Last Updated 6.1.25.

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

(As of May 2025, we are currently in the middle of our second five-year upgrade of all content on our website. Until this upgrade is complete, our new editors may still be correcting minor grammatical or spelling errors as they go through the hundreds of pages on our website.)

 

Prologue

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

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

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

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Overview

This article and its links discuss:

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

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

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

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

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

 

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a. the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

After you finish this article, please be sure to read its companion article called, the Climageddon Feedback Scenario. It will help you understand and "see" the climate change emergency at the level of a climate change researcher and analyst. 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

2. The 2025-2031 carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and last chance to prevent mass extinction threshold. This is the second phase of runaway global heating, contributing to an unavoidable extinction process for half of humanity by mid-century. (This second phase is generally seen as irreversible for centuries to millennia, and we just crossed in in 2024.)

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

This tipping point, if we avoid crossing 450 ppm will likely allow us to at least slow down the currently unavoidable extinction of half of humanity by mid-century so that more of us can live longer. On the other hand, this tipping point, if crossed, will lead us within a few additional decades beyond the unavoidable extinction of half of humanity into total human extinction. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

Overview of the first extinction-triggering tipping point

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Climate Inertial and Momentum

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The new climate Cliff Shocker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Worse yet:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

It is not just us saying this:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following is from Wikipedia:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

a. soaring temperatures, 

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

c. growing climate mass migration, 

d. climate-related resource and distribution shortages, and 

e. intensifying climate-related land and resource conflicts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

The same climate scientists who believe that we cannot prevent crossing carbon 500 also believe that no matter what we do, we have already missed our window of opportunity and control to prevent carbon 600 ppm. Furthermore, they believe that once we have crossed the carbon 500 ppm level, we will not be able to keep from reaching carbon 800 ppm (the near-final phase of the Climageddon Scenario.) (Reaching carbon 800 ppm would once again be because of continuing to add more carbon into the atmosphere and because of the total accumulating effects of crossing more and more global warming tipping points that will continue occurring even more rapidly after we cross the carbon 500 ppm threshold.)

Our reading of the current science indicates that if we do not immediately get close to the previously described 2025 radical fossil fuel reductions, we will cross the carbon 600 ppm level. But, if we do enact the necessary radical 2025 fossil fuel cuts immediately, there is still an acceptable yet small possibility that we can still slow down our crossing of the carbon 600 ppm final tipping point or, at least long enough so that we can save some small portion of humanity and transfer needed infrastructure into the global warming safer zones. (We may be able to save humanity from near-total extinction by also immediately enacting ALL of the actions described in part three of the Job One Plan.)

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

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

a. temperature momentum already "baked" into the climate system (the existing carbon 413 ppm level already in the atmosphere,)

b. the additional three or more carbon particles per million we continue to add to the atmosphere each year (as we continue failing to adequately reverse our fossil fuel use,) and

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

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

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

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

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

Economies, governments, and societies will collapse in many areas of the world between the 45th parallel north and the 45th parallel south. 

As we reach the carbon 500 ppm and carbon 600 ppm tipping point levels, we will also cross into the later and most dangerous later phases (4 and 5) of the 6-phase of what we call the Climageddon Extinction Scenario and Countdown model or Climageddon Scenario. Review the following Climageddon Extinction Scenario illustration starting from the bottom up! The top of the illustration below shows you the later Climageddon Scenario consequences the bottom shows you the earlier consequences.

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

If we do reach carbon 600 ppm

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We do not have until 2050, 2040, or 2035 to make the required global fossil fuel reductions to save ourselves as many governments and fossil fuel companies want you to believe. We also do not have until even 2030 to make the required fossil fuel reductions, as many prominent but ill-informed environmental groups want you to believe.

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

The current global warming threat is extreme because:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

The reasons for this are:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

The most important things to remember on this page!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

Created by the Job One Research Team

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

Putting ALL of the above together as a single unified process

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

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

 

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

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

 

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

Global Warming Emergency Petition

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

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

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

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

Click this link and start feeling better.

 

Please donate any amount to help keep our 100% publicly funded nonprofit think tank free for everyone! Help us to keep providing uncensored climate change forecasts, facts, and solutions to the public.

With every donation of any amount, you will get amazing gifts! Click the donate image below and also see what these gifts are.

 

 

And, if you have not done so already,

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

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

Important technical details for the 2025 targets 

 

After you finish this article, please be sure to read its companion article called, the Climageddon Feedback Scenario. It will help you understand and "see" the climate change emergency at the level of a climate change researcher and analyst.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

How a movie story and an asteroid metaphor will help you understand the Climageddon Scenario and the massive climate change and 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's 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. Temperatures listed below are what are called committed or baked in temperatures that will occur because of the forecasted carbon methane and nitrous oxide present in the atmosphere at the various phases.

 

 

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” large 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 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 underground shelters, which also contain seeds for every species of plant and 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 its 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 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 are 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. 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, and
4. the threat, hazard, and business or insurance risk assessment.

Here is additional key information to help you better understand the global warming future consequences and timetables using the 6 Phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario and Countdown as a model 

In the following detailed descriptions, warning signs, and consequence countdown timetables for the Climageddon Scenario's 6 phases, you will learn what you need to know to protect your family, finances, business, and nation. But, to get the most out of what you are about to read and to plan your global warming safer future if you have not done so already, you will need to have a good basic understanding of the dynamics of global warming. If you don't, be sure to click the following links basic and illustrated global warming education articles as needed.

a. what global warming is and how it works,

b. what are global warming's 20 worst consequences,

In order to have the necessary understanding of how global warming tipping points will throw our shared future into turmoil and chaos, we also strongly recommend that you read these pages as well:

c. the four extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points, and

d. the 11 key global warming tipping points. This will help you better understand how global warming's 11 major tipping points create climate and human system crashes and collapses, (This article covers the basics of positive feedback loops, complex adaptive systems, systems theory, and things like nonlinear consequence responses common after tipping points are crossed.) 

Although you will be able to understand much of the Climageddon Scenario without reading and understanding the four links above, it will be more difficult for you to see how most of the consequences within each of the 6 Climageddon phases will synergetically multiply, accelerate and amplify each other and produce the very scary reality of the following Climageddon Extinction Scenario six phases.

We have made the inherently very complex Climageddon 6 phase extinction model as simple as possible with lots of additional illustrations as you will soon see, but if you do not understand the basics of global warming listed in a-d above, you may not see the seriousness of what is already happening or, it will be difficult for you to see how the following layers and levels of the phase-by-phase Climageddon consequences fit together to create a mass extinction event which will occur within our lifetimes if we miss the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets by plus or minus 5 percent. 

 

Finally, here are some important technical details relating to the Climageddon Scenario extinction model:

1. The timeframes and costs for the various global warming consequences described below for the six phases of the Climageddon Scenario are based on the best available science as well as compensatory calculations and projections for underestimated or politicized official global warming reports as well as "cooked" calculations for non-existent carbon capture technology and the missing additional calculations due to the absence of almost all tipping point calculations in official global warming reports. (See the links in this paragraph for detailed descriptions for these compensatory calculations.)

2. There is no doubt that critics may find some minor areas where they can say this or that prediction is off by a few percent due to some new research. Still, that minor detail does not and will not outweigh the overwhelming body of global warming knowledge or facts fairly presented in the Climageddon Scenario extinction model. Climageddon convincingly demonstrates that humanity faces a high probability of mass extinction within 3-5 decades if we fail to reach the necessary global fossil fuel reductions.

3. 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 and will be updated by future research. So far, new research has supported the details of the Climageddon Scenario research and, in some places, has shown several of its predictions to be too conservative.

4. 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. 

5. 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.

6. The beginning and ending boundaries for each phase of the 6 Climageddon Scenario phases are approximate for temperature, time frame, and carbon ppm levels. As such, there will be some inherent overlap in temperature, timetable, and carbon parts per million (ppm) levels between the different scenario phases. 

7. In the Climageddon temperature and time illustrations, the CS Phase stands for another one of the six Climageddon Scenario phases.

8. There will be many warning signs and timetables to take in on the Climageddon Scenario phases below, but don't worry. If you can't remember or process all of the details, the summary, charts, and illustrations near the end of the Climageddon Scenario will simplify and summarize the critical information described within its six phases.)

9. The Climageddon Scenario was first explained in the 2017 book Climageddon. The new Climageddon Scenario version 2.0 which you are about to read, contains major upgrades and additions based on new research studies and analysis that has occurred since 2017.

Here are the 6 phases of the Climageddon Countdown Extinction Scenario 

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. 

 

 

Climageddon Scenario Phase 1, From 2020 until as soon as 2026-2032

The temperature continues to rise, catastrophes increase, and carbon hits 400-450 ppm!

Phase 1 is the beginning of catastrophic climate destabilization. Phase 1 is associated with a measurement of atmospheric carbon in the range of 400-450 ppm. As of August 2020, we were already at about carbon 414 ppm. 

(If you do not already understand why the atmospheric CO2 carbon graph (above) will be the best indicator of what your future will be like, click here and look down the page until you see another graphic illustration.)

In Phase 1, the atmospheric carbon ppm rate continues to increase each year at only about 3 ppm per year. The average global temperature continues to go up in a continuous but hopefully only in a linear degree-by-degree manner.

In this phase, the many global warming consequences continue increasing in frequency, severity, and scale (area covered,) but once again in a linear manner. In Phase 1, the cost of significant single-instance, global warming-influenced disasters will average in the $30-$100 billion range.

The early stage of Phase 1

In the early stage of Phase 1 (from carbon 407-425 ppm,) which we are in now (at carbon 414 ppm) and will be in until about 2025, temperatures will increase beyond the estimated current 1.2° Celsius^[1] (about 2.2° Fahrenheit) rise. They will eventually increase our average global temperature by about 1.7°-2.2° Celsius (3°-4° Fahrenheit.)

“[The] ...atmospheric greenhouse gas levels (~400ppm CO2 and ~485 CO2e [carbon dioxide equivalent]) are likely the highest in the last 15 million years, and never previously experienced by humans. The current conditions, if maintained over centuries/millennia (that is until the system reaches equilibrium), would likely produce temperature increases of +3-6° Celsius and sea levels 25–40 meters higher, based on evidence of past climates.”  —David Spratt, “Climate Reality Check”^[2]

If the average global temperature in Phase 1 continues to rise degree-by-degree, even without crossing any more points of no return or global warming, climate, human, and biological system tipping points, the bad news is we still likely and quite easily bring about the end-of-humanity scenario as described in the later phases of the Climageddon Scenario. Please keep in mind that just the small average global temperature increase we have had thus far is already causing millions of people to become climagees and migrate toward the more northern countries in Europe and North America.

Please also note that early phase 1 could end as early as 2026 if fossil fuel burning goes up considerably and/or we cross additional key global warming tipping points.

 

 

The later stage of phase 1, the first and most important tipping point

(Special note for the carbon 425-450 ppm 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, near-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 more real to you. )

In the later stage of Phase 1, if we continue only up to carbon 425-450 ppm, in about 16 years or less (about 2022-2032) we can expect an eventual increase in average global temperature of about 2.2°-2.7° Celsius (4°-4.9° Fahrenheit), and millions of more people will be forced to either migrate or die. 

When we cross the very dangerous carbon 425 ppm level and enter the very slippery slope of the later stage of phase one of the Climageddon Scenario to just before we hit carbon 450 ppm in early Phase 2, it is highly probable because of crossing more global warming tipping points, points of no return and positive feedback loops at these higher temperatures, we will have reached a key threshold transition point where we will continue near uncontrollably on this very slippery slope toward 3°, 4°, 5°, and 6° Celsius temperature increases (5.4°, 7.2°, 9°, and 10.8° Fahrenheit.) These temperature levels would eventually lead to the extinction of most of humanity.

When we cross this carbon 425-450 ppm battle line, in addition to leading us to likely mass extinction in as little as the next 30 to 50 years, its consequences will also be irreversible for centuries to thousands of years. 

In essence, we cannot ever allow ourselves to enter into the later stage of phase one (carbon 425-450 ppm) of the Climageddon Scenario because we will almost certainly go over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and into the processes of likely extinction. The only way to keep from crossing the carbon 425 to 450 ppm tipping point is to radically and immediately and radically reduce fossil fuel usage by the correct amounts (which will soon be discussed.)

In order to prepare you for the shocking, REAL and correct 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 was 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 in 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.

Yes, intentionally or through ignorance, our governments, the media, and most of the world's environmental groups have not been telling us the REAL facts about how our REAL lack of any progress whatsoever in reducing the rate of fossil fuel use increases, much less the complete absence of any substantive reductions anywhere 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.)

(If you do not understand or are uncertain about how fossil fuel emissions of carbon in the atmosphere create global warming, please click here for a set of simple illustrations and then continue reading... 

What must now be done to correctly reduce our fossil fuel usage and save humanity and our future

The absolute minimum total fossil fuel reductions that must occur to prevent the likelihood of our going extinct within the next few decades are:

1. 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-zero carbon emissions in this solution mean that no additional fossil fuel emissions are going into the atmosphere that are not also being simultaneously 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.) 

2. 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 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.)

(Please click here for all of the related information and qualifying factors relating to the above targets for developing and developed nations listed above.)

As mentioned previously, the steadily rising temperatures of Climageddon's Phase 1 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. The probability of maintaining only a gradually increasing average global temperature 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 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.

In the later stage of Phase 1, (as well as all of the other 5 phases below,) unless we make the required radical global fossil fuel reductions described above, 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 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 very slippery slope into and through the other following Climageddon Scenario phases. 

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

“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.

The probability of crossing from Phase 1 below carbon 425 ppm into Phase 2 over 425 ppm is inevitable because of the many factors described above and because of the 13 reasons described near the top of the following link, Is global warming out of our meaningful control for at least the next 30-50+ years?

The warning signs of phase 1, 2026-2032

The following listing of positive feedback loops, points of no return, tipping points, consequences, and interactions with our other current global challenges should be considered as good early warning signs we are both in phase 1 or moving rapidly through phase 1 into phase 2. Watch for information about these warning signs, consequences, and events occurring in the news.

Particularly watch to see if they're being described as worse than before or as breaking all previous records. Look carefully at what the consequence pattern and trend is moving toward.

The following are the best objective warning signs that individuals can see for themselves and that will motivate thoughtful individuals to act appropriately:

 

Phase 1: The most probable initial positive feedback loops, points of no return, and tipping points to occur or be crossed are as follows:

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

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

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

4. Increased permafrost and tundra heating release more carbon and methane and which results in more heat and more disease epidemics and possible pandemics. This once again speeds up the whole process of more positive feedback loops and crossing more points of no return and tipping points. 

Please also note that melting permafrost in the tundra is because the northernmost areas are warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. This permafrost melting 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 localized anthrax and smallpox outbreaks because of the decomposition of ancient frozen animals from the melting permafrost and tundra, which residents either had no immunity to or who were not prepared to deal with these outbreaks due to lack of available vaccines. 

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

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

The most likely major tipping point to be crossed and worsen sometime in phase 1

There is an extinction-accelerating 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.

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.

This means that the world is going to continue 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 degrees plus temperatures and drought.

The following is from Wikipedia:

“Since 1979, the minimum annual area of sea ice in the Arctic has dropped by about 40%, as measured each September. From sea ice models and recent satellite images, 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.

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. As the process of massive crop reductions and failures expands and continues, mass starvation will begin to destabilize all of our other economic, social, and political systems. 

Additionally, 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 absorb the heat, and then heat up more, which once again, causes more global warming.

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. Paradoxically, according to new studies, because of melting Arctic ice we will also have more extreme cold and heavier snows during the US winters. 

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

 

Additional thoughts on the critical importance of the global warming tipping point emergency

Because we have ignored 60 years of warming, we are already deep into the global warming trajectory toward the collapse of civilization. This collapse outcome is highly likely because nine of the known global warming and climate change tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated. See below.

 

 

These nine activated tipping points can trigger abrupt and significant releases of carbon back into the atmosphere, such as the release of carbon dioxide and methane caused by the irreversible thawing of the Arctic permafrost.

After global warming tipping points are crossed, additional warming would become self-sustaining due to both positive feedback loops within the climate system and the mutual interaction of these global warming tipping points. It is best to think about these nine interacting global warming tipping points within the climate system like a row of dominos. 

These climate system tipping points are so interconnected that knocking over the first couple of "dominos" will most likely lead to a cascade knocking over many, if not all, of them. Once the above global warming tipping point "dominos" begin their falling cascade, we are already at a criminal point of no return.

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

Distinguished Professor of Meteorology Michael Mann from the University of Pennsylvania recently stated that once we have reached the carbon 405 ppm level in our atmosphere, a 2 degrees C average global temperature increase is already baked in, and there is nothing we can do to stop it! As of June 2020, we are currently at carbon 416 ppm.

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

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

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

Soon we will lose control of the tipping points for the Amazon rainforest, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the Greenland ice sheet in much less time than it's going to take us to get to global net-zero emissions. There is a crucial way to think about this race to get to net-zero emissions before we cross more extinction creating global warming tipping points. 

Imagine that the captain on the Titanic suddenly sees the iceberg in front of him. To slow and steer the Titanic, he needs at least 3 miles, but he is only 1 mile away from the iceberg. In this example, the titanic is already doomed the moment the captain notices the iceberg.

This Titanic example is not much different than our current situation with our trying to reach the last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and get to net-zero emissions. We have wasted so much time over the previous 35 years ignoring valid scientific warnings; we may not have enough time to "steer" away from extinction. 

We already have a baked-in minimal 2 degrees C in average global temperature increase and, we have initiated the global tipping point cascade effect, which will quickly get us to 4°C and the collapse of civilization. This alone will rapidly take us to a far less habitable planet and climate regardless of any additional global fossil fuel emission reductions we might now make.

 

 

 

In the image above, the Planetary Threshold dividing line is the tipping point previously mentioned of crossing over the carbon 425-450 ppm level. As one can see, once we cross that carbon 425-450 ppm Planetary Threshold line the stability of the planetary climate rapidly collapses into an over-heating uninhabitable Earth! 

Phase 1: The following complete list of phase 1 global warming consequences will continue to increase in severity, frequency, and scale from 2020-2032.

Many of these consequences are interconnected and interdependent. Some also exist in transformational relationships and processes which can amplify or multiply each other's consequences, or disrupt our abilities to control these consequences.

The complete list of global warming-related consequences that will occur and continue to increase in this phase from continuing to burn fossil fuels at anything close to the rates we are now are:

1. atmospheric heating which increases average global temperature,

2. new disease outbreaks, epidemics, and more COVID-19-like pandemics in areas where they have never been before. (This is due to loss of natural animal habitat, eating more wild animals, additional melting of the permafrost, overcrowding, less resilient health systems, and mass migrations. Because of accelerating global warming consequences, we could be experiencing COVID-19 type pandemics every decade.)

3. shrinking sea ice and ice shelves, glaciers and snowpack,

4. ever-increasing crop failures (because of heatwaves, rain bombs, droughts, flooding, wildfires, and other extreme weather) increasing mass starvation, and causing soaring food prices. (Please note that the world's five principal grains (rice, wheat, maize [corn], millet, and sorghum,) are particularly vulnerable to crop failure when temperatures are near or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit more than 20-30 days during their regular growing periods.)

 

 

5. extreme storms of all kinds, (hurricanes, tornadoes, rain bombs, bomb cyclones, etc,)

6. droughts,

7. clean drinking water scarcity,

8. desertification,

9. fires and wildfires,

10. flooding,

11. toxic air pollution,

12. ocean acidification, (which causes critical sea life and reefs to die. Ocean heating and ocean acidification from carbon from global warming will eventually kill off much of the oceans' oxygen-producing plankton. These plankton are responsible for as much as 50% of all oxygen produced on the planet.) )

13. loss of biodiversity,

14. jet stream disruption,

15. mass human migrations,

16 animal and insect migrations, 

17. forests that were a major stabilizing force absorbing carbon become neutral in their carbon absorption and stop taking carbon from the atmosphere. (Soon in later phases the forests will begin to release their vast stores of carbon pushing temperatures higher even faster.)

18. economic losses. (In this phase, most nations will spend 1-3 percent of their total gross domestic product (GDP) directly or indirectly paying for the consequences of the global warming emergency.)

Click here to learn more of the technical details about how each of the previous global warming consequences will increase in severity, frequency, and scale with each progressive Climageddon phase. 

 

 

In one way or another, directly or indirectly, as the above list of heat-driven global warming consequences increases in severity, frequency, and scale, the following things occur. Many of these consequences are interconnected and interdependent. Some also exist in transformational relationships and processes which can amplify or multiply each other's consequences, or disrupt our abilities to control these consequences.

They are the critical warning signs to watch in the news to know that the global collapse process is accelerating and worsening:

1. Because of increased global warming and other global challenge-related work disruptions, the total human capacity to work or produce will go down significantly. This will cause more business and product distribution interruptions, business and personal uncertainty as well as more unemployment and homelessness.

2. There will be less food available from failed and shrinking food crops due to many of the extreme climate consequences such as extreme heat, droughts, flooding, rain bombs, nonseasonal weather, and other extreme weather events.

3. Many food prices will rise considerably more than the normal cost of living increases. (For example, fish prices will rise considerably as the remaining over-stressed fish stocks are depleted to near extinction.

4. More people will be starving.

5. The cost of living, for repair, maintenance, building, or rebuilding in global warming safer areas will continue to rise significantly. There will be more homelessness everywhere.

6. There will be increasing disease, epidemics, and pandemics as conditions worsen and health services are stretched thin.

7. There be increasing mass migrations of starving, sick, and unemployed people fleeing from the many climate consequences as well as from an ever-increasing number of unstable or collapsed economies or nations.

8. There will be widespread, survival-driven criminality by larger and larger portions of a starving, unemployed, homeless, or migrant populations. (Imagine increasing numbers of desperate individuals and groups trying to stay alive by any means possible. Now imagine your favorite dystopian movie like Mad Max. This will give you a small taste of what the future struggle to stay alive will be like as most of the global challenges mentioned earlier continue to worsen.

9. Because of the growing survival-driven criminality, migrations, and social and political chaos, governments will impose states of emergency and martial law resulting in increased restrictions, suffering, and the loss of many hard-won human rights. Nations will be forced to become more military and totalitarian in their control of the population to deal with the growing losses, chaos, and shortages of essential resources.

10. As the social, economic, and political chaos spreads, it will trigger more regional, national, and international conflicts and more conventional wars. There also will be a significantly large potential for a new nuclear, biological, or chemical war. These conflicts and wars will be due to increasing food and other resource scarcity, scarcity of global warming-safe land, unstoppable mass migrations, and the other consequences listed on this page.

11. When all of the above items are taken collectively, it will cause even the strongest nations' economies and political systems to collapse. 

12. Once most of the national governments have collapsed, the nuclear reactors, chemical, and biological weapons, and their manufacturing, service, and storage facilities will become compromised. This is because there will be no or few functioning national governments to maintain operations or security for these sites. Hundreds of millions will sicken and die as nuclear reactors go critical and meltdown spewing toxic radiation worldwide. Millions more will sicken as die from the releases of insecure biological weapons and industrial chemicals. If too many nuclear reactors go critical and meltdown, the radiation circling the planets will kill off everything.  

13. As all of the above intensifies, human suffering and global deaths will continue to rise exponentially. Human deaths will eventually reach mass extinction or even near-total extinction levels, and what we have known to be our civilization will collapse.

14. If there are any unlucky survivors after the global collapse, they will most likely enter a new Dark Age. But, this will not be like the Dark Age that occurred during the Middle Ages. It will be far worse.

If 90% or more of the human population, or even close to that percentage, is lost because of climate change and the other world crises (described on this page) intersecting with climate change, it is highly likely we will enter into a new Dark Age where previous technological and knowledge levels cannot be sustained. This dark age could last for hundreds to thousands of years, and society needs to rebuild itself to keep up with its current technological and knowledge levels.

But even society rebuilding its technical and knowledge base over hundreds of thousands of years will be incredibly difficult because the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age that followed it were powered, fueled, and dependent upon by easy access to relatively cheap fossil fuels like coal and particularly oil. If or when humanity enters the next Dark Age, it will not be able to access easy-to-reach or inexpensive-to-access oil with remaining or functioning post-collapse technology because even today, easy-to-reach and inexpensive-to-access oil and coal have largely disappeared. Rebuilding the modern world we have today after a new Dark Age would be all but impossible without the energy sources that powered the Industrial Revolution and the Information Age.

And finally,

15. Suppose we do not experience a complete runaway global warming event, and we make it through the post-collapse new Dark Ages. In that case, it will take centuries to thousands of years for nature and the climate system to come back into balance. Only then will the conditions suitable for humans to thrive once again exist-- if any humans are left at that time. (Complete runaway global warming is where the average global temperature keeps rising until Earth's atmosphere is ripped off into space like what happened on Venus.)

Hopefully, at this far distant time, any surviving bands, clans, tribes, or communities still functioning will have learned the first great global collapse lessons, and they will have changed their behaviors. They will now model the needed new behaviors, such as the principles of sustainable prosperity and the principles of evolutionary success, among other new possible policies to finally resolve all of the issues raised in the global challenges described above. 

If these survivors have genuinely learned the lessons from the first great global collapse of civilization, they will develop a new worldview and new economic, political, and social systems. This new worldview will provide the tools and opportunity for a tremendous new re-building and reboot of humanity. 

Humanity will have an opportunity to experience a unique renaissance where humankind and nature come into a balance that allows both to flourish once again. Whatever is left of humanity will restart the greatest evolutionary adventure in our history.

Fasten your seat belts. Strap on your shoulder harness and put on your helmets. We are entering the extreme turbulence of the beginning of the global collapse process. The COVID-19 pandemic and the current global recession/depression are just a small beginning of it.

Unfortunately, it is going to get a whole lot worse before our governments take it seriously and act! The baby boomers (born from 1946 to 1964) are likely to be the last generation that will experience any near-continuous measure of stability, security, and safety during their lifespans. But even they will have a very rough ride as they approach the end of their years.

 

 

Phase 1: From 2020-2032, there will be continual critical reactions of global warming consequences with our other global challenges (listed below,) which will cross-intensify and worsen many of the global warming consequences of this phase as well as our other global challenges themselves.

Here are the other non-global warming challenges to our global society that will both interact with each other and likely continue to worsen in this phase of the Climageddon Scenario. Please note that while the Climageddon Scenario is mainly focused on global warming, it also must include all of our major other global challenges, as listed below. This is because most of these other different global challenges will interact with global warming, and many of them will further intensify the consequences of global warming.

These other major global challenges listed below are steadily getting worse over time and are also likely to add additional economic, social, and political instability, uncertainty, and chaos to the destruction caused by global warming in this phase. In some cases, these challenges getting worse over time can even speed up the negative effects of economic, social, and political instability, uncertainty, and chaos caused by global warming within this particular Climageddon Scenario phase. 

Today's most dangerous global challenges fueling the likelihood of the first great global collapse are:

Global Challenge 1: Resolving the current COVID-19 global pandemic. Directly and indirectly, the current COVID-19 pandemic is due in significant part to the loss of natural wild animal habitats caused by global warming and other man-made causes such as eating more wild and not domesticated animals, the exploding and hungry world populations crowding into urban areas, and the overall deterioration of global health services. 

If a vaccine is ever found, the COVID-19 pandemic is estimated to go on around the world until mid to late 2021 or even into early 2022 before everyone is vaccinated. If no vaccine is found, like what has happened with AIDS, Lyme disease, and many other viruses over the last 30 years, we will be living with the effects of COVID-19 until a “herd immunity” is developed and if that immunity is even applicable to this virus. A somewhat safer global herd immunity could take as many a 3-5 years to develop.) 

Global Challenge 2: increasing global economic instabilities that are leading to regularly reoccurring global and national recessions or depressions over shorter and shorter time periods. (These recessions and depressions are fueled by existing economic weaknesses, lack of financial reserves, huge national deficits, low financial system resilience, and major unexpected shocks or events (like COVID-19,) hitting the global markets and global financial systems.

COVID-19 is predicted to create a global financial recession or depression that could last until late 2022 or until 2025 or as long as 2030. (Ten years for recovery from a COVID-19 global recession or depression is not that long when you consider that ten years is the time it took to recover from the 2008 global banking and housing meltdown and recession.)

Global Challenge 3: ever-rising over-population, (the Earth has the carrying capacity for about 1 1/2 - 2 billion people. Currently, we are nearly 8 billion people, adding about 130 million additional people each year, racing to 9.8 billion by or before 2050. (About 50 million people a year normally die.)

We are way over sustainable population levels already yet, no government other than China seems willing to set a one child per couple policy! Future and current generations will suffer unthinkable catastrophes because, as humanity, we failed to manage the size of our global population to match the carrying capacity of our global environment and the Earth's available resources.

 

 

Please note that as the global population continues to rise, the additional population serves to further amplify and multiply the most harmful consequences of almost all the 12 other global challenges and consequences listed on this page.) One could easily say that overpopulation and its inherent over-consumption beyond our carrying capacity is also a major cause behind today's global warming emergency. (Please click this carrying capacity link to learn more about why this rapidly rising overpopulation challenge is so dangerous.)

For a candid and balanced article on the immense suffering caused by our overpopulation global challenge, please see this article, Population, the Great Knee-Jerker: A Holistic Survey and Plea to Reduce Suffering.

Global Challenge 4: Over-consumption causing ever-rising global resource depletion (aka overshoot) caused by overpopulation, toxic pollution of water, lands, and air, crop failures, overfishing, topsoil loss, resource distribution injustice, and the massive “overconsumption and waste” of the Earth's finite resources. Global resource depletion will significantly increase food shortages and cause soaring food prices leading to more starvation and mass migrations. For example, the following are estimates of when only a few of our critical global resources will be depleted; freshwater 12 years (2032), fish stocks almost totally gone by 2050, adequate topsoil for crop growing gone by 2070. (See this page to see 90 percent of fish stock already overfished and to see charts on how this loss will throw much of the world into starvation.)

Of particular concern is the depletion of phosphorous critically needed for crop fertilizers. Adequate access to this could run out in as little as 35-45 years.

 

 

If you still do not believe that massive resource depletion and overshoot is a huge soon-arriving problem? Watch this fantastic resource overshoot video with great graphics and global resource depletion amounts and time frames in simple illustrations by Hugh Montgomery, a noted English professor. (We strongly recommend you watch this video for all of the food and non-food resources that are in an accelerating depletion peril. [Forward the video to the 10 minutes and 30-second mark to begin watching Professor Hugh Montgomery's compelling graphic presentation.])

There are also many other critical mineral and non-mineral resources that will also run out soon, click here for more about these.

Global Challenge 5: escalating pollution of lands, air, and waters. Ongoing and accelerating toxic pollution kills crops, fish stocks, and poisons our air, water, and soil creating and accelerating all types of global health, social, and economic problems. (Ocean heating and ocean acidification from carbon from global warming will eventually kill off much of the oceans' oxygen-producing plankton. These plankton are responsible for as much as 50% of all oxygen produced on the planet.) 

 

 

Global Challenge 6: loss of biodiversity, we are having more plants and animals go extinct than at any other time in human history. This is due to an ongoing and accelerating loss of natural habitat due to overpopulation, global warming, overuse, pollution, etc. (Leading Stanford University biologists, who were first to reveal that we are already experiencing the sixth mass extinction on Earth, released new research this week showing species extinctions are accelerating in an unprecedented manner, which may be another tipping point for the collapse of human civilization.)

 

 

Global Challenge 7: growing economic inequality, social and racial injustice, hunger, and poverty. Today less than 1% of the world's population owns more than 50% of all wealth. Over for the last several decades, this ownership percentage continues to grow in favor of the wealthy.

Growing economic inequality and poverty often increase food shortages and often cause food prices to soar leading once again to mass starvation and mass migrations. This year (2020,) 130 million people are lacking adequate food and could starve to death. COVID-19's effect on the world economy could double that number of the next few years. Over the following decades, global warming consequences will raise that number into the hundreds of millions eventually rising well past a billion.) 

 

 

Global Challenge 8: Escalating local, regional, and international criminality, conflicts, terrorism, and war. Expect these population-destabilizing security and stability threats to increase in their intensity, frequency, and scale. This threat escalation will occur from the urban and rural local levels to regional and international levels.

Vastly increased levels of survival-driven criminality, conflicts, terrorism, and war will be due to the world experiencing almost all of the global challenges on this page getting steadily worse. Global nuclear war or widespread chemical or biological war is also a real and escalating threat as most of the global challenges on this page worsen. Nations with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons will compete to the death for the few global warming safer lands or the dwindling food and other resources.

 

 

Global Challenge 9: Mass migrations, political and economic instability, increasing terrorism, conflicts, and war plus global warming and many of the other listed global challenges on this page will both create and expand sudden, massive migrations of millions then billions of desperate refugees and climagees. During this phase, as most of the listed global challenges on this page intensify, various stronger governments will order precautionary evacuations of selected individuals and groups to limit casualties and losses from their most vulnerable areas. Before 2030-2035 because of global warming alone, the world will see hundreds of millions of climagees (climate refugees.)

 

Global Challenge 10: New COVID-19 like pandemics as well as other new and older disease epidemics that will likely flare up every decade. This will in part be due to global warming melting of the permafrost, loss of natural animal habitat, eating more wild animals, overcrowding, less resilient health systems, mass migrations, wars and conflicts, and many of the other challenges and consequences listed on this page.

Additionally, new and older disease epidemics will occur more frequently and be more severe because of the abuse of antibiotics in animal product production. This abuse has resulted in bacteria that are now resistant to every known type of antibiotic. Worse yet, because of accelerating global warming, more COVID-19 type global pandemics could come as often as every decade. The AIDS virus became widespread in the late 1970s, the SARS virus in 2003, the MERS virus in 2012, and the Ebola virus in 2013. Click here for more about how escalating global warming may begin producing COVID-19 like pandemics every decade. 

 

 

Global Challenge 11: increasing political instability and collapsing governments. Fueled by existing internal and external conflicts, soaring deficits, and the intensifying global challenges listed on this page, poorly managed nations with weak economies and low existing resilience will fall first. In 2020 we already see numerous countries on the verge of economic or political collapse. As the increased stresses of these listed global challenges continue to increase upon all nations, stronger nations will also steadily collapse. And finally, what is the most dangerous challenge and collapse accelerator of all.

 

 

The other non-global warming challenges to our global society that will both interact with each other and likely continue to worsen in this phase of the Climageddon Scenario are the same as above. When you mix the accelerating global warming threat multiplier in with the above expanding global challenges you create for yourself a converging cascade of endless catastrophes. 

Some reasons why most of our above critical global challenges have not been solved or will be nearly impossible to fix

The following are not all of the reasons that it is highly unlikely that we will be able to resolve the above global challenges. They are only several of the most important and overarching reasons:  

Reason 1: Our failure to evolve effective global governance with the needed legislative, judicial, and enforceable executive powers to solve all of the global challenges that cross national borders. If you think about it deeply, you will discover that this critical evolutionary failure of not having yet developed effective global governance is a core structural cause of why most of the above global challenges have not been resolved, and they continue to worsen. 

Even though it looks like someone manages the well-being of the planet as a whole from the United Nations or our international treaties, this is an illusion! No one governing body is effectively or responsibly driving the global "car," and it is speeding toward a cliff without a driver. 

Reason 2: Wealthy vested interests have compromised the effectiveness of our national governments. More often than not, our national government's decisions are not based on the general population's long-term wellbeing. They are based on increasing the short-term financial and power advantages of a very few ultra-wealthy individuals and corporations funding politicians openly or secretly. Consequently, decisions favoring the interests of the privileged ultra-wealthy most often harm the general wellbeing of the many. 

Reason 3: We have hunter/gatherer's brains developed before the stone age, trying to manage the twenty-first century highly complex, self-organizing global systems. The physical structure of our minds has not advanced in over a million years. Our biological brains were developed in response to the simple stone-age demands of hunting and gathering food. 

Our stone age brain structure cannot sufficiently understand or do all of the complex data, analyses, and calculations needed to manage complex adaptable systems like the global climate, the global economy, the global environment, and balancing and managing international and global politics without endless war and conflicts. 

The average planetary IQ is only about 100. Even genius-level individuals (IQ 140 and up) cannot stay up with the ever-increasing amounts of new information and ever-increasing technical and other global system complexities. To cope, our stone-age brains automatically revert to behaviors based on emotions, self-interest, and the comfort of superstitions. Consequently, we regularly do not understand or see the most severe problems within the various global systems until it is too late to avoid the worst possible catastrophes, i.e., the global warming extinction emergency and the ongoing collapse of global civilization. (Both of which are occurring because of either the convergence or the amplification of the global challenges listed above.)

Reason 4: Most of our current leaders have both stone-age minds and stone-age leadership qualities.
We are still evolving members of the ape family. We proudly try to distance ourselves from our ape animal roots by calling ourselves, humans. Despite our cultures continually trying to make us unaware of being evolving animals, we are all still mostly subject to our ancient biological animal drives, and so too it is with our current leaders.

Most of our current leaders had to have a high degree of stone-age alpha male qualities, or they would have never become leaders in their area. Those stone-age alpha leadership qualities are used to command the pack with fear of violence, actual violence, and deceit. They most often use these and other aggressive intimidation tactics for maintaining their power, privilege, and self-interest.

Stone age alphas will give excellent lip service to the common goals or the greater good of all, but they are always cleverly protecting and forwarding their own interests or adding to their assets, most often, at the expense of those they lead.

Unless society can remove these unevolved stone-age alphas from group leadership positions, it will continue to have the world we have now, and it will be far more difficult fixing it.

This deficient stone-age leadership problem means societies worldwide will soon need to establish minimum levels for their leaders' cognitive, social/emotional, and moral developmental levels. To manage the complexity and vast amounts of modern society information, our societies should also set minimum educational and intelligence levels for all critical leaders. We also need to ensure our leaders are well versed in scientific falsification methodology, basic logic, systems thinking, ethics, and dialectical meta-systemic thinking (Otto Laske.)

Not only should there be minimal developmental and skill levels set for all critical leadership positions, but there also should be recommended levels for cognitive, social-emotional, and moral development, education, and intelligence. This way the population can make better choices about who to elect or choose for their leaders for critical positions. (Luckily, science has already laid out the highest levels of human cognitive, social-emotional, and moral development in the works of Abraham Maslow, Claire Graves, Robert Kegan, Lawrence Kohlberg, and Otto Laske.

Today's world does not need more aggressive, self-centered, and genetically confident stone-age alpha leaders. We need more of the new and evolved alpha leaders. 

To successfully solve the world's current challenges, societies must eventually remove all stone-age alpha leaders from its most crucial power positions. It must replace them with the best-educated, smartest, and most cognitively, social-emotionally and morally developed new alpha leaders.

With these highly-evolved new alpha leaders, we will have the leaders needed for today's complex world. They will be the leaders genuinely dedicated to using their skills and gifts to resolve our current problems in ways that truly improve the collective's overall wellbeing.

For more about dialectical meta systemic thinking, click here.

Reason 5: Fundamental Evolutionary Flaws in Human Language

Human language is produced in the brain in layers. Human language is initially learned, in infancy, based on memorized sound patterns. The patterns are associated, not with logic, but with emotion. The next brain level, again in early childhood, groups sound patterns of simple words and simple-logical phrases. These are referred to as Single Sentence Logic (SSL). These two processes, each with their own brain layer, work very fast. This fast response provides a substantial survival advantage in a hunter-gatherer environment.

It is not until much later in a child's development that the ability to handle intricate word patterns like paragraphs, pages, books, and libraries, on a logical basis, is formed in additional separate layers. The problem is, this brain structure leads to significant difficulties for complex modern communications. It takes a relatively long time interval to process complex issues. 

Many private, corporate, and governmental forces want to manipulate people. Using quickly presented, short "sound bites," filled with emotional "trigger" words, they can effectively saturate the fast layers, blocking higher levels of thinking in most people. As social complexity explodes, most people's ability to understand and resolve complex problems is entirely overwhelmed by the media's bombardment with very rapid emotional triggers.

Reason 6: The explosion of technology and complexity is not compatible with how human brains evolved

The explosion of technology has also introduced extreme complexity into how we use tools and instruments, and into all commercial and social interactions! For all the technical elements to work together, very complex sets of rules and information are required. We would have to memorize many thousands of pages of detailed directions. To fully engage in all our commercial and social interactions, we would also have to memorize many thousands of pages of law books, and read and remember all the words in every contract and agreement we sign. This high complexity also means actions and decisions must be made much faster. Timing becomes critical, and every piece of technology-dependent information must be precise. There isn't time to check into the reference material. Human brains can't do even a small fraction of this. So, people don't do it. They make up their own "workarounds" (i.e., superstitions), which, of course, are not compatible with anyone else's. The result is, that interactions with both machines and other people constantly don't work the way we expect! 

Reason 7: Evolved human psychology drives individuals toward self-centered individual survival

Humans cannot escape the numerous strong survival drives that have been hard-wired into them over millions of years of vertebrate evolution.

Because of the rapidness of messaging, we can't take the time to research and understand complex issues or correctly operate the equipment. To "cope," the human brain invents "shortcuts" - i.e., "superstitions" about what has been said or how things work. Because of the continual breakdown of equipment and interpersonal interactions and the rapid emotional media assault of messages, individuals believe they are being assaulted. The assaults are interpreted as "threats" by our evolved self-centered personal defenses for survival. They are direct attacks on our inherent concepts of individual freedom. Our "fight or flight" defenses evolved to deal with "tangible" adversaries. Our brain uses the invented superstitions to assign "blame" for their pain. The blame must have a "name"! This complexity and flawed language vs. freedom dichotomy directly explains the current extreme polarization of social groups, governments, and political beliefs.

Ironically, before science broke open our vast understanding of nature, the forces of nature, in the form of demons, were the most common culprits. With such thinking largely discredited, our made-up superstitions are now more often aimed at each other! These "selfish gene" drives lead to social conflict and violence. When confronted with this, society's response has gone from simple admonishment to putting people in prison or even putting them to death. The problem is, these drives run so deep, even this entire range of responses has failed. The results have been 12,000+ years of war and conflict. To reach a peaceful, sustainable future, radically new approaches are needed for managing the self-interest vs. community-interest conflict. A patchwork of fixes has not worked and will not work.

Reason 8: Our stone-age impaired brains are also being attacked and compromised by 4th generation mind control technology enabled by supercomputers, advanced algorithms, artificial intelligence (AI) software, and today's social media and search platforms. This social media-enabled mind control attack of hidden manipulation is not only enhancing tensions and polarizing people worldwide. It is also causing people to no longer be able to reason out or understand what is true or fake.

This mind control is dangerous because, without the ability to see and know truth from falsehood independently, the world will continue making terrible decisions on our many global challenges. Social media fake news propagation is also super-charging racial, ethnic, religious, and national political tensions worldwide to make matters worse. This super-charging effect will eventually and most certainly produce more racial, ethnic, religious, and national conflicts, maybe even new race, ethnic, religious, and national wars.

Before we describe the basics of 4th generation mind control, we strongly recommend first watching the shocking Netflix documentary called The Social Dilemma. It will set the necessary foundation for you to understand the invisible tactics used and to know why fourth-generation mind control is already another severe and vast problem inhibiting our ability to solve our current global challenges. Additionally, the everyday use of fourth-generation mind control by social media companies is not only inhibiting our ability to think and solve our global challenges; it is also significantly accelerating the worse consequences of those challenges.

In this new documentary, you will hear top executives from Silicon Valley's most prominent social media companies telling you the world is in new grave danger, and that we must regulate and remove this danger immediately. They also will warn you that AI and supercomputers have twisted social media into a new form of ultra-sophisticated, hidden nano-manipulation whose fundamental purpose is to get you to change your opinions, beliefs, and sense of identity to ultimately change your behavior without either your awareness or conscious consent.

Once you have viewed the Netflix documentary called The Social Dilemma, you are ready to continue with this brief explanation of the four generations of mind control:

a. First-generation mild control is almost as old as humanity. It appeared in ancient Egyptian and other cults where a member was put through many highly restrictive, cathartic, and stressful experiences. This process would often also involve the use of drugs and a fake death and a "miraculous drugged "rebirth from the "death" experience. The reborn individual would then assume the cult's new identity because the cult had saved their lives.

The subject usually also became a fanatical true believer. First-generation mind control was time-consuming and labor-intensive. Think of it as a one-by-one assembly line. (For more, see the initiation rites of Hashish Assassins.)

b. Second-generation mild control was advanced in the 1950s when modern psychology tactics were integrated with many ancient first-generation cult tactics. The Russians, Koreans, and the Chinese all used second-generation tactics in their Gulags and though-reform prison camps on political dissidents. The Koreans made second-generation mind control effectiveness famous when the captured US Air Force pilots and used it so effectively that the pilots went on International TV and denounced America and the American way of life.

Second-generation mind control was more refined and also less time-consuming. Numerous handlers were still needed in the prison camps to execute the program to apply and maintain continuous stress on the subject until they broke. Think of an assembly line that could produce more cost-effective mind control victims whose opinions, beliefs, and identities had been radically changed. (For more, search the descriptions of what was done in Korea to downed US pilots during the Korean war.

c. Third-generation mild control was advanced in the 1960s by cults like Scientology, the Moonies, and Hare Krishna. Here coercive influence tactics of modern psychology were integrated with many of the ancient first-generation cult tactics. Unlike the Russians, Korean, and the Chinese Gulags and their use of thought-reform prison camps, these modern cults had refined the mind control tactics to newer micro-influence levels no longer requiring physical constraint or physical abuse.

Third-generation mind control was less time-consuming and labor-intensive because it could be done not one-by-one, like in earlier mind control generations, but on a whole group of people at the same time. This group application was achieved by controlling almost every area of their existence by the cult. (What they wore, ate, thought, did, etc.)

Stress was still applied continuously but more skillfully, secretively, and gradually in micro-steps. Think of a faster, better coercive influence group assembly line, which also could produce more cost-effective mind control victims whose opinions, beliefs, and identity had been radically changed more efficiently and faster. (If you read George Orwell's 1984, you will have a good idea of what life was like inside these third-generation mind-control cults. For more, search for what was done to victims of the cults mentioned above in the many lawsuits filed against them.)

d. Fourth-generation mild control began not long after the creation of social media, and Silicon Valley launched the new search platforms. Fourth-generation mind control makes a very significant big jump from an individual or group application to mass application. No longer did one have to be imprisoned or even be in a high-control, high-restriction cult to be the victim of this new hidden and even more dangerous mind control.

Fourth-generation mind control uses supercomputers, artificial intelligence, complex algorithms, the psychology of influence and behavioral change, tightly controlled echo chambers, and some earlier generation deceit and hidden influence tactics. Fourth-generation mind control can create a meaningful and continuous influence over the subject in gradual nano-steps. These nano-steps make it even easier to change the subject's opinions, beliefs, and even their core sense of who they are (their identity), and they have no idea this is even being done.

Fourth-generation mind control is the least time-consuming and labor-intensive because it is done mostly by machines. It is being done to billions of people simultaneously, not just the small groups as in third-generation mind control. Stress is still applied continuously but far skillfully, secretively, and more gradually than in any other generation.

Think of a faster, better mass production assembly line that can more cost-effectively produce billions of mind control victims over the next few decades. Think of it as the fastest, most invisible, and advanced technology of modern civilization being used against our stone-age brains. Yes, our stone-age brains will never have a chance unless we regulate and ban them from being used on our children or manipulating every person now using social media. (For more, watch the Social Dilemma documentary on NetFlix. In clear and precise ways, it will show you the many subtle and invisible ways that today's social media is using fourth-generation mind control to invisibly change your opinions, beliefs, identity, and behavior without your awareness or consent.

 

Reason 9: Our current form of democracy has reached its limits.

"Democracy," or more specifically, "Athenian Democracy" in the form of a Republic, as it is now implemented worldwide, is incompatible with the technology-produced conditions of modern society. Ancient Athens had a small, sparse population, simple technology, and relatively similar self-sufficient farmers. Their culture was dominated by one national religion and very homogeneous practices. This simple "social environment" continued well into the 18th century. It allowed the concept of "majority voting" to work and provide most people with an "acceptable" outcome. ALL these factors have now changed.

We now have huge populations with hundreds of interspersed beliefs and cultures that are radically different. A hyper-specialized workforce breaks down the prevailing "agricultural culture" that bonded most people. Additionally, complex, hyper-integrated new technologies force all of these cultures to adopt narrow approaches for communication and interaction unfamiliar to all of them. All of the alternate forms of democracy currently in use or being discussed rely on the limiting singular "winner" outcome of "majority voting" to determine social action. In societies with hundreds of competing cultures, no "singular result" can come anywhere near close to providing most people with an acceptable result. The result is, that most people "feel" the result of any government decision, which always has many provisions that don't address their needs, as a "government tyranny" against them. The product is population unrest and distrust or hate of government around the world.

In ancient Athens, with a population under 100,000, "congresses" of as many as 4,000 citizens were assembled as "representatives". These were predominantly farmers, making decisions for farmers. Even so, a very sophisticated machine was built to ensure that every representative was selected without bias or allegiance to a social group!

Today, a few hundred people (politicians) are chosen to represent hundreds of millions of citizens, each with very different job skills, social situations, educational backgrounds, etc. The requirements for preventing bias or allegiance, which the Athenians in 500BC already understood, was a cornerstone for democracy to work and have been thrown to the wind. So, not only is the majority wins "singular result" a major flaw, the process that actively steers representatives into the hands of political parties and industrial "lobbying" completely severs any logical connection between current "democracies" and the original implementation of that term. By design, contemporary "democracies" can only be hotbeds for corruption and government failure. "Democracy" must now evolve to new forms that solve all the 8 problems listed above if we are ever to solve our critical global challenges (described above.)

What happens when you mix everything above together in Phase 1?

When you are thinking about the interacting collective and individual impacts of the above, you must also consider their direct and indirect impacts upon human social, economic and political systems and the tipping points within those unique human systems. For example, as we continue to experience more of the multiplying, amplifying, and magnifying consequences mentioned above that will also increase in frequency, severity, and scale, we will also begin to experience more random human system crashes and collapses which have previously occurred when severe stresses arise within our social, economic and political human systems. This will then eventually push these human systems ever closer toward or over their own internal tipping points.

For example, as crops fail from Arctic Sea ice loss, droughts, rain bombs, extreme storms, cold spells, and extreme temperatures, food prices will skyrocket. Populations will eventually riot before they starve to death and then as more people die or struggle not to die, law and order will break down. Eventually, the weaker countries will collapse under the ever-increasing weight of these rising internal economic political, and social climate-related catastrophes and resource conflicts.

What also will begin to happen as we leave Phase 1 and enter Phase 2 is that nuclear reactors, toxic chemical manufacturing plants, and any chemical or biological weapons stockpiles in the weakest nations will become more vulnerable to accidental meltdown, release or theft as the governments of weaker nations no longer have the resources or manpower to keep these critical sites secure and operational.

As the world's weakest nations collapse from the mounting global warming, our other global challenges, they will create more and more desperate climagees (climate refugees in the millions.) As this rising migration seeks to enter the stronger and safer nations, the stronger nations will also begin to experience local and regional breakdowns in law and order as they experience greater and greater stresses upon their own economic, social, and political systems as they too simultaneously struggle with most of the same consequences.

Here is An Illustrated Quick Overview of the Climageddon Climate Change and Global Warming Extinction Scenario Processes 

At this point, an illustration will help simplify the many things you have just read. The Climageddon extinction scenario process illustrated below will help you understand global warming's many levels of processes and interactions 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 synergetic processes 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 pushing us toward our extinction.

The top of the illustration below shows you the later phase 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 interacting and colliding as well as amplifying and multiplying each other as the Climageddon extinction scenario unfolds in phases and waves. (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.)

Remember to review this illustration from the bottom up beginning with the heating of global warming escalating!

 

 

About the Climageddon Extinction Scenario and Countdown as a whole system

As you can see from the illustration above, the Climageddon Scenario is far more than just a summary listing of the individual global warming consequences and tipping points. In the above illustrated intertwined unfolding phases and interactions, 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 consequences and interactions of our global warming emergency synergize with each other at various levels 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" synergetic consequence interaction perspective, you will find many illustrations like the one above showing the major tipping points and other global warming consequences colliding with our financial, social, and political systems. 

"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

Now that you have learned about Phase 1 of the Climageddon Scenario, it is time to learn about assigning risk levels to every Climageddon phase.

How to assign 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 was 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 analyses and how they are used to rate the six phases of the Climageddon Scenario:

1. The Torino Impact Hazard 0-10 Scale was 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 the 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-late 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.)

 

Phase 1 Risk and threat ratings:

As described earlier, for each Climageddon phase, three different risk ratings are provided. Here are the risk ratings for phase 1:

Phase 1 Torino impact rating:

Torino rating 8: The threat is highly certain for localized and regional destruction. Attention by public and governmental contingency planning is merited if the events are less than 3 decades away. Click here and go to the section of the page called Action Plan Section 2 near the bottom of the page to learn what the governments must start doing immediately.

Phase 1 US military DEFCON rating:

DEFCON 4, described as increased intelligence gathering and security measures.

Phase 1 US Homeland Security risk rating:

Orange: High risk.

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

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

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

We can still maintain the perseverance needed to succeed in this monumental task by regularly reviewing the many benefits which will unfold as we work successfully on this together. (Click here to review those benefits.) 

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

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

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

 

 

Congratulations!

You have finished Phase 1 of the Climageddon Scenario. There are 5 more well-illustrated and soon-arriving Climageddon Scenario phases to review where, unfortunately, things get even worse as global warming worsens.

Because the Climageddon Scenario is already unfolding, please do not forget that if we do reach the last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets by plus or minus 5 percent, we will avoid the worst consequences of the Climageddon Scenario and mass extinction! Life over the millennia always seems to find a way to solve its previous mass extinction challenges!

To help prevent the 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario from unfolding there exists a deadline-prioritized, effective action plan to ensure we do not trigger the later mass extinction phases. Click here for a brief overview of this plan.

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

If you get discouraged reading the many consequences of the Climageddon Scenario, please go to this Surprise Benefits of Global Warming page, which is the most-read page on our website.

 

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

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

Please click here and go to our member's area critical timeframe update on these issues as soon as possible. This update is vital if you want to prepare your family or business for what is now unavoidable!  

 

Click here for the Climageddon Scenario Phase 2, beginning as soon as 2032-2050

The information and illustrations of the detailed consequences, costs, and timetables for phase 2, as well as for each of the other 4 Climageddon Scenario, phases are contained on this next page.

This next page is normally only found in our member's only section, which we have made temporarily viewable to the general public. Much of the recently updated consequences, costs, and timetable information that you are reading in the 6 phases are not found in the Climageddon book.

If the consequence, costs, and timetable link above is not working in the paragraph above, use the following to get to this additional Climageddon Scenario phase 2-6 information:

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.)

Our Members Only section of the website contains much information like the following. We recommend that you click Members link at the top of the page and see what else is available.

 

 

Please keep in mind that the global warming disaster costs in the chart above are only for single disasters during phases 1-4. In phase 5 you see the total cost to the world.

 

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

 

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

Last updated 2.3.25

Overview

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

It contains the following information and sections:

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

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

3. Tipping Points Also Have Points of No Return.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

19. Summary.

Prologue

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

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

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

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

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

Introduction

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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What is a climate change and global warming tipping point?

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

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

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

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

The simple definition of a global warming tipping point is:

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

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

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

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

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

Tipping Points Also Have Points of No Return

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Overview of the biggest dangers of global warming tipping points:

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

8. A complex adaptive system, such as the climate, reacts with its subsystems in both predictable and unpredictable ways. In the illustration above, an action X in system A causes the obvious linear effect Y in system B, but it can also cause a seemingly unconnected nonlinear XY reaction in system C. It is this nonlinear unpredictability in other interconnected and interdependent systems that also should cause us great concern as we add more fossil fuel carbon to the atmosphere

9. Hidden points of no return can occur long before tipping points are crossed: A major factor working against the resolution of the global warming emergency is that with each degree of temperature increase, developmental momentum within the processes of that particular global warming area will push relevant tipping points toward their points of no return, which makes the crossing of such tipping points inevitable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

11. Crossing multiple tipping points will lead to the later phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario. In addition to increasing unpredictability and leading us into the later phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario, crossing multiple tipping points can create a dramatic acceleration of consequence time frames. It will drastically increase the scale, severity, and frequency of the consequences within the related global warming systems and subsystems involved.

12. No compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs. This failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the critical national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the Paris Climate Agreement targets are also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. This means we are using the wrong needed fossil fuel reduction calculations to save us from extinction within our lifetimes.

 

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The following is from Wikipedia:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What we do know is that:

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

What we do not know:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

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

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

One more tipping point super-shocker

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

A humorous 11-minute tipping point animation

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

A deeper perspective into the science of exponential progressions

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

Complex adaptive systems by nature:

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

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

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

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

A big-picture perspective on the challenge before us

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

 

Summary

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

What You Can Do Now!

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If you do not believe that global warming is already out of our meaningful control for at least the next 30-50 years, click here and then continue with the rest of this critical document.

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

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. 

To purchase the printed and ebook versions of Climageddon at Amazon, click here. 

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

Click this link and start feeling better.

Footnotes:

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

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

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

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

⁶⁰ Micheal E. Mann. "The fat tail of climate change risk." Huffington Post. September 11, 2015. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-e-mann/the-fat-tail-of-climate-change-risk_b_8116264.html (In this article, professor Mann uses the terminology “fat tail” to describe global warming tipping point events.)

⁶¹ "Wake Up, Freak Out - then Get a Grip." Vimeo video. 11:34, posted by "Leo Murray," September 11, 2008. http://vimeo.com/1709110

⁶² "The Most IMPORTANT Video You'll Ever See." YouTube video. 9:17, posted by "wonderingmind42," June 16, 2007. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

If you are interested in understanding the climate science and analysis procedures we used to present the above information, click here for a technical explanation of our climate research process.