The 20 worst global warming consequences,

The 11 key global warming tipping points

(Please note: The processes of global warming extinction are sometimes also called runaway global warming, irreversible global warming or, out of control global warming.) 

How a movie story and an asteroid metaphor will help you understand the Climageddon Scenario and the massive global warming catastrophes that are coming... 

A very good metaphor and way to think about the 6 phases of the unfolding Climageddon Scenario (described below,) is to imagine numerous waves of larger and larger asteroids crashing into the earth over shorter and shorter periods of time between the next wave of asteroids. For the sake of the metaphor accuracy, imagine these waves of asteroids have already begun and will continue throughout 10-60 years. 

(Please see the illustration below which will provide a quick but necessary minimal overview of the many consequences of 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario for the sake of the asteroid story. The temperatures listed below in both Celsius and Fahrenheit are the predicted increases in average global temperature that will most probably occur at each of the 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario due to increasing global warming consequences.)

Now that you can see that temperatures (consequences,) will continue to rise at each new Climageddon Scenario phase, you are ready to continue with the asteroid story and metaphor.

At first, the asteroid waves are made of smaller asteroids and the waves will be farther apart. In the earlier asteroid waves, the asteroid impact consequences grow in a slower, gradual and linear manner. In later waves, the asteroids grow larger and the waves now grow closer and closer together in time. Unfortunately, in the later larger waves, the asteroid consequences will grow faster and exponentially. 

Next, imagine that each new wave of the asteroids almost always hits the earth in the illustration below between the 45th parallel north and the 45th parallel south (between the two yellow/mustard colored lines.)

These would be the most asteroid-unsafe areas to live in in the future.

And finally, imagine the last wave of “planet-killing” and largest asteroids also hit the earth between the 45th parallel north and the 45th parallel south. 

To help you envision what will likely happen to society and your life during this unfolding asteroid cataclysm story and metaphor, it is useful to look to another story, the 1998 Hollywood science fiction disaster film called Deep Impact. This movie depicted humanity’s combined efforts to prepare for and destroy a 7-mile (11 km) wide planet-killer asteroid set to collide with Earth and cause a mass extinction. 

In this movie, to prevent the asteroid from reaching Earth, Russia and the United States send a spacecraft with nuclear weapons to destroy it before it reaches the critical minimal distance from Earth. The spaceship reaches the proper critical distance in time, but the nuclear weapons’ first attempt fails and instead splits the comet into two smaller masses, both still heading directly for Earth. 

After the U.S. President announces the failure to prevent the asteroid catastrophe, he declares martial law and reveals that in anticipation of this possible failure, governments worldwide have been secretly building underground shelters in what they believe will be the safest areas to ride out the impact. The U.S. government then conducts an emergency lottery and randomly selects 800,000 Americans under age 50. The government has also chosen 200,000 secretly pre-selected individuals to also enter the survival shelters bypassing the lottery. Not surprisingly, they are top government officials, top military brass, key scientists, and powerful corporate elites.

Around the world, the lucky and the pre-selected few go to the underground shelters, which also contain seeds for every species of plant, important viable animals, as well as massive food supplies for the would-be shelter survivors.

The first asteroid mass impacts Cape Hatteras in the Atlantic Ocean, causing a tsunami up to 3,500 feet (1,100 meters) high. The second mass is due to impact western Canada, creating a cloud of dust that will block out the sun for two years, killing all unsheltered life on Earth in a matter of weeks. 

At the last minute, the damaged spacecraft carrying the remaining nuclear weapons hits the larger second mass in a suicide mission, breaking it up so that most of it burns up in the atmosphere or misses the planet completely.

After the survivors finally come out of their shelters, the President speaks to a large crowd, telling them they've been blessed with a second chance to call Earth their home...

Here's what's important about this story and metaphor in relation to its similarities to the unfolding Climageddon Scenario. In the preceding metaphor and story, the most obvious parallels to the escalating global warming emergency and the Climageddon Scenario are: 

1. Just as they are in the asteroid wave metaphor, our global warming consequences will come faster and faster and grow larger and larger with each new phase of the six Climageddon Scenario phases. (Worse yet, in the mid to later phases of the Climageddon Scenario our consequences (which you will be reading about soon,) will begin growing exponentially.)

2. As we move through the six phases of the Climageddon Scenario there will be many of the other unthinkable consequences that occur within our social, economic and political systems just as in the movie when humanity faces its end. Some of those are rare and noble sacrifices, others widespread panic, chaos, looting, crime, cruelty, and loss of basic human rights.

2 As global warming consequences continue to worsen in the later phases of the Climageddon Scenario, governments will be forced to declare martial law, and there will be lotteries and secret pre-selection and quotas for who still will be able to move to the global warming safer zones near or above the 45th parallel north or near or below the 45th parallel south to escape the chaos occurring within that middle highest danger zone a little longer. 

3. If we keep going as we are now without radically reducing global fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 global fossil fuel reductions targets and we somehow survive the coming global warming consequences, most of humanity will die and there will have to be a massive, difficult, and costly rebuilding of civilization by the few remaining survivors if there are any survivors. 

As you continue to think about the many kinds of facts in the Climageddon Scenario article, please keep in mind the Deep Impact end-of-the-world asteroid movie story because its unfolding process is a good metaphor for how the Climageddon Scenario’s most serious consequences will also grow worse, closer and closer, and faster and faster over time. Also, please don't forget we still do have a last chance for humanity and civilization to survive, but only if we successfully reach the challenging 2025 global fossil fuel reductions targets.

Who most needs to understand how the Climageddon Scenario Extinction Countdown unfolds

Understanding the rapidly unfolding progression of the 6 phases of the Climageddon Countdown scenario is critical for every individual, business, or nation that wants to thrive or survive over the next 5, 10, 20, 30 or more years and takes planning for their or financial, physical and political future security seriously. 

Understanding the Climageddon Scenario is crucial information for anyone involved in:

1. personal, financial or security short or mid- to long-range planning,
   
   
2. city, corporate, or national mid- to long-range planning, 
   
   
3. the threat, hazard, and business or insurance risk assessment, and
4. planning, financing, or building mid- to long-term infrastructures such as highways, water treatment or sewage plants, power plants, power transfer stations, power lines, hospitals, government buildings, manufacturing facilities, distribution centers, military bases, corporate headquarters, real estate developments, and telecommunications facilities. 

An Illustrated Quick Overview of the Climageddon Global Warming Extinction Scenario Processes 

The Climageddon extinction scenario process illustrated just below will get you started and help you to understand global warming's many levels of processes as a holistic gestalt. A gestalt in holism is the idea that the properties and processes of natural systems and subsystems should also be viewed as having a synergy process and as an interconnected and unified whole, not simply as collections of, or summations of, separate and individual non-inter-dependent or inter-connected parts or actions.

Review the following Climageddon Scenario illustration starting from the bottom up! Starting from the bottom, this illustration reflects the unfolding natural progression of ever-worsening and interacting consequences and tipping point processes that will occur as global warming continues to escalate toward our extinction.

The top of the illustration below shows you the later Climageddon Scenario consequences the bottom shows you the earlier consequences. For now just get a general idea of all the global warming consequences, tipping points, and human system factors will be both interacting and colliding as well as amplifying and multiplying as the Climageddon extinction scenario unfolds in phases and waves. The illustration below will be explained in much more detail later in this document. (Full explanations of each tipping point and consequence are found here, the 11 key global warming tipping points and, here the 20 worst global warming consequences.)

And finally:

1. Please keep in mind that the temperature, carbon ppm, and loss or cost levels for each of the 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario described below are not hard and rigid boundaries. They may be modified by future research.

2. ll temperature amounts in this document or any other document on our website are always displayed as the Celsius or Fahrenheit increase from preindustrial average global temperatures. 

3. The severity, frequency, and scale of the many consequences listed below will not always occur in a steadily increasing linear line, curve or pattern. There will be intermittent periods of relatively stable levels of consequences and EVEN periods of lessening consequences before the next phase and wave of consequences continue to increase in severity, frequency, and scale to the next level.

More about the Climageddon Extinction Scenario and Countdown

It is far more than just a summary listing of the individual global warming consequences and tipping points. In its intertwined unfolding phases, it becomes easier to see the continually heat-intensified individual consequences and tipping points churning into something far more dangerous than just the individual summation of these things. Collectively, all of these moving parts of our global warming emergency synergize and accelerate the intensity and speed of the more deadly later stages of the Climageddon extinction scenario.

When you begin to see the Climageddon extinction scenario model as an integrated climate, human, and biological super system, you will discover:

1. new critical relationships and processes occurring between the climate, human, and biological systems,
   
   
2.  new qualifying and conditioning climate, human, and biological contexts, and finally,
   
   
3. new phase-by-phase interactions and magnifying transformations of the interconnected and interdependent climate, human, and biological system consequences that will both suddenly and dramatically worsen our lives.

To help you get this "big picture" perspective, you will find many illustrations like the one below showing the major tipping points and other global warming consequences colliding with our financial, social and political systems, which in this illustration below could easily also lead to a nuclear or horrible regional war as we desperately compete over resources and very limited safer global warming areas.

 

 

The Climageddon Scenario was first discussed in the new book Climageddon. It is already taking place. And, if we do not take immediate action to radically cut fossil fuel use, it will fully unfold into humanity's near-total or total extinction.

"Because of its, scores of variables, complexity and constantly evolving and emerging new tipping points and synergies, one of the hardest things to grasp about the Climageddon extinction prediction model is that it is a unique viewing gestalt for our probable future relating to almost every level of our current existence." Lawrence Wollersheim

Assigning accurate risk evaluation levels to each the 6 phases of the Climageddon extinction scenario

To help you put into perspective the serious implications of the consequences unfolding at each level of the 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario, we use three recognized risk, threat, and hazard alert scales.

Those three risk evaluation scales are:

1. The Torino Impact Hazard 0-10 Scale used to quantify the many risks and hazards of asteroids of different sizes hitting the earth.

2. The DEFCON 5-1 levels used by the U.S. government and military regarding preparedness for nuclear or conventional war. And,

3. The current US Homeland Security Advisory System. 

Here are the three risk analysis and how they are used to rate the six phases of the Climageddon Scenario:

1. The Torino Impact Hazard 0-10 Scale used to quantify the many risks and hazards of asteroids of different sizes hitting the earth. (The Torino Scale goes from 0 to 10, where a 0 rating is no hazard or threat and a 10 is “a collision is certain, capable of causing a global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it, whether impacting land or ocean.”)

There is a good reason to use the Torino Impact Hazard Scale with the Climageddon Scenario. Depending upon what phase of the scenario we enter, how we adapt to the threat may be uncannily similar to how we might adapt to survive impacts of ever-increasing asteroid sizes hitting the earth in repeated waves.

For example, if we knew well in advance that a small, survivable asteroid would hit the earth, using the Torino scale threat level 3 advisories could provide enough time to relocate almost everyone from the local hazardous area of impact. If a larger but still survivable asteroid were to hit, once again using the Torino scale threat level 4 advisory, we could have time to relocate almost everyone from the larger regional area of impact.

Similar to these asteroid impact scenarios, as the escalating global warming emergency continues through the 6 Climageddon Scenario phases, it will also eventually force us to relocate first millions, then billions of people. We will relocate them first locally, then regionally, nationally, and eventually internationally to the far north or far south. But, we may be able to move only as much of the total human population as can survive in the poorer soils and shorter growing seasons of the northernmost and southernmost countries of the world (above the 45th parallel north to Canada, Russia, Scandinavia, Alaska, Iceland, and Greenland etc), and also below the 45th parallel south like some areas on south island of New Zealand or at the tip of South America.

2. The DEFCON 5-1 levels used by the U.S. government and military regarding preparedness for nuclear or conventional war. (The DEFCON rating system goes from 5 to 1. DEFCON 5 is normal peacetime military readiness, and 1 is the highest military alert, such as imminent nuclear war. As the climate continues to destabilize, at some point the nations of the world will have to declare emergency regulations and martial law to deal with the escalating crisis and the internal and external instability it creates. Using this scale is appropriate because if left unchecked, global warming will parallel and eventually exceed the destructiveness of all non-nuclear world wars.)

3. The current US Homeland Security Advisory System. (The Homeland Security Advisory System is a color-coded terrorism threat advisory scale. The different levels trigger specific actions by federal agencies and state and local governments, and they affect the level of security at some airports and other public facilities. Although this is a terrorist threat risk system, it is also useful for climate crises. In the mid-to-later phases of the Climageddon Scenario, as our political, economic, and social systems break down, the nations of the world will react similarly to how they would react to a high-level terrorist threat or an actual attack. Martial law and other restrictive emergency measures with curfews, new regulations, loss of civil rights, and normal legal protections will be enacted.)

There are also other "outside" challenges and contextual factors that will interact directly or indirectly to worsen the MAIN consequences described in the Climageddon Extinction Scenario below

The Climageddon Scenario and global warming extinction model does not take place in a contextual vacuum. It takes place in a global context in which other major global challenges and consequences are already occurring and getting worse.

These 6 other major global challenges and consequences will directly or indirectly interact with and collide into the unfolding 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario global warming extinction model. These additional Climageddon Scenario interactions with the global challenges below will, unfortunately, make our lives and the other global warming consequences much worse. 

Please keep the in mind the following other contextualizing and evolving global challenges as you read the 6 phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario:

Global Challenge 1: Overpopulation, the Earth may have only the resource carrying capacity for about 2 billion people or less. (Please click the brief carrying capacity link and the brief overshoot link for a full understanding on why this overpopulation challenge is so bad.)

We are near 8 billion people racing to 9.4 billion by or before 2050. We are way over sustainable population levels and future and current generations will suffer dearly because we failed to manage ourselves in this area by itself.

Global Challenge 2: Resource depletion fueled by overpopulation, toxic pollution, and escalating global warming.

We already have increasing food shortages (1 billion people are hungry.) Ocean fish stocks are already suffering from catastrophic losses from pollution and overfishing. We are rapidly depleting our many kinds of quantity-limited, nonrenewable, and even renewable resources to unsustainable levels. This resource depletion also increases global poverty by making those essential resources more expensive.

To make matters worse, many of our current key resources will run out at nearly the same time! Paradoxical to making the necessary fossil fuel reductions and moving to green energy generation, we will also soon be facing fossil fuel shortages caused by the early attainment of peak oil.

Global Challenge 3: Global economic instability.

There is no doubt that the mix of the Climageddon Scenario consequences will increase the already existing global poverty, economic instability, economic inequality (conflicts between rich and poor) and rising national deficits. Imagine a global financial depression or crisis occurring as we also try to solve the global warming emergency and all of our other global challenges at the same time. In the next global financial crisis or global depression, there will be even less resiliency and fewer resources to solve all of these challenges.

Global Challenge 4: Political instability first in countries with low management capabilities or low resource resilience or high deficits.

Many nations of the world are weaker than we are allowing ourselves to realize. Global warming and these other global challenges will greatly increase political instability which acts to further increase the likelihood of more wars, terrorism, and political injustice in all low, medium, and high resilience nations. This global challenge plus escalating global warming and the other global challenges will create sudden and massive migrations of millions then billions of people that even the richest nations will not be able to absorb.

Global Challenge 5: Global Pandemic.

As all of the above 4 resilience-reducing global challenges get worse and the earth warms, this increases the probability of a global pandemic which is not caused by the global warming pandemic enhancing consequence of melting tundra and permafrost. This is specifically a separate high risk due to existing or new diseases being poorly treated, the mobility and migration of world populations and the overall deterioration of global health services as the stew of all of the global challenges listed above come to a global warming amplified boil.

Global Challenge 6: Failing to evolve a single global government with legislative, judicial, and enforceable executive powers.

If you think about it carefully, you will discover that this last and most often invisible global challenge IS itself the single biggest reason and core structural cause for why our main global challenges including global warming have not yet been resolved. The lack of the existence of a single global government with legislative, judicial and executive verification, enforcement and punishment powers having common global laws allows humanity's biggest global challenges to either:

a. exist at all,

b. continue to exist or,

c. to remain perpetually unresolved and/or,

d. continually worsening as many of them are now.

In other words, the mere absence of a true global government of itself alone acts to facilitate, escalate and enable all of the global challenges that we currently face. 

What we are facing with the above other 6 global challenges (above) interacting with the 7th global challenge (global warming and its Climageddon Scenario below,) is certain to become the greatest convergence of catastrophes and cataclysms in human history. For an amazing video by a famous English university professor with wonderful illustrations that explain most of the above global 6 challenges and the coming Great Convergence of catastrophes and cataclysms please click here.

Now that you have a better idea of the highly volatile and dangerous context in which the following Climageddon Scenario global warming extinction model is occurring, you are now ready to review its 6 phases and the consequences and time tables for each phase.

Here are the 6 phases of the Climageddon Countdown Extinction Scenario illustrated and in detail

The next section describes the 6 phases of the Climageddon Countdown Extinction Scenario in phase by phase detail. It also contains many more illustrations and charts (like the one below) as well as decade-by-decade global warming consequence information that was difficult and expensive for our organization to acquire.

This detailed year-by-year information is invaluable is to any individual, business or nation attempting to plan for how the escalating global warming emergency will directly affect their future life quality, finances and security. This next section on the detailed consequences for each of the 6 phases is contained only in the Member's section of this website on this page Climageddon Scenario Consequence Timetables. Much of it is not found in the Climageddon book.

To read the rest of this critical document on what happen within each of the six Climageddon Extinction Scenario phases:

If you are a member and you are logged in, click the Members link on the top menu bar on the far right side of the page. Then click the link called Climageddon Scenario Consequence Timetables.

If you are not already a member, you also can see this critical information and the rest of this Climagageddon Scenario document by becoming a member by clicking here.)

 

 

(Special Note: The global warming deadlines and tipping points disclosed below will not only affect humanity's extinction possibilities. They also present an extinction threat to many animal and biological species. While reading this article please keep in mind that at the end of this article, we have provided some great news to help you process the following uncomfortable news! You will find a capable, self-directed plan for what you can do how to resolve the global warming emergency while we still have the time to do so. )

Welcome to our website

We have been a not-for-profit organizational force for global warming education and truth since late 2008.

The following will tell you about our organization and why our organization's mission is so important at this time.

Most individuals who use this website have come to the conclusion that unless we make painful global fossil fuel use reductions by 2025, humanity is well on its way toward extinction within their lifetimes. This extinction threat comes from the current global warming emergency and the 6 other major global challenges facing humanity.

Our members and visitors appreciate Job One for Humanity because we treat them with respect as adults and we tell the difficult truths we now must hear to make the best of our almost impossible current situation.  

Introduction to "our story"

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

You are about to read some very alarming facts about our current global warming situation. We trust you to make up your own mind about what to do after thinking carefully about the facts that we are presenting.  

We have learned that not everyone decides to take the same remedial, protective or preparatory actions once they process the shock of what they are about to read. Because of this, we have provided the Job One for Humanity Plan which contains many options for very different kinds of individual or collective responses to the global warming crisis.

Because it is always best to get the bad news out-of-the-way before the good news, we will start with the bad global warming (aka climate change,) news first. Keep in mind as you read the bad news that there is good news about what you can do to improve our situation further down this page.

Here are the most current global warming facts that will define the quality of life and length of life for most everyone on earth.

Some time ago it became clear to our nonprofit organization that the world's leading global warming authorities (the U.N's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC],) in charge of the 2016 International Paris Climate Conference agreement had grossly misinformed the public about both the consequences and timetables of future global warming and, we had to do something about it.

At the last international climate conference the IPCC failed to:

a. warn the public of both the actual severity of future global warming consequences and,

b. how soon these consequences will actually begin occurring.

For years, the IPCC, governments and environmental organizations they influence have told the public:  

1. that global warming is still manageable (in the sense that we are currently and will continue to make steady and adequate progress in lessening global warming for the foreseeable future,)
2. that global warming consequences will occur gradually,
3. that global warming consequences will remain generally mild until about 2100 And,
4. the very worst consequences of global warming will occur after 2100 long after most of us living today are gone.

Nothing listed in items 1-4 above could be farther from the truth!

1. The public has no idea that we have managed global warming so incredibly poorly for the last 35 plus years that it has become out of our meaningful control for at least another 30-50 years with horrific and unavoidable consequences arriving far sooner than almost any of us are prepared to deal with.

The rest of this document plus the dozen reasons that global warming may be uncontrollable for at least another 30-50 years found at the top of this page will conclusively prove to you that global warming is, in fact, now our of our meaningful control.

2. Global warming is now far worse than just now unavoidable horrible consequences. In addition to your location, what we do now until 2025 to reduce fossil fuel use will be critical in determining how much time we have left to prepare for what is coming, and how much longer more people will live as a massive human, animal and biological extinction event unfolds within the next 30-50 years.

What the above gross misinformation about global warming by the IPCC means for those who use their predictions 

In spite of what is being reported in the media, the global warming reduction strategies currently being promoted or executed by the IPCC, our governments, and most other environmental organizations will not work in time to save most of humanity from unconscionable levels of suffering and death far sooner than we are being told! Their inaccurate global warming remedial strategies will not save us from:

a.) the 20 worst consequences of global warming continually increasing in frequency, severity, and scale, 

b.) triggering many of the 11 most dangerous global warming tipping points leading to spiking and cascading ecological, economic, political and social system catastrophes and collapses and finally, 

c.) a 6th mass extinction event for much of humanity, (This will be caused when we cross the cataclysmic tipping point of carbon 600 ppm (particles per million in the atmosphere,) about 50 to 70 years from now if we are very lucky. 

Mass extinction is not new to either evolution or nature. There have been five previous mass extinction events. More will be said about carbon 600 PPM farther down this page. (For more information about the carbon particles per million (ppm) in the atmosphere causing global warming, click here.)

How fast it gets worse from where we are today and how much time we have left before the above a, b or c type global warming consequences begin to directly or indirectly affect you, your family, business or nation depends completely on your current location and how much we cut fossil fuel use. In fact, some of you around the world are already experiencing many of the above severe type a and b type consequences.

Some areas we'll be hit a lot harder by escalating global warming than others

In general, some areas of the world will suffer more frequent and severe Global warming consequences covering increasingly large areas. Using the map below as a guide this is what consequence distribution will look like:

1. The a and b type consequence severity will increase rapidly in severity, frequency, and scale within the next 5-10 years in the areas between the 25th parallel north and the 25th parallel south.

2. Within the next 10 to 15 years, the areas of increasing consequences severity, frequency, and scale for the a and b consequences listed above will generally expand throughout the areas between the 35th parallel north and the 35th parallel south.

3. Within 15 to 20 years, life will regularly become highly chaotic and unstable for those unfortunate individuals and businesses still trying to live and operate below the 45th parallel north or the 45th parallel south. Global warming consequences within that area will also continue to increase in severity, frequency, and scale.

Depending on your current and ultimate location, financial loss, starvation and death tolls from global warming-related catastrophes will continue to rise steadily until we reached what we call the last phases of the Climageddon Scenario. This is where as much as 70-90% of the world's total population will die within as little as 30-50 years. This will occur primarily because we have crossed the carbon 600 ppm tipping point and because of starvation, migration wars, civil unrest and many of the other 20 worst global warming consequences and 11 dangerous tipping points are occurring and cross-triggering each other. (This new mass extinction event reality will be explained in more detail further down this page and other linked pages below.)"

Here is the Bad News We are Now Forced to Face

(Special note for the first carbon 435-450 ppm climate cliff tipping point. This section contains the key reasons why we have only about 6 years left to slow down the coming mass extinction event and our crossing of the two most dangerous global warming tipping points described further below. Additionally, only by reaching or 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. As you read about the three major global warming tipping points below, our current extreme extinction threat will become real to you. )

If we do not engage in anything less than the greatest mass mobilization of resources in human history directed toward radically cutting fossil fuel use to hit or come very close to the critical 2025 targets while simultaneously increasing green energy generation to slow the escalating 20 worst consequences of global warming, we will cross over the carbon 425-450 ppm climate cliff and rapidly cross the near-extinction atmospheric carbon tipping point level of carbon 500 ppm (parts per million.) This is predicted to happen in as soon as 20-25 years from now about 2038-2042. Once we cross the carbon 500 ppm tipping point it is almost certain that we will cross the carbon 600 ppm extinction-level tipping point not too long after that. 

This will be explained in far more detail as you keep reading but, as essential background, it is necessary to know that the carbon ppm level in the atmosphere comes from our burning of fossil fuels. Because of the known effects of carbon (one of the main greenhouse gases,) an increasing carbon ppm level in our atmosphere is one of the best, if not the best predictor of future global warming temperature increases. (If you do not understand how global warming occurs, you will find basic illustrations and the science by clicking here.)

Keep the following in mind as you read the rest of this document:

a. On the average over the last 60 years, for every additional 25 PPM of carbon that goes into the atmosphere, our average global temperature goes up .5 degrees Fahrenheit or about .25 degrees C.

b. As of July of 2019, we are currently at carbon 414 ppm level. We are also adding another 3+ carbon ppm each year into the atmosphere as the global economy and world population grows.

As you can see from the graph below, carbon PPM is now rising at near exponential levels in spite of everything we are being told about all the governmental and environmental programs that are supposed to be reducing global warming and the harmful effects of our using fossil fuels. As you can clearly see from the rising carbon ppm graph below, our current programs and strategies to reduce global warming are failing horribly!

Worse yet, when we cross the near extinction carbon 500 ppm tipping point in about 25 to 30 years (from 2018 about 2043-2048,) our average global temperature will inescapably soar to at least 4°C (7.2 degrees Fahrenheit). At 4°C, all ice on earth will begin melting as it has done repeatedly in the past, sea levels will eventually rise about 240-270 feet, and a large portion of humanity (as much as 30-60%) will die of starvation, or from rising temperatures and global warming's other related 20 worst consequences.) At carbon 500 ppm many struggling or weakened governments and societies will collapse in many areas of the world.

Even though it will take many centuries for the seas to rise the full 230 feet, there will still be sea level rise spurts within those centuries where the sea level rise up to 10 feet or more in just a few decades as it has also done repeatedly in Earth's past. 

Take a moment to visualize the seas eventually but steadily 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 near-extinction tipping point.

Also, take a moment and let the following 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!)

When we cross the "all ice on earth melts" carbon 500 ppm critical tipping point level, it is highly probable we also will quickly reach the carbon 600 ppm extinction level tipping point within as little as another 25-30 years, about 2063-2072. (There are at least a dozen reasons why the world will cross through these two critical tipping points. To see these reasons and know that we are not exaggerating crossing these tipping points, click here,)

Crossing the carbon 600 ppm level will raise the average global temperature to 5°C (9 degrees Fahrenheit) and bring about the beginning of massive methane clathrate releases from ocean coastal 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 release process once we reach 5°C and by 6°C it is in full bloom.) 

Because methane, when released as a 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 once again. 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 towards carbon 600 ppm and the 5°C average global temperature rise, it will eventually bring about the extinction of most if not all of humanity (70-90%) and the end of civilization as we know it in the final phases of the Climageddon Scenario.

Please note, if we do not reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction goals, there is currently 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 and the dozen reasons discussed on this page, there are numerous climate scientists who believe that crossing the carbon 500 ppm is also inevitable because we will soon cross the other climate, biological and human system tipping points illustrated near the top of this page. These factors leading to the inevitable crossing of the carbon 500 ppm tipping point 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. 

Numerous climate scientists also believe that no matter what we do, we have already missed our window of opportunity to prevent crossing the carbon 600 ppm tipping point and that once we have crossed the carbon 500 ppm tipping point, we will not be able to keep from reaching carbon 800 ppm (the near-final phase of the Climageddon Scenario.) Reaching 800 ppm would occur because of the 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 tipping point.)

Fortunately, there is still an acceptable possibility that we can slow our crossing the carbon 600 ppm final tipping point long enough so that we can save more of humanity and transfer needed infrastructure into the global warming safer zones. Just slowing our crossing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point will be a Herculean task of massive global cooperation and mobilization. (We could do this slowing action by immediately enacting all of the actions described in part three of the Job One Plan.)

The speck of good news here is that the probability that we can at least temporarily, slow many of the 20 worst non-extinction global warming consequences is still good and this will allow us more time to get prepared for consequences we can no longer avoid.

How Important is it to Understand the Carbon 600 ppm Extinction Level Tipping?

The above bad news, particularly the inevitably of crossing the 500 PPM tipping point, is truly the most important message of the 21st-century. This is because other than thermonuclear war, the new reality of out of control global warming for at least the next 50 years has become humanity's single greatest security threat and greatest global disruptor of future economic, political and social stability! It has also become the single greatest threat multiplier for humanity's other biggest global challenges. (To see humanity's other biggest challenges other than global warming, click here.)

The escalating consequences of global warming will not occur gradually and definitely, will not be mild to moderate as we are being told. These changes will come at us, not on a linear increasing curve, but on a steadily rising exponentially increasing curve.

Great suffering, starvation, financial loss, large-scale migrations, climate wars, and death are already occurring all over the world for millions of people from the 20 major consequences of escalating global warming. Worse yet, these consequences will continue to increase in frequency, severity, and scale almost every year. Soon tens of millions then hundreds of millions and eventually billions of people will be affected!

What clearly needs to be understood by everyone is --- that if the average global temperature rises just 3° C above pre-industrial levels, almost no one and no nation will be spared levels of severe and massive financial loss, suffering, and death that will make Earth into a living hell. We are now as little as just 10-15 years away from where we are locked into this deadly 3°C temperature rise.

If we do not take immediate action to radically cut fossil fuel use to be 2025 targets and increase green energy generation (as described in our Job One for Humanity Plan Part 3) to slow down crossing the final extinction tipping point of carbon 600 ppm, the unconscionable suffering and death of 70-90% of everyone on earth will become a dominant reality for much of the world's total population—not by 2100 or later, but by as soon as 2063-2072. 

Our current global warming extinction emergency does not mean everything is hopeless and that there is nothing we can do. But it does mean we are now at an extremely serious juncture and we have little remaining time left to prepare for and adapt to the unavoidable and massive global warming consequences that will, at the minimum, steadily worsen for another 30-50 plus years! 

How the three extinction-evoking tipping points of carbon 425, 500 and 600 ppm create a condition where global warming management becomes out of humanity's future control

What most people really do not realize about crossing the above three tipping points is that, at some soon point after passing them, it will be "too little too late" to make any real difference in avoiding the worst global warming catastrophes at some future point when we finally do begin making the required fossil fuel reductions. This loss of control is because soon after we cross the carbon 425 ppm climate cliff, we begin to trigger other natural climate system tipping points. After we cross carbon 425 ppm, we will trigger much larger naturally increasing methane releases from the tundra, permafrost, and ocean shelves. We will also trigger massive additional natural carbon releases from our deep oceans, trees, and soils. 

Eventually, these natural system tipping points will also go into positive feedback loops with each other. These activated positive feedback loops will further intensify the crossing of more natural tipping points. 

These positive feedback loops in the climates natural systems increase average global temperature. This further triggers increased-heat caused releases of more naturally generated methane and carbon, which once again, further increases average global temperature in an endless cycle. Unfortunately, these increasing temperatures will go on and on until the Earth finally corrects itself hundreds or thousands of years in the future. 

Unlike humanity's remaining ability to control its use or not use of fossil fuels, if we cross the previously mentioned natural climate system tipping points, the future is almost exclusively under nature's control! There is little to nothing we can do to keep the other natural sources of carbon and methane from becoming a runaway train of ever-increasing average global temperature. 

Humanity's inability to control these large and complex natural systems, tipping points and positive feedback loops IS the crucial reason why we cannot fail to meet the 2025 global targets. If we do, as soon as 2025, we will let any remaining control of the global warming extinction emergency slip out our hands for many human lifespans. 

We do not have until 2050 to make the required global fossil fuel reductions to save ourselves as many governments and fossil fuel companies want you to believe. We also do not have until even 2035 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 cuts to prevent going over the carbon 425 ppm climate cliff and losing all meaningful control of our global warming future. 

This emergency creates a 600 trillion dollar question hanging in the air. Why aren't the brightest minds in the world's intelligence agencies screaming at their national politicians about this nearly out of control emergency? Why aren't they making our politicians understand this is our last 5-year window of control to keep a super-destructive new global Pandora from getting out of her box? 

Why aren't our intelligence agencies (as well as the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations,) shaming our politicians into realizing that they have exposed ALL of humanity to an imminent and irrational extinction risk? Why aren't these recognized as risk and threat levels that should NEVER be endured or justified? (600 trillion dollars plus is the estimate for the total global costs that we will occur if we survive, and if we go over the climate cliff and trigger the carbon 500 ppm near-extinction tipping point and the carbon 600 ppm final-extinction tipping point as discussed above.)

What Options Do We Have to Save Humanity and the future?

As you can see from the first atmospheric carbon ppm graph at the top of this page, we are not making anything even close to the required radical cuts in our fossil fuel use to reduce the carbon going into our atmosphere and slow or reverse rising temperature.

In order to prepare you for the shocking REAL fossil fuel reductions that must be made if we are going to save humanity from unimaginable loss, suffering, death, and likely extinction, it is first necessary to see just how poorly our previous fossil fuel reduction agreements and actions have fared since we were first notified about the global warming extinction danger by our scientists over 35 years ago. 

What has been hidden from you: 

1. We have actually increased fossil fuel use more this century than in the last two decades of the 20th century. To make this point alarmingly clear, more than half of all fossil fuel emissions that have been released in the last 25 years and parked in the atmosphere are more than were released in all of recorded history before 1990. 

2. Even though we have had over 20 international conferences on fossil fuel use reduction, and we had international treaties since at least 1993 pledging we would reduce global warming, worldwide we still are about 67% higher in carbon emissions than the early 1990s. (Atmospheric carbon emissions is probably the best way to measure future global warming.)

3. In 2018 carbon emissions increased another dramatic 2.7% and they are projected to increase once again in 2019.

now take one more look at the blue atmospheric carbon CO2 graph a little bit above this area. Yes, intentionally or through ignorance, our governments, the media, and most of the world's environmental groups have not been telling us the REAL facts about how what our REAL lack of any progress whatsoever in reducing the rate of fossil fuel use increases, much less the complete absence of any substantive reductions across the world in reducing atmospheric carbon.

Keeping the preceding horrific failure of any appreciable efforts to take seriously fossil fuel reductions, or even reducing the rates of increases, now please explore the REAL fossil fuel reductions that must be made to save our future. (If you don't believe we are telling you the facts about our dismal failure in reducing global warming over the last 35 years, click here to view a short video by climate Professor Kevin Anderson in a recent presentation to the Oxford University Climate Society.)

To slow and prevent the processes of likely going extinct, here is what is now needed to happen. 

The absolute minimum amount we need to reduce fossil fuel use to slow and prevent the processes of likely going extinct in the next few decades is as follows:

a. All industrially developed nations must reduce their total fossil fuel use by 75% by 2025 and then continue reducing fossil fuel use to net zero carbon emissions by 2035.  Net carbon zero emissions in this solution means that no additional fossil fuel emissions are going into the atmosphere that are not also simultaneously being removed from the atmosphere by natural means. (Only about 20 countries produce 70% or more of the world's carbon emissions.)

Think of developed nations like most members of the G 20 group; Argentina, Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and India. (See technical note 1 near the end of this page for why China and India had to be included in the list of developed countries.) 

b. All developing nations must maintain their total fossil fuel emission levels as they are at the beginning of 2019 and not allow them to go any higher. Then by 2045, all developing nations must also be at net zero carbon emissions. This means they will have to reduce their fossil fuel use about 6 % per year starting now.

This allowance for developing nations to stay at the level they are now and gradually reduce down to net zero carbon emissions by 2045 is part of an essential justice and equity equation. The developed nations created their wealth by producing the far greatest majority of all carbon emissions in the atmosphere today, thus causing almost all of our current global warming extinction emergency. (See technical note 2 near the end of this page for more about justice and equity allowances.)

Here's another way of describing why the above 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets are so important to achieve. If we do not engage in anything less than the greatest mass mobilization of resources in human history directed toward radically cutting fossil fuel use to hit or get very close to the critical 2025 targets described above, we will without a doubt cross what is known as our "last chance" carbon 425-450 ppm climate cliff and we will go over the other two extinction-evoking tipping points quickly. 

If we continue only to the carbon 425 ppm climate cliff tipping point level, in about 6 years or less we can expect an eventual increase in average global temperature of about 2.2°-2.7° Celsius (4°-4.9° Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels. At those temperature levels, millions and millions of people will be forced to either migrate or die. 

When we cross the carbon 425 carbon ppm climate cliff tipping point, we will have also reached the key threshold transition level where we will continue near uncontrollably to 3°, 4°, 5°, and 6° Celsius average global temperature increases (5.4°, 7.2°, 9°, and 10.8° Fahrenheit.) These soon-arriving even higher temperatures of 3°, 4°, 5°, and 6° Celsius will be due our continuing to add more fossil fuel carbon to the atmosphere but also from the crossing additional 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.

There is much more information including what our individual, business and national annual targets would be, what will happen if we don't hit these targets, and the technical footnotes that will help explain the severity of these 2025 fossil fuel reductions above in detail. We strongly suggest you go to this page and read the technical notes and other information on these absolutely essential fossil fuel cuts before continuing on... 

Getting real and preparing for the worst while working passionately for the best possible outcomes

To grasp how difficult these cuts will be, imagine that in the next six years you personally will have to cut all of your home (appliance and heating/cooling etc use,) auto, plane and other travel that uses fossil fuels as well as all business activities that use fossil fuels by 75%, then cut back to zero fossil fuel use within the next 10 years. Now imagine everyone else doing this all across the planet in all of the developed countries.

If you live in a developed country, are you doing this now? Does that seem likely or possible to you that you would voluntarily so change your normal life so fast? Do you see the governments of the developed nations of the world coming together and in a great act of cooperation passing the laws, verification procedures and the enforceable punishments necessary to make sure these cuts actually occur?

It is more likely that the citizens of the developed world who did not fully understand both the urgency and critical importance of why they needed to make these radical, immediate and painful sacrifices would literally throw any politician out of office or would even overthrow any government that tried to enforce these kinds of radical energy and fossil fuel usage cuts to their comfortable or even subsistence level lifestyles and livelihoods?

Now imagine all of the individuals, corporations and governments in the developed nations that depend upon fossil fuel use and sales directly or indirectly seeing their livelihoods disappear by 75% in the next six years and then drop to zero over the following 10 years until eventually their industries no longer exist. How much of a fight and a global disinformation program would those individuals, industries, and nations create and put up to preserve their often luxurious livelihoods and their futures?

What would the fossil fuel industry be capable of doing to preserve a $28 trillion year market segment? How far would they go to preserve their one-third piece of the world's total gross domestic product (GDP) in what they would have to see as a life and death struggle?

If you're a pragmatist, this (and the other dozen or so reasons we will not be able to stop escalating global warming for as much as another 30-50 years found on this page, means we will not be able to prevent massive global temperature increases, horrendous climate calamities, and the near extinction or total extinction of humanity far sooner than imagined. (We strongly recommend reading the reasons found on this page for why we will not make the necessary global fossil fuel reductions in time. it is found about 1/3 of the way down the page.)

This means that for as much as another 30-50 years, we have already passed the point of being able to control rising global warming as well as all of its related unavoidable and unthinkable consequences unless we can immediately cut our fossil fuel use by the required 2025 percentages described above. But can we really make those life-critical cuts in time?

If your pragmatist, you will most likely believe that it is highly improbable (or even impossible,) that we will ever make the critically needed cuts to our fossil fuel usage in time to save ourselves. There are several reasons you are probably correct.

1. Each year we continue to delay in making the needed radical fossil fuel usage cuts means that any future cuts will need to be even more extreme, which makes them even less likely to be done because of the even more severe hardships that they will impose globally.

2. it is unlikely we will make the needed cuts soon enough to save ourselves is because of what is called Garrett's Global Warming Dilemma. This research states that because of the laws of physics and mathematics, almost all of our fossil fuel based global economy must first collapse in a necessary and steep global recession or global depression in order to produce the required cuts in our fossil fuel use to save humanity in time. This well-documented climate research by Professor Garrett is the research most often ignored by environmental groups around the world because it produces a horrible dilemma for which either answer is unthinkable as well as un-sellable. (if you're a science person, please click here and read a summary of Prof. Garrett's alarming research on atmospheric carbon, global warming, and the necessary fossil fuel reductions we must make to save the future.)

3. The absolutely horrible side effects if we do cut fossil fuel radically to the 2025 levels described above. One of the most horrible effects is that global agriculture will crash when we radically reduce fossil fuel use.

Agriculture is heavily dependent upon fossil fuels such as methane to make the essential fertilizers and other chemicals to allow mass food production to occur. Agriculture also depends heavily upon fossil fuels to run the equipment essential to creating and processing our mass food production and its distribution.

Once we come anywhere close to the absolutely essential levels of global fossil fuel reductions that we need to execute to save the future, global agriculture which is dependent upon fossil fuels will crash and up to 50% of the population will die of starvation not long after that. 

4. 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 level of average global temperature increase above our preindustrial level, somehow we still will be able to control the extremely slippery slope which can quickly lead us to 3, 4 and 5° Celsius increases in average global temperature.

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

While it is absolutely true that we have to at least make the required 2025 fossil fuel reductions no matter what! It is also true that even those steep fossil fuel reductions are still not enough to avoid the unthinkable suffering or the wide-scale reduction of the human population through starvation by as much as 50%.

On the other side of this painful quandary is an even scarier fact. If we do not make those immediate 2025 global fossil fuel use reductions, it is very likely that we will lose everything in as little as 30 to 50 years where as much as 70 to 90% of humanity (if not all,) will suffer and die. So ultimately, what other choice do we have other than to make the required 2025 fossil fuel reductions above while at the same time knowing we're probably going to have to make even steeper fossil fuel reductions as more research becomes available?

The big take-away from this page

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

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

b. the longer we will have to prepare for what we can not avoid, and

c. future generations will suffer less from the ever-increasing sequence of global warming consequences (described fully in what is called the Climageddon Scenario.)

Because of Garrett's Global Warming Dilemma and side effects as well as these many other disturbing reasons environmental groups hide Garrett's critical research away as well as other global warming bad news and ignore it like dirty laundry. At this point, itis hard to imagine that fossil fuels use will ever be cut to anything close to the critical levels needed.

At least not until we are faced with truly massive global financial losses and billions dead and suffering. By that time, the worst consequences and higher temperatures of global warming will be irreversible for timescales far, far beyond the human lifespan. 

If you are a pragmatist and a mature adult, you have begun to realize that for all intents and purposes, we have already crossed the point of having meaningful global warming control. What we must do now is limit the total damages by preparing for, adapting to and making the best of, what we can no longer avoid. It is now time to save and salvage what we can!

Depending upon if you are in or close to a global warming safe location, for the next 5 to 20 years, your life should still be somewhat stable and you should fill your life with as much joy and satisfaction as is possible. The time to enjoy what remains of the quality of your life is now because escalating global warming is going to make life progressively worse faster and faster until in almost all locations survival is extremely difficult. 

We can still hope that we will slow what is coming just enough so that we have more time to prepare and some of humanity and civilization will survive in the global warming safe zones of the future.

The twist

There is also another very dark possibility that will allow some of humanity and our civilization to survive. If we do not successfully either radically cut fossil fuel use by the 2025 target percentages listed previously or allow the world economy to go into a severe recession or depression, the other most probable way that we will finally same a small part of humanity and successfully curtail our fossil for use is through a massive die-off of 70 to 90% of the human population when we cross the final carbon 600 ppm tipping point. This will occur in part due to massive crop failures and starvation linked to soaring global warming temperatures.

As billions die of starvation, or in migration and resource wars or because of the other worst consequences of global warming, fossil fuel use will drop radically in what may be adark "last resort solution” that saves some of humanity in the end. But remember: even if this happens, it will still take centuries to thousands of years before the average global temperature and the planet recovers from what we have done to it.

Survivors will be living a nightmare of high temperatures, extreme weather and chains of other global warming-related consequences we can barely envision. (To understand more about the year-by-year sequence of consequences on how billions will die, migrate or perish in global warming-related resource wars, click here and read about the Climageddon Scenario.)

From the above and the many difficult reasons found on this page, you can see that there is no realistic or practical escape from the coming consequences. We would be lucky beyond belief to have just a one in 1 million chance of hitting the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets.

In every situation, the only way we save any part of a liveable future for at least a part of humanity is to radically and immediately cut fossil fuel use to slow things down enough that we have time to prepare, migrate and adapt as well as possible.

In all of the above-discussed scenarios, no matter what, we must still do what we can and make the best of a horrible escalating emergency. To do this we need to come together immediately and get very busy with what we still can do! (More of these specific "must do" actions are in the new JOB ONE PLAN AND described farther down this page in a section called, What You Can Do Right Now to Help Slow Our Global Warming Consequences and Improve Your Chances of Survival?) 

"Outside" ongoing global challenges and contextual factors that will interact directly or indirectly to worsen the coming global warming consequences

Our coming global warming extinction consequences do not take place in a vacuum. They take place in a global context in which other major global challenges and worsening consequences are already occurring in the world.

In addition to all of the global warming consequences mentioned above, we also have 6 other major global challenges that will directly or indirectly interact with and collide into global warming consequences. These additional interactions with the other global challenges below will make our lives and the other global warming consequences considerably worse.

Please keep these additional contextualizing global challenges in mind as you come to grips with the convergence of all of humanity's massive problems facing us currently:

Global Challenge 1: Overpopulation, we are near 8 billion people racing to 9.4 billion by or before 2050. We are way over sustainable population levels and future and current generations will suffer dearly because we failed to manage ourselves in this area by itself.

The Earth may have only the resource carrying capacity for about 2 billion people or less. (Please click the brief carrying capacity link and the brief overshoot link for a full understanding on why this ever-rising overpopulation challenge is so bad.)

Global Challenge 2: Resource depletion fueled by overpopulation, toxic pollution, and escalating global warming.

We already have increasing food shortages (1 billion people are hungry.) Ocean fish stocks are already suffering from catastrophic losses from pollution and overfishing. We are rapidly depleting our many kinds of quantity-limited, nonrenewable, and even renewable resources to unsustainable levels. This resource depletion also increases global poverty by making those essential resources more expensive.

To make matters worse, many of our current key resources will run out at nearly the same time! Paradoxical to making the necessary fossil fuel reductions and moving to green energy generation, we will also soon be facing fossil fuel shortages caused by the early attainment of peak oil.

Global Challenge 3: Global economic instability.

There is no doubt that the mix of the Climageddon Scenario consequences will increase global poverty, economic instability, economic inequality (conflicts between rich and poor) and rising national deficits. Imagine a global financial depression or crisis occurring as we also try to solve global warming and all of our other global challenges at the same time. In the next global financial crisis or global depression, there will be even less resiliency and fewer resources to solve these challenges.

Global Challenge 4: Political instability first in countries with low management capabilities or low resource resilience and/or high deficits.

The nations of the world are weaker than we are allowing ourselves to realize. Global warming and these other global challenges increase political instability which acts to further increase the likelihood of more wars, terrorism, and political injustice in low, medium, and high resilience nations. This global challenge plus escalating global warming and the other global challenges will create sudden and massive migrations of millions then billions of people that even the richest nations will not be able to absorb.

Global Challenge 5: Global Pandemic.

As all of the above 4 resilience-reducing global challenges get worse, this increases the probability of a global pandemic. This is a unique pandemic risk which is not caused by the global warming consequence of melting tundra and permafrost. (This separate high-risk situation is due to existing or new diseases being poorly treated, the mobility and migration of world populations and the overall deterioration of global health services as the stew of all of the global challenges listed above come to a global warming amplified boil.)

Global Challenge 6: Failing to evolve a single global government with legislative, judicial, and enforceable executive powers.

If you think about it carefully, you will discover that this last and most often invisible global challenge IS the single biggest reason and core structural cause for why our most dangerous global challenges have not yet been resolved. The lack of the existence of a single global government with legislative, judicial and executive verification, enforcement and punishment powers having common global laws allows humanity's biggest global challenges to either:

a.) exist at all,

b.) continue to exist or,

c.) to remain perpetually unresolved and/or continually worsening as many of them are now.

In other words, the mere absence of a true global government of itself alone acts to facilitate, escalate and enable all of the global challenges that we currently face. 

What we are facing with the 6 global challenges (above) interacting with the 7th global challenge (which is global warming and many consequences) is certain to become the greatest convergence of catastrophes in human history.

(For a great video by a famous English professor with wonderful illustrations that explains most of the above global challenges and the coming Great Convergence of catastrophes please click here. This video is well worth your time to better understand meal most impossible context humanity finds itself in.)

You now have a better idea of the volatile and dangerous context in which the following Climageddon Scenario global warming extinction model will take place. (Please note the global warming extinction emergency is also known as the climate extinction emergency, Holocene extinction, sixth mass extinction event, climate crisis, climate emergency, run-away global warming.)

What We Still Can Do to Face Widespread Climate, Ecological, and Human Systems Collapse.

There is much counterbalancing good news in this horrible situation. It will help us persevere and stay motivated to prepare for and adapt to the many destabilizing consequences of the global warming extinction emergency.

Our simple good news is that in order to create the best possible outcome for ourselves and those we love, we prepare, adapt and slow down global warming as much as we still can!

Here is how:

1. We still have time to honestly face this emergency and slow our crossing the final extinction tipping point of carbon 600 ppm. We can only do this by radical and immediate global fossil fuel usage reductions as described in the 2025 targets elsewhere on this page. It will take the most coordinated mass mobilization of human resources in our history, a Herculean but life-critical effort.

2. We also still have time to migrate, prepare for and adapt to the unavoidable coming worst consequences so more of us may survive, but only if we start immediately preparing and we work together to motivate our governments to execute an effective, deadline-driven and prioritized plan to slow down global warming like the 2025 targets and action steps of part 3 of the Job One for Humanity Plan.

Our expanded good news is:

1. We should be encouraged by the fact that in the last 4.5 billion years of Earth's evolution, life has always found a way to survive the 5 previous mass extinctions. Enough of us should be able to make it through this escalating global warming evolutionary bottleneck and minimize the worst of this temporary transitional evolutionary retrogression that we are currently in (and creating.)

2. Working together we will by necessity need to build many new sustainable prosperity eco-communities. These new eco-communities will serve as a critically necessary backup plan for humanity and civilization. These eco-communities will also act as successful examples and "beacons of light" teaching the new sustainable lifestyles and livelihoods vital to even having a future if we are able to make it through this emergency. (For more information on these new backup eco-communities see the eco-community model at our sister website.)

3. Overcoming this global warming extinction emergency will also help us better solve our other major converging global adaptive challenges as well as our currently unknown future challenges as one effective and united human family. Solving this challenge will help us eventually create a sustainable prosperity for all. Click here to review the full meaning and actions of sustainable prosperity.

(It is important to understand what are our other major converging global adaptive challenges because the global warming extinction emergency is taking place as an integral part of those other challenges. Our global warming extinction emergency is not only a multiplier of those other global adaptive challenges it also helps cause or magnify our global warming extinction emergency and vice versa. Some of the other global adaptive challenges are even the roots of the deepest causes of the global warming extinction emergency.)

4. We are intelligent and adaptive beings and we are able to solve or adapt to almost anything.

5. The future is unknown and full of unpredictable negative and positive wild cards. This means that there is still hope for some of humanity and civilization to thrive and survive if we quickly exercise responsible, intelligent and effective, "first things first" critical path adaptive actions to manage the global warming extinction emergency. See Our Job One for Humanity Plan.

6. We can still fully enjoy each day (as best as we can, even in spite of the rapidly destabilizing climate, escalating global warming catastrophes and other deteriorating or retrogressing global challenges. We can and should make our lives as happy and as good as they can be during this hopefully temporary global warming retrogression and transitional period.

7. There are many more good news and surprise benefits about the global warming extinction emergency that offers additional hope for the evolution of humanity, click here for them. (This is one of the most-read pages on our website.)

As Michael Dowd the evolutionary teacher likes to say "what really matters is --- coming back into right relationship with reality." Because we have failed to effectively resolve escalating global warming over the last 35+ years of warnings by our best scientists, we will now literally be forced by its escalating consequences to come back into a new "right relationship" with its harsh and disruptive reality or we will perish!

To create a right relationship with the reality of out of control global warming our organization has recently evolved into an eco-community of sustainability advocates and Evolutioneers that value the wisdom of

a. appropriate threat preparedness,

b. adaptability and

c. living sustainably. 

We are not fear manipulated or fear dominated, but we also will never ignore painful data that should trigger protective and useful evolutionary fear reactions, like our current global warming extinction emergency. We use such "warning feedback" and appropriate evolutionary fear to wisely anticipate, avoid, prepare and/or adapt.

What You Can Do Right Now to Help Slow Our Global Warming Consequences and Improve Your Chances of Survival?

A major part of our story as an organization is that we have created the Job One for Humanity Global Warming Plan to help you and society prepare for and adapt to the current global warming extinction emergency and save and salvage as much of humanity and civilization as is possible. 

The Job One Plan is a critical deadline-driven “first things first” plan designed to help individuals and groups:

1. do everything within your power to slow the crossing the final catastrophic tipping point of carbon 600 ppm by cutting all global carbon emissions by the amounts and time tables mentioned previously. (See Part 3 of the Job One Plan and Part 4 of the Job One Plan.)
2. make the necessary emergency backup and recovery preparations before it is too late, (Part 1 of the Job One Plan,)
3. adapt locally to the new realities of out-of-control global warming. Click here for details on how to do this in Part 1 and Part 2 of the Job One Plan,
4. plan and execute the necessary migration of individuals, families, businesses, and communities as well as critically needed infrastructure to areas that will be much safer from the 20 worst consequences of global warming, Part One Of the Job One Plan,)
5. implement effective global warming slow and lessen strategies wherever possible in your current location as an individual, (Part 2 of the Job One Plan,) And
6. promote effective sustainable lifestyle and livelihood action steps so that when we do get through this with whatever is left of humanity, we have already created the necessry new practices that will re-stabilize our climate and weather at or near its original state about carbon 270 ppm --- the  state which has successfully sustained humanity and humanities ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years, (Part 2 of the Job One Plan.)

Never forget, if we fail and cross the carbon 600 ppm threshold, there is no livable future you would want to inhabit (if we do not make or come very close to the required 2025 fossil fuel cuts mentioned previously)

Never forget we are not talking about vague low probability statistics and possibilities here. We are talking about the lives of you, your family and billions of other individuals, families, and children all over the world! 

Click here to see your first action steps on the Job One plan.

Click here to read a short page on the four critical global warming deadlines to never forget. 

More good news: How our nonprofit organization is uniquely reacting to create the best possible outcomes

In addition to executing the Job One action plan above, we are also adapting as an organization in a uniue way that bears additional discussion before the unavoidable collapse that will continue occurring in many of our ecological, biological and human systems and sub-systems at accelerating rates.)

We are creating and slowly growing a Job One eco-community as well as promoting the creation of other national and international eco-communities in advance of the coming collapse. We are doing this solely because the current facts clearly shout that many of our ecological (and in some areas our economic, political and social systems,) are in severe challenge or, are nearing critical tipping points or collapse with no (or low,) remaining recovery resilience left to "right the ship." 

To the discerning evaluator and researcher both human history and the current global warming emergency indicate that many of our other non-global warming converging global challenges will continue to get worse faster with little realistic hope of correction before a chain reaction of multiple or, cascading catastrophes and crossed tipping points shakes us and wakes us to the need for drastic and immediate evolutionary improvement toward more sustainable livelihoods and lifestyles.

Because of what we are now doing as a species (expanding fossil fuel use and its consequent atmospheric pollution,) and not doing, (immediately establishing strictly enforceable international fossil fule use limitation laws,) as well as not living more sustainable lives, global warming continues to get worse but now on a exponential curve. And, it will get much, much worse in the decades to come. This is because of our grossly inadequate political and economic global warming remedial actions.

We are not detached survivalists waiting for the end of the world! We are engaged sustainability advocates and Evolutioneers working actively to create a better world.

We believe whole-heartedly in working for the best possible future while at the same time wisely being prepared for the worst possible and hopefully temporary transition period. 

To help deal with this global warming extinction emergency, we envision that by necessity and as a safeguard, there also needs to be a widespread establishment of new sustainable eco-communities in all of the global warming safe zones. We hope Job One will play an essential role in securing the survival of humanity and civilization and in the establishment of the new sustainable prosperity vision within the post-global warming culture that survives the future and learns from the past.

By helping to create these new emergency backup eco-communities in the global warming save zones, driven into creation by the urgency of the global warming extinction emergency, we hope we can help create a better path for the possible long-term future of humanity and our civilization.

How we will achieve our above new eco-community goals

We will enact our mission and message only by using only peaceful and evolutionary means and where we can still find enjoyment and joy in relationship and experience of our day to day lives.

Even if the escalating global warming extinction emergency and the convergence of it with humanity's other major converging global adaptive challenges was somehow resolved in the next 30 to 50 years or turned out to be not as bad as is currently predicted, these new eco-communities would function even better and more joyously on their other goals of helping to co-create the necessary re-structuring and re-alignment of society necessary to create:

a.) a sustainable prosperity for ALL of humanity (and because of the dangers of ignoring the 5000-year Sustainability rule,)

b.) a just civilization and

c.) thriving and meaning-filled individuals and communities --- all of which will better align with and forward a positive and progressive evolution of life in the universe. 

Ultimately, no matter how bad it gets, by focusing on adapting to the challenges in front of us and then learning from it, and taking whatever outcome that we are given using that outcome both as a foundation and as motivation for building a better world we are not only doing the best thing possible, we are also working for the best possible outcome. (Making a better world can be easier once all of the resistant previous human structures and systems have collapsed and are no longer resisting the necessary changes we should've made long ago,)

If there is this Great Collapse after the Great Convergence of our current global warming consequences converging with our other major global challenges, and if we are ready and humble enough to learn from our pre Great Collapse mistakes, we have the opportunity for a Great Rebuilding with the reward of a much better world for all of us who are cooperative and smart enough to prepare, adapt, survive and learn.

As things get worse, try to keep your attention on the parts of the Job One Plan that you can get done. Try also to focus on the truth that if we collapse the world and it's beautiful ecological, biological, social and political systems, there hopefully will be a post-collapse beautiful new beginning that you will play an important role in helping to create.

To learn much more about these new eco-communities click here and, you will be taken to a sister website.

To learn more about our specific and detailed global warming extinction emergency preparedness recommendations and strategies please click here. 

Also, see this page to learn more about the new Evolutioneers who will be building these new "beacon of light" eco-communities.

In spite of all the difficulties of doing so, more about why must we press on and meet the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets

The most important reason that we must press on and meet the 2025 targets is simple and tremendously powerful. If we do hit the 2025 targets, as much as 50% of humanity suffer and die due to starvation over a relatively short period (1-2 decades.) (See this page [Reason # 2,] for why as much as 50% of humanity will die of starvation if we do hit the 2025 targets.) As horrible as as much as 50% of humanity suffer and die is, this outcome is still far better than having 70-90% (or even all of humanity,) suffer and die over over the next 3-5 decades if we fail to hit the 2025 targets. 

There are only a few other things you can always be sure of in this global warming emergency. In spite of all of the challenges and probable adverse outcomes, the few things that you can always be sure relating to creating our best possible global warming outcomes is that:

a. The faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use, the more people that will survive to carry on humanity. 

b. The faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use, the less future generations will suffer from an ever-increasing sequence of escalating global warming catastrophes. And,

c. The faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use, the more time we will have to get prepared.

Also never forget, we still have some time left to:

1. make the required radical fossil fuel reductions,

2. complete the necessary emergency preparations, and to

3. adapt to soon-arriving global warming consequences that we can no longer change.

Summary of key Facts

Fact 1: We are not being told the painful truth by our governments, our intelligence agencies or even our biggest environmental groups about how bad global warming currently is and more importantly, how bad it's going to get in the near future.

Fact 2: Because of our long delay in fixing this crisis, many global warming consequences are not only going to be far worse than we are being told, they also are coming far sooner than we are being told.

Fact 3: We have, unfortunately, missed our critical "window of opportunity" to effectively manage global warming and prevent most of its worst consequences and crossed tipping points from occurring. (Many of the worst consequences are now unavoidable and out of our meaningful control for at least the next 30-50 years.)

Fact 4: If we act correctly and immediately, we may still have a small amount of time (about 6 years,) to slow down the worst of these unavoidable global warming consequences just enough to protect ourselves and maximize our individual chances of avoiding extinction. (This is possible even though most of humanity will suffer and die far sooner than anyone is ready for.) 

Fact 5: Because there is still no guarantee that we will act any differently than we have for the last 35 years to slow down global warming sufficiently to prevent a fast track to extinction, it is time for rational, wise and mature individuals to begin creating emergency backup plans and start their personal emergency preparations. This emergency preparation could even include migrating to areas that would be safer from the effects of global warming.

We have already crossed the point of no return for at least the next 30-50 years with all of its associated unavoidable consequences and what we must do now is to prepare for and adapt to what we cannot avoid while still trying to slow down global warming enough so that we still have enough time left to save and salvage whatever we can. Therefore the Mission of Job One for Humanity must, at all costs, be to help society and its members slow global warming to prevent complete human extinction due to rapidly escalating global warming consequences.

We do this by:

a. warning you (and society,) about our current state of out of control global warming (for at least the next 30-50 years,) and why we must radically reduce fossil fuel use to slow down the process of crossing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point. (The timetables for  global warming's 20 worst consequences and 11 key tipping points is found on our website and in the new book Climageddon.)

b. helping you prepare for and adapt to the reality of the likelihood of living in a world where as much as 70-90+ percent of the unprepared human population will die soon. Global warming extinction is no longer a remote possibility coming sometime after 2100 as we have been told, it will be arriving as soon as the next 30 to 50 years if we do not immediately make the required fossil fuel cuts! (We are, unfortunately, already moving rapidly through the 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario extinction model. For information on how to prepare and adapt information so more of us live longer and suffer less is contained in both Part 1 of the Job One Plan as well as Part 2 of the Job One Plan) and,

c. do everything we can to get our governments to slow escalating global warming so more of us can survive longer and suffer less. (Parts three and Part four of the Job One plan.

d. helping inclined individuals and groups create sustainable, self-organizing and independent eco-communities in global warming-safe locations to help make sure that enough of these new communities are established and well-prepared to survive the escalating onslaught of now unavoidable global warming catastrophes. These new experimental communities will likely be essential to help carry forward the survival of humanity, human culture, and civilization if we fail to make the required fossil fuel reductions. (See the Universe Community sections of our sister website for all the information you will need to do to create and self-organize your own sustainable eco-community in a global warming-safe zone.)

e. Once we have survived the global warming extinction emergency and have learned the hard experiential lessons it will teach us, we (this organization and the new eco-communities mentioned above,) will promote a new and proven understanding of sustainable living and sustainable livelihoods to help transform the trauma and loss of the coming global warming collapse into a springboard for building a better and more just world that will thrive again for hundreds of generations. (Click here to learn about that new Sustainable Prosperity.)

What we do know is that, no matter what, and in spite of all of the challenges and bad 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, the more people we will survive to carry on our civilization, and that future generations will suffer less from the ever-increasing sequence of global warming consequences as described fully in what is called the Climageddon Scenario.

 

Sign the Petition to Declare a Global Warming State of Emergency

Are you feeling sad, upset, depressed, angry or anxious about the global warming emergency?

There is a lot of horrible news to digest about global warming. Any person who realizes that our governments are not doing enough to save us from unthinkable suffering and loss will naturally experience sadness, anger, depression, or significant anxiety.

The Job One for Humanity staff also has had to digest all the dreadful global warming news. To get our team though it emotionally, we learned about something called the Kubler Ross model of change. This emotional management model helped our team deal with all of the challenging emotions that today's global warming news evokes. 

We felt it would be irresponsible to leave our readers without some of these tools to manage the intense feelings that the global warming emergency can create. Accordingly, we are providing the following images and tools that should help you come to emotional terms with the new realities of global warming. Here's how these global warming caused emotional reactions, transitions, and healings usually look for most people:

1. If you're like most people, what you have learned about the global warming emergency will cause you to initially react with denial and shock. 

 

2. If you have the tenacity to explore more concerning how bad our governments have let global warming become, you will likely also become frustrated and angry at "how could our politicians and governments ever allow this to happen.

3. If you continue examing the facts of the global warming emergency and its solutions, you will most likely then enter into a bargaining or experimenting phase to find some way to deal with such disturbing and disruptive information on your life and future.

4. If you continue verifying the facts of the global warming emergency as well as it's honest but difficult and painful solutions, you will most likely next enter into a transitional feeling of grief or depression. 

5. As you work your way through your grief or depression, you will eventually come to a level of acceptance of what is scientifically accurate. (Even though it is currently is being suppressed by the fossil fuel industry, mass media, and the politicians owned by the fossil fuel industry.)

A bit more about the Kubler Ross Model emotional management model

The five primary emotional transition levels above are vital parts of the Kubler Ross model. Over time, this model is a useful tool to help you deal with the global warming denial, anger, fear, grief or anxiety that any healthy person would experience once they truly realize the current nature of our global warming emergency.

The Kubler Ross model is used to help people deal with the medical news that they are going to die. But, it still has powerful relevance here.

This is true because as you wrestle with the new global warming realities, you will most likely go through these five emotional phases over and over again. You will do this in numerous waves until you finally reach a profound and deeply stable state of acceptance, peace, and hopefully motivation to do whatever you can to reduce this threat.

When you finally realize how bad our global warming emergency is the challenging emotional effects is a real thing! If you don't believe us, please click here to read about a new report called, The Psychological Effects of Global Warming on the United States and Why the U.S. Mental Health Care System Is Not Adequately Prepared.

Reaching necessary emotional acceptance and getting into action

Once you reach a level of emotional acceptance for what you have learned about the global warming emergency, you will be more willing and ready to begin new ways to solve the global warming emergency. You also will find yourself being better prepared to make new decisions on how to adapt and integrate this critical information into your life and business. 

You may begin even emergency preparations for the unavoidable coming global warming consequences. This way, you are better able to protect you, your family and business and wisely maximize the chances of staying out of harm's way.

Once one reaches the critical state of emotional acceptance of the reality of what one is facing, most mature adults do as they have done for millennia. They accept what they cannot change and start finding ways to adapt to it. (There are also many adaptation steps found in the Job One Plan.) They also accept the truth of the bad news, and they get busy working on whatever they can do to change and improve it. (In this case, the get active on the Job One Plan action steps.) 

We at Job One have found that the best thing to help minimize the emotional pain and trauma is to get busy completing the action steps of the Job One Plan. This is true even if you have not fully reached the acceptance level of your emotional recovery. The Job One Plan's many action steps proactively focus your attention on what can still be done. This focus on the needed action also minimizes your available attention on the negatives (once they have served their purpose of redirecting you to action the deeper truths of this emergency.)

Therapy or support groups also can help you work through having the painful realization that humanity is in the worst existential crisis on its history and, we do not have much time left (until 2025,) to effectively prevent mass extinction. Therapy or support groups can also help get you motivated to do whatever you can on the many action steps of the Job One Plan.

As you continue to understand the scale of our global warming emergency, you may also come to realize that our lives and our children's lives are going to be far shorter than we ever imagined. But that still can be changed if we immediately react to the challenge of radically reducing our global fossil fuel usage to meet the 2025 targets!

One last emotional recovery tip 

Not everything about our global warming extinction emergency is emotionally disheartening. There are many surprising benefits to this emergency. Click here to read the single most read page on our website on these many benefits. At Job One we review this list regularly to maintain the mental well-being of our own staff. We also discovered that regular review of this good news and benefits list was critical to keeping our volunteers on-mission and maintaining their motivation as well. 

Additionally

Because most of you that have understood the previous facts (that do not fall into a defensive denial,) will naturally and 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 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.) and,

b. 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. (Click here to begin this process.)

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 outsides sources or from working through the above Kubler Ross model on your own.

No matter what, and in spite of all of the challenges and bad outcomes that are possible, the core constant truth for the best possible global warming outcome for humanity is that:

a. The faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use, the more people that will survive to carry on humanity. 

b. The faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use, the less future generations will suffer from an ever-increasing sequence of escalating global warming catastrophes.

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

Other related information:

If you would like to know more about how this gross misinformation of the public over a 30-year timeframe concerning the global warming extinction emergency occurred, click here and go to the end of the page to the subtitle, How this Gross Misinformation Occurred. 

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

While reading this article please also keep in mind that to help you process the following uncomfortable news, at the end of this article, we have provided some great news! You will find a capable, self-directed plan for what you can do how to resolve the global warming emergency while we still have the time to do so. )

Introduction

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

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

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

Yes, this failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement targets is also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. In other words, our current global fossil fuel reduction calculations are based on the inconceivable belief that "everything will work perfectly within our rapidly warming climate systems all of the time and we will never crossing any key global warming tipping points." Unfortunately, the immutable laws of mathematics and physics also do not work that way, particularly as we simultaneously continue to add massively more carbon and methane to our atmosphere each year. 

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

Why global warming tipping points are important to your future:

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

What is a global warming tipping point?

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

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

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

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

The simple definition of a global warming tipping point is:

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

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

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

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

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

Points of no return

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why understanding global warming tipping points is critical to your future

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

Overview of the biggest dangers of global warming tipping points:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

9. Crossing multiple tipping points will lead to the later phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario. In addition to increasing unpredictability and leading us into the later phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario, crossing multiple tipping points can create a dramatic acceleration of consequence time frames. It will drastically increase the scale, severity, and frequency of the consequences within the related global warming systems and subsystems involved.
10. No compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC,) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs. This failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the critical national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement targets is also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. This means we are using the wrong needed fossil fuel reduction calculations to save us from extinction within our lifetimes.

 

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

What is a keystone tipping point

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

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

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

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

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

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

Warning signs that a tipping point may soon be crossed

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

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

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

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

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

Which global warming tipping points will most likely be crossed first

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

The most likely major tipping point to be crossed and worsen

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

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

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

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

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

All of these grains have upper and lower temperature limits. Most of them cannot survive more than 10 days during their growing season over 100° Fahrenheit particularly, if this heat comes early in their growing season or when their soils are drought dry. 

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

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

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

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

The following is from Wikipedia:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The carbon levels we should be most concerned about

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

        "Monthly Keeling Curving CO2 Widget” courtesy of Show. Earth⁵⁶

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

Which other global warming tipping points are likely to be crossed in the near future

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How global warming tipping points are unfolding

What we do know is that:

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

What we do not know:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. we will be able to maintain the previous average annual increase of only carbon 3 ppm. (In part it will probably go higher because of the Earth's population soaring to 9 billion, causing our estimated energy needs to skyrocket by 40% as more of the world’s population enters into the middle class.) And, most importantly

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

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

The terrifying thought that is completely real and critical for you to burn into your brain is that, as much as 70 to 90% of humanity will suffer and die in as little as 30-50 years, but our ability to have any real or meaningful control over this looming emergency ends around about 2025 sometime after we enter the carbon 425-450 ppm range. But, this will only occur if we fail to successfully execute these global fossil fuel reductions. 

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

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

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

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

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

Our exponential exposure and vulnerability as we cross more global warming tipping points

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

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

Our estimated risk level for going over more global warming tipping points

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. The climate cliff tipping point level. (This tipping point initiates the beginning of a runaway process for triggering more and more global warming tipping points at faster and faster rates.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Something important to remember is that as we cross more and more global warming tipping points, the worst global warming consequences will increase faster and faster. They will not grow gradually and linearly. They will grow exponentially over time. (In the graph below the red line is an example of a linear gradual growth trajectory and the red line is an example of exponential growth curve and trajectory.)

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

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

One more tipping point super-shocker

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

What to never forget about the danger of crossed tipping points

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

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

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

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

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

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

The many tipping points of global warming do not take place in a vacuum. They take place within a global context in which the 6 major global challenges and their consequences are already occurring.

These 6 major global challenges that directly or indirectly will be interacting with and colliding into the global warming tipping points described below. These additional interactions with the 6 global challenges below will make our lives and our 11 major global warming tipping points far worse. Please keep these contextualizing other global challenges in mind as you read the 11 major global warming tipping points that will follow further down this page:

Global Challenge 1: Overpopulation, the Earth may have only the resource carrying capacity for about 2 billion people or less. (Please click the brief carrying capacity link and the brief overshoot link for a full understanding on why this overpopulation challenge is so bad.)

We are near 8 billion people racing to 9.4 billion by or before 2050. We are way over sustainable population levels and future and current generations will suffer dearly because we failed to manage ourselves in this area by itself.

Global Challenge 2: Resource depletion fueled by overpopulation, toxic pollution, crop failures, overfishing yrs. and loss of topsoil.

We already have increasing food shortages (1 billion people are hungry.) Ocean fish stocks are already suffering from catastrophic losses from pollution and overfishing. We are rapidly depleting our many kinds of quantity-limited, nonrenewable, and even renewable resources to unsustainable levels. This resource depletion also increases global poverty by making those essential resources more expensive. To make matters worse, many of our current key resources will run out at nearly the same time! 

Global Challenge 3: Global economic instability.

There is no doubt that the mix of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario consequences will increase global poverty, economic instability, economic inequality (conflicts between rich and poor) and rising national deficits. Imagine a global financial depression or crisis occurring as we also try to solve global warming and all of our other global challenges at the same time. In the next global financial crisis or global depression, there will be even less resiliency and fewer resources to solve these challenges.

Global Challenge 4: Political instability first in countries with low management capabilities or low resource resilience or high deficits.

The nations of the world are weaker than we are allowing ourselves to realize. Global warming and these other global challenges increase political instability which acts to further increase the likelihood of more wars, terrorism, and political injustice in low, medium, and high resilience nations. This global challenge plus escalating global warming and the other global challenges will create sudden and massive migrations of millions then billions of people that even the richest nations will not be able to absorb.

Global Challenge 5: Global Pandemic.

As all of the above 4 resilience-reducing global challenges get worse, this increases the probability of a global pandemic which is not caused by the global warming consequence of melting tundra and permafrost. (This is a separate high risk due to existing or new diseases being poorly treated, the mobility and migration of world populations and the overall deterioration of global health services as the stew of all of the global challenges listed above come to a global warming amplified boil.)

Global Challenge 6: Failing to evolve a single global government with legislative, judicial, and enforceable executive powers.

If you think about it carefully, you will discover that this last and most often invisible global challenge IS the single biggest reason and core structural cause for why our main global challenges have not yet been resolved. The lack of the existence of a single global government with legislative, judicial and executive verification, enforcement and punishment powers having common global laws allows humanity's biggest global challenges to either:

a. exist at all,

b. continue to exist or,

c. to remain perpetually unresolved and/or

d. continually worsening as many of them are now.

In other words, the mere absence of a true global government of itself alone acts to facilitate, escalate and enable all of the global challenges that we currently face. 

What we are facing with the 6 global challenges (above) interacting with the 7th global challenge (escalating global warming and its 11 tipping points,) is certain to become the greatest simultaneous convergence of multiple and cross-multiplying catastrophes in human history. (For a great video by a famous English professor with clear illustrations that explain the above global challenges and the coming "Great Convergence" and chain of catastrophes please click here.)

Now that you have a better idea of the volatile and dangerous context in which the following global warming tipping points will take place, you are now ready to review be 11 major tipping points.

A humorous 11-minute tipping point animation

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

A deeper perspective into the science of exponential progressions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Complex adaptive systems by nature:

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

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

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

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

A big-picture perspective on the challenge before us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Summary

• Crossed tipping points can cause sudden and unpredictable severe changes and immediate or complete system crash or collapse.
  
  
• Crossing global warming tipping points is not as rare as the fossil fuel industry would like you to believe. We have already crossed several global warming tipping points and it is likely we will cross more.
  
  
• In general, when a tipping point is crossed, unpredictability increases along with the speed of change. Our ability to control the disruption of a tipping point and reverse it drops radically as the system tumbles towards collapse.
  
  
• Once a point of no return is crossed, it is just a matter of time before its tipping point is crossed.
  
  
• Because the climate and global warming are complex adaptive systems, when any global warming tipping point is crossed, it makes it significantly more likely that more tipping points will also be crossed in interconnected or interdependent systems or subsystems.
  
  
• Because of inherent pre-existing momentum or inertia factors within one or more of the global warming tipping points, and the possibility that points of no return have already been crossed, we may have already crossed more of the global warming tipping points and be inevitably locked into crossing even more tipping points no matter what we do.
  
  
• At this point, at the least what we must do is prevent our crossing any keystone tipping point, which would deepen irreversible global warming and the later stages of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario.
  
  
• Any global warming remedial plan based on everything going perfectly will become the perfect plan for failure.
  
  
• The most important process that directly or indirectly causes global warming tipping points to be crossed is increasing heat.
  
  
• Humanity successfully survived the first great evolutionary bottleneck. We have many more advantages today, which should be of help in getting us through the current emergency we are facing.
• Understanding the 11 major global warming tipping points along with the Climageddon Extinction Scenario is absolutely essential to understanding how and why as much as 70 to 90% of the human population will suffer and die within as soon as the next 30 to 50 years if we fail to hit the absolutely critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.
• No compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC,) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs. This failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the critical national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement targets is also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. This means we are using the wrong needed fossil fuel reduction calculations to save us from extinction within our lifetimes.
• We need to execute the correct 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets to save humanity from mass extinction before it is too late.

What You Can Do Now!

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All of the preceding, and far more information about the escalating warming emergency can be found in the Climageddon book. Get your copy now! Each purchase of Climageddon helps support the Job One for Humanity nonprofit organization and our Job One plan to help you and the world survive global warming. 

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Footnotes:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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