fails because even those who believe this technology might save us are projecting that they will not be scaled up to make a difference until sometime after 2050. This 2050 date is long after the damage is done and long after anything can be done for billions who will suffer and die! (Please click here if you still have any illusions about new carbon removal technology miraculously saving us at the last minute. The science there will help you understand that the only way out of this imminent extinction catastrophe is to radically reduce fossil fuel use globally to come close to the 2025 targets.)

9. The only effective way to prevent our total extinction from the primary and secondary consequences of climate change is to get as close to the correct and honest 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.

Additional thoughts on the critical importance of the carbon 425-450 ppm total extinction-triggering tipping point and the probable sequences of climate events as we approach and cross it

Because we have ignored decades of climate warming, we are already deep into the climate change trajectory toward extinction and the collapse of civilization. This collapse outcome is highly likely because nine of the known global warming and climate change tipping points that regulate the climatic state of the planet have already been activated.

 

 

Most of the above-activated tipping points can and will trigger abrupt and significant releases of carbon back into the atmosphere, such as the release of carbon dioxide and methane caused by the irreversible thawing of the Arctic permafrost. After the above global warming tipping points are crossed, additional warming would become self-sustaining due to both positive feedback loops within the climate system and the mutual interaction of these global warming tipping points. 

It is best to think about the above nine interacting global warming tipping points within the climate system like a row of dominos. These climate system tipping points are so interconnected that knocking over the first couple of "dominos" will most likely lead to a cascade knocking over many, if not all, of them. Once the above global warming tipping point "dominos" lock into their falling cascade, we are already at a point of global and societal no return.

It is not just us saying this:

Because of these global warming tipping points and positive feedback loops, Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director emeritus and founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, believes that if we go much above 2° C, we will quickly get to 4° C anyway and, a 4° C increase would also spell the end of a tolerable human civilization.

Johan Rockström, the head of one of Europe's leading research institutes, warned that in a 4°C warmer world, it would be "difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that. Not even a rich minority world survive with modern lifestyles in the post-4°C-warmer turbulent, conflict-ridden world". 

Many other climate scientists have warned that once the climate warms 4 degrees C over our preindustrial average global temperature, human adaptation to these temperature levels will be all but impossible!

Leading Stanford University biologists released new research recently showing species extinctions are accelerating in an unprecedented manner. The rapid loss of biodiversity is another likely and already occurring tipping point for the collapse of human civilization. (These are the same Stanford biologists who were first to warn us that we are already experiencing the sixth mass extinction on Earth.)

Soon we will lose control of the tipping points for the Amazon rainforest, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the Greenland ice sheet in much less time than it's going to take us to get to any dubious and unenforceable global national net-zero emissions pledges. 

There is an additional and crucial way to think about the race to reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets before we cross more of the extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points. Imagine that the captain on the Titanic suddenly sees the iceberg in front of him. To slow and steer the Titanic away from the iceberg, he needs at least 3 miles, but he is only 1 mile away from the iceberg. In this example, the titanic is already doomed when the captain notices the iceberg.

This Titanic example is not much different than our current situation. We have already gone over the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff. We are doing very poorly toward reaching the last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. We have wasted so much time over the previous decades ignoring valid scientific warnings; we have very little time remaining to "steer" away from extinction. 

We already have a baked-in minimal 1.5 - 2 degrees C in average global temperature increase. We also have initiated the global climate tipping point cascade effect, which will quickly get us to 4°C and the collapse of a civilization in which no one would want to exist. This 4°C alone will rapidly take us to a far less habitable planet and climate regardless of any additional global fossil fuel reductions we might now make.

 

 

In the image above, the unillustrated Planetary Threshold dividing line is the climate cliff previously mentioned of carbon 386 ppm. As one can see, once we crossed that carbon 386 ppm Planetary Threshold line, the stability of our climate rapidly collapses into an over-heating uninhabitable Earth!  

Here are the most probable carbon feedback loops, carbon sink losses, points of no return, and tipping points to be crossed after we crossed the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff in 2015

1. Decreased albedo from reduced snow cover and melting Arctic ice increasing the earth's average global temperature,

2. Increased sea ice and glacier melt resulting in additional sea-level rise,

3. Increased atmospheric water vapor increases resulting in more extreme weather,

4. Increased permafrost and tundra heating, releasing more carbon and methane, resulting in more heat, disease epidemics, and possible pandemics. This tundra heating speeds up the process of more positive feedback loops and crossing more points of no return and tipping points. 

(Please note that rapidly melting tundra permafrost is also because the northernmost areas are warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.) This permafrost melting also can cause local and global pandemics caused by ancient viruses and bacteria being released from the permafrost. They have already had localized anthrax and smallpox outbreaks in Siberia because of the bacteria and viruses released from the decomposition of ancient frozen animals from the melting permafrost and tundra. Unfortunately, the Siberian residents had no existing immunity to these diseases and were not prepared to deal with these outbreaks due to a lack of available vaccines. 

5. Decreased carbon capture from the world's forests as temperatures rise and forests go from removing carbon from the atmosphere to carbon-neutral (no longer removing carbon from the atmosphere.) Carbon neutral is the state that occurs just before overheated over-stressed forests next begin to release carbon back into the atmosphere!

(Click here to learn more about each item listed above.)

Here are the most likely keystone tipping points to be crossed after we crossed the carbon 386 climate cliff in 2015

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

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

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

Food crops are more sensitive to heat when there are droughts and, they are more sensitive to heat, rain bombs, and cold spells when they are just beginning to grow. Unfortunately, because more ice is melting in the Arctic ocean almost every summer and staying melted longer in the year, we are losing more and more critical cooling for our vital food crops. As a result, we are losing stable growing seasons. 

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

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

Because of the continually increasing loss of the cooling effect on growing regions below the Arctic because of the constantly diminishing Arctic ice, the number of growing season days with temperatures over 100° will continue increasing steadily as more and more Arctic ice melts and remains melted longer throughout the year. (We estimate within a decade or so, we could have as many as 30 days of 100-degree heat during the growing season in many critical crop-growing areas.)

Because melting Arctic ice also affects and disrupts the jet stream and ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, you will also have extreme and unseasonable cold spells appearing during the prime crop growing seasons worldwide. These cold spells will also further reduce food yields and produce more crop failures during the fragile growing season.

This again means that the world will continue to experience more and larger crop reductions and failures as more polar ice melts and stays melted longer. Corn is one of the most significant food staples for humanity, and it is also one of the most sensitive crops to increasing 100 degrees plus temperatures and drought.

The following is from Wikipedia:

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

The increasing melting of arctic polar ice is a clear and glaring warning sign of increasing global warming and future severe reductions in future crop yields, as well as dangerous increases in future crop failures. These crop failures will also mean higher prices and ever-increasing food scarcity, and increasing global starvation.

This Arctic crop stability problem is not something far-off in the future. On the contrary, it is already happening in many world areas. 

It is also already causing large human migrations. The expanding and increasing polar ice melting is a primary "canary in the coal mine" for increasing future mass starvation not way off in 2100 as we have been told, but now and in years the decade to follow.

Already in the growing belt of the United States, we are seeing increased and record-breaking heat, droughts, rain bombs, Derechos, and other extreme unseasonal weather that directly affects crop yields and crop failures in the most vulnerable areas. This pattern of greater crop yield reductions and crop failures will continue to increase as long as more polar ice disappears and the Arctic remains relatively ice-free into longer and longer summers. As the process of massive crop reductions and failures expand and continues, mass starvation will begin to destabilize all of our other economic, social, and political systems. 

Reduced polar ice also reduces the albedo effect because white snow or ice reflects heat away from the earth and into the atmosphere, keeping the world cooler. However, as more Arctic polar ice is melted, the darker polar oceans absorb the heat and then heat up more, which once again causes more global warming.

As global temperatures continue rising, the time frames in which we will be crossing more of the tipping points listed above will get shorter. But that will not be the only significant effect of the melting Arctic ice due to global warming. Paradoxically, according to new studies, we will also have more extreme cold and heavier snows during the US winters because of melting Arctic ice. 

In general, you can count on that increased crop yield reductions and crop failures will increasingly occur because of arctic ice melt, increased heat, increased droughts, increased cold spells, increased rain bombs, and extreme weather storms. This will make it more and more impossible for modern agriculture and the major food crops to survive throughout their current growing seasons. There are estimates that crop yield reductions and crop failures will average 5 to 10% or more for each degree Fahrenheit that the average global temperature rises. This will continue until the planet becomes so warm that too many days of the growing season will be at 100° or more. This will make successfully growing the world's five major grains all but impossible.

The carbon 386 ppm climate cliff and its 1.5 C temperature increase threshold was the last threshold for excluding humanity's mass extinction threat by mid-century. Staying below 1.5 C was also the final threshold where we could have prevented a significant acceleration in crossing other more dangerous global warming tipping points. 

One can see from the preceding that while we all do our best to encourage our governments to meet the 2025 targets, it is also now wise to start a personal global warming emergency backup plan and "Plan B!"

New technology will not be able to save us in time!

Many people falsely believe that geoengineering, carbon capture, or some other new miracle technology will ride in like a knight on a white horse at the last minute to save humanity from the natural consequences of its decades of previous bad climate decisions, actions, inactions, and mistakes. It cannot scale up in the critical 3-9 years left, or it is loaded with potential side effects even worse than what it is trying to fix.

(Click here to read about why this fairy tale carbon capture technology is not going to happen or will be "too little too late" to save us.)

Reviewing the most misunderstood climate danger because it means our survival or extinction

What not coming close to the critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets means and what is at stake:

1. If we fail, we will not be able to even slow down the unavoidable extinction of half or more of humanity by mid-century. 

2. Only by coming very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets do we have any reasonable chance of preventing an even worse, total extinction event from ending humanity and civilization occurring from 2050- 2080 or sooner.

3. Because near-total to total extinction is now associated with crossing the atmospheric carbon threshold of carbon 425 - 450 ppm and the eventual higher temperatures produced when we cross that threshold, we only have about 3 to about 9 more years to be able to prevent our total extinction. (Carbon is currently accumulating in the atmosphere at about three carbon ppm per year.) 

4. Unfortunately, we also have two additional super-dangerous extinction-accelerating tipping points after the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point threshold. (Please go to this page and go down to the second extinction tipping point. It will inform you of what happens after we cross the carbon 450 ppm threshold.

5. After crossing the carbon 425-450 level, the following three extinction-producing  tipping points are FAR worse than what you have read above! they will create both extinction level and Venus affect level runaway global warming.

And, if you read nothing else from the links above, read this page to help you process all of this bad news!

To get started solving the climate nightmare in a simple way, please also sign this vital:

Global Warming Extinction Emergency Petition

 

Technical Notes

1. The United Nations report that to avoid 2C global emissions had to be in decline from 2015. It is evident from the carbon graph above we did not do that. If we did not meet the goal of staying of declining atmospheric carbon since 2015, remaining below 1.5C is all but impossible. Click here to see this UN report.

2. Please note that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) 2014 AR5 2C mitigation scenario (RCP2.6) required the removal of CO2. The 2018 IPCC 1.5C report had CO2 removal and sequestration for all 1.5C scenarios. We currently have no capacity for CO2 removal at any scale and nothing for it in the foreseeable future. 

MIT says CO2 removal would take 30 years for carbon capture to happen. Therefore, we have, in essence, gone over the climate cliff from multiple prediction perspectives.

3. Click here to see the latest monthly and yearly graphs for current carbon ppm in the atmosphere. 

4.  

 

The nine facts in this article are the facts that most other environmental groups are afraid to tell you. Once you understand them, you will be better prepared for what is happening now and what is coming.

Read more

There is a lot to update you about on global warming emergency this month especially since we missed last month's update...

Read more

There are serious reasons for why we may not achieve the extinction-preventing 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines. We may not even hit any fossil fuel reduction targets or deadlines for the next 30-50 years.

Here's why...

Read more

Last Updated 4.16.25.

Job One for Humanity published this article. Job One is a nonprofit climate change think tank and risk assessment organization founded in 2008. It is independent, 100% publicly funded, and uncensored by any government or corporation.

 

Prologue

The following page helps explain why about half of humanity will perish by about 2050. Many more will die between 2015 and 2070 if our governments do not immediately enforce the mandatory 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. 

When you read this page, please remember that the climate change consequences described below are not only destructive by themselves. Most climate change consequences described below will also interact with and amplify other interconnected climate change consequence areas. This interaction and amplification feedback cycle is one of the most unseen, unrecognized, and dangerous parts of our climate change nightmare and emergency.

All is not lost, and there is hope. This is because, as you will find out when you read about the second and third global warming tipping points, Mother Nature will indirectly do what our governments have directly failed to do to lower global fossil fuel use, but it will be a very painful process.

 

Get Our New Free Climate Change Danger Alerts and Brief Climate Updates Here!

 

Overview

This article and its links discuss:

1. How and why will half of humanity go extinct if it passes beyond the critical carbon 450 ppm (parts per million) level and threshold?  

2. How to prevent crossing the atmospheric carbon level of 450 ppm. (This carbon ppm level is our last genuine chance to avoid a climate change mass extinction threshold that, once crossed, will lead to the near-certain extinction of about half of humanity by about 2050. 

3. The four global warming extinction-accelerating tipping points and the five phases of runaway global heating, most of which are irreversible for centuries to thousands of years. (This article contains dense, complex climate science and analysis on why half of humanity will perish by about 2050 if we keep doing "business as usual." When you finish it, you will understand the unconscionable climate change nightmare humanity is now subjected to because of the greed of the global fossil fuel cartel.)

4. How numerous greater and lesser climate change tipping points and feedbacks will cross and interact with each other. These crossed tipping points and feedbacks will cause even more climate change tipping points and feedbacks to be crossed and interact. Each new cycle of crossed climate tipping points and feedback WILL raise average global temperatures even faster and further intensify climate change consequences until little is left of humanity.

If we act soon and get close to the challenging 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, crossing the carbon 450 ppm threshold doesn't have to be humanity's fate.

 

Introduction

Irreversible climate change specifically means that we will not be able to get the dangerous levels of excess greenhouse gases (like carbon) out of our atmosphere and back down to a normal and human-safe pre-industrial level for hundreds to thousands of years. This will cause many of the worst consequences of climate change to last long after we have stopped burning fossil fuels.

As of July 2023, we are currently at the atmospheric carbon level of 420 ppm. We will soon enter the generally considered irreversible second phase of runaway global heating sometime between 2025 and 2031. This is when we enter into the carbon 425-450 ppm range.

This page explains why most people who hear our governments talking about global fossil fuel reduction targets for 2030-2060 have no idea if we fail to make the 2025 critical reductions over the next 3 to 6 years. We are royally screwed!

If we miss the correct 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets by a lot, we will not only suffer the unavoidable extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century, but we also will bring about a:

a. widespread great global collapse of our critical social, economic, and political systems, and

b. a rapidly worsening runaway global heating resulting in our near-total human extinction by about 2070-2080.

Unfortunately, many climate activists and environmental organizations still do not understand the following:

a. the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, 

b. where runaway global heating becomes fully beyond our control or

c. where the climate change survival threshold and its final deadline exist.

Consequently, they develop climate change education and remedial climate change programs that do not match or fit the true urgency of this emergency or the real deadlines necessary to save the lives of most of humanity.

Hopefully, this article will help those individuals, organizations, and governments re-adjust their climate change programs accordingly before it is too late!

This article explains in great detail why we must act within this 3-8 year window of opportunity to fix the climate change emergency. It also contains an important section near its end on why all is not hopeless yet! 

This article will also help explain why worsening climate change consequences interacting with multiplying and amplifying humanity's other 11 major crises will cause a highly likely, and almost certain, globally widespread "Great Collapse" of our economic, political, ecological, and social systems, which can be partial, transitional, and temporary if we act in time. 

When you finish reading this article, you will know if we have already entered into a runaway global heating extinction emergency.

In many places on our website, we have warned that about half of humanity will unavoidably go extinct by mid-century. After reading this entire page, you will conclusively understand why this will occur. It will become more than apparent as you watch the carbon and methane in our atmosphere rise and as higher global temperatures lock in with each new tipping point crossed.

Below, the cumulative primary and secondary effects of increasing climate change consequences and crossed climate change tipping points and feedbacks will painfully illuminate how the unavoidable extinction of about half of humanity is already occurring by about mid-century. (The how of a runaway global heating-driven mass extinction is found on this page.)

Only when you understand both why and how mass extinction will happen will you genuinely grasp the accuracy of our climate change think tank's additional warning and that; unfortunately, we also face near-total, but NOT total, extinction.  

When you finish both the why and how pages, you will not doubt the reasonableness of our strong warnings about mass and near-total extinction. (Near-total extinction is defined as about 50 to 90+ percent of what remains of humanity going extinct post-2050.

We know this news is frightening, but a bit of good news is that it is also highly improbable that all of humanity will go extinct. (For why it is highly improbable that we will go totally extinct from climate change and global heating, click here.)

While reading this article, please remember that many of the climate tipping point risks and feedback below are yet avoidable and unnecessary. We can still slow and fix climate change if we work together to get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel targets.

Finally, to help you process the following uncomfortable news, we have provided realistic, good climate news at the end of this challenging article! You will even find a plan for what you can do to help slow and fix the runaway global heating extinction emergency.

 

A quick overview of the four extinction-accelerating tipping points and the four phases of irreversible global warming

There are just four critical atmospheric carbon-based global warming accelerating tipping points and deadlines to never forget.

Atmospheric carbon (CO2) is measured in parts per million (ppm.) If you look a bit farther down the page, you will see an atmospheric carbon CO2 graph that will give you an initial idea of our current danger level.

Here is a quick overview of the atmospheric carbon danger levels: 

1. The carbon 386 tipping point, which we passed in 2015. At this point, we entered into the beginning of the first phase of runaway global heating. (This was discovered by James Hansen, the NASA scientist who was one of the first to warn the world of the extinction threat.)

2. The 2025-2031 carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and last chance to prevent mass extinction threshold. This is the second phase of runaway global heating, contributing to an unavoidable extinction process for half of humanity by mid-century. (This second phase is generally seen as irreversible for centuries to millennia.)

3. The 2042-2067 or earlier carbon 500 ppm tipping point begins the runaway global ice melt. This is the third phase of irreversible runaway global heating, which accelerates the unavoidable extinction process for half of humanity by mid-century and can lead to the extinction of a far greater portion of humanity from 2050-2070. (This third phase is also irreversible for centuries to millennia.)

4. The 2063-2072 or earlier, the carbon 600 ppm near-total human extinction tipping point due to massive methane releases from the permafrost and the oceans. This climate change tipping point creates the fourth phase of runaway global heating. (This fourth phase is also irreversible for centuries to millennia.)

5. The post-2072, the carbon 750 ppm final and fifth phase of irreversible runaway global heating. (This crossed threshold leads to certain total human and biological extinction.) This fifth phase may be irreversible forever or for many millennia.

Of these four still yet-to-be-crossed tipping points, the 2025-2031 carbon 450 ppm tipping point is the most important. Once we cross the 2025-2031 tipping point, any realistic or practical control of our global warming future to prevent mass extinction is all but over for centuries, possibly thousands of years. 

If we pass all four yet-to-be-crossed tipping points, we will experience human, animal, and biological extinction. We also will experience complete economic, social, and political collapse and chaos beginning at the second phase and long before the fifth phase of runaway global heating. 

That is a powerful statement, but we can prove it in the materials and links on this page.

 

 

The current global warming consequences will be like a day at the beach compared to what is coming if we trigger the four global warming tipping points described below. (Those current consequences are massive and escalating wildfires, heat waves, droughts, flooding, rain bombs, extreme and record-breaking weather, bomb cyclones, sea-level rise, etc. Click here for all 20 of those consequences.)

Once you understand the four tipping points and deadlines, you can plan for your future safety or your smartest business moves in a rapidly deteriorating environment. The following sections will discuss most aspects of these global warming tipping points in detail.

But before you can fully grasp the insane danger of crossing any of the four key tipping points below, you will need to understand how we measure carbon in the atmosphere. (Much of today's atmospheric carbon is caused by burning fossil fuels.)

First, some basics: How we measure global warming and what increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tells us about future global warming and our extinction 

Before you can fully grasp the danger of crossing the four key extinction-accelerating tipping points below, you will need to understand how we measure carbon in the atmosphere. (Carbon is the main greenhouse gas that we are creating by our fossil fuel use that is causing global warming.)

Atmospheric carbon from fossil fuel burning is the main human-caused factor in the escalating global warming we are experiencing now. The current level of carbon in our atmosphere is tracked using what is called the Keeling curve. 

Each year, many measurements are taken at Mauna Loa, Hawaii to determine the parts per million (ppm) of carbon in the atmosphere at that time. At the beginning of the Industrial Revolution (1), around 1880, before we began fossil fuel burning, our atmospheric carbon ppm level was at about 270. Here is the Keeling curve graph of July of 2024. 

 

 

Keeling Curve Monthly CO2 graph, via Show.earth (2)

 

As you can see, we are not doing very well. No matter what you hear in the media, if the total carbon ppm level is not going down or the carbon’s average ppm level per year is not falling or at least slowing its steep increase, (3) we are not making any significant progress on resolving the escalating global warming emergency. Total atmospheric carbon and carbon’s average ppm level per year are the most dependable measurements of our progress and a predictor of what will happen with global warming and its many consequences.

How do we know if we're making honest progress in reducing carbon dioxide to reduce escalating global warming?

There are at least two ways we will be able to tell that we are making honest progress in reducing global warming:

1. When we see our average annual increase in carbon ppm levels (currently at about 3 ppm per year) begin dropping, remaining at the current level, or at least rising at a slower rate.

2. When we start seeing the above Keeling graph levels dropping from the current carbon ppm level (approximately 425 ppm) to carbon levels of 350-325 ppm. (How we do this is in the free Job One Plan.)

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A quick look at the historic rise of carbon in the atmosphere

On average, over the last 60 years, for every additional 25 parts per million (ppm) of carbon that goes into the atmosphere, our average global temperature goes up .5 degrees Fahrenheit or about .25 degrees C. On average, over the last 6 decades, we have been adding about an increase of 3 + additional carbon ppm into the atmosphere each year.

If you look at the trendline on the graph above, you can clearly see we are in serious trouble! In spite of everything you are hearing about all we have done to reduce global warming over the past 30+ years, you can clearly see that global warming from increased atmospheric carbon is not only continuing to get worse, but it is also getting worse at an even faster rate. 

It is also critical to understand that the ever-increasing damage that we are doing to our life-critical environment is primarily because of our carbon pollution of the atmosphere and its consequent global warming. Worse yet, this warming will not reverse itself for hundreds to thousands of years from now!

What you will find below is the how, when, and why the next wave of crossed global warming tipping points will not only severely worsen our lives but also bring about the extinction of most of humanity. Before that extinction occurs, we will experience escalating economic, political, and social chaos within our lifetimes.

When reading the four tipping points described below, keep in mind that:

1. we are almost out of time to do something about them (unless we get close to these 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets) and

2. the following four tipping points both define and highlight the key elements and essence of what makes up our current global warming extinction emergency.

3. the first three tipping points trigger an unavoidable mass extinction by mid-century. The last tipping point triggers near-total extinction not long after that.

To set the final stage for your discovery of the four critical tipping points and deadlines, it is also advantageous to review what is happening in our climate right now:

1. At our current atmospheric carbon levels, we are already experiencing more and worsening extreme droughts and storms, wildfires, rain bombs, bomb cyclones, hurricanes, and other wild and unseasonable weather.

2. At our current atmospheric carbon level of about 420 ppm, the stability of the bellwether West Antarctic ice sheet has already been breached, and this ice loss is now irreversible. (This ice sheet plays a critical role in rising sea levels. This ice sheet is also an excellent example of one of many critical global warming tipping points  the world has hurdled past far faster than anyone had predicted or foreseen.)

3. The Earth's temperature has risen radically (exponentially) since the Industrial Revolution from the previous stable range it held for thousands of years. It will continue to rise radically as we fail to reduce our global fossil fuel use. Please notice how the average global temperature is rising faster and faster over shorter and shorter periods of time.

Since 1970 alone, the average global temperature rose from preindustrial levels of .7 degrees Celsius to 1.4 degrees Celsius. That is a faster average global temperature rise than has occurred in over one million years! At our current increasing fossil fuel use rates, we will soon be committed to crossing the 2.0 - 2.7 Celsius degree increase from the preindustrial levels mark sometime after 2025. 

 

(The red line is rising temperature and the blue line rising atmospheric carbon measured in ppm.)

Based upon the foundational global warming measurement and other information from above, you are ready for what will happen over the next few decades if we go over what we call the 2025 carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and do not come very close to meeting these 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. 

 

 

Here are the four critical levels of global warming extinction triggering and accelerating tipping points we will cross in the near future if we fail to act effectively

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

The four critical atmospheric carbon-based global warming accelerating tipping points and deadlines to never forget are:

1. The 2025 carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point level. (This tipping point significantly accelerates and initiates the complete runaway global warming process of triggering more and more critical global warming tipping points at faster and faster rates. Once we cross this carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point, the average global temperature will continue to rise out of our control. It will continue rising, powered by the laws of climate physics and the natural forces of the climate system.

This tipping point, if avoided, will allow us to at least slow down the currently unavoidable extinction of half of humanity by mid-century so that more of us can live longer. On the other hand, this tipping point, if crossed, will lead us within a few additional decades beyond the unavoidable extinction of half of humanity into total human extinction.) 

2. The extinction-accelerating, runaway global ice melting carbon 500 ppm tipping point level. (ALL ice and ALL glaciers on Earth will enter a near-unstoppable process of a complete meltdown! (Sea levels could rise up to 10 feet over decades and up to 220 feet over several centuries.)

3. The carbon 600 ppm total human extinction, runaway massive methane release tipping point level. (Carbon 600 ppm is where massive amounts of methane gas start being released from coastal ocean shelves and the world's permafrost, and all of humanity will perish.) And,

4. The above carbon 750 ppm runaway greenhouse gas effect and the atmosphere removal tipping point level. (This is the final global warming tipping point level of carbon 750 and beyond. It leads to the near-total extinction of all biological life on Earth that needs oxygen to survive. This is because our average global temperature is rising so high that Earth's oxygen atmosphere is stripped off into space, and everything dies.)

It is important to note that every advanced national intelligence agency around the world with adequate long-term climate research funding already knows about the above four tipping points and precisely what will happen when we cross them. (Just like they knew that we had to be prepared for the next pandemic.) Yet, they chose to keep this information a carefully guarded national secret and not urge their politicians to adequately and publicly prepare or act. 

The reason for this secrecy may be simple. If you knew your governments were secretly preparing to save themselves and their key personnel from what you are about to read, you probably would be angry, fearful, and in panic. Widespread public anger and fear would substantially interfere with or delay governmental efforts to secretly prepare their survival plans. To think that the best-resourced national intelligence agencies do not have this information and the big data meta-systemic analysis skills to review current climate research studies and see the coming extinction emergency is naive.

We know the previous is a lot to take in. After you read about the detailed consequences of crossing these four critical global warming consequences below, we think you, too will understand why governments have chosen to keep this information secret and are trying to protect themselves first. This secrecy and public denial of the global warming extinction emergency is not only logical for their survival, but also necessary if anything is going to survive! 

After you finish this article, you will also know the most probable cause of an inevitable World War III if we let this extinction emergency get out of control. That inevitability will be a massive nuclear, biological and/or chemical war for the last global warming safer zones where a tiny desperate portion of humanity may be able to survive if we do not cross the fourth and final tipping point.

 

 

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

When you cross a global warming tipping point, things generally get a lot worse faster. Therefore, as you read the four levels of extinction-accelerating tipping points below, it is important to remember that as we cross more global warming tipping points, the global warming consequences will also get worse and worse, faster and faster!

They will not grow gradually and linearly. They will grow steeply to exponentially over time. (In the graph below, the red line is an example of a linear gradual growth trajectory, the blue line is a significantly steeper curve, and the green line is an example of an exponential growth curve and trajectory.)

 

 

 

This much steeper to an exponential growth of global warming consequences will begin about 2025-2031 when we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point threshold). It will continue worsening from there. 

This very steep to exponential growth in the severity, frequency, and scale of global warming consequences also means that few, if any, NGOs, corporations, or governments will ever be able to either manage or recover from these accelerating consequences for long. A climate consequence steep to exponential growth curve also means that unless you have made emergency preparations long before these consequences occur, you won't have enough time to do so later. 

This rising danger of getting caught unprepared exists because our social, economic, and political systems also will become radically more unpredictable, unstable, and chaotic. This system instability will happen sometime after global warming consequences enter their steeper to exponential curves (the green line above.) 

If you have not prepared for this next step of a radical to exponentially rising global warming consequence growth long before it is needed (2025-2031), you will find yourself in a living hell! (See our Plan B for Climate Change Resilience for ideas on how to get well-prepared for what is coming and what is now unavoidable because of climate momentum and human inertia. Unfortunately, preparing correctly will take most people and organizations several years!)

The next section will discuss the four most dangerous tipping point levels in detail. In these four levels of tipping points, it also contains the four most critical reasons why we have only about six years left (until about 2025) to slow down an unavoidable mass extinction process as well as our crossing the other near-total extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points described below. As you read about these four major global warming tipping point levels, our current extreme extinction threat will become vividly real to you.

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

 

The first extinction-triggering tipping point and the second phase of runaway global heating will be crossed sometime between 2025-2031. It is the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point 

Overview of the first extinction-triggering tipping point

At this threshold of atmospheric carbon, we will cross many new climate tipping points and trigger climate feedback loops. These occurrences will significantly accelerate and ensure the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century.  It is the last chance threshold we must not cross to prevent mass extinction.

Beginning about 2025-2031, the severity, frequency, and scale of current climate change consequences will rise steeply to exponentially. These rising consequences include heatwaves, droughts, wildfires, hurricanes, flooding, rain bombs, extreme wind, dust, wildfire smoke storms, unseasonable cold spells, and abnormal seasonal changes.

This increase in climate consequence severity, frequency, and scale is because we have already crossed the beginning of the first stage of runaway global heating and are about to cross into the second. If you imagined runaway global heating like a train without brakes rolling down a mountain that is getting steeper and steeper, you would have a good idea about the seriousness of our climate consequences soon rising steeply to exponentially.

Because climate change consequences will soon begin rising steeply to exponentially, you may have only a few more years of relative climate change stability, depending upon where you live. (Beginning around 2025, if you are in a high-risk climate change area, the global heating consequences you are already experiencing will start to become far worse than you are currently experiencing.)

Saying we have only three to, at best, nine more years left to control climate change and global heating does not mean that humanity will go totally extinct in 3-6 years! It only means that if we do not do what is necessary to radically reduce global fossil fuel use over the several years to meet the 2025 global targets:

1. many more climate change consequences will begin at vastly higher levels of severity, frequency, and scale. (They will quickly increase steeply to exponentially.) And,

2. humanity will face many more unavoidable cataclysmic climate change consequences (such as about half of humanity going extinct by mid-century.) 

3. we also will face near-total extinction because we will keep moving into the danger levels of the second and third extinction-accelerating tipping point levels. (If you are curious about what near-total extinction is, why we will not go totally extinct, and why near-total extinction is good news when compared to as opposed to total extinction, click here.)

To put the danger of this first near-total extinction-triggering tipping point in the proper perspective, it is vital to remember that atmospheric carbon was at about 270 ppm for hundreds of thousands of years. At carbon 270 ppm, there was climate stability. 

Our best climate scientists have now calculated that if we kept atmospheric carbon below the carbon 350 ppm level, we would avoid the worse consequences of climate change, global warming.

The most important thing to remember is that crossing the first extinction-triggering tipping point and passing the carbon 450 ppm threshold will bring about an unavoidable extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century. We will experience the unavoidable extinction of about half of humanity because we will trigger far too many of the primary and secondary runaway global heating consequences, many occurring simultaneously. 

 

Climate Inertial and Momentum

What follows in this section are the technical details on how and why not crossing this first climate change extinction-accelerating tipping point is so critical to our future survival. The following will also help you learn about climate system momentum factors and human inertia factors.

Most people, unfortunately, do not understand the extinction-preventing 2025 global fossil fuel reduction deadline. Moreover, they do not understand the physics and mechanics behind the laws of climate momentum and human inertia. 

Our current climate momentum factors mean that even if we stopped ALL global burning of fossil fuels today, global temperatures would continue rising for the next 2-3 (or more) decades. Furthermore, it also means that the radical 2025 global fossil fuel reductions we must make immediately will not deliver significant and observable benefits to the average citizen for about 2-3 decades. Finally, if we ever make the needed fossil fuel reductions, this climate momentum time lag will challenge the patience and understanding of almost everyone, not just our politicians. 

 

 

 

The graph above illustrates a true exponential rise in the three critical atmospheric greenhouse gases expressed in parts per billion. Since the mid-1700s and the start of the Industrial Revolution, these gases have been mostly human-made from burning fossil fuels. As a result, each of these greenhouse gases has built up considerable atmospheric heat-increasing momentum! (Click here to learn more about our 60 years of failed global fossil fuel reductions.)

We only have until about 2025 to 2031 to maintain control of our global warming future. This short time is because we will cross new dangerous climate tipping points as we pass through the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold. 

 

The old and new climate cliff: The beginning of runaway global warming and moving quickly toward irreversible runaway global warming

For a bit, we must talk about the concept of the climate cliff and what it is before we detail the first extinction-producing tipping point, which is when we cross the carbon 425-450 threshold. For years, our organization had previously called this carbon 425-450 ppm level the climate cliff. (In this article, you will also hear us call the carbon 425-450 ppm level our first extinction-triggering or producing tipping point.)

The original climate cliff 425-450 ppm level was based on the United Nations' decades-long-held target of keeping the average global temperature rising no more than 2°C above preindustrial levels. Recently, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) lowered its temperature target level to 1.5 C based on realizing the consequences of a 2°C temperature increase above preindustrial levels would be far worse than the original research indicated.

The UN's new climate cliff level of 2020 is now to stay below an average global temperature increase of 1.5C. This target level has changed because global warming consequences above this temperature are now known to be much worse than previously believed.

One of the other significant reasons now being acknowledged among recognized climate scientists for the new UN 1.5 C climate cliff temperature target level is that there are already considerably more atmospheric carbon emissions than was previously predicted. These additional carbon emissions come from other amplifying carbon feedback loops and carbon sink failures.

Many of these further amplifying carbon feedback loops and carbon sink issues will show up just beyond a 1.5 °C average global temperature increase as soon as 2025. (These amplifying carbon feedbacks and carbon sink failures will be described further below.)

Newer research also shows that staying at or near a 1.5 C average global temperature increase may be the temperature level that entirely excludes the latter levels of runaway global warming and continues to cross additional extinction-triggering global warming tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops.

At this point, it is also essential to understand what is meant by the term runaway global warming. Runaway global warming means that global warming will continue to increase on a runaway course. Imagine a train going down a steep hill with no functional brakes. Once the runaway global warming "train" gets started, in most cases, it will continue to roll on by itself with no practical way to stop or control it.

There are several levels of runaway global warming: beginning, extinction, and the Venus effect. 

The beginning level of runaway global warming is defined as the point where numerous climate change and global warming consequences become catastrophic and unavoidable! For example, the UN's new 1.5 C climate cliff temperature threshold now means that because of what just the beginning level of runaway global warming can do, going above 1.5 C level will eventually lead to the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century. (This link will show you how this mass extinction event will happen.)

Extinction-level runaway global warming is the level of runaway global warming that will ensure humanity's near-total extinction. Venus-level runaway global warming will be so bad that it rips the atmosphere off our planet. As a result, the Earth will lose all human and biological life. This level of runaway global warming is believed to have happened to the planet Venus.

In our own internal 2016-17 climate analysis, using existing fossil fuel infrastructure, we calculated the first climate cliff for triggering beginning level runaway global warming (an unstoppable crossing of more amplifying global warming tipping points and climate feedback loops) would occur between the carbon 425 to carbon 450 ppm levels. These levels of atmospheric carbon would eventually create at least a global 2 °C - 2.7 °C temperature increase over preindustrial levels. 

Because of the UN IPCC threshold level of 1.5C, the beginning temperature and carbon limits for our former carbon climate cliff level now needed to be updated from its previous carbon level (425-450 ppm) and previous temperature level of about 2 -2.7° C above preindustrial levels to the new 1.5 C climate cliff starting point (about carbon 386.)

 

The new climate Cliff Shocker

The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has previously calculated that reaching the carbon 420 ppm level is equivalent to a 1.6 C average global temperature increase from preindustrial levels. They made this very low-temperature rise calculation without including crossing any of the many climate tipping points or amplifying carbon feedback loops.

But, as you will soon discover, we have already crossed important climate tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops and will quickly cross many more. (Our calculations, making reasonable allowances and adjustments for crossed tipping points and omitted amplifying carbon feedback loops, show the temperatures will rise much higher than the UN's temperature calculations.)

To have stayed below a 1.5 C target temperature increase, we would have had to have kept our atmospheric carbon level below 386 ppm. But, according to James Hansen the world-renowned climate scientist, around 2015, we already had crossed over 386 carbon ppm level and ensured that we would hit the 1.5 C level. 

The good news is we can still slow down the extinction of half of humanity by mid-century if we come close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. (It is perfectly normal to reject or doubt the possibility of such large-scale extinction occurring so soon. Therefore, we strongly recommend at some point clicking here to see the detailed sequences of some 80 primary and secondary consequences that will bring about the extinction of about half of humanity.)

All we can do now is slow and delay our partial extinction. But, it will take a government-driven mass mobilization to do it. This government-driven mass mobilization would have to radically reduce global fossil fuel use and get very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets as its first action. 

If the world governments act immediately and get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, more people will live longer and more comfortably. And, maybe we can still save humanity from the only thing worse than the extinction of half or more of humanity by mid-century, humanity's near-total extinction occurring from about 2050-2080 or sooner. 

And there is a bit more bad news. Acting only to minimize the current global warming extinction threat is insane! It is insane because any temperature increase of 1.5 C will also trigger the crossing of three more extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops.

If nothing is done by our governments to radically slow and then reverse the average global temperature increase above the 1.5 C level, near-total extinction will be our eventual future. Supporting this 1.5 C danger is the Siberia permafrost field research (rather than the currently less accurate computer modeling) by Anton Vaks. (Reversing climate change means we need to get back down to at least carbon 350 ppm for some stability and hopefully eventually back down to carbon 270 ppm, where both humans and nature flourished.)

This Siberian research puts a global permafrost "thaw-down" also beginning at 1.5 °C. This Siberian research means that when the world's permafrost crosses this 1.5 °C average global temperature increase tipping point, the world's permafrost begins a near-continuous meltdown. Furthermore, this research indicates that after we reach a 1.5 °C average global temperature increase, all permafrost stored carbon and methane will eventually be released from the permafrost. 

This 1.5 °C permafrost release point, plus other human-made carbon and methane releases, put us squarely on the fast track for the worst global warming prediction scenarios. (Click here for more documentation on the permafrost meltdown.)

Our ticking permafrost methane time bomb is further illuminated by the rising atmospheric methane CH4 graph below. When viewing this methane graph, consider that atmospheric methane is about 80 times more effective over 20 years and about 24 times more effective over 100 years than atmospheric carbon in increasing global warming. (The atmospheric methane graph below is in parts per billion [ppb].) 

 

 

It is vital to know how having already crossed the carbon 386 ppm new UN 1.5 C climate cliff will further accelerate the crossing of more global warming tipping points and amplify carbon feedback loops

The new carbon 386 ppm tipping point level was our last chance climate cliff because it was our last window of opportunity to keep from crossing the next critical atmospheric carbon threshold, which, when crossed, will significantly accelerate crossing more global warming tipping points and amplifying carbon feedback loops. Once we go over this 386 ppm climate cliff, our average global temperature will inevitably rise considerably above 1.5C - 2°C (eventually possibly as much as 3.2 C in eventual equilibrium warming.

Equilibrium warming is known as equilibrium climate sensitivity (ECS.). It is the long-term temperature rise (equilibrium global mean near-surface air temperature) that is expected to result from a doubling of the atmospheric CO₂ concentration.)

Moreover, this temperature rise will be far faster than has ever occurred over previous human-friendly geologically-scaled periods. This means that what used to happen over millennia or centuries within our climate systems will now occur over decades!

Unfortunately, rapidly rising global temperatures are not the worst effect of crossing the carbon 386 ppm level and the climate cliff. These fast temperature rises will also create a decisive additional climate momentum factor in addition to the already existing atmospheric carbon momentum. This further climate-related momentum will not only push our global temperature even higher even faster, but it will also force many of the 11 climate tipping points below and more tipping points within the climate's subsystems to be crossed much faster! 

(The illustration below lists the 11 major global warming tipping points. The arrows between the tipping points indicate that these tipping points interact and can also trigger each other's system or subsystem tipping points. Global warming temperatures will soar faster and faster as we cross more climate tipping points, which will cross even more climate and human system tipping points in an endless feedback loop.) 

 

 

At some point, we strongly recommend that you click here to learn more details about each tipping point above and how they will unfold to bring us closer to near-total extinction. This tipping point meltdown detail page covers what happens when you cross each of the above global warming tipping points, how they accelerate global warming temperature rise, how they accelerate global warming consequences, and how they cause sudden and complete climate, biological and human system collapses. Crossing these climate tipping points will also make any possible recovery from crossing these tipping points impossible or much slower, harder, and more expensive. This expanded tipping point reading will help you "see" the tremendous and dangerous impact that the many additional and soon-arriving crossed global warming tipping points will have on your future.

(At some point, to learn more about tipping point effects, we strongly recommend that you click here to learn more details about each tipping point above and how they will unfold to bring us closer to near-total extinction. (This additional tipping point meltdown page covers what happens when you cross the above tipping points, how they accelerate the global warming temperature rise, consequences, and how they will cause sudden and complete climate, biological, and human system collapses if left unchecked.)

Crossing these climate tipping points will also make any possible recovery from crossing these tipping points either impossible or much slower, more complicated, and more expensive. (This expanded tipping point reading will help you "see" the tremendous and dangerous impact that the many additional and soon-arriving crossed global warming tipping points will have on your future.)

 

What to expect in rising temperatures now that we have crossed the carbon 386 climate cliff into runaway global warming

Since we have already passed the carbon 386 ppm level back around 2015, within about five years (around 2025 or less), we can expect to lock in an eventual total minimal increase in average global temperature of about 1.5 °C. 

Next, we cross the carbon 425 ppm level by or before about 2025; we can expect to lock in an additional eventual total increase in average global temperature of about 2 -2.7° Celsius (4° - 4.9° Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels. (In March of 2022, we were at about carbon 420 ppm.) 

The distinguished Professor of Meteorology, Michael Mann from the University of Pennsylvania, recently stated that once we reach the atmospheric carbon 405 ppm level, a 2 degrees C average global temperature increase is already baked in! And once that happens, the terrible news is that we can do nothing effective at this point to stop those temperature levels from rising for many more decades. (Again, this is why we correctly call our current climate emergency the runaway global heating emergency.)

At only this 1.5 -2.7° Celsius increased average global temperature range, hundreds of millions will eventually starve, and hundreds of millions of people worldwide will eventually be forced to migrate or die. 

Furthermore, we are also condemned by the total heat-producing momentum of all of the previous carbon and other greenhouse gases that we have ever put into the atmosphere, along with the other factors mentioned further down this page. All of these will inevitably and quickly not only push our global temperature even higher but also trigger the crossing of ever more tipping points at an accelerating rate!

Because we have already gone over the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff and triggered this next level of accelerating climate tipping point crossings and climate feedbacks, we are now locked into continually increasing temperatures for as much as the next 30+ years and crossing even more dangerous tipping points and climate feedbacks. 

We will reach our next, even more dangerous, transitional carbon and temperature threshold when we eventually do cross the carbon 425-450 carbon ppm tipping point level. This is the extinction-triggering threshold where, because of crossing even more future global warming tipping points and amplifying climate feedback loops at an accelerating rate, we will be unable to stop ourselves from proceeding uncontrollably to average global temperature increases of 3°, 4°, 5°, and 6° Celsius (5.4°, 7.2°, 9°, and 10.8° Fahrenheit respectively.) 

Once we cross the 2° Celsius (the carbon 425-450 ppm level,) the higher mass extinction accelerating temperature levels of 3°, 4°, 5°, and even 6° Celsius will be all but locked in! According to James Hansen, one of the world's most influential climate researchers, a carbon 450 ppm level would eventually develop into an average global temperature increase of 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) in this century and be the end of human civilization as we've come to know it.

In many places on this website, Job One for Humanity has said that because we have wasted 60 years of scientific warnings and did little to fix global heating, we now face the unavoidable extinction of about half of Humanity by mid-century. We hope you can see how, with global temperatures reaching just 2-3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, this horrendous mass human extinction is not only possible, it is inevitable. When we reach a temperature increase of only 3° C, billions of lives could be lost. 

Unfortunately, there is nothing we can do to change the 60 years of our past climate inaction that will stop the mid-century extinction of about half of Humanity. But, we can still prevent our near-total extinction after mid-century by getting close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, and with the help of Mother Nature and some human counteractions once we are finally motivated enough to make the harsh changes needed. (At some point, please click here to read how the counteractions of Mother Nature and our human systems will eventually kick in to save us from total extinction.) 

At this point, because of the many increased temperatures being discussed, it is crucial to explain a bit further the global warming temperature-fed feedback loop. The hotter it gets, the more it amplifies and drives more intense global warming consequences, crossing more climate change tipping points and triggering more amplifying climate feedback loops.

Then, these more intense global warming consequences, additional crossed climate tipping points, and additional triggered amplifying climate feedback loops cause the temperature to rise even higher, which starts the cycle all over again. The bad news is that once this cycle gets going, it goes faster and faster like a train with no breaks running down a hill. That's more details about why they call it runaway global warming.

 

 

The uncontrollable continuous rise in average global temperature, which will cause mass starvation, death, and migration, will be due primarily to:

1. the major global warming consequences will continue to intensify and cross-react as heat rises. 

The following illustration will help you visualize how future global warming consequences will intensify separately and together as we cross more tipping points and global temperatures rise. Imagine all of these global warming consequences whirling around, colliding with, and amplifying each other because of the agitation and "boiling effect" of ever-rising heat. This motion is similar to how the rising heat under a steam cooker churns, whirls, and collides with the boiling water inside the steam cooker faster and more violently. 

 

 

As increasing heat boils our planet, just like boiling water in a pot, the above global warming consequences will intensify and increase in severity, frequency, and scale! (To learn about exactly how the escalating 20 worst global warming consequences will cause mass starvation, death, and migration as well as social, economic, and political chaos, click here.)

2. more global warming consequences (listed above) will go into positive feedback loops as temperatures rise. Think of a positive feedback loop as a small stimulus that then amplifies a specific effect or consequence, causing it to get bigger and bigger. For example, if you hold a microphone too close to a music amplifier, there will be an irritating scratchy distortion of sound that "feeds back" to the amplifier, getting louder and louder the longer the microphone is held closer and closer to the amplifier source. 

3. our being unable to stop ourselves from crossing more global warming tipping points. Crossing more tipping points will again trigger other positive feedback loops and points of no return within the systems and subsystems of the global climate. It will also cause global warming tipping points to interact with each other cumulatively.

4. our continuing to cross "points of no return" within the global warming tipping points processes. Tipping point processes have within them definite points of no return. Once a tipping point's point of no return is crossed, crossing that tipping point is all but inevitable. Once that occurs, things usually collapse quickly, and recovery is typically slow, complex, costly, or downright impossible.

 

 

5. the accelerating heat-producing carbon and other greenhouse gas momentum (we will continue to add more fossil fuel-burning carbon to the atmosphere every additional year (currently at the rate of about three carbon ppm per year.)

6. profound human system inertia and numerous other human system maladaptation factors will make it difficult to fix this extinction emergency or recover from it. (Described in detail on this page.)

Because of the preceding, we have no other rational alternative than to prevent crossing into the hazardous transitional carbon 425-450 ppm threshold range and tipping point. At our current carbon and other greenhouse gas atmospheric pollution rate, entering this range will, unfortunately, begin sometime around 2025 if we do not get very close to the correct and honest 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets. 

There is something we can always be sure of in this horrible emergency. No matter what and despite all of the challenges and painful tipping point outcomes that are coming, the single constant truth for the best possible climate outcome for humanity in this emergency is that the faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use:

a. the more people we will survive to carry on humanity, life, and our beautiful civilization, and

b. future generations will suffer less from an ever-increasing sequence of escalating global warming consequences.

In the illustration below, you will see a red vertical line, the "Must never pass, last chance battle line and range of carbon 425 to 450 ppm." As you can see, going over the carbon 425 ppm leads us to a very steep downward, darker red slope toward our rapid extinction. (The illustration below also shows at what carbon ppm levels the six distinct phases of a Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown will occur (i.e., CS Phases 1-6 below.) After you complete the rest of this document, we strongly recommend that you review the detailed year-by-year global warming consequence timetables found in the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown. (As a reminder, the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown will be linked again at the bottom of this page.)

 

 

 

In summary of the first extinction-triggering tipping point, here is what is most important to remember about a failure to get close to our 2025 reduction targets and going over the carbon 425-450 ppm extinction-triggering tipping point:

1. Once we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold, global warming consequences' frequency, severity, and scale will go from gradual linear increases to very steep to exponential consequence increases! This steep to exponential consequence explosion will begin within 3-6 years (2025-2031) as we cross this critical extinction-triggering tipping point. (As of July of 2024, we are at carbon 425 ppm.)

Please, for effect, once again, see the most current blue Atmospheric CO2 carbon graph (on this page) to see how dangerously close we are to this critical carbon 425 - 450 ppm tipping point already.

2. After we also cross the carbon 425-450 ppm range, the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century is assured and unavoidable. The mathematics and physics of atmospheric carbon and other greenhouse gases, raising our temperature, will climb steeply and then exponentially after going over the carbon 425-450 ppm level. This additional greenhouse gas rise will drive our temperatures ever higher, even faster up to and through at least two more extinction-accelerating tipping points and into the many other global warming consequences described both further below and in these primary and these secondary runaway global heating consequences. 

3. After we cross the 425-450 ppm threshold, stopping this ever-increasing global warming temperature momentum will be like trying to stop a gigantic boulder from rolling faster and faster down a hill that keeps getting steeper and steeper. 

4. We are in an unacknowledged climate change extinction emergency, and so far, our governments are not even close to reaching the critical 2025 targets. 

5. If we do not come close to the 2025 targets, we lose our last chance to stop ourselves from going over additional and far worse global warming tipping points. These extra tipping points will cause near-total to total human extinction and economic, political, and social chaos within our lifetimes!

If we do not come close to the 2025 targets, our final window of opportunity to effectively control our destiny regarding preventing the other two near-total extinction-accelerating tipping points from being crossed closes. This unthinkable outcome is also why the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point level is our most crucial next tipping point to understand and respect. (More about what causes this near-complete loss of control of our global warming future will be explained in the following even worse climate tipping point sections below.)

6. The beginning of runaway global warming was initiated when we went over the climate cliff and crossed carbon 386 ppm in 2015. We will fully enter the unavoidable mass extinction level of climate change when we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold. This is the carbon level where we can no longer stop ourselves from crossing a cascade of more significant climate tipping points.

7. Mass human extinction will accelerate as we cross the 3° C level and pass beyond it.  Once we cross the 2° Celsius (the carbon 425-450 ppm level,) the inevitable mass extinction accelerating temperature levels of 3°, 4°, 5°, and even 6° Celsius will be all but locked in! 

At 4° C, life will be a living hell for unlucky survivors. Crossing the carbon 450 ppm level will eventually develop into an average global temperature increase of 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) well before the end of this century and be the end of human civilization as we've come to know it.  At or near a temperature increase of 4° C, the lives of half of humanity are in severe peril if not gone.

8. In case you have been tricked by massive fossil fuel industry propaganda campaigns and still believe some "new technology" will save us just in time. Get over that fairy tale. 

We have only 3-6 years left to get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets or lose control of our climate change future. But, unfortunately, no new carbon removal technologies (or what we at Job One for Humanity call the magical carbon-sucking unicorns) will be able to save us in time.

Once we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold, we will cross so many additional climate tipping points and trigger so many climate change feedback loops that carbon and methane levels in the atmosphere will start to skyrocket far, far beyond where they are now. Carbon and methane released from the tundra, permafrost, and forests are growing fast. Soon the oceans and soils will also start releasing massive amounts of carbon at levels no "new technology" will be able to keep up with or reverse for centuries.

The highly-touted fossil fuel industry's heavily-lobbied carbon removal technology fails because even those who believe this technology might save us are projecting that it will not be scaled up enough to make a significant difference until sometime after 2050. Unfortunately, this 2050 date is long after irreversible climate damage has been done, and long after anything can be done for the billions who will suffer and die! 

(Please click here if you still have any illusions about new and heavily promoted carbon removal technology miraculously saving us at the last minute. The science and math there will help you understand that the only way out of this imminent extinction catastrophe is to radically reduce global  fossil fuel use globally to come very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.)

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

Additionally, it is not just carbon capture "new technologies" that are unworkable when one confronts the honest global fossil fuel reduction deadlines we now face and their many primary and secondary consequences. No miracle "new technology" (like solar screening, geo-engineering, etc.) currently exists at the needed scale or cost efficiency capable of saving humanity from our accelerating global heating nightmare before about half of humanity is dead. No "new technology will magically get us close to the painful 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets in time.

The widely promised miracle "new technologies" that will save us from climate extinction are fossil fuel industry-supported illusions and false solutions. They intentionally act to hide the absolute urgency of the runaway global heating emergency and the fossil fuel profit-killing reality that we must radically reduce global fossil fuels use now!

Worse yet:

1. None of the current miracle "new technology" climate solutions can come even close to globally scaling up in time to compensate for our significantly missing the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. 

2. Most have not yet been proven to work (even at a small scale.)

3. All have not been adequately tested at a sufficiently large enough scale for unintended side effects. Any unknown and unintended side effects could create even more significant problems than the problems they were designed to solve.

4. They all appear to be prohibitively costly and financially unsustainable.

5. Many burn so much fossil fuel trying to remove atmospheric carbon or geo-engineer the planet or atmosphere that their massive fossil fuel use eliminates their benefits. Additionally, massive amounts of energy will be needed to process the required raw materials and fabricate the solutions to implement the new technologies. To do this quickly, existing methods must provide the energy, which would further delay reaching global fossil fuel reduction goals. And finally. And worst of all,

6. These miracle "new technologies" falsely promise that we can continue our lives of over-consuming, overpopulating, polluting, and burning fossil fuels exactly as we are now or with little painless change. Nothing could be further from the truth if we want to survive.

Furthermore, society is ignoring that we are reaching limits to the availability of many natural resources. To build these proposed new technologies, vital materials will be required in such tremendous amounts that routine daily needs would be severely impacted.

 

 

Possibly after 2050, some new technology will be tested, safe and deployable at scale and reasonable costs to contribute in some minor way to restoring our climate stability. But none of these new technologies can replace the urgent, immediate requirement to radically reduce all global fossil fuel use to get close to the correct and honest 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.

Hoping for some "new technology" to be discovered at the last minute to miraculously save us is a horrible personal, corporate, or national strategy dooming us to fail ourselves into extinction and chaos.

9. The only effective way to prevent our near-total extinction from the primary and secondary consequences of climate change is to get as close to the correct and honest 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.

10. James Hansen, a former NASA climate scientist, and leading climate researcher, said that we should be safe if we stayed below an atmospheric carbon level of 350 parts per million (ppm). However, he also said that if we go beyond an atmospheric carbon level of about 386 ppm, we will enter into a state of runaway global heating. As of July of 2024, we were at carbon 425 ppm. We are already deep into runaway global warming and racing towards mass extinction.

 

Additional thoughts on the critical importance of the carbon 425-450 ppm first extinction-triggering tipping point and the probable sequences of cataclysmic climate events as we approach and cross it

Because we have ignored decades of climate warming, we are already deep into the climate change trajectory toward extinction and the collapse of civilization. This collapse outcome is highly likely because nine of the known global warming and climate change tipping points that regulate the climatic state of the planet have already been activated.

 

 

In alignment with the above illustration, please take the time to read about one very hazardous glacier collapse in particular. It is genuinely critical to your immediate future well-being. Click here to read about the 2-3 foot quick and severe global sea level rise consequences of the Thwaites "doomsday glacier."  It will describe our first truly global climate catastrophe. This soon-collapsing massive glacier will give you a glimpse into the global economic, social, and political turmoil this single glacier will create.

Here is a recent update on the Atlantic Ocean current tipping point. Current Earth system computer models (ESMs) project a dramatic slowing (28–42% by 2100) of Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and Southern Meridional Overturning Circulation (SMOC) across a range of climate scenarios, with a complete shutdown of SMOC possible by the year 2300. These newest predictions for ocean current slowdown are decades ahead of previous climate-related forecasts. Maintaining this critical ocean current at the same pre-climate change speed it has held for thousands of years is essential to humanity's future survival. This ocean current slowdown is a massive climate change tipping point with many impacts; see this article.

Most of the above-activated tipping points can and will trigger abrupt and significant releases of carbon back into the atmosphere, such as the release of carbon dioxide and methane caused by the irreversible thawing of the Arctic permafrost. After the above global warming tipping points are crossed, additional warming would become self-sustaining due to both positive feedback loops within the climate system and the mutual interaction of these global warming tipping points. 

It is best to think about the above nine interacting global warming tipping points within the climate system like a row of dominos. These climate system tipping points are so interconnected that knocking over the first couple of "dominos" will most likely lead to a cascade knocking over many, if not all, of them. Once the above global warming tipping point "dominoes" lock into their falling cascade, we are already at a point of global and societal no return.

It is not just us saying this:

Because of these global warming tipping points and positive feedback loops, Professor Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, director emeritus and founder of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, believes that if we go much above 2° C, we will quickly get to 4° C anyway and, a 4° C increase would also spell the end of a tolerable human civilization.

Johan Rockström, the head of one of Europe's leading research institutes, warned that in a 4°C warmer world, it would be "difficult to see how we could accommodate a billion people or even half of that. Not even a rich minority world survive with modern lifestyles in the post-4°C-warmer turbulent, conflict-ridden world". 

Many other climate scientists have warned that once the climate warms 4 degrees C over our preindustrial average global temperature, human adaptation to these temperature levels will be all but impossible!

Leading Stanford University biologists released new research recently showing species extinctions are accelerating in an unprecedented manner. The rapid loss of biodiversity is another likely and already occurring tipping point for the collapse of human civilization. (These are the same Stanford biologists who were first to warn us that we are already experiencing the sixth mass extinction on Earth.)

Many climate researchers also believe that we entered into extinction-level runaway global warming long before we hit carbon 425 ppm and even before we hit carbon 386 ppm. Like the NASA scientist James Hansen, who warned 40+ years ago about climate extinction, many climate researchers hold that global warming tipping points and amplifying positive climate feedback loops act to "stack up" on each other and magnify their combined adverse effects. They maintain that we entered into runaway global warming (because of the stacking effect) as soon as we crossed carbon 350 ppm, just as James Hansen predicted. 

Soon we will lose control of the tipping points for the Amazon rainforest, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the Greenland ice sheet in much less time than it's going to take us to get to any dubious and unenforceable global national net-zero emissions pledges. 

There is an additional and crucial way to think about the race to reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets before we cross more of the extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points. Imagine that the captain of the Titanic suddenly sees the iceberg in front of him. To slow and steer the Titanic away from the iceberg, he needs at least 3 miles, but he is only 1 mile away from the iceberg. In this example, the Titanic is already doomed when the captain notices the iceberg.

This Titanic example is not much different than our current situation. We have already gone over the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff. We are doing very poorly toward reaching the last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. We have wasted so much time over the previous decades ignoring valid scientific warnings; we have very little time remaining to "steer" away from extinction. 

We already have a baked-in minimal 1.5 - 2 degrees C in average global temperature increase. We have also initiated the global climate tipping point cascade effect, which will quickly get us to 4°C and the collapse of a civilization in which no one would want to exist. This 4°C alone will rapidly take us to a far less habitable planet and climate, regardless of any additional global fossil fuel reductions we might now make.

 

 

In the image above, the unillustrated Planetary Threshold dividing line is the climate cliff previously mentioned of carbon 386 ppm. As one can see, once we crossed that carbon 386 ppm Planetary Threshold line, the stability of our climate rapidly collapses into an over-heating, uninhabitable Earth!  

 

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Here are the most probable carbon feedback loops, carbon sink losses, points of no return, and tipping points accelerating after we crossed the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff in 2015

1. Decreased albedo from reduced snow cover and melting Arctic ice increases the Earth's average global temperature,

2. Increased sea ice and glacier melt resulting in additional sea-level rise,

3. Increased atmospheric water vapor results in more extreme weather,

4. Increased permafrost and tundra heating, releasing more carbon and methane, resulting in more heat, disease epidemics, and possible pandemics. This tundra heating speeds up the process of more positive feedback loops and crossing more points of no return and tipping points. 

(Please note that rapidly melting tundra permafrost is also because the northernmost areas are warming twice as fast as the rest of the world.) This permafrost melting also can cause local and global pandemics caused by ancient viruses and bacteria being released from the permafrost. They have already had localized anthrax and smallpox outbreaks in Siberia because of the bacteria and viruses released from the decomposition of ancient frozen animals from the melting permafrost and tundra. Unfortunately, the Siberian residents had no existing immunity to these diseases and were not prepared to deal with these outbreaks due to a lack of available vaccines. 

5. Decreased carbon capture from the world's forests as temperatures rise and forests go from removing carbon from the atmosphere to carbon-neutral (no longer removing carbon from the atmosphere.) Carbon neutral is the state that occurs just before overheated, over-stressed forests begin to release carbon back into the atmosphere!

(Click here to learn more about each item listed above.)

 

Here are the most likely keystone tipping points to be crossed after we crossed the carbon 386 climate cliff in 2015

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

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

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

Food crops are more sensitive to heat when there are droughts, and they are more sensitive to heat, rain bombs, and cold spells when they are just beginning to grow. Unfortunately, because more ice is melting in the Arctic Ocean almost every summer and staying melted longer in the year, we are losing more and more critical cooling for our vital food crops. As a result, we are losing stable, growing seasons. 

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

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

Because of the continually increasing loss of the cooling effect on growing regions below the Arctic because of the constantly diminishing Arctic ice, the number of growing season days with temperatures over 100° will continue increasing steadily as more and more Arctic ice melts and remains melted longer throughout the year. (We estimate within a decade or so, we could have as many as 30 days of 100-degree heat during the growing season in many critical crop-growing areas.)

Because melting Arctic ice also affects and disrupts the jet stream and ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, you will also have extreme and unseasonable cold spells appearing during the prime crop growing seasons worldwide. These cold spells will also further reduce food yields and produce more crop failures during the fragile growing season.

This again means that the world will continue to experience more and larger crop reductions and failures as more polar ice melts and stays melted longer. Corn is one of the most significant food staples for humanity, and it is also one of the most sensitive crops to temperatures of 100 degrees or more and drought.

The following is from Wikipedia:

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

The increasing melting of arctic polar ice is a clear and glaring warning sign of increasing global warming and future severe reductions in future crop yields, as well as dangerous increases in future crop failures. These crop failures will also mean higher prices and ever-increasing food scarcity, and increasing global starvation.

This Arctic crop stability problem is not something far-off in the future. On the contrary, it is already happening in many world areas. 

It is also already causing large human migrations. The expanding and increasing polar ice melting is a primary "canary in the coal mine" for increasing future mass starvation, not way off in 2100 as we have been told, but now and in the years to follow.

Already in the growing belt of the United States, we are seeing increased and record-breaking heat, droughts, rain bombs, Derechos, and other extreme unseasonal weather that directly affects crop yields and crop failures in the most vulnerable areas. This pattern of greater crop yield reductions and crop failures will continue to increase as long as more polar ice disappears and the Arctic remains relatively ice-free into longer and longer summers. As the process of massive crop reductions and failures expands and continues, mass starvation will begin to destabilize all of our other economic, social, and political systems. 

Reduced polar ice also reduces the albedo effect because white snow or ice reflects heat away from the Earth and into the atmosphere, keeping the world cooler. However, as more Arctic polar ice is melted, the darker polar oceans absorb the heat and then heat up more, which once again causes more global warming.

As global temperatures continue rising, the time frames in which we will be crossing more of the tipping points listed above will get shorter. But that will not be the only significant effect of the melting of Arctic ice due to global warming. Paradoxically, according to new studies, we will also have more extreme cold and heavier snows during the US winters because of melting Arctic ice. 

In general, you can count on increased crop yield reductions and crop failures to occur because of arctic ice melt, increased heat, increased droughts, increased cold spells, increased rain bombs, and extreme weather storms. This will make it more and more impossible for modern agriculture and the major food crops to survive throughout their current growing seasons. There are estimates that crop yield reductions and crop failures will average 5 to 10% or more for each degree Fahrenheit that the average global temperature rises. This will continue until the planet becomes so warm that too many days of the growing season will be at 100° or more. This will make successfully growing the world's five major grains all but impossible.

The carbon 386 ppm climate cliff and its 1.5 °C temperature increase threshold were the last thresholds for excluding humanity's mass extinction threat by mid-century. Staying below 1.5 °C was also the final threshold where we could have prevented a significant acceleration in crossing other more dangerous global warming tipping points. 

One can see from the preceding that while we all do our best to encourage our governments to meet the 2025 targets, it is also now wise to start a personal global warming emergency backup plan and "Plan B!"

 

New technology will not be able to save us in time!

Many people falsely believe that geoengineering, carbon capture, or some other new miracle technology will ride in like a knight on a white horse at the last minute to save humanity from the natural consequences of its decades of previous bad climate decisions, actions, inactions, and mistakes. 

(Click here to read more about why this fairy tale carbon capture technology is not going to happen or will be "too little too late" to save us.)

We are cautionary and warn people about the pitfalls of techno-optimism and the engineer's limited and mechanistic view of complex adaptive systems (the climate, biological and social systems, etc.). But, it does not mean we are anti-technology.

Our position on the use of technology is best described by the term Appropriate Technology. Appropriate technology is a movement encompassing technological choice and application that is small-scale, affordable by locals, decentralized, labor-intensive, energy-efficient, environmentally sustainable, and locally autonomous. Unfortunately, the miracle "new technology" solutions proposed for climate change are far from the best appropriate technology principles.

 

Allowing an atmospheric carbon 425-450 ppm level ever to be reached is humanity playing with fire and betting the house (its survival) on both being insanely lucky and on nonexistent or insufficient new remedial technologies

"Unfortunately, most people do not realize it is not just the ever-increasing global warming heat that is so dangerous to our future; it is also all of the other primary and secondary climate-related consequences that will make the future a nightmare if we do not fix this mess immediately!" Lawrence Wollersheim

Humanity thrived for almost 1,000,000 years when the historical interglacial high atmospheric carbon levels remained within the carbon range of 270-280 ppm. 

Decades ago, climate scientists warned us that when we crossed the atmospheric carbon 350 ppm level, humanity would be unsafe from horrible consequences and even extinction, and we were on the way to runaway global warming. 

Measuring the most dangerous greenhouse gases of atmospheric carbon [CO2,] methane [C4,] and nitrous dioxide [No2] are the best ways to measure the increasing threat level of global heating consequences. These measurements are also one of the best ways to predict future global heating and temperature levels. 

In the illustration below, on the left vertical axis are atmospheric measuring levels for both carbon and nitrous dioxide in parts per million [ppm.] On the right vertical axis, you see the measuring level for atmospheric methane in parts per billion [ppb.] Across the bottom of the illustration is the last 2,000+ years. 

The red, blue, and black lines moving from left to right across the illustration tell the painful story of human history and the pollution of our atmosphere. The illustration clearly shows what happened when humanity began the fossil fuel-powered industrial revolution in the late 1700s to early 1800s.

 

 

Here is a bit more about our atmospheric carbon history and its meaning. Many climate researchers believe we are already in the beginning stages of runaway global warming and have been so for quite a while. (Think of runaway global warming like a train rolling down a steep hill with no brakes.)

What most people do not understand about what helps cause runaway global warming within the climate's systems and subsystems is that crossed climate tipping points will create a higher new global temperature that also will trigger more climate tipping points and more amplifying climate feedback loops. By themselves alone, more triggered climate tipping points and climate feedback loops will increase heating within the climate system, producing more severe consequences. Each add-on new tipping point and feedback loop helps create a growing "stack" of overlapping temperature-increasing mechanisms fueling runaway global warming! 

At some point, triggering the next climate tipping point or feedback loop will initiate an unstoppable domino effect, which will trigger even more tipping points and amplify more feedback loops at faster and faster rates. Once this level is reached, the tipping point and feedback loop "stacking" effect ensure that a self-sustaining cycle of feedback loops that will repeatedly create the next higher level of temperatures and more severe consequences. 

The stacking effect was predicted decades ago by one of the world's most respected NASA climate scientists, James Hansen. Hansen said that if the atmospheric CO2 level reached and stayed at only the carbon 385 ppm level and was allowed to sit there for many years, it alone could kick off a climate tipping point and feedback loop stacking effect. He warned that this stacking effect would lead to an unstoppable chain reaction to higher and higher temperatures (hence runaway global warming.) 

So here is the tough love. Humanity thrived successfully for millennia when atmospheric carbon was at the 270 to 280 ppm-level. We went over the climate cliff in 2015 when we hit carbon 386 ppm level. Within the next 2-3 years, we will pass the carbon 425 ppm level. 

We would have stayed safe from runaway global warming if we had only stayed below the 350 ppm carbon level. According to James Hansen, since we passed the carbon 386 ppm in 2015, we have already triggered the stacking effect. We have already activated the crossing of ever more climate tipping points and feedback loops. 

Brace yourself. As of July of 2024, we were at carbon 425 ppm. From the preceding, one can see that this carbon 425 level is far, far beyond any reasonable and safe atmospheric carbon level and far into the stacking effect of runaway global warming. 

(If you still have any doubts about what the stacking effect of amplifying climate feedback loops means or what climate tipping points are, why they will help cause a sudden, steep to exponential rise in climate consequences, or their importance to your future, a new video has come out called Earth Emergency. It takes you through the most dangerous climate feedbacks and tipping points in an easy-to-understand way. This public broadcasting (PBS) video also makes many of the key points that we are making on this website. Click here to see this "don't miss it" super simple video.)

At the carbon 425 ppm level, our atmospheric carbon level is about 155% greater than the humanity-thriving level of carbon 270 ppm. One has to wonder, how much higher does this percentage of atmospheric carbon have to rise beyond the last safe level of carbon 350 ppm, before we collectively finally realize we are in a grave extinction danger?

Allowing an atmospheric carbon level of 425-450 ppm ever to be reached is humanity playing with fire and betting the house (near-total extinction) on being both insanely lucky and on nonexistent or insufficient new greenhouse gas remedial technologies.

No matter how you look at it, we are at a completely immoral and insane risk level to the survivability of humanity. We are already living beyond the highest possible danger zone.

If we are very, very fortunate, and it is not already too late, we may have another 3 to 6 years before crossing over the 425-450 ppm threshold and into the full-on runaway global warming where global heating and the extinction emergency goes out of our control for centuries, but we indeed do not have any more time than that. 

We are at our absolute last chance, 3 to 6-year warning!  

Either we make the necessary and radical 2025 global fossil fuel reductions, or we face near-total extinction that survivors may never be able to reverse for centuries to thousands of years. 

On the other hand, if we miss this last three-to-nine-year opportunity to prevent our extinction, we can at least hope to slow it down to have more time to get ourselves ready for near-total extinction.

"We have delayed facing and fixing the climate change emergency for decades, and it has now reached an insane climate change extinction risk level. This extinction risk level is so high that it is comparable to humanity playing Russian roulette with a gun where every chamber of the revolver has a bullet in it, and every bullet is an extinction-accelerating tipping point or catastrophic amplifying climate feedback loop." Lawrence Wollersheim

What we do in the next three to nine years in getting close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets will determine the survival and future of much of humanity. And, if we do not fix this, it will also be many of the lives of Earth's plants and animals that will suffer the same horrible fate. 

If our governments fail to act, few, if any, will survive. Even fewer individuals would want to exist in the overheated world we would leave them.

If you have any doubts about what amplifying climate feedback loops or climate tipping points are, or their importance to your future, a new video has come out called Earth Emergency. It takes you through the most dangerous climate feedbacks and tipping points in an easy-to-understand way. This public broadcasting (PBS) video also makes the key points that we are making on this website. Click here to see this "don't miss it" super simple video.

 

(Special note 4.22.2022: There is a lively ongoing conflict between various climate change researchers. Some believe we are already in a state of runaway global warming, and there is nothing we can do about it at our current greenhouse gas levels. This group believes we are already headed to near-total to total human extinction. 

Another group of climate researchers believes that we still may be able to prevent near-total extinction (but not avoid mass extinction) if we can do the nearly impossible task of cutting global fossil fuel use by 75% to at least get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets discussed here.

Other climate researchers using grossly underestimated and distorted IPCC calculations believe we have until about 2030- 2040 to make much smaller global fossil fuel reductions and still save humanity. 

Our website reflects the ongoing conflicts within researchers positional differences. As an organization, we currently believe that the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century is unavoidable. However, we still may be able to prevent near-total extinction if we can do the near-impossible task of cutting global fossil fuel use by close to 75% to get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets discussed here. (Please note we may have as long as 2031 to get close to these 2025 targets before we cross the far side of this carbon 425-450 ppm threshold level when we finally reach carbon 450 ppm.)

Because we believe the probability of getting close to the 2025 reduction targets even by 2031 will be very, very challenging, we have also created an action program that compensates for this probable failure to prevent climate change from reaching severe extinction levels. We hope that this clarification helps our readers better understand our current position and our Job One action plan.

Please click here for a special update on the fact that on Feb 3, 2024, for the first time ever, atmospheric carbon rose above the carbon 425 ppm threshold.

Please help share these ten critical climate facts everywhere! Unfortunately, at best, we have only 3 to 9 more years to fix this climate nightmare.)

 

Reviewing the most misunderstood climate change dangers, because it means our survival or extinction

What does not coming close to the critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets mean, and what is at stake?

1. If we fail, we will not be able to slow down the unavoidable extinction of half or more of humanity by mid-century. (Mass extinction is most associated with having already crossed the carbon 386 ppm threshold.)

2. Only by coming very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets do we have any reasonable chance of preventing an even worse, near-total extinction event from ending humanity and civilization beginning as soon as 2070.

3. Because near-total extinction is now associated with crossing the atmospheric carbon threshold of carbon 425 - 450 ppm and the eventual higher temperatures produced when we cross that threshold, if we are very, very fortunate, we only have about 3 to about 6 more years to be able to prevent our near-total extinction. (Carbon is currently accumulating in the atmosphere at about three carbon ppm per year.) 

4. Unfortunately, we also have two additional super-dangerous extinction-accelerating tipping points after the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point threshold. 

5. After crossing the carbon 425-450 level, the following three additional extinction-producing tipping points are FAR worse than what you have read above! They will create both extinction-level and Venus-effect-level runaway global warming.

6. Crossing the Carbon 425-450 ppm threshold means that it is virtually impossible to save about half of humanity from extinction by about mid-century.

As we cross into the second climate change extinction tipping point, it might be a good time to read about how Mother Nature is going to solve the accelerating climate change problem that our governments are ignoring and that our governments probably will continue to ignore until the death and damages are so high that the politicians become afraid to lose their cushy jobs, rich pensions and their many other disclosed and undisclosed benefits. Click here to read how Mother Nature will save us from reaching the fourth climate change extinction tipping point.

 

Please continue reading to learn about the other, even worse, climate extinction-triggering tipping points. 

 

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The second global warming extinction-accelerating tipping point and the third phase of runaway global heating will be crossed as soon as 2042-2067 or earlier. It creates a runaway global ice melt

Failing to reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets is simply not a rational option! But, if we fail, here is more on how mass human extinction and economic, political, and social chaos will become our shared future from crossing the next two critical global warming tipping points within the next few decades. 

 

 

As the current carbon levels rise, we will cross the 500 ppm near-extinction level as we continue crossing more of the 11 critical global warming tipping points within the climate’s many systems and subsystems, but now at an even faster rate. Once we go over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point, we will inevitably cross the carbon 500 ppm level as soon as 2042-2067 or earlier. (Which tipping points we cross and how much and how fast we add additional carbon to our atmosphere will determine when in that 2042-2067 time range we will hit carbon 500 ppm.) 

When we cross the carbon 500 ppm level, ALL ice and ALL glaciers on Earth will enter a near-unstoppable process of a complete meltdown! Yes, you read that right! At carbon 500 ppm we begin the melting of all global ice.

Crossing the carbon 500 ppm threshold has, in fact, repeatedly happened in Earth's geological history. When it occurred, the sea level inevitably rose to the 70 meters (230 feet) range. At our current annual carbon ppm emission rates, we will reach this catastrophic carbon 500 ppm range in just 20-25 more years. Worse yet, this global melting tipping point may not reverse itself for centuries to thousands of years once we stop carbonizing our atmosphere.

If we cross that critical tipping point, passing the atmospheric carbon level of 500 parts per million (ppm), our average global temperature will eventually soar to 4°C (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit). At 4°C, a large portion of humanity (hundreds of millions to billions) will die of starvation (or die and suffer from increased heat or the other runaway global heating-related consequences.) Governments and society will collapse in most areas of the world between the 35th parallel north and the 35th parallel south.

Even though it will take many centuries for the seas to rise the full 230 feet, there still will be shocking spurts of sea-level rise within those centuries where the sea level rises up to 10 feet or more in just a few decades, as it also has done repeatedly in Earth's past. The sudden multi-decade spurts of sea level rise will displace billions of people from their coastal or close to a waterway homes, and hundreds of millions or more will die in the ensuing displacement turmoil.

Take a moment to visualize the seas eventually but steadily and in sudden spurts rising 230 feet, and what this will mean to our coastal cities, our national borders, and the generations that follow us. Take a moment to visualize the ever-increasing massive worldwide crop failures because of the ever-increasing heat and the consequent mass suffering of slow starvation as we approach and pass the carbon 500 ppm level.

 

 

Take a moment to let the following really sink in. Anything at or above a 4°Celcius increase in average global temperature would be incompatible with an organized global society and would be beyond adaptation! This temperature and carbon level would also virtually guarantee we eventually could hit carbon 600 ppm. When we cross the carbon 500 ppm tipping point, we cross a steeper, even more, slippery slope, and we could quickly reach the carbon 600 ppm extinction level tipping point within another 25-30 years (as soon as 2063-2072 or earlier.)

When this happens, we will greatly accelerate the process of crossing even more global warming tipping points. As a type of positive feedback loop, this will once again further spike the average global temperature. 

It will also help you to understand how fast future global warming will intensify using the illustration below if you imagine all of the global warming tipping points whirling around and colliding into each other because of the "boiling effect" or agitation of ever-increasing heat. This is much like how the rising heat under a steam cooker whirls and churns the water inside faster and faster. (To learn more about how crossing critical global warming tipping points like those in the illustration below accelerate consequences, causes sudden and complete system collapses, makes recovery much slower, harder, and more expensive, and function, click here.)  

 

 

If we pass this second tipping point, global warming consequences will continue accelerating exponentially in frequency, severity, and scale.

But please also realize that it is currently unlikely that humanity will allow itself to reach this carbon 500 ppm level and go beyond the already unavoidable extinction of about half of humanity into the beginning phases of a near-total extinction process. Humanity's likely inability to reach or go much beyond the carbon 500 ppm level will be due to the many natural and human counteractions of the Great Die-off taking over.

On Earth, nothing takes place in a vacuum. For every action, there is a counteraction. If you have not done so already, please click here to take the time to read about the good news of many powerful natural and human simultaneous counteractions to the above global runaway heating consequences.

These crucial counteractions should occur with sufficient impact, power, and timing to prevent humanity from reaching the carbon 500 ppm level or much beyond it, but about half of humanity will be unable to avoid extinction because of our 60 years of recklessly ignoring the warnings of our best climate scientists. 

 

Why will about half of humanity go extinct by mid-century? 

At this point, you should begin to be able to see why about half of humanity will unavoidably start into their extinction process once we pass the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold (starting in about 2030) and as we approach the carbon 500 ppm level (around about 2050-2060.) The extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century will not come about only because of:

a. soaring temperatures, 

b. failed or low-yield crops and mass starvation, 

c. growing climate mass migration, 

d. climate-related resource and distribution shortages, and 

e. intensifying climate-related land and resource conflicts.

In addition to the climate consequences already occurring in a-e above, the extinction of about half of humanity will continue moving forward and accelerating because of the many other climate-related or climate-triggered primary and secondary consequences listed on this critical page. These additional climate consequences will intensify, randomly (or periodically,) growing more frequent, or covering larger areas, which cumulatively and collectively, and in total effect will create the many causes for the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century.

Cumulatively and collectively, the combined effect of many of the primary and secondary climate consequences listed on this page could just as easily cause humanity's near-total or even total extinction if we let our atmospheric carbon level go much beyond carbon 500 ppm.

After one comes to fully understand the many accumulating and intensifying primary and secondary climate consequences, the only rational option is to get as close to the 2025 global fossil fuel targets as possible to limit humanity's damages to the extinction of only about half of humanity by mid-century.

(If you have not done so already, we strongly recommend reading the primary and secondary climate consequences listed on this page after you have completed this article. Once you have done that additional reading, the painful reality and probability of half of humanity going extinct by mid-century will also become more accurate and probable. 

Never forget that crossing the carbon 500 ppm threshold means that it also may no longer be possible to save about three-fourths of humanity from extinction by about 2060-2080.

As we cross into the third climate change extinction tipping point, it might be a good time to read about how Mother Nature is going to solve the accelerating climate change problem that our governments are ignoring and that our governments probably will continue to ignore until the death and damages are so high that the politicians become afraid to lose their cushy jobs, rich pensions and their many other disclosed and undisclosed benefits. Click here to read how Mother Nature will save us from reaching the fourth climate change extinction tipping point.

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The third global heating extinction-expanding tipping point (and the fourth phase of runaway global heating) will probably be crossed as soon as 2063-2072 or earlier. It creates runaway methane releases and the beginning of a total human extinction scenario.

If we cross the carbon 600 ppm final extinction level, it will result in raising the average global temperature to 5°C (9 degrees Fahrenheit) and bring about massive methane clathrate releases from coastal ocean shelves as it has done before in the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 million years ago, and most notably the Permian–Triassic extinction event, when up to 96% of all marine species became extinct, 252 million years ago. (Please click here to watch a short video that brilliantly explains the extinction process once we start releasing methane clathrate from our coastal shelves. New research shows we actually begin this new methane release process once we reach 5°C, and by 6°C, it is in full bloom. Also, methane releases from the permafrost will also increase at significantly faster rates at these higher temperatures.) 

Because methane, when released as a gas from permafrost or fracking or as gas from methane clathrate, is 86 times more potent than carbon as a temperature-increasing greenhouse gas, it will once again rapidly spike up the average global temperatures. 

The following is a methane graph (found at https://www.methanelevels.org) in which you can see how total atmospheric methane levels from all sources have exponentially skyrocketed, particularly during the last 50 years.

 

 

If it continues to rise from there toward the carbon 600 ppm final tipping point and an average global temperature of 5°C, it will eventually bring about the near-total extinction of most if not all of humanity and the end of civilization as we know it in the final phases of the Climageddon Scenario.

(Please note: Unless we get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets by 2031 at the latest, there is no mathematical way for us to prevent crossing the carbon 500 ppm tipping point where all ice on earth will melt! Beyond its mathematical certainty, there are numerous climate scientists who believe that crossing the carbon 500 ppm is ALREADY inevitable because we will soon cross other climate, biological and human system tipping points covered at the top of this page. This does not even include the other accelerating global warming positive feedback loops already occurring throughout our climate system. (Positive feedback loops enhance or amplify changes; this also (like tipping points) tends to move a system away from its equilibrium state and make it more unstable.) 

The same climate scientists who believe that we cannot prevent crossing carbon 500 also believe that no matter what we do, we have already missed our window of opportunity and control to prevent carbon 600 ppm. Furthermore, they believe that once we have crossed the carbon 500 ppm level, we will not be able to keep from reaching carbon 800 ppm (the near-final phase of the Climageddon Scenario.) (Reaching carbon 800 ppm would once again be because of continuing to add more carbon into the atmosphere and because of the total accumulating effects of crossing more and more global warming tipping points that will continue occurring even more rapidly after we cross 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. But, if we do enact the necessary radical 2025 fossil fuel cuts immediately, there is still an acceptable yet small possibility that we can still slow down our crossing of the carbon 600 ppm final tipping point or, at least long enough so that we can save some small portion of humanity and transfer needed infrastructure into the global warming safer zones. (We may be able to save humanity from near-total extinction by also immediately enacting ALL of the actions described in part three of the Job One Plan.)

At worst, even if we can not still prevent crossing the carbon 600 ppm level, we can at least slow it down as well as some of the other worst coming global warming consequences. While even slowing down our crossing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point will be a Herculean task of massive global governmental cooperation and mobilization, the probability that we can at least temporarily slow and delay some of the other of the 20 worst global warming consequences by getting close to our 2025 targets by 2031 at the lettest is still reasonable, but more importantly, this will allow us more time to get prepared for the many global warming consequences we can no longer avoid no matter what we do.)

It is important to be realistic in your future planning. As you can see, the probability that we will cross the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point is far too high. Additionally, the final window of opportunity to prevent crossing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point will close by 2025-2031 if we have not made the radical and immediate radical fossil fuel cuts necessary. This is because of the:

a. temperature momentum already "baked" into the climate system (the existing carbon 413 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 continue failing to adequately reverse our fossil fuel use,) and

c. The additional global warming tipping points we will continue to cross I didn't even faster rate we will continue to cross I didn't even faster rate if we miss our 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets. And finally,

d. If we fail to reach or come close to the 2025 reduction targets, we are not just facing the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century, we are facing near-total extinction! This is because we could possibly cross the carbon 600 ppm-level. This is the level where we will also enter the last phases of run-away global heating! (If you are not sure about how much worse it can possibly get if we enter a run-away global heating near-total extinction phase, click its link in the previous sentence.)

Never also forget that at 5°C, which will occur once we hit carbon 600 ppm and above, more than half of humanity will already be dead by mid-century because of:

a. starvation because of the devastating effect that increased heat will have on crop failure or,

b. from global warming's other 19 worst consequences or 11 key tipping points.

Economies, governments, and societies 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 also cross into the later and most dangerous later phases (4 and 5) of the 6-phase of what we call the Climageddon Extinction Scenario and Countdown model or Climageddon Scenario. Review the following Climageddon Extinction Scenario illustration starting from the bottom up! The top of the illustration below shows you the later Climageddon Scenario consequences the bottom shows you the earlier consequences.

The largest illustration on this page below, the Global Warming and the Climageddon Scenario Cascading Meltdown reflect the unfolding natural progression of ever-worsening consequences, tipping points, and human system processes that will accelerate as global warming continues. These consequences, tipping points, and human systems will also synergetically and cumulatively collide with each other and adversely interact. It is these ever-increasing interactions among and between worsening global warming consequences, tipping points, and human systems that will make each of these things worse faster and faster.

This illustration reflects the core of the final processes that will lead to our mass extinction as well as into global economic, political, and social chaos. Its three levels of global warming interactions (consequences, tipping points, and human systems,) highlight the continuous onslaught of emergencies, crises, and catastrophes that we are already experiencing and which foretell our eventual extinction.

Starting reading this large illustration only from the bottom up because that is how it will unfold. 

 

 

Take a moment and think about the bitter reality that when we reach the carbon 600 ppm tipping point (which can occur as soon as 2063-2072, or possibly earlier,) we trigger the final processes that will bring about the extinction of most of humanity by mid-century. (Which tipping points we cross and how much and how fast we add additional carbon to our atmosphere will determine when in that 2063-2072 time range we will hit carbon 600 ppm.)  

But, long before we reach the carbon 600 ppm level tipping point, humanity will be in a massive die-off, and global civilization will have begun collapsing. But please also realize that it is highly unlikely that humanity will allow itself to reach this carbon 600 ppm level. Humanity's likely inability to reach carbon 600 ppm will be due to the Great Die-off's many natural and human counteractions.

On Earth, nothing takes place in a vacuum. For every action, there is a counteraction. If you have not done so already, please click here to read about the many powerful natural and significant human simultaneous counteractions to the above global runaway heating consequences. Most importantly, these crucial counteractions should occur with sufficient impact and power to prevent humanity from ever reaching the 600 ppm carbon level.

If we do reach carbon 600 ppm

At or near carbon 600 ppm, the unlucky survivors will enter into an ecological and climate hell and a new dark age that will make those survivors of the following centuries curse us and wish they were dead. Please also remember that as we pass this third tipping point, global warming consequences will continue to accelerate exponentially in frequency, severity, and scale.

(The global warming consequences, tipping points, and human system factors (shown above) will interact and collide in 6 distinct phases and waves. At some point, after you finish this document, we strongly recommend that you read about the 6 phases and waves of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario and countdown here. In detail, it describes the timetables and consequences of our global warming future if we miss the 2025 targets.)

 

How the three previous extinction-producing tipping points of carbon 425, 500, and 600 ppm create a no-win condition where global warming management becomes out of humanity's future control

What most people do not fully realize is that at some soon point after passing the first tipping point of carbon 425-450 ppm, we will no longer be able to avoid unimaginable future global warming catastrophes or mass extinction. After we cross the carbon 425 ppm tipping point, our loss of control is because we will begin triggering:

1. evermore natural climate system tipping points.
2. much larger naturally occurring methane releases from the tundra, permafrost, and ocean shelves.
3. additional natural carbon releases from our deep oceans, trees, and soils and our own failure to reduce our global fossil fuel use. 

Eventually, these natural systems will also go into positive feedback loops with each other or cross their own internal tipping points. These positive feedback loops will once again increase the average global temperature. This further triggers increased-heat caused releases of evermore naturally generated methane and carbon, which once again further increases the average global temperature in an endless cycle. Unfortunately, these increasing temperatures will go on and on until after we are gone, when the Earth can finally correct itself hundreds or thousands of years in the future. 

Unlike humanity's remaining ability to control and regulate its use of fossil fuels, if we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point, control of our future transfers to nature's control! There will be nothing we can do to keep the other natural sources of carbon and methane from crossing their own internal tipping points or entering into positive feedback loops.

Once we pass the carbon 425-450 tipping point, nature takes over, and global warming becomes a runaway train of ever-increasing average global temperature lasting for centuries or longer. 

Humanity's total inability to control these large, complex natural systems, tipping points and positive feedback loops IS the most crucial reason why we cannot fail to meet the 2025 global targets. If we do not meet the 2025 targets, as soon as 2025, 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, 2040, or 2035 to make the required global fossil fuel reductions to save ourselves as many governments and fossil fuel companies want you to believe. We also do not have until even 2030 to make the required fossil fuel reductions, as many prominent but ill-informed environmental groups want you to believe.

We have only until 2025 to make the required global fossil fuel reductions to prevent going over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and losing all meaningful control of our global warming future. 

This extinction emergency creates a series of compelling 600 trillion dollar questions hanging in the air: (600 trillion dollars plus is the minimum estimate for the total global warming damage costs that will occur if some of us manage to survive.)

1. Why aren't the brightest minds in the world's intelligence agencies screaming at their national politicians about meeting the 2025 targets and this nearly out-of-control extinction emergency?

2. Why aren't they making our politicians understand this is our last chance window of control to keep a dark and destructive new Pandora from getting out of her box? 

3. Why aren't our intelligence agencies (as well as the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations) getting our politicians to realize that they have exposed ALL of humanity to an imminent and irrational extinction threat level? (More will be said about this in the next section.)

The above-listed natural system climate tipping points and positive feedback loops are complicated, but we have further simplified their descriptions and interactions on this page. This page will also help you understand how the increasing methane releases from the tundra, permafrost, and ocean shelves will occur and how massive new carbon releases from our deep oceans, trees, and soils will occur.

 

The extreme and imminent threat that humanity has only faced in one other area

Because escalating global warming and its tipping points are happening at a global level, we find ourselves at an extreme and unconscionable threat level. In just a few decades, the threat of the global warming extinction emergency will wreak its havoc on almost everyone.

The current global warming threat is extreme because:

1. Its consequences are already intensifying in severity, frequency, and scale and will soon begin doing so suddenly, radically more intensely, and finally, exponentially.
2. Its tipping points will continue to be crossed at faster and faster rates. These crossed tipping points will produce more heat increases even faster, as well as massive climate, biological, and human system instability, chaos, and crashes.

The time nearness of this threat is imminent because our emergency is developing on a timescale of just a few decades. This is very unlike the centuries or millennia of developmental timescales that have occurred in each of Earth's five previous major extinction events. 

Our current extinction threat is no longer just possible or probable. Once we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point, the extinction threat becomes near-certain. Passing the carbon 500 and 600 ppm tipping points is a certain human, animal, and biological extinction catastrophe. 

Once we go over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point, our extinction threat level rises to a level comparable to the threat level of a highly probable global nuclear war occurring soon. This is why the extreme threat level is merited. Over the coming decades, the accumulated destruction caused by global warming has the full capability of equaling or exceeding the devastation, suffering, and death of a global nuclear war. 

Our politicians have ignored 35 years of scientific warnings. Our politicians have utterly failed to do their jobs. Our politicians have failed to protect us and manage this imminent and extreme threat, which threatens their nation and citizens and the survival of humanity and civilization itself.  

Our politicians have successfully managed the global nuclear threat for the last 75 years. They also have done almost nothing over the last 35 years relating to the equal and eventually even higher risk of global warming extinction. Our global warming extinction emergency will unfold as the "ultimate disruptor" over the next 3 to 5 decades. Already it is causing considerable global financial loss, death, and hardship. 

While you are legitimately panicking over all of this bad news, never forget that only by meeting the 2025 targets can we prevent Earth's sixth great extinction. Never forget that the global warming extinction emergency is not just the greatest disruptor of the 21st century, it is also the ultimate no-win game!

If you are still confused about how crossing global warming tipping points will lead us to mass extinction within your lifetime, please click here for detailed global warming tipping point documentation. (Click here for information to help you overcome your legitimate panic, or remember this link as you read the next even worse news section.)

 

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The fourth and most dangerous near-total climate extinction tipping point and the fifth phase of runaway global heating could be crossed sometime after 2070. 

Welcome to humanity's ultimate near-total extinction vs. total extinction dilemma. In many places on our website, we have laid out the global warming science, which indicates that we are already facing an unavoidable global warming-caused extinction of about half of humanity within our lifetimes. 

This extinction event will unavoidably cause the deaths of most of humanity by mid-century. Such a massive die-off will be due to crossing critical global warming tipping points, climate feedback loops, and the combined future consequences of global warming, particularly mass starvation due to global crop failures of the most climate-sensitive crops. 

 

 

But it can get much worse. If we do not make or come reasonably close to the 2025 global reduction targets for our global fossil fuel use, we will also face the beginning stages of a possible total extinction event. 

A total extinction event could begin as early as 50-70 years in the form of very high average global temperature and very high atmospheric carbon levels of about carbon 750 ppm, which will support initiating the final stages of the runaway-global heating process.

The final stage, runaway global heating, describes the circumstances in which the global climate destabilizes catastrophically and permanently from its original state—similar to what happened on Venus when the planet lost its atmosphere out into outer space. Runaway global warming is thought to have occurred on Venus 4 billion years ago because of a very high carbon-rich atmosphere and exceptionally high average surface temperatures.

The final stage of runaway global warming will create a literal Climageddon meltdown where nothing will survive because there will be no atmosphere. This total extinction event will enter its first phase as soon as our average global temperature rises at or above 5- 6 degrees Celcius. 

Somewhere at a 5-6 degree Celcius increase in average global temperature, added to the massive additional tipping point of releases of methane from coastal deposits and permafrost, will quickly further skyrocket atmospheric carbon levels and average global temperatures to new levels faster than at any previous time in humanity's history. This will also trigger, initiate and accelerate the final phases of runaway global warming.

Here is how this happens. At a 5-6 degree Celcius temperature increase, the coastal deposits and permafrost begin releasing methane at exponentially higher rates, or in other words, the "methane timed bomb" goes off. 

This will take us from the 5-6 degree Celcius atmospheric carbon level of 500-600 parts per million (ppm) far too quickly to the atmospheric carbon levels of carbon 800 ppm, carbon 1,000 ppm, carbon 1,200 ppm, and even to carbon 1,600 ppm and beyond. (Our climate was stable for hundreds of thousands of years at about carbon 270 ppm.) We are currently at about carbon 420 ppm. (The recent carbon 270 to 415 ppm increase occurred since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which was powered by burning fossil fuels.) 

In addition to the methane time bomb, there is a permafrost and carbon time bomb, which also is going to make things a lot worse a lot faster than we have previously predicted. Click here to watch a short Public Broadcasting Service video that explains the permafrost and carbon time bomb.

 

The Final Lose/Lose Shocker: We may not survive even the first 2 tipping points if our politicians and governments do not immediately work together and mass mobilize  to achieve the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets

There are other hyper-critical factors to be carefully planned for in the nightmare carbon 500 and 600 ppm global warming scenarios we are already facing in our not-too-distant future. As if the proceeding was not enough to convince any rational individual that they need to do everything within their power to get their governments to come as close to the 2025 reduction targets as is possible to slow and lessen global warming so they can survive a bit longer, there is yet more terrible news. 

As global warming worsens toward passing more of the above levels of tipping points, we will also have to deal with ever-escalating humanity and civilization-ending chaos, instabilities, and realities such as the following scenarios:

Scenario 1: Nuclear Reactor Meltdown. Once temperatures rise 4 degrees Celsius (in about 22-42 years and at about the carbon 500 ppm level), nuclear reactors found within global warming unsafe zones between the 45th parallel north and south will no longer be safe. They will no longer be able to be kept secure or maintained by functioning governments as global warming worsens.

If these nuclear reactors go critical and melt down without stable and secure maintenance, it will not matter where you migrate to in the world. At 4 degrees Celsius, the combined consequences of global warming will cause most of the world's weakest governments to collapse, as well as many stronger governments.

If nuclear reactors are melting down in many areas of the world where there are collapsed governments, it is NOT far-fetched to consider this extra end-of-the-world scenario, considering that we have had the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in Russia and the Fukushima reactor meltdown in Japan. These were both stable governments with extensive precautions, security, and maintenance people to ensure this would never happen.

Worse yet, once temperatures rise to 5 degrees Celsius (in about 43-53 years and at about the carbon 600 ppm level), nuclear reactors will be melting down everywhere because even the strongest countries will now be collapsing. This means that no location or deep bunker will be safe from the continuous massive radiation fallout from hundreds of Chernobyl-like nuclear reactors melting down. Once these reactors go critical, they will spew deadly radiation for centuries to thousands of years! (There are about 420 nuclear reactors used to generate power in the world today. There are also about 200 research reactors.)

 

 

Unfortunately, this same kind of nightmare holds true for all biological or chemical weapons or toxic chemicals stored in any areas with collapsing or collapsed governments. Once those areas are abandoned, lawless, or in chaos, these toxic commodities will either be seized for weaponization or will slowly leak out and poison areas far beyond their original locations. Scenario 1 is a no-win everyone dies eventually scenario because there are no bunkers existing that can keep people safe for centuries to thousands of years from these threats!

Scenario 2: Welcome to World War III. We could easily enter into a global warming-caused neat-total extinction event without the final runaway global heating near-total extinction tipping point being crossed. This can easily occur as global average temperatures reach anywhere from a 2+ to 4 degrees Celcius increase.

At those increased temperature levels, there will be increasing mass starvation and a mass migration of desperate climagees (climate refugees.) To survive, countries in the many unsafe zones between the 45th parallel north and the 45th parallel south will demand land and resources from those countries in the safer zones. Regional and international conflicts and wars will break out over the safer land areas and remaining food and other resources. 

These wars will be of ultimate desperation between the nations in safe and unsafe areas. They will undoubtedly include chemical, biological, and even tactical nuclear weapons. Any weapons available by the desperate nations or groups will be used to force those governments in the global warming safer zones to open their borders to the billions of "migrate or die" desperate climagees.

Because there will not be enough resources available in the safer zones to support the billions of climagees, the most vicious wars the world has ever seen will likely be fought over the safest remaining areas on Earth in what will likely be humanity's desperate last fight for survival! If this occurs, as it is likely it would, it is doubtful anyone will survive this hellish new nuclear, biological, and chemical World War III.

Scenario 3: Migration Lotteries that Won't Work Well Enough. Critical large-scale food production above the global warming safer 45th parallel north or below the 45th parallel south will be highly limited. This food crisis will be because of the soil quality, and the lower seasonal sunlight levels will be grossly inadequate for using traditional or existing food production methods.

We will not be able to grow enough food for the desperate billions of climagees migrating to these safer areas. Somehow the governments of the world will try to find a way to cooperate and fairly and wisely limit how many people can occupy the limited safer zones and still be fed. Trying to limit the number of desperate climagees who can inhabit the few remaining global warming safer zones by force or special lottery will be beyond difficult.

Any such action will in itself, create unimaginable social chaos, panic, and conflict that will keep those living in the global warming safer zones under continuous threat. At best, because of the nuclear reactors, toxic weapons, and the coming border wars, anyone living in those limited, safer zones will only have temporary relief.

Scenario 4: Lack of Genetic Diversity. If you do not allow enough genetically diverse individuals from the global warming unsafe zones to migrate, there will not be enough genetic diversity to survive the waves of new diseases that will burn through the far north or far south. These new diseases will emerge because of thousands-of-year-old unknown and known pathogens being increasingly released from the melting permafrost (which humanity has never seen before and has no immunity to.) Additionally, these safer global warming zones will also be under threat from new pathogens or existing pathogens that are always mutating or spreading because of the breakdown of health services as the world tumbles toward global warming mass extinction. Only adequate genetic diversity will guarantee that at least someone will survive. And,

Scenario 5: Our Inability to Move Infrastructure Fast Enough. For any of us to survive similarly to what we are used to, the world's critical infrastructure needed for a functioning modern civilization must be moved to the safer far north or far south zones within the next 5-15 years. To do this, we must wisely use whatever relative political, economic, and social stability that remains. (These safer zones most generally exist above the 45th to 55th parallels north or below the 45th to 55th parallels south.)

This means that to save even a small percentage of humanity, we should already be moving critical industries like medical, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, etc. The bad news is that this is not happening as well. This infrastructure move also involves moving administrative, policing, and other social structures into the limited "Goldilocks" global warming safe zones.  

From the above additional five scenarios, even the most optimistic person will recognize nothing will save them other than only temporarily. From the totality of everything they are facing, they will also realize that it has come down to this final simple truth --- we either cooperate and work together to meet the 2025 targets or we die together.

We are no longer in only an emergency to prevent global warming from getting worse. We are no longer in only an emergency to prevent global warming mass extinction.

We are in an all-out war to prevent total human, animal, and biological extinction and economic, social, and political chaos and collapse. As long as we keep thinking about gradually managing the vague threat of "climate change," we are focusing on the wrong target.

We will fail in preventing our own extinction. Our governments need to shift their focus to meeting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets at all costs! This new focus is the only way to slow global warming mass within our lifetimes and prevent near-total extinction. (The specific action steps needed to get our governments to meet the 2025 targets are found within Part 3 of the Job One Plan.)

 

If we fail, no wealthy individual, corporation, or nation will be able to use its wealth to escape the instability, chaos, collapse, and extinction!

From what you have read so far, you can see that we are in a no/win game if we do not get close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, but there are always those wealthy and arrogant individuals, corporations, and nations who will believe their wealth will insulate and save them from what is coming. Here is what they will face in the future that should convince them that this is a no-win game for them as well.

In spite of wealthy individuals and corporations already buying land and facilities in safer northern countries, they will not be safe there either. The mass migrations of desperate, aggressive, and armed climagees (climate refugees) and national armies will eventually overrun any and all border security measures. These locked-out climagees will angrily take their fair share of what's left and severely punish anyone who they even remotely believe had any significant part in letting this horrific global warming meltdown and catastrophe occur either by commission or omission.

Eventually, even the private security companies of the ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations hired to protect their compounds in the safer zones will eventually turn against their affluent bosses, realizing that they now live in a late-phase Climageddon Scenario world, where only firepower and military-style training determine temporary ongoing survival, final ownership, and safety. Worse yet, and worth repeating, the climagee survivors of the most painful and devastating catastrophe in human history who breakthrough into the safer zones will be so angry and traumatized they will seek a horrible vengeance on everyone and anyone they hold responsible for either causing or contributing to the catastrophe, or for failing to act when they reasonably could have slowed or prevented the worst of it.

In their unimaginable anger and pain, some of the remaining climagee survivors who desperately fight their way into the remaining temporarily safe zones and, like some survivors of the Holocaust, will relentlessly hunt down anyone who they believe knew about the escalating global warming extinction emergency and had the influence or resources to address it, but did not. Those individuals and corporations of great wealth will most certainly lose all of their power and their resources in the massive globalized backlash of anger and punishment that will be directed toward them.

There will be no place on earth or Swiss bank that will be able to save them and their assets from what will be viewed by the survivors as justifiable punishment for their gross global warming crimes of omission or commission against the survival of the whole of humanity.

Things will be even worse for wealthy corporations or individuals or nations who act in ways to profit from the escalating global warming catastrophes, real estate and market crashes, and the coming other 20 worst consequences as they are unfolding. When those wealthy individuals or corporations are identified by the enraged climagee survivors for their unconscionable commissions and omissions, it is highly likely that ALL of their wealth will be removed from them as well as from all of their trusts, secret bank accounts, businesses and all of their heirs for their crimes against humanity and the future. It is highly likely that such responsible individuals, corporate executives, and politicians will be put into hard labor camps for the rest of their natural lives.

Please do not mistake that the Job One organization is promoting any form of an illegal individual climagee survivor or group vengeance against wealthy corporations, individuals, or nations in any way whatsoever or at any time! All we are disclosing here is these are the most probable and natural human anger reactions by surviving individuals who have suffered unthinkable consequences and the pain of probably losing everyone and everything they have loved.

Our organization promotes and believes only in the peaceful execution of fair and equitable justice by impartial individuals, properly constructed courts, and the rule of law. As an organization, we hold that what is transpiring now (allowing global warming to worsen to near-extinction levels beyond recovery for all but a few in less than centuries) is ultimately a matter of ignorance.

Global warming is incredibly difficult to understand in the first place, but the ignorance of personal greed or excessive comforts being valued over the common well-being of society makes solving this challenge even worse. We only mention the highly probable outcomes for those ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations who act to make matters worse or fail to act when they should have acted to educate about the problem and in the hope that through this educational warning, the ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations will wake up that this is the ultimate no-win game even for them, and that we should never go down such a dark path.

As if the previous was not enough, the fate of those wealthy individuals and corporations who migrate to the temporarily safer global warming zones near the 45th parallel north or south will also have to deal with and solve the following devastating problems, some of which have been mentioned earlier.

At some point, even the world's 1% wealthiest individuals, corporations, and nations will recognize their money and power won't save them from the accelerating climate extinction monster. They will realize that we either cooperate and work together or die together. Click here to see our program to reach the 1% to get them to act by helping them realize the horror, suffering, financial loss, death, and the physical, emotional, and spiritual traumas that will be experienced and will continue to grow as global warming and climate change accelerate will be physically and emotionally wholly unbearable to the point that life will not be worth living! 

They will eventually understand that the consequences of our current out-of-control global warming will last from centuries to thousands of years, and no one can survive all of the previously listed consequences even for one century with our existing technology. 

 

The REAL crisis, challenge, and ultimate climate change question for our collective and individual future is...

"How do we prevent a global warming-caused near-total extinction event from occurring while we are simultaneously dealing with an unavoidable mass extinction event, which is already occurring?"

The above is the most important global warming question that no politician or global warming education organization is currently honestly addressing! Yet, there is no more critical question for the survival of humanity that must be faced and managed, or there will be no more humanity!! 

This is the central question at Job One for Humanity which we are facing and managing in an honest, adult manner. In facing the global warming emergency over the last 11 years, we have been continually forced to create and update a science-based remedial plan that, if honestly executed, has a reasonable probability of preventing the neat-total extinction of humanity. 

 

 

This new plan is ultimately practical in that it also helps individuals make the critical emergency preparations and adaptions needed to deal with our steadily unfolding mass extinction process while also still promoting all of the key actions that must be done by our governments to prevent the near-total extinction of humanity.

What is also essential to keep in mind when you are considering the four global warming tipping points, mass extinction or near-total extinction, is that a mass extinction event is already unfolding. And it is accelerating at a continually accelerating pace, which will come to full realization throughout the next 30-50 years.

The great news of the Job One Plan to better manage the global warming extinction emergency is that...

1. if we can get our governments to act effectively on this emergency and get close to the 2025 targets, those of you who start preparing and adapting now should be able to survive and thrive much longer through what most of humanity will not.

2. The only way to solve the dilemma of preventing a runaway global heating-caused near-total extinction event from occurring while we are also simultaneously dealing with an unavoidable mass extinction event that is already occurring, is to begin the Job One Plan action steps that fit with your current circumstances!

 

 

Click here to overview the 4 Parts of the Job One for Humanity Plan to resolve the global warming emergency and prevent near-total extinction. Here you can learn what you can do to protect your family, business, and nation during the unfolding mass extinction event while at the same time helping to execute the most effective governmental actions required to resolve our extinction emergency.

If you want to review additional climate science on why about half of humanity will go extinct by mid-century, click here. We want you to have all of the science and analysis behind our half of humanity going extinct by mid-century statements. Hence, you will know that the many painful and difficult changes you will soon need to make on the Job One Plan B are genuinely warranted.

 

Please keep reading. The next sections will help motivate you to take the best possible actions in spite of all the bad news...

 

 

A wise Chinese general was cornered at the banks of a large river by an opposing army at least 20 times larger than his own. His only means of escape was to get his army across the river before they were attacked. This general had also previously placed enough boats on the bank of the river for escape with his army should that need arise.

As the larger army approached, pushing the smaller army closer to the river, this general gave the order to his most trusted lieutenants to rush to the boats and burn them. When his army saw their only means of escape was being destroyed, they became wildly angry and charged toward the general. The army demanded to know why their trusted general had burned their escape boats and condemned all of them to certain death at the hands of a vastly superior army.

The general calmly said, “We will win this battle or we will die. There is no other alternative and no escape.”

His army now knew their only option was victory or death. Filled with such clarity and single-mindedness of purpose, they fought with such reckless intensity, they defeated the opposing army 20 times their size.

Now that you better understand the rapidly approaching extinction consequences of our global warming extinction emergency from the science and analysis in the links above, you too should no longer retain any illusion of any long-term escape for you or your family, business, or nation from immense suffering and likely extinction --- if we do not deal with the reality of this emergency.

What you also may not have realized yet, is that our 35-year failure to have previously started effective fossil fuel usage reductions means that we too, in effect, have already burned our escape boats! Because of this, like the Chinese army, we either win, or we die.

This is the perilous and sad point that we have come to because of our inaction and ineffectiveness in addressing global warming and the required fossil fuel reductions for almost 35 years.

The good news is if we act wisely cooperatively and immediately to radically cut fossil fuel use to the above targets, humanity and civilization will have a chance to continue. 

So what do you have to lose? What rational alternative do you have than to act immediately to radically reduce your personal fossil fuel use? What legitimate excuse is there for you not to help us get our governments to enforce the required radical fossil fuel reductions by the necessary deadlines and that only governments can achieve? 

The reality is, that failure is no longer a conscionable option.

There is a fifth tipping point that few are willing to talk about, 2025-2030 "migrate or die" tipping point

If we miss our last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, and if you live in a global warming unsafe zone, you will need to migrate either before or near 2025 to about 2030 if we are lucky. The global warming safer areas are generally above the 45 parallel north or the 45 parallel south as shown above or below the orange lines in the illustration below.

 

 

If we miss the 2025 deadline by a considerable amount, near or around 2025-2030 real estate prices will also begin to drop significantly (or even crash) in some global warming higher-risk areas (from the red Equator line to each of the orange 45-degree lines.) They will also begin to soar in many global warming safer areas.

The reasons for this are:

1. A predictable mass extinction event will be unfolding at a continually accelerating pace and it will come to full realization throughout the next 30-50 years. It will also unfold faster and faster because more extinction-accelerating tipping points will be crossed faster and faster as the carbon ppm levels continue to climb in the atmosphere. This means that you will have less and less time to prepare, adapt, and migrate as the global warming extinction emergency gets worse at faster rates if you do not get started soon.

2. At some point by around 2030, there will have been so many global occurrences of extreme or record-breaking storms, droughts, heatwaves, floods, rain bombs, bomb cyclones, hurricanes, and unseasonable weather, which cause more severe disasters and catastrophes that no intelligent person will be able to continue to deny the evidence of their own eyes or their increasingly painful experiences. At that point, far more people will begin to migrate to the very limited global warming safer areas. 

In response to the increased migration pressure, real estate prices will rise rapidly (even skyrocket) in more and more of the limited global warming lower-risk areas.

3. Like what has already happened in Europe with Middle Eastern and African climagees (climate migrants,) nations in the global warming safer areas will either be closing their borders or making immigration so restrictive that fewer and fewer climagees will still be able to migrate much after 2025-2030.

There will be a negative 2025-2030 tipping point for allowing the mass migration of individuals and businesses out of the global warming high-risk zones into the safer zones. Once this tipping point is reached, the safer zones will close down all migration!

It will be unwise to allow yourself to get caught on the wrong side of this perilous 2025-2030 tipping point.

Click here to learn more about the safer (lower risk) and unsafe (higher risk) global warming zones as well as wise global warming migration options.

 

 

The most important things to remember on this page!

1. There is only one real global warming deadline and tipping point that is necessary to burn into your mind at this time. Everything depends on what we do with the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets:

a. If we hit the 2025 targets, we could possibly still prevent the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century, but this is highly unlikely.

b. If we miss the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets by a lot, there will be the extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century.

c. If we do not get very close to the 2025 targets, most of us could go extinct in a near-total extinction event! And,

d. If we miss the 2025 targets by a significant amount, the best we can hope for is that we have cut global fossil fuel usage enough so that we slowed down the extinction processes sufficiently so more of us can live a little longer!

2. If we miss the 2025 targets, no new technology can scale up fast enough to save us! Our ability to maintain any real or meaningful control over this emergency ends just after we breach the carbon 425-450 ppm range in 2025.

3. It is the pure physics and mathematics of global warming temperature dynamics that will take over after we have gone over the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff.

4. If we do not make the 2025 targets, our last chance and the final window opportunity to effectively control our own destiny regarding preventing even worse extinction level tipping points from being crossed literally closes! If we go over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point, the worst consequences of global warming will not only increase in severity, frequency, and scale, they will also come at us faster and faster. Eventually, everything we depend upon in an organized society for our survival becomes so unstable that an organized society can no longer exist. At that not too distant point, we then starve to death, or die in resource scarcity collapses or conflicts or, in "migrate or die" chaos, or in national conflicts.

5. The largest illustration on this page above, the Global Warming and the Climageddon Scenario Cascading Meltdown reflects the unfolding natural progression of ever-worsening consequences, tipping points, and human system processes that will accelerate as global warming continues. These consequences, tipping points, and human systems will also synergetically and cumulatively collide with each other and adversely interact. It is these ever-increasing interactions among and between worsening global warming consequences, tipping points, and human systems that will make each of these things worse faster and faster.

This illustration reflects the core of the final processes that will lead to our mass extinction as well as into global economic, political, and social chaos. Its three levels of global warming interactions (consequences, tipping points, and human systems,) highlight the continuous onslaught of emergencies, crises, and catastrophes that we are already experiencing and which foretell our eventual extinction if we fail to reach the 2025 targets.

6. While you personally can do some things on your own to reduce global warming, there is nothing you can do individually (or even in large groups,) to effectively hit the 2025 targets. It is now the government's responsibility to save us. The 2025 targets can only be achieved by governments working together and immediately issuing new global warming reduction laws and then verifying and enforcing that they are followed to hit the 2025 targets.

7. Not getting very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets is the ultimate no-win game! It is near-total extinction.

8. Escalating global warming is the ultimate no/win game unless we come close to meeting the 2025 targets! 

(Many key areas of this document were derived from the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown document. It breaks down the complex global warming processes at the next level to help prove to you that the technical details above are accurate. If you have not yet read about the six phases of the Climageddon extinction scenario, which will take you level-by-level through the consequence and timetable details as humanity moves ever closer to extinction, we strongly recommend doing do so now by clicking here.)

 

 

9. What most people do not understand about global warming tipping points

Most systems like the global warming climate system cannot be easily fixed once you cross a crucial tipping point without a long recovery time and severely high costs. These long recovery periods and high costs are due to:

1. The whole or significant part of the system completely crashing. Some system tipping point crashes are entirely unrecoverable, and others will take hundreds to thousands of years. By the time this system recovers, it's too late, and the damage has already been done.

2. There is so much previous momentum in the system that what you did decades ago is now driving current and future consequences.

3. There is so much inertia in other parts of the system that you can't change in time; you will not be able to prevent the worst global warming consequences from occurring.

What most people have a hard time understanding about global warming is that:

a. there is a finite window of opportunity (realistically until 2025,) where we still have some control of our global warming future, and 

b. when you cross critical global warming tipping points, that window of opportunity is gone, usually for centuries to millennia while you are suffering all of the consequences of a crashed system.

To learn more about the 11 key global warming tipping points click here.

10. If you only remember the following things from this page you will understand the core message of this page and our website: 

11. The core message of our website is simple and straightforward. If you have not read it already, click here.

12. After reading this article, you definitely will want to read this page. It is the small-picture, detailed overview of the 40 primary and secondary global warming-related consequences that will occur as we cross the four major extinction-triggering climate tipping points below. It will help you get prepared for what is coming.

13. If the climate change emergency is allowed to continue as we are doing now, what you see above IS what will unfold step-by-step and layer by layer. The world's wealthiest individuals, corporations, and nations will lose their wealth and fall.

Eventually, millenniums of human civilization will be lost into a post-collapse new dark age. We will be lucky if there are any human survivors at all. (Click here to see what will happen with the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations if they fail to use their influence to get our governments to act before it is too late!)

14. This page helps explain why we have predicted that about half of humanity will perish from climate change-related primary and secondary consequences by mid-century.

15. It is critical to understand the five phases of runaway global heating and when we cross over into irreversible global heating, which could last for centuries before recovery. Each of the first three phases of runaway global heating pushes us farther into the mass human extinction process and makes recovery or control more unlikely. If we cannot get global heating under control by getting close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets before we get far into phase two of runaway global heating, very few of us will be left (if any.) This is particularly true if we enter phase three. If we enter phase four of runaway global heating, there is little hope left for any human survivors. Finally, phase five of runaway global heating will end all life on earth.

16. Many individual climate tipping points and feedback loops are getting worse considerably faster than predicted. This worsening is a double problem because not only are those climate systems getting worse faster than predicted, the climate systems interconnected to those systems will most likely also get worse faster than predicted because of that interconnection. It is not just one thing getting worse in this scenario. It's one thing making almost everything else it is connected to get worse as well. This linear and nonlinear amplification factor across intra-system and extra-system climate interconnections within the climate as a complex adaptive system is seldom compensated for in computer modeling.

It is not just Job One for Humanity saying these scary things anymore. Hundreds of climate scientists now feel we cannot keep global warming below a 2° C increase. This means that all we can do right now is prepare for and adapt to what's coming. (If needed, click here to review the many reasons why it is highly unlikely we will reach our 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and why we must begin preparing ourselves.)

The above is all you have to remember about global warming and your future. Most of the pages of our website are about showing you the exact science behind these simple statements so that you can always verify what we are saying is true. You can start or continue that verification process here.

Everything for a livable future for humanity depends upon simply not passing beyond the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold!!!

Most people who hear our governments talking about reaching fossil fuel reduction targets between 2040-2060 have no idea if we fail to make the required global fossil fuel reductions over the next 3 to 8 years (from 2025-2031); we are royally screwed!

If we miss the correct, uncensored, and up-politicized 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets by a lot, we will suffer:

1. The unavoidable extinction of about half of humanity by mid-century. And, 

2. We will bring about phase 2 of irreversible runaway global warming and near-total human extinction by about 2070-2080.

But why do we have to act within this 3-8 year last window of opportunity to fix the climate change emergency? Few understand this survival critical information. 

The key reasons that we are almost out of time to prevent the mass and near-total human extinction are as follows:

1. James Hansen, a former NASA climate scientist, said that humanity should be safe if we stayed below an atmospheric carbon level of 350 parts per million (ppm). However, he also said that if we go beyond an atmospheric carbon level of about 386 ppm, we will enter into a state of runaway global heating. If you imagined runaway global heating like a train without brakes rolling down a mountain, which is getting steeper and steeper, you would have a good idea about what we face with the runaway unstoppable and ever-rising temperatures of runaway global heating.

James Hansen also said that if we crossed the carbon 386 ppm threshold, critical climate change tipping points and climate feedback loops would start "stacking." These tipping points and feedback loops would rapidly be continually crossed like falling dominoes. Crossing additional climate tipping points or climate feedback loops is a self-feeding, self-reinforcing, and self-sustaining process! In other words, because of the climate tipping points and feedback loops, runaway global heating would become irreversible in the most practical meaning of the word.

2. Accordingly, we ensure an ever-continuing global temperatures rise if we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm level. Just the carbon 425-450 ppm level by itself would eventually lock in a total increase in average global temperature of about 2 -2.7° Celsius (4° - 4.9° Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels. 

Once we cross the 2° plus Celsius (the carbon 425-450 ppm level,) the widespread extinction-accelerating temperature levels of 3°, 4°, 5°, and even 6° Celsius will also be all but locked in! (According to James Hansen, a carbon 450 ppm level would eventually develop into an average global temperature increase of 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) in this century and be the end of human civilization as we've come to know it and near-total human extinction.)

As you can see below, as of July 2024, we were at the hazardous carbon level of 425 ppm We are currently entering the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold where climate change hell breaks loose and for all practical intents and purposes, we lose control of our climate future for many, many decades to centuries. 

 

 

 

3. Once we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold level, we also begin triggering many additional climate tipping points and amplifying climate feedback loops at even faster rates! These tipping points and feedback loops will also cause the many primary and secondary consequences of climate change to increase in severity and frequency radically, and they will occur over larger and larger areas.

4. Unfortunately, we have passed phase one of runaway global heating. We are about to enter phase two of runaway global heating. When we enter phase three of runaway global heating (after about 2031,) the primary and secondary climate change consequences will continue to rise exponentially.  

5. Once we cross the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold level, runaway global heating becomes all but irreversible for centuries. Only the proven processes of nature over vast amounts of time will be able to slowly reverse the atmospheric carbon pollution and the other consequences of runaway global heating after all of the other key sources of runaway global heating are eliminated.

We finished a three-article series in January of 2023 on what happens when you add current climate research (like the above,) climate change extinction tipping point, and feedback loop information into five well-documented studies on the factors that are most likely to bring about global collapse. Those five areas are industrial output, food production, resource availability, population, and pollution. The previous five studies did not include recent climate change research.

The last article in this series has graphs that show how the updated prediction timeframes for the global collapse of these five critical factors have grown significantly shorter when you add climate change consequence factors and timeframes into the other five studies. Click here to go to the first of these three articles. It will also link you to the other two articles. We strongly recommend reading these articles to learn how humanity's global survival timeframes have grown much shorter! 

The ultimate and still remaining global warming critical question for every person, business, religion, and the government on Earth

We were grossly unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic despite repeated warnings by our scientists. We are woefully unprepared for the coming global warming extinction emergency and we have once again have ignored the warnings of our scientists.

If we continue to fail to act effectively, we face unavoidable mass human extinction for most of humanity by mid-century and near-total extinction within as little as 50-70 years.

We have already all but lost the battle to avoid global warming mass extinction by our being so far away from hitting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.

The ultimate remaining global warming question for every person, business, religion, and the government should be most concerned about at this time is:

"Will we, at least, come close enough to the critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets so that humanity can avoid near-total extinction?"

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

If you want to find out what you can do to prevent crossing the last chance 2025 deadline and tipping point, click here to learn more about the Job One for Humanity Plan.

 

 

To learn more about what you can do to prevent extinction click the image just above.

Help us get the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction goals met by signing the global warming extinction emergency petition now.

Created by the Job One Research Team

The essential positive perspective on the above disruptive global warming and climate change news

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

Discover amazing information, tools, alerts, and promotional benefits for becoming a Job One for Humanity climate change think tank donor/supporter/member by clicking here!

 

Curious about the many major step-by-step consequences unfolding as we pass through the global warming tipping points described above? 

All of the most critical consequences that we will face as individuals, businesses, and nations as we cross the tipping points described above were not listed above. It helps many people to see these critical tipping point consequences that will most affect them written in a simple list form. This simple list will help you know what is coming in what general sequence and, most importantly, for what you will need to be prepared.

If you click the 2025 Global Warming Doomsday clock image below, it will take you to a critical global warming tipping point consequence list and other vital information concerning how our other global problems will affect the global warming emergency and your lives.,

Once you click the image below, we strongly recommend reading the whole page, but if you only want to read the consequence lists, do as follows. First, about 1/2 way down the page, go to the section called, "How global warming will act as the key disruptor, threat amplifier, and multiplier accelerating global collapse."Next, a bit farther down the page, go to "How the Great Global Collapse will likely unfold and how it will affect everyone in its path. These two lists and the whole pages are shocking eye and mind openers!

 

 

Putting ALL of the above together as a single unified process

There is a lot of complex climate information listed above. To help you see this page developing from one deadly, multilayered, overarching process called the Climageddon Feedback Loop, click here. This one page will tie all the processes and interconnections above together in a way that will allow you to see the climate nightmare at the level the best global climate researchers see it. 

When you understand the Climageddon Feedback Loop, you understand why you should start preparing for the coming climate chaos NOW. You will also understand why climate change researchers who accurately include it in their calculations are terrified and quietly moving their families to safer climate change locations if they are currently in medium to high-risk areas.

 

If you still have doubts about what you are reading...

For many visitors to our uncensored climate change think tank's website, their biggest question after reading our climate change consequences and timetable forecasts is, "Why are your climate change forecasts so much worse than almost everything I hear in the media from my government, the educational environmental and climate change organizations, or the former world's leading authority on climate change, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC)? Click here for the five critical reasons that will fully answer your "why are our forecasts so much worse" question.

 

Please share these critical nine global warming facts with everyone you can, and, please sign this

Global Warming Emergency Petition

And, if you read nothing else from the links above, read this page!

Despite Everything Disheartening that You Have Read Above, the Job One For Humanity organization is NOT an End-of-the-World, all-is-lost organization

Please click here to read our balanced, positive approach toward the monumental challenges we face to avoid extinction and the widespread collapse of our global systems. 

Still Feeling Sad, Angry, or Anxious About Global Warming? Here is what to do.

Click this link and start feeling better.

 

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And, if you have not done so already,

after reading the above article, you will definitely also want to read this page. It is a detailed overview of the 80 primary and secondary global warming-related consequences that will occur as we cross the four major extinction-triggering climate tipping points described below.

Click Here Now if You Are Ready to Vote if the Global Fossil fuel Cartel is Guilty of Causing Climate change and Financially Responsible for all Climate change Loss and Damage.

Important technical details for the 2025 targets 

 

It should be noted that many, many climate scientists have had the courage to say we are already well past the point of effectively stopping global warming from reaching a 2 degree Celcius increase in average global temperature (above our pre-industrial temperature levels.) Our average global temperature will reach a 1.5 degree Celcius increase because we have already crossed over the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff. This means that the other mass extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points described on this page will soon be triggered.

In essence, what these "it is already too late" climate scientists are now saying is:

a. All we can do now is prepare for and adapt to the horrible list of consequences described in this article. 

b. We will not be able to avoid a mass extinction event and die-off. And,

c. The only thing our governments (not us as individuals) can still do is slow, save, and salvage what we can to still prevent a runaway global heating-driven near-total extinction event. To do this, they need to slow down the accelerating rise in global temperature from the rate that it is now. This will allow more of us to survive a little bit longer to get prepared. (On this page, you will find our Plan B for how to prepare for and adapt to the many consequences we can no longer change.)

d. The global warming extinction emergency is part of a much larger and more dangerous ongoing global collapse process. Click here to read about this more extensive global collapse process, and how the global warming emergency is accelerating it. 

e. According to a new 2023 study, the correct climate sensitivity constant is 4.8 degrees Celsius, not the IPCC's 3 degrees Celsius constant used by the IPCC over the last 30-plus years in almost all critical climate change calculations. The new study is called Global Warming in the Pipeline. It is by James Hansen et al. (James Hansen was the climate scientist at NASA, primarily responsible for bringing the climate change emergency globally into the public mind.)

This new and correct 4.8 degrees Celsius climate sensitivity constant amount confirms that climate consequences will be sooner, worse, and far beyond what we are being publicly told. The climate sensitivity constant is used in every major calculation involved in climate change consequence severity predictions, consequence timetables, and discovering the correct global fossil fuel reduction amounts to keep humanity from going extinct.

This corrected 4.8 degrees Celsius corrected climate sensitivity constant also implies that we are already in a hidden worst-case climate change scenario for which humanity is not even remotely prepared. 

Our organization, which has done over a decade of extensive research analysis on the global warming emergency and which has created this Doomsday Clock, has also aligned itself with the many climate scientists who have said we are well past the point of effectively stopping global warming from reaching a 2 degree Celcius increase. (On this page you will find the almost two dozen reasons why our organization now also believes that global warming has gone out of our reasonable control and that we will face unavoidable mass extinction with just a few decades.)

If that is our current position, it is only natural to wonder why we have also created and are promoting the Climate Change and Global Warming Doomsday Clock? The answer is simple. 

We wanted to promote the extreme urgency of the global warming extinction emergency so that our governments finally begin to significantly reduce global fossil fuel use to at least slow down the current global warming acceleration curve enough to prevent a near-total extinction event. Also, if more people understand the urgency of our emergency, they also will do what they can to slow it down and, they will have more time to prepare for and adapt to the upcoming horrific global warming consequences. As this happens more of humanity and civilization can also survive longer and most importantly, we still have a chance to avoid near-total extinction. It is just that simple! (Click here to see the many effective government actions needed to slow down the near-total extinction nightmare so more of us can survive longer.

For those interested in the most complete timeframes, triggering events, and supplemental information related to when and how the preceding primary and secondary global warming consequences will occur, please see the six unique phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario. This is dense reading but well worth the time for those who must know every known warning sign and signal tracking the acceleration of the unfolding mass extinction and collapse. Individuals with significant personal investments, businesses that could be affected, or working in predictive positions at insurance companies, investment banks, or hedge funds are the most frequent readers of the six phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario.

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

Click here to see most of the published climate research and other summary references reviewed or used for content on this website. This master references listing also includes a description of the analysis process used to develop the facts found on these pages.

Ask them why they are not adequately managing the greatest threat multiplier and global problem amplifier of the 21st century by enacting the governmental steps described here!

 

(This page is derived substantially from the 2016 book, Climageddon, The Global Warming Emergency and How to Survive It. It has been updated with new climate research since 2016 as applicable. Climageddon is Available on Amazon.)

 

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For answers to all of your questions about climate change and global warming, click here for our new climate change FAQ. It has over one hundred of the most asked questions and answers about climate change.

 

Please consider becoming an annual member by clicking here and checking out the wonderful information and benefits that you will receive. We guarantee you will get more than you receive when you become a proud funder of our 100% publicly-funded not-for-profit climate change think tank.

Updated 4.15.25.

Job One for Humanity published this article. Job One is a nonprofit climate change think tank and risk assessment organization founded in 2008. It is independent, 100% publicly funded, and uncensored by any government or corporation.

 

Prologue

1. To best understand the global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines described below, one must also understand our current climate change condition. If you have not read our continually updated ten most critical facts about today's climate change condition, please do so now. Without this understanding, it will be hard to grasp the urgent deadline and severe levels of global fossil fuel reductions needed.

2. Our politicians and governments have failed to fix climate change, use the correct global fossil fuel reduction targets, or even slow climate change down. But there is a clear and simple reason for their failure. Our politicians and governments have been paralyzed and made ineffective by a decades-long, multibillion-dollar, highly sophisticated global climate change disinformation program designed and paid for by the global fossil fuel cartel.

If you have not already read the detailed proof that the previous statement is not an exaggeration, please do so here before reading the article below to give you the correct perspective on who is to blame for the climate change emergency we all now face.

3. The most honest and fundamental message for the world today about our inability to "fix" climate change and secure our climate future is:

"Unavoidable and accelerating climate change consequences have reached a level where it is already too late to save about half of humanity that will die off by about 2050. Immediate and aggressive government action is now mandatory to reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets to save the rest of post-2050 humanity, or there will be as little as 15 to 5% of humanity left alive by about 2070." 

If we do not get our politicians and governments to understand that "we have to reverse the accelerating climate change emergency by radically reducing global fossil use immediately, most of us and our civilization will not be around soon after 2050 to 2070. The biggest remaining question is, how much more motivation do our politicians need before they make the required changes today to save the tomorrows of the future?

 

Overview: 

As you read this article, please remember that for 60 years, our governments have been buried in global fossil fuel cartel disinformation and other coercive actions to disable our politicians, described in full on this page. Because of fossil fuel cartel disinformation actions, our governments failed year after year to make the needed but far easier and gradual global fossil fuel use reductions.

Because we wasted 60 years of easy, gradual, and incremental reductions due to the misinformation and disinformation programs of the greed-driven global fossil fuel industry, we now face the radical, honest, and painful global fossil fuel reductions that you are about to read.

The radical, honest, and painful global fossil fuel reductions that are now needed are:

1. All developed countries (including India and China) must reduce ALL fossil fuel burning in transportation, homes, businesses, and manufacturing by 75% by 2025-2031.

Please note we only have until about 2031 to make the required reductions if we are fortunate, and we do not cross any significant climate tipping points or feedbacks before 2031. So planning to prevent humanity's extinction and depending on being very lucky is not a wise or effective plan, nor does it reflect even the minimum levels of the Precautionary Principle especially when there is overwhelming scientific evidence that the climate change extinction threat is real. Therefore, all global fossil fuel reduction plans should be based on the 2025 deadline, not the 2031 date.

Also, please note that temporarily, there would need to be an exemption for military and police fossil fuel needs until they can replace their current equipment with green-energy-powered equipment. Public order will need to be maintained in this very tough transition. 

2. All undeveloped countries must reach significantly lower national fossil fuel reduction targets by 2025-2031 (because of climate justice factors discussed below.) And,

3. Each nation must also reach net-zero emissions by a fixed date (discussed below.)

4. Because of the 60 years of ineffective climate action, the only way we can now reach the required global fossil fuel reductions in time to save about 50% (or less) of humanity from extinction is to enact immediate government-enforced rationing of all fossil fuel use in ALL nations. This rationing would be restricted according to the 2025 target amounts discussed below.  

More than anything else, the life and death and last chance for humanity reason we must get close to these targets is a bit of complex climate science, but it is explained in simple detail on this page. Before you go on, please read the climate science for why it is so vital we hit these survival-critical targets before it is too late.

The following and full last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets will cause many readers real emotional discomfort. This is because the fossil fuel targets and deadlines below are not only very difficult to reach but also contradict the commonly held public and media-forwarded illusions about what our current fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines should be.

This article also lays bare the global fossil fuel reduction target and deadline deceptions forwarded by wealthy fossil fuel corporations or national vested interests. The commonly promoted 2050, 2040, and 2035 "too little too late" versions of incorrect global fossil fuel targets and deadlines are currently provided to governments (and most environmental groups) by "trusted authorities" like the IPCC (the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), are not only dead wrong, they are also dangerously counterproductive to humanity having any livable future. (The IPCC was formerly recognized as the world's leading authority on climate change.)

The new 2025 targets found below were critical to counteract the gross underestimation errors and twisted distortions that the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) used to comply with the influence of global and national fossil fuel industries. (If you doubt that the massive financial influence of the 28 trillion dollars a year fossil fuel industry could alter how honest climate science would be presented, click here and read the amazing details about the horrible history of the IPCC twisting and underestimating climate science and the influence of the fossil fuel industry on how it presents climate science.)

In the article below, you will also find links to the documentation on why the incorrect and heavily promoted 2050, 2040, 2035, 2032, and 2030 global fossil fuel targets and deadlines are freeways to failure, gross underestimations, and a fast track to mass extinction for most of humanity by mid-century.

At the end of this article, in the Technical Notes section, you will find the calculations, compensations, and adjustments for "how and why" the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets came into being. 

The honest and adjusted 2025 target information below will help organizations and individuals correct their climate change reduction activities. It presents global fossil fuel reduction targets that were not influenced by fossil fuel lobbyists or twisted by the IPCC and that we must get close to by 2025 if we are to survive as a species and civilization.

The following article lays out the facts behind why we have only until 2025 to reduce global fossil fuel use sufficiently to come as close as possible to meeting the 2025 global targets. If we fail, we lose all practical, effective, and meaningful control of our global warming future. We will lose this control of our future because we cannot stop ourselves from crossing many more global warming tipping points, climate feedbacks, and because of complex climate momentum factors and human inertia factors. If we fail to get close to the 2025 targets, we will rapidly trigger the three worst extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points.

At the end of this article, you will also find links to effective governmental actions and individual solutions that must be undertaken to meet the correct 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and detailed technical notes. The technical notes will also explain the many detailed calculations and correct adjustments behind why the 2025 targets are valid and proper targets for where we are now.

We have wasted 60 years of valid scientific warnings. We now have less than five years left to hit the following global fossil fuel reduction targets as the only practical and proven way left to guarantee we can still save and salvage whatever we can for a livable future.

Our current runaway global heating emergency consists of the many direct, indirect, primary, and secondary consequences of climate change and runaway global heating. To save humanity at this point, we must first set a firm "last stand" atmospheric carbon (C02) in parts per million (ppm) limit of carbon 450 ppm.

If we go above carbon 450 ppm, we will push the average global temperature above 2 degrees Celsius. After 2 degrees Celsius, there will be no way to stop runaway global warming from crossing many more climate tipping points and feedbacks, which will cause increased global temperature levels of 3, 4, 5, and 6 degrees Celsius. Only a tiny portion of humanity will be able to survive a 4-degree Celsius increase, and their lives will be a living hell. (If you want to see all of the climate science and extinction nightmares we release upon the world if we go above the carbon 425 to 450 ppm range, click here.)

Unfortunately, politicians and nations will also face the horrible Garrett's Climate Dilemma when they do make the required global fossil fuel cuts described below. Garrett's Climate Dilemma is the dilemma that demonstrates that to save at least half of humanity through critical global fossil fuel cuts needed now, no matter what we do, the other half of humanity will perish from starvation and the other primary and secondary climate consequences by mid-century. (If you want to review additional climate science on why about half of humanity will go extinct by mid-century involving Garrett's Climate Dilemma, click here. We want you to have all of the science and analysis behind our half of humanity going extinct by mid-century statements. Hence, you will know that the many painful and difficult changes you will soon need to make are genuinely warranted.)

The world has waited far, far too long to fix global warming. The painful climate bill has come due. Now about half of humanity will die by mid-century.

Without the required 75% global fossil fuel reductions (described below) achieved by 2025 - 2031 and enacted exclusively through government-enforced global fossil fuel rationing, there is little realistic hope that humanity will be able to prevent its near-total extinction. At this point, only this government-enforced fossil fuel rationing will save us in time. All of our previous efforts to effectively reduce the fossil fuel usage causing global heating have failed miserably.

On this page, you will find a complete list of all the actions our governments must take to hit the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets described below. The good news is our governments are going to have to do the lion's share of the work making the laws and enforcing the laws because it is far too late for individual action alone to save as much as possible of the rest of humanity.

(If you do not understand the basics of how our fossil fuel emissions go into our atmosphere to create our current global warming emergency, please click here for a set of simple illustrations. After reading this article, we also strongly recommend that you read this most important page on our website about the four major extinction accelerating global warming tipping points.) 

(At the end of this article, to counterbalance the disruptive and unsettling climate change, global warming, and fossil fuel reduction facts, you will find a link to a comprehensive four-part plan for what you can do to manage the climate change emergency! You will also find a link to the many surprising and significant benefits that humanity will acquire as together we resolve the climate change challenge and opportunity.)

Finally, please remember that the correct global fossil fuel reduction amounts you see below also consider and compensate for the global fossil fuel cartel's disinformation and undue influence over the IPCC and their summary reports used by every government, media outlet, and environmental group. (Click here to see how the global fossil fuel cartel has caused the IPPC's climate change information, solutions, and timetables to be grossly underestimated through various "invisible hand-influenced" distortions, false calculations, and assumptions.  

 

Special Update of 2.15.24: Because of rapidly changing climate change conditions and the rapidly rising greenhouse gas levels, we now believe that the new Climate Justice Now program found here will be an indispensable tool needed to help humanity come close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and keep much of humanity alive.

 

Introduction

 

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

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.

 

More about your annual personal, business, and national fossil fuel reduction targets

The most important things to remember from this page!

1. There is only one real global warming deadline that is necessary to burn into your mind.

If we miss the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets by a lot, half of humanity, as well as many animal and biological species, will go extinct by mid-century! If we do not get very close to the 2025 targets, humanity will enter the accelerating phase of runaway global warming and the runaway greenhouse effect, and eventually we will experience a near-total extinction event. 

2. If we widely miss the 2025 targets, we go over the carbon 425-450 tipping point, no existing new technology can scale up fast enough to save us!  The 2025 targets really are our last chance! Our ability to maintain effective or meaningful control over this extinction emergency ends just after we breach the carbon 425-450 ppm range. If we do not come very close to the 2025 targets, our last chance, the final window opportunity to effectively control our own destiny regarding preventing even worse extinction level tipping points from being crossed literally closes!

3. If we go over the carbon 425-450 tipping point, the worst consequences of global warming will not only increase in severity, frequency, and scale, they will also come at us faster and faster. Eventually, everything we depend upon in an organized society for our survival becomes so unstable that an organized society can no longer exist. At that not too distant point, we then starve to death, or die in resource scarcity collapses or conflicts in a "migrate or die" chaos, or in national conflicts.

4. It is the pure physics and mathematics of global warming temperature dynamics that will take over after we go over the carbon 425-450 tipping point and cross the three other extinction evoking global warming tipping points to drive our temperatures ever higher past 3, 4, and 5 degrees Celsius.

5. While you personally can do some things on your own to reduce global warming, there is nothing you can do individually (or even in large groups,) to effectively hit the 2025 targets. It is now a last chance governmental responsibility to save us. The 2025 targets can only be achieved by governments working together, mass mobilizing, and immediately issuing new global warming reduction laws, and then verifying and enforcing that they are followed to hit the 2025 targets.

To get our governments in action, we need to get our politicians in action first! Part 4 of the Job One plan will help you do this!

6. Not making the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets is the ultimate no-win game because we are in truth facing a near-total extinction event and the completion of the Sixth Great Extinction Event of human history. What must be realized is that we must do only and exactly what is necessary to meet the 2025 targets. Getting lost on actions that do not forward the 2025 targets critical path is at best a distraction and at worst measures that will amount to "too little too late" to save us.

7. It is critically important to understand that no compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC,) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs. This horrific failure to include crossing any global warming tipping points in our current global and national fossil fuel reduction calculations is also true for the world's most recent 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. This omission of including proper calculations for crossing global warming tipping points as the world continues to warm is the recipe for mutually assured destruction. Yes, this failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points shockingly also means that the national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement targets are also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. 

8. The largest illustration on this page (above,) the Global Warming and the Climageddon Scenario Cascading Meltdown reflects the unfolding natural progression of ever-worsening consequences, tipping points, and human system processes that will accelerate as global warming continues. These consequences, tipping points, and human systems will also synergetically and cumulatively collide with each other and adversely interact. It is these ever-increasing interactions among and between worsening global warming consequences, tipping points, and human systems that will make each of these things worse faster and faster.

This illustration reflects the core of the final processes that will lead to our mass extinction and global economic, political, and social chaos. Its three levels of global warming interactions (consequences, tipping points, and human systems) highlight the continuous onslaught of emergencies, crises, and catastrophes that we are already experiencing and which foretell our eventual extinction if we fail to reach the 2025 targets.

9. Most of you that have understood the previous facts (that do not fall into a natural and defensive denial) will appropriately feel shocked, sad, angry, or even betrayed. The most logical and best thing to do to deal with those often overwhelming feelings is to work for "the best" while you prepare for "the worst," just in case we fail. What this means is that you will need to focus as much as your energy and resources on just two main action strategies:

a. Get busy with emergency preparations and adaptations for you, your family, and/or your business for many of the now unavoidable consequences that will be arriving soon no matter what we do and in case we fail to hit the 2025 targets. (Click here to begin this process.) and,

b. Get busy on getting the 2025 reduction targets met by getting our governments enacting and enforcing the laws needed to reach the 2025 targets. (Click here to learn what you need to know to get started on this.) 

These two action-based strategies will minimize the natural feelings of being shocked, sad, angry, or feeling completely betrayed by our current world leaders until you can get additional emotional support or assistance from other outside sources or from working through the Kubler Ross model on your own.

10. The REAL crisis, challenge, and ultimately global warming question for our collective and individual future is..."How do we prevent a global warming-caused near-total extinction event from occurring while we are simultaneously dealing with an unavoidable mass extinction event, which is already occurring?"

11. Keep in mind that our government leaders have utterly failed to see the coming pain and suffering of the COVID-19 pandemic, nor did they adequately prepare for it. Our government leaders are also not seeing or adequately preparing for the global warming extinction emergency, which is already happening and will be far, far worse than COVID-19!)

12. One of the hardest things for people to grasp regarding the global warming emergency is that by the time our governments finally get serious about fixing the global warming emergency, it will probably be too late to fix it. This irony is due to the increasing temperature momentum already in the climate system.

13. We now have less than five years left to hit the following global fossil fuel reduction targets as the only practical and proven way left to guarantee we can still save and salvage whatever we can for a livable future.

14. Be sure to read the technical notes further down this page. This will help you verify the validity of the 2025 targets and the many compensatory and corrective calculations behind them.

15. The life and death and last chance for humanity reason we must get close to these targets is a bit of complex climate science, but it is explained in simple detail on this page. Please read the climate science for why it is so vital we hit these survival-critical targets before it is too late. 

(Many key areas of this document were derived from the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown document. It breaks down the complex global warming processes at the next level to help prove to you that the technical details above are accurate. If you have not yet read about the six phases of the Climageddon extinction scenario, which will take you level-by-level through the consequence and timetable details as humanity moves ever closer to extinction, we strongly recommend doing do so now by clicking here.) 

In a nutshell:

This article has laid out the facts behind why we have only until 2025 to reduce global fossil fuel use sufficiently to come as close as possible to meeting the 2025 global targets. Each year we fail to hit these targets, the target for the remaining years goes up by the percentage of the missed target from the previous year, making the likelihood of meeting these targets more doubtful.

If we fail, we lose effective and meaningful control of our global warming future. We will have lost control of our future because of complex climate momentum factors, human inertia factors, as well as passing over the carbon 425-450 tipping point. Once we pass over the carbon 425-450 tipping point, we will rapidly trigger additional extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points.

Because of 60 years of ineffective climate action, the only way we can now reach the required global fossil fuel reductions in time to save about 50% (or less) of humanity from extinction is to enact immediate government-enforced rationing of all fossil fuel use in all nations. This rationing would be restricted according to the 2025 target amounts discussed above.  

 

Why are only a few of the world's thousands of environmental groups promoting the real 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines?

The most correct answer is that most of these environmental groups have been cleverly and invisibly deceived into accepting the incorrect analysis and interpretations of current global warming research by hidden vested interests and compromised bureaucratic "authorities." 

Click here to read about other key systemic global warming consequences and timetable deceptions.

After reading the above two links, you now know why so many groups are promoting the wrong global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines. Please do everything you can to get the information on this page to these groups and the world's politicians!

 

A quick and simple way you can immediately help get us closer to achieving the challenging 2025 targets

Important technical details on the calculations and compensations for how the 2025 targets were created

 

 

Here are the technical facts, footnotes, and disclosures which affect the validity of the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets described at the top of this document. Many global warming educational organizations are using a different climate change and global warming Doomsday Clock date. They are promoting that all nations of the world have to reduce their total fossil fuel use by 50% by 2030. This 2030 date is dead wrong for many reasons. 

One of the biggest reasons is that this 2030 target date ignores principles of equity, responsibility for harm caused, and social justice. It demands that all of the undeveloped, poorer nations reduce their annual fossil fuel use the same 50% amount as all of the wealthy and developed nations. This demand for the same amount of fossil fuel reduction is even though the wealthy developed nations have caused almost all of the global warming and atmospheric carbon pollution problems that we now face.

The correct 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets mentioned further above allow the poorer, undeveloped nations to cut their annual fossil fuel use considerably less than the wealthy developed nations. Yet, we all still get to the overall 2025 critical global targets.

There are also many other reasons those organizations still promoting the erroneous 2030 Doomsday Clock global fossil fuel reduction targets are wrong. These other reasons are found in the numbered Technical Notes section found further below.

The following technical information is for fellow researchers and techies who want the detail behind the calculations and factors involved in calculating the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets listed at the top of the page. This technical information is also useful in that it also shows you what is missing or wrong with the "too little too late" 2050, 2040, and 2035 global fossil fuel reduction targets and doomsday deadlines also being promoted by governments, the United Nations, and quite a few other environmental groups.

Here are the qualifying and essential facts and factors relevant to calculating the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets: 

1. The core science and base calculations behind the 2025 fossil fuel targets described on this page are based on the work of renowned climatologist Kevin Anderson. Kevin is one of the few climatologists unafraid to speak the "truth to power" and show the errors within the highly politicized calculations of "authorities" like the United Nation's IPCC. Using his calculations as our starting base we then allowed for additional factors being added or compensated for that even Kevin Anderson did not allow for in his calculations. You will see the additional factors and corrections described in the rest of these technical notes.

(Here are the links to the two videos by climate Prof. Kevin Anderson discussing in detail the REAL fossil fuel reduction calculations needed. Click here for the first professor Anderson video. Click Here for the second professor Anderson video.)

2. Like almost all other 2050-2040 2035 and 2030 fossil fuel reduction targets, the above 2025 global fossil fuel reduction amounts and calculations also do not include any of the false and grossly misleading atmospheric carbon capture technology reduction calculations and "compensations" currently being included in our current international fossil fuel reduction calculations and the fossil fuel reduction treaties. These future carbon capture compensations are being used by "trusted authorities" like the IPCC, (the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, ) almost all governments and environmental groups. 

The IPCC's newest global fossil fuel reduction target and deadline is "a global reduction in all fossil fuel use by 40% by 2030." This 40% level is far too little, far too late to save use from grave danger in the future. 

The reasons the IPCC targets and 2030 deadline are far too little far too late in part is as follows:

a. The current IPCC carbon capture calculations reverse backward into today's IPCC's calculations extensive compensatory fossil fuel use allowances for what our current fossil fuel reductions should be. They base these allowances for burning more fossil fuel today because of the unproven future atmospheric carbon removal success of negative emission technologies (NETs.)

Yes, that does not make sense. Quite unbelievably, the IPPC relies upon that NETs may be put into successful operation at the proper scale sometime after 2050 for the carbon allowances they using today in today's reduction targets. (NETs are also sometimes called BECCS (bio-energy with carbon capture and storage.)

This also means that these miraculous and nonexistent atmospheric carbon removal technologies will not be deployed in time to meet the survival-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. 

The IPCC's current mathematical reliance upon these "will be working after 2050 magical "carbon sucking unicorns" when setting today's reduction targets, allows the IPCC and the governments of the world to delude the general public as to the real nature of the worldwide warming extinction emergency. It also enables the IPCC to foist bogus and grossly inadequate current carbon reduction targets upon unsuspecting populations. 

This also allows unsuspecting national populations to believe they are safe when, in fact, they are in grave peril.

These false IPCC calculations have also fooled most of the world's largest environmental groups. They have also relied on the IPCC's estimates for the current global fossil fuel reduction calculations. These false IPCC calculations are allowing the fossil fuel industries and fossil fuel-producing nations to continue with "business as usual" while the rest of the society believes there is no or little urgency for reaching the 2025 global targets listed above.

The carbon capture technologies (NETs) which are currently projected by the IPCC to eventually keep (or return) the average global temperature to near 2°C do so by removing about 100 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere. With no scientific testing at scale, the IPCC also believes that these magical carbon-sucking unicorns operating sometime after 2050 can remove 100 gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere without any disastrous or even worse side effects.

To help you get an idea of just how big our atmospheric carbon capture problem is, consider that one gigatonne or metric gigaton (unit of mass) is equal to 1,000,000,000 metric tons. One hundred gigatons would equal 100 billion metric tons or 100,000,000,000 metric tons. 

Carbon capture is an important and complex issue that should not be relevant to setting the correct and honest current global fossil fuel reduction targets to save humanity and the future. Please click here for the whole crazy story about how these "magical carbon sucking unicorns" are being used to "cook the books" for the critical fossil fuel reduction calculations by the IPCC, the world's governments, and most of the world's environmental organizations to set (or promote,) the current global fossil fuel reduction calculations. 

We need honest reduction calculations we can use today based on today's resources and technology, not some theoretical calculations based on an unproven and unscaled, new technology that may or may not exist in 2050!

b. Unfortunately, our governments also have been giving global warming predictions and fossil fuel reduction calculations that include a 25-40% underestimation factor. They have also been not including any calculations for any of the 11 key tipping points being crossed.

When you add these two factors back into the prediction calculations to correct them, it becomes obvious that if we miss our 2025 reduction targets, we will be facing our worst higher temperature nightmares far faster than we are even remotely prepared. To read about the politicizing of the science and math in the United Nations calculations as well as their underestimation and tipping point exclusion errors, click here. 

3. The above 2025 reduction calculations also do not include any extra reduction percentage or calculations for the massive spikes in carbon and methane emissions. These spikes will occur when we closely approach or cross new permafrost and tundra melting global warming tipping points.

To be safe, the 2025 percentages for fossil fuel emissions reduction should be significantly higher by another 10-15% to allow for approaching or crossing more global warming tipping points. Not allowing any fossil fuel reduction compensatory calculations for any tipping point crossing issues amounts to planning for perfection. Planning for perfection is always planning to fail. Click here to learn more about the tipping points that will suddenly release massive additional amounts of carbon and methane into the atmosphere. 

4. The 2025 reduction calculations above are based on current and projected carbon CO2 levels in the atmosphere provided by the United Nations. They do not show the total levels of all greenhouse gases now in our atmosphere as tracked by CO2e. (CO2e measures ALL major greenhouse gases in our atmosphere.)

Because the calculations above also do not include the necessary reductions for methane and the other greenhouse gases as tracked by CO2e, the reduction calculations above probably should also be increased by another 2 to 4%. This additional 2 to 4% reduction would in part, allow for the factor that methane is 86 times more potent for increasing global warming than carbon as Co2 in our atmosphere. As shocking as it sounds, methane releases into the atmosphere from fracking or natural gas distribution is seldom measured or regulated by countries worldwide, including the US.

5. The above 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets also do not include any of the fossil fuel emissions currently produced by all import-export activities between nations. These extra emissions are significant because ocean cargo ships, trains, planes and other methods used for international import-export transport produce a lot of all global fossil fuel emissions. For some reason which defies logic, those scientists charged by the governments to measure and regulate global fossil fuel emissions also have carved out a political exemption for measuring or regulating this particular category of emissions, which could be up to 2 % of the world's total fossil fuel emissions.

6. To make the above 2025 reduction calculations work to save humanity from extinction, both China and India can no longer be considered developing nations. They must be required to make the same fossil fuel reduction targets as all other developed nations. This inclusion is necessary at this time because they are producing far too much of the world's total carbon emissions. China is already the world's largest fossil fuel polluter. There will be no way to meet the already severe fossil fuel reduction targets if they are not placed into the developed nation's category.

7. There are no effective international climate justice agreements regarding the differences in required fossil fuel reductions between developed and developing nations. All that exists today, which considers equity, and existing global warming treaty responsibilities is the usually ignored and unenforceable UNFCCC treaty.

This is the treaty most of the world signed and ratified. Its operating principles began with "Parties should protect the climate system for the benefit of present and future generations of humankind, on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities." The problem here is there is that no treaty agreement specifies the proportionate remedial responsibilities based on who did the damage. There is also no treaty on the required differences in fossil fuel reductions that each developed or developing country must make.

To make matters worse, the US and many other nations are currently not abiding by existing fossil fuel reduction treaties. Due to the nature of this emergency, to resolve current inadequacies and the inadequacies of past global warming treaties and agreements, it was necessary to come up with at least something valid, workable, and just reduction calculation that could be put into action immediately. This is our plan where developing nations were given far less initial fossil fuel reduction requirements and a longer time to reach net-zero carbon emissions. In short, the 2025 reductions mentioned above are REAL and necessary, and they can work to avert the extinction threat.

8. Having carbon neutrality, or a net-zero carbon footprint means achieving net-zero carbon emissions by balancing any measured amounts of carbon dioxide C02 released into the atmosphere with an equivalent measured quantity of carbon dioxide taken from the atmosphere and being captured for long-term storage (see carbon sequestration). In the Job One Plan, this carbon capture and sequestration(CCS) should happen almost exclusively through our already-existing natural biological, chemical, and physical processes. (See this definition of global warming for illustrations on how the climate's heat controlling systems and processes handle carbon capture and sequestration among other things).

Net-zero carbon emissions by 2035 or sooner for developed nations and 2045 or sooner for developing nations is a challenging subgoal to achieve. It will also require that strong financial disincentives be placed on fossil fuel use as well as keeping almost all existing fossil fuels in the ground and never burned (coal, oil, natural gas, tar sands, etc.) While doing this, we will also have to be heavily incentivizing natural carbon sequestration methods, as discussed in Part 3 of the Job One Plan.

9. Once we get to net-zero carbon emissions by 2035 for the developed nations, and 2045 for the developing nations we still aren't safe. There is much left to get done to restore our climate's long-term natural atmospheric carbon balance back down to around carbon 270-300 ppm (its preindustrial level.) 

10. The Job One Plan or any other legitimate plans for achieving net-zero carbon emissions also does not endorse Cap and Trade methods of arriving at net zero carbon and carbon-neutrality through offset schemes. Current Cap and Trade methods are too often a disguise for "business as usual." They will not get us to the critical fossil fuel reduction levels we need in the extremely limited time left to keep us from crossing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point. In Job One's targeted version of getting to carbon-neutrality, we use a method called Fee and Dividend (discussed in part three of our Job One Plan.) In our plan, you will not be able to buy Cap and Trade carbon credits to make up the difference and achieve net-zero carbon emissions through buying offsets because that inevitably promotes more fossil fuel burning.

11. Net-zero carbon emission calculations from fossil fuel use by 2035 in developed and developing countries could allow for a minimal amount of fossil fuel use for agriculture and medical uses.

12. The required fossil fuel reduction calculations discussed above are based on attempting to keep the average global temperature from rising two degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. It is calculated that if we cross that 2°C maximum levels of average global temperature increase above the preindustrial level, somehow we will be able to control the extremely slippery slope which will quickly lead us to 3, 4, and 5° Celsius increases in average global temperature. 

13. The reason undeveloped nations have considerably lower 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets is because of the principles of climate justice. Put simply; they have added so little carbon fossil fuel pollution to the atmosphere compared with the countries in the illustration below. The difference between the big polluters who primarily have caused today's global warming extinction emergency and the low-level polluting nations is staggering.

 

There is additional strong evidence beyond what has been discussed above that; even if we are successful in achieving the 2025 targets, the average global temperature will still rise to 3°C and likely beyond with many unavoidable and horrendous consequences. This 3°C and beyond means that we have a real problem as far as making only the above-required fossil fuel reductions. 

We have to make the required 2025 fossil fuel reductions no matter what! It is also highly likely that even those steep fossil fuel reductions are still not enough to avoid unthinkable suffering or the wide-scale reduction of the human population by as much as 50%. 

On the other side of this painful quandary is an even scarier fact. If we do not make the 2025 targets, it is very likely that we will lose nearly everybody in as little as 30 to 50 years. In 30-50 years, as much as 70 to 90% of humanity (if not all,) will suffer and die. 

What other choice do we have other than to make the required 2025 fossil fuel reductions while at the same time knowing we're probably going to have to make even steeper fossil fuel reductions as more research becomes available?

What we do know is this. No matter what, and in spite of all of the challenges and adverse outcomes that are possible, the single constant truth for the best possible global warming outcome is that the faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use:

a. the more people we will survive to carry on our civilization, and

b. that future generations will suffer less from the ever-increasing sequence of global warming consequences (as described fully in what is called the Climageddon Extinction Scenario and countdown.)

13. The above 2025 critical fossil fuel reduction targets are still significantly lower than they should be. The 2025 global fossil fuel reduction amounts described at the top of the page are the minimum essential starting reduction amounts. Based on numerous uncalculated factors and conditions described in 1-12 above, they should be significantly higher.

 

Based on the best current science from climate Professors like Kevin Anderson, the 2025 targets and deadlines above at least, are far closer to what we must do, and we have to start somewhere. These new working fossil fuel targets and timelines are based on both good science and climate justice and must now replace our current ridiculously impotent governmental and IPCC (UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) global warming reduction targets and deadlines.

If we really wanted to be completely safe and if we took into consideration all of the other calculation mistakes and inclusion or exclusion factors that were not considered, we probably should be targeting 80 to 85% fossil fuel reductions in all developed nations by 2025 (or earlier.) This would also require a modification to net-zero carbon in all developed nations by around 2032 or earlier. Higher fossil fuel reduction adjustments also would need to be made for the targets in developing nations that would be aligned with that which was re-targeted for developed nations. And finally,

14. In all fairness, it is critical to also candidly discuss just how enormously difficult it will be to reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. Unfortunately, because of our:

1. lack of progress over the last 60 years,

2. the ongoing global denial that global warming is real, and

3. the several dozen other reasons described on this 2025 many challenges page, it is highly probable that we will not be successful in achieving the 2025 targets. (Please see this detailed 2025 challenges page to understand why our probable failure to reach the 2025 targets is our most likely future.)

15. It also should be noted that many, many climate scientists have had the courage to say we are already well past the point of effectively stopping global warming from reaching a 2 degree Celcius increase in average global temperature (above our pre-industrial temperature levels.) When our average global temperature reaches a 2 degree Celcius increase, we have crossed over the last carbon 425-450 ppm battle line. This means that the mass extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points described on this page will soon be triggered.

In essence, what these "it is already too late" climate scientists are now saying is:

a. We have already gone past the midnight hour on the Climate Change and Global Warming Doomsday Clock. 

b. All we can do now is prepare for and adapt to the horrible list of consequences described in this article. 

c. We will not be able to avoid a mass extinction event and die-off. And,

d. The only thing our governments (not us as individuals) can still do is slow, save, and salvage what we can to still prevent a global heating-driven near-total extinction event. To do this, they need to slow down the accelerating rise in global temperature from the rate that it is now. This will allow more of us to survive a little bit longer to get prepared. (On this page, you will find our Plan B for how to prepare for and adapt to the many consequences we can no longer change.)

Our organization, which has done over a decade of extensive research analysis on the global warming emergency and which has created this Doomsday Clock, has also aligned itself with the many climate scientists who have said we are well past the point of effectively stopping global warming from reaching a 2 degree Celcius increase. (On this page you will find the almost two dozen reasons why our organization now also believes that global warming has gone out of our reasonable control and that we will face unavoidable mass extinction with just a few decades.)

If that is our current position, it is only natural to wonder why we have also created and are promoting the Climate Change and Global Warming Doomsday Clock? The answer is simple. 

We wanted to promote the extreme urgency of the global warming extinction emergency so that our governments finally begin to significantly reduce global fossil fuel use to at least slow down the current global warming acceleration curve enough to prevent a near-total extinction event. Also, if more people understand the urgency of our emergency, they also will do what they can to slow it down and, they will have more time to prepare for and adapt to the upcoming horrific global warming consequences. As this happens more of humanity and civilization can also survive longer and most importantly, we still have a chance to avoid near-total extinction. It is just that simple! (Click here to see the many effective government actions needed to slow down the near-total extinction nightmare so more of us can survive longer.

16. The Global emissions target illustrated below did not happen before 2025. The average global temperature above pre-industrial level is already at 1.59°C as of January 3, 2025. Humanity is now in very deep trouble and none of our governments are doing anything effective to protect our futures!

 

 

In every situation and in spite of all of the obstacles, the only way we save any part of a liveable future is to cut fossil fuel use to meet or get very close to the 2025 targets. These 2025 reductions will slow things down enough so that we have time to prepare, migrate, and adapt as well as possible.

No matter what, we must do whatever we can and make the best of a horrible escalating emergency that may already be out of our control for decades.

It's time to get started on the effective Job One for Humanity Plan to try to meet the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. Start it today!

Now that you understand how bad things are, please help us get the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction goals met by signing this global warming extinction emergency petition now. (It only takes a few minutes.)

 

What our climate change think tank is doing to deal with the problem of insufficient global fossil fuel reductions being made or likely to be made

Because of of the many intensifying and unavoidable climate change consequences arriving soon, we have entered a time when emergency preparation and adaptation for these climate catastrophes is mandatory for survival. Consequently, our think tank research team and many of our volunteers have transferred more of their time and resources over to:

1. climate change preparation, adaptation, and resilience-building actions for their families.

2. helping to forward the much larger climate change preparation and adaptation actions of the worldwide collaboration called Climatesafe Villages. And,

3. focusing on the Climate Justice Now program because we believe it has a reasonable chance to help humanity get to the minimum global fossil fuel reductions that will at least save 30% to, at worst, 2% of humanity.

 

About the Job One for Humanity nonprofit organization and climate analysis think tank

Job One for Humanity is a not-for-profit climate change think tank that provides a unique "big picture" and holistic view of the many inter-connected and inter-dependent climate systems creating our current climate change emergency. We analyze recent climate change research for errors, omissions, and unrecognized patterns across the many consequences, timeframes, and suggested remedies of the multiple systems involved in the climate change crisis.

Unlike other climate change educational organizations, we provide prioritized, time-accurate, and critical-path solutions to the climate change emergency. These solutions are based upon the most accurate global fossil fuel reduction targets and the most dangerous climate change and global warming tipping point deadlines we currently face. 

Job One for Humanity is also an all-volunteer non-profit organization, which is very rare these days. Our volunteers are independent, self-organizing individuals who have a passion for fixing climate change before it is too late.

The core of our organization is made up of think tank climate research analysts who have also volunteered their time. In many ways, one could think of us as a crowd-sourced think tank. Our volunteers also self-organize and coordinate to handle our social media, marketing, research, events, and even accounting. Our volunteers do all of the blog postings as they have done for years.

Click here to see a useful profile of our members and the audience of visitors who will most benefit from our website.

 

Special Update: 

In March of 2022, Job One For Humanity reviewed current climate science and updated its position on climate change. It concluded that a climate change-triggered extinction event of about half of humanity by mid-century is now unavoidable! This widespread mass extinction event will be caused by the primary and secondary climate change consequences described on this page. 

This first extinction-level will result from mass starvation due to climate change-related crop failures, low crop yields, soaring food prices, and growing regional conflicts as tens of millions of starving climate refugees seek to find new homes to eat and survive.

Worse yet, if humanity does not get close to making the required radical global fossil fuel use reductions (as described in detail on this 2025 global targets page,) humanity will face the second extinction level of near-total extinction beginning as soon as 2070. 

The above climate change facts are currently being censored or altered by the actions of powerful fossil fuel industry lobbyists upon the media and our governments. Yet, widely visible climate change consequences and current climate science-based predictions support the above statements as accurate. 

We have had to update our mission goals because of the preceding and increasingly severe global climate change consequences. We have shifted to helping individuals, families, and businesses move to a higher focus on preparing, adapting, and building climate resilience and other kinds of resilience in all of their and our essential life-supporting systems. 

Accordingly, we have updated our mission and goals to help individuals, families, and businesses to:

a. prepare for, adapt to, and build enhanced resilience to survive climate change's ongoing catastrophic or unavoidable consequences while time remains to do so, 

while simultaneously, 

b. hard pressing our governments to radically cut global fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 global targets to slow down global climate change sufficiently so that more of humanity can live a little longer and more securely. 

And, if by some very remote chance we can get close to meeting the survival-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, 

c. we actively support the building of many sustainable urban and rural communities worldwide that:

1. might allow at least some small part of humanity to potentially survive through the coming climate-change-propelled global collapse, extinction, and potential rebirth cycle and process, and,

2. might learn from and apply the hard climate change and other economic and political consequences, which will happen to us because of the final consequences of our current highly unsustainable and inequitable lives.

Our future depends on how fast we fix climate change. Our next 3 to 9 years will determine the future survival of humanity. (If you would like to see the analysis of many factors that bought us to the realization that, at best, climate change is only 3-9 years away (2025-2031) from going out of our control for centuries to millennia, click here.)

We understand that the above is a distressing and problematic climate update. But, the good news is, if our governments mass mobilizes and gets us close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, we still will be able to save as much as half of humanity! We will also be able to save many of the plant and animal species and other living systems of our beautiful planet. 

So, let's get busy and work together to save what we need to survive and what we dearly love.

Click here to see all of the reasons why a mass extinction event by mid-century is mathematically, economically, and politically unavoidable.)

 

Additional technical information to further prove to you that mass human extinction and economic, political, and social chaos from the accelerating consequences of global warming will become a reality within our lifetimes: 

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

20 worst consequences of global warming

global warming's 11 key tipping points

Why we have failed to fix global warming for 60 years. (How fossil fuel-producing nations and fossil fuel industry lobbyists have "cooked the books," making us believe we were safe when we were not.)

Why carbon-sucking NETs won't save us in time.

If you still don't believe that once we go over the carbon 425-450 tipping point, we are basically locked into continually increasing temperatures for as much as the next 30-50 years, click here.

For those who may still believe that we can miss the last chance 2025 targets and still be safe, our organization has described what will happen in far greater detail than above in what we call the 6 phase Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown. Click here to read the  Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown document.)

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

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

 

Are you still Feeling Sad, Angry, or Anxious About Global Warming or hitting the 2025 Global Targets? Here is What to do next.

Click this link and start feeling better.

 

Ask them why they are not adequately managing the greatest threat multiplier and global problem amplifier of the 21st century by enacting the governmental steps described here!

 

For answers to all of your remaining questions about climate change and global warming, click here for our new climate change FAQ. It has over one hundred of the most asked questions and answers about climate change.

Written by the research staff at Joboneforhumanity.org

 

Please donate any amount to help keep our 100% publicly funded nonprofit think tank free for everyone! Help us to keep providing uncensored climate change forecasts, facts, and solutions to the public.

With every donation of any amount, you will get amazing gifts! Click the donate image below and also see what these gifts are.

 

 

Please consider becoming an annual member by clicking here and checking out the wonderful information and benefits that you will receive. We guarantee you will get more than you receive when you become a proud funder of our 100% publicly-funded not-for-profit climate change think tank.

Let's start with a few of today's most concerning climate change emergency facts:

In spite of all the media PR, all the 21 climate conferences over the last 30 years, and all the national reduction pledges, things are not just getting gradually worse in a linear progression (1,2,3,4, etc.), they're getting worse in an exponential progression (2,4,8,16, etc.)! When we measure current rates of toxic carbon and methane pollution going into the atmosphere, there is now no way to deny it; we are not winning the escalating global warming battle!  

In spite of 30 years of warnings by credible scientists, the environmental movement and an increasing body of compelling scientific evidence (now agreed to by almost all of the scientists qualified in climate science), the toxic carbon and methane pollution of the atmosphere has not slowed or even leveled off.

Leading climate scientists like James Hansen (former head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies who also originally warned us about the global warming danger 30 years ago) say that we would remain safe if carbon in the atmosphere did not go over 350 parts per million (ppm). As of February of 2016, carbon ppm was near 405.35 ppm and increasing at about 2-3+ ppm per year in a nonlinear, exponential progression.

 

 

Worse yet, if you include atmospheric methane and other greenhouse gas pollutants, our current adjusted carbon ppm is already near 430 ppm or 430 ppm of CO2e! (When you combine the global warming heating effect of carbon with other greenhouse gases it is called the CO2e ppm rating. Also, see the rapidly rising carbon only ppm graph curve farther below. It does not show atmospheric methane included.) 

See the rapidly rising carbon ppm graph curve just below. Please note that It does not include and show atmospheric methane pollution. If it did, it would be at an effect-combined level of about 430 ppm.

We will be at carbon 450 ppm in 10 years or less if we include atmospheric methane in our calculations. To put this in a time-lapse perspective, from 1850 to about 1950, carbon pollution was steady at about a 1 ppm per year increase. From 1950 to 2000, the increase rose to 2 ppm per year, and now in its current exponential curve, it is at 2.75 ppm per year and rising rapidly toward 3+ ppm per year in possibly just a few more years. If carbon continues to rise in this exponentially and nonlinear way and continues virtually unchecked by our ineffective actions as it appears it may, after the year 2025 the increase will reach a possible level of 3-4+ ppm per year from its current level of about 2.7 ppm per year.

According to James Hansen, carbon 450 ppm would correspond to an average global temperature increase of 6 degrees Fahrenheit in this century and “the end of human civilization as we’ve come to know it.” Based on carbon ppm levels already in the system and soon reaching the 450 mark, this means that a 2.7-degree Celsius global temperature increase (6 plus degrees Fahrenheit) may already be an inescapable reality.

Unfortunately, it gets much worse! It is also highly probable that because of our denial and delay in facing and addressing the escalating global warming emergency with honest and effective measures, carbon parts per million in the atmosphere will most likely continue to rapidly rise to and beyond carbon 550 ppm, which translates to a 3-4+ degree Celsius increase (6-8+ degrees Fahrenheit) in average global temperature. For every degree of Celsius temperature increase, global food production will drop 10% in many southern areas while the human population will continue to soar toward 9 billion. Climate scientists who are normally guarded in their language call a 4 degree Celsius increase (6-8 degrees Fahrenheit) in average global temperature "Hell on Earth."

More "big picture" climate change facts:

1. We the general public are not being honestly told how bad escalating global warming actually is right now, or how bad it will become if we continue as we are now. The fossil fuel heavily lobbied or owned global media are telling us what will not alarm us to the real dangers and will allow the fossil fuel industry to continue “business as usual.”  Current fossil fuel use values for toxic carbon air pollution are more than 404 parts per million (ppm.) This is higher than at any other time in the last 1 million years (and maybe higher than any time in the last 25 million years.) This new carbon pollution record represents an increase of 85 carbon ppm in the 55 years since David Keeling began making his revolutionary atmospheric carbon pollution measurements at Mauna Loa. (See graphs one and four below.)

2. Even more disturbing than the historic magnitude of this change is the fact that the rate of toxic carbon pollution accumulating in the atmosphere has been rapidly increasing over the last few decades. If we keep doing only what we have been doing to resolve global warming, this also means that future increases will happen even faster. (See graphs one and two below.)

3. When averaged over 55 years, the increase in toxic carbon pollution has been about 1.55 ppm per year. However, the most recent data suggest that the annual increase is more than 2.75 ppm of carbon pollution per year. Carbon pollution of our atmosphere is getting worse, not better! We are not making progress in reducing our fossil fuel burning addiction.

Our 30-year inability to get the climate change emergency under control is in part due to:

1. The lack of national and international verifiable and enforceable international laws making large-scale toxic carbon and methane pollution of the atmosphere a strongly punished crime against both current society members and future generations.

2. The physical time lags in developing and deploying the infrastructure needed for the new green energy technologies (10-15 years if everyone on the planet and every government all agreed to do this immediately and there were no budgetary or resource restrictions in completing this life-critical project).

3. The existing carbon pollution momentum is already in the atmosphere. It will take numerous decades if not the rest of this century to eliminate it if we could immediately get our carbon 430 ppm level back down to carbon 350 to 325 ppm.

If the escalating global warming emergency and its consequent climate destabilization proceed to the levels currently being predicted, it will eventually cost the global society hundreds of trillions of dollars in crisis recovery as well as soaring insurance rates, massive real estate depreciation, and massive coastal and other infrastructure losses, in addition to the vast amount of human suffering and death. The Stern Review estimated that the costs of catastrophic climate destabilization will eventually grow to consume as much as 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of every nation on earth—and that is not even at climate destabilization's latter, or worse, stages! (The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change is a 700-page report released for the British government. The report discusses the effect of global warming on the world economy.)

Right now most nations are struggling with over-indebtedness and their economies are in trouble with anemic annual growth. How will many of these nations, particularly the weakest ones, remain politically or financially viable, stable, or even in existence if another 5% or more of their total GDP is drained off each year into the continually escalating costs of climate destabilization?

The global warming emergency and its consequent climate destabilization are already here! Its super storms, flooding, wildfires, heatwaves, migrating insect infestations, and droughts will continue increasing in scale, severity, and frequency.

In fact, we are already in a state of irreversible global warming that will last at least another 50 years. We are now facing an extinction-level event where human-caused carbon and methane pollution levels in the atmosphere push the global temperature increases to 5-6 degrees Celsius (8-12 degrees Fahrenheit) and beyond.

Please Go to the next page in this special briefing called: Future global warming - unfortunately, it gets worse.

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