The 4 Extinction Accelerating Climate Change & Global Warming Tipping Points
Prologue
The not-for-profit Job One for Humanity organization is primarily a place focused on educating individuals and businesses on how to both survive and thrive through the coming climate change and global warming challenges.
You are about to read some horrible climate change and global warming news. The good news is that there are still many things we can do to improve our global warming future.
At the end of this document, we have provided links to a practical plan to manage escalating global warming. We have also provided a link to the many benefits we will achieve as we face this emergency and enact the needed actions to manage its consequences. You will be surprised by the benefits that you (and humanity) will acquire as we resolve this challenge, opportunity, and adventure while never forgetting, "our greatest challenges are also our greatest opportunities."
If you want to see all of the disturbing details of crossing the four global warming tipping points described below, look for the image of the global warming doomsday clock at the end of this document.
Introduction
The four tipping points below are an overview of our global warming and climate collapse future. To help you process the following uncomfortable news, at the end of this article, we have provided some good news! You also will find a plan for what you can do to help slow and resolve the global warming extinction emergency, while we still have the time to do so.
There are just four critical global warming accelerating tipping points and deadlines to never forget:
1. the 2025 carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point, (the Climate Cliff)
2. the 2042-2067 or earlier, extinction-accelerating, runaway global ice melting tipping point level,
3. the 2063-2072 or earlier, extinction-accelerating, massive methane release tipping point level, and
4. the post-2072, runaway rising global warming temperature tipping point level.
Of these four tipping points, 2025 is the most important. Once we cross the 2025 tipping point, any realistic or practical control of our global warming future to prevent mass extinction is all but over for centuries to thousands of years. If we pass the following four critical deadlines and tipping points, not only will we experience mass human, animal, and biological extinction, we will also experience widespread economic, social, and political chaos within our lifetimes!
That is a powerful statement, but we can prove every bit of it to you 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.)
How we measure global warming and what increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere tells us about future global warming
Before you can fully grasp the danger of crossing the four key tipping points below, you will need to know how we measure carbon in the atmosphere. (Carbon is the main greenhouse gas which 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.. The Keeling curve measures atmospheric carbon in parts per million (ppm).
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 current Keeling curve graph for where we are today:
Keeling Curve Monthly CO2 graph, via Show.earth (2)
As you can see, we are not doing very well. As of
The not-for-profit Job One for Humanity organization is primarily a place focused on educating individuals and businesses on how to both survive and thrive through the coming climate change and global warming challenges.
You are about to read some horrible climate change and global warming news. The good news is that there are still many things we can do to improve our global warming future.
At the end of this document, we have provided links to a practical plan to manage escalating global warming. We have also provided a link to the many benefits we will achieve as we face this emergency and enact the needed actions to manage its consequences. You will be surprised by the benefits that you (and humanity) will acquire as we resolve this challenge, opportunity, and adventure while never forgetting, "our greatest challenges are also our greatest opportunities."
No matter what you hear in the media, if the total carbon ppm level is not going down or 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 be happening 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 414 ppm) to carbon 350-325 ppm. (How we do this is in the free Job One Plan.)
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 total extinction not long after that.
To set the final stage for your discovery of the 4 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 414 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 level. 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 average global temperature rose from preindustrial levels from .7 degrees Celcius to 1.4 degrees Celcius. 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 cross the 2.0 - 2.7 Celcius degree increase from preindustrial levels mark sometime near 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, accelerating, and expanding tipping points we will cross in the near future
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. Those four tipping point levels are:
1. The 2025 tipping point level. (This tipping point significantly accelerates the runaway 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 powered by the laws of climate physics and the natural forces of the climate system. This tipping point if avoided will allow us to slow down the currently unavoidable mass extinction event so more of us can live longer. This tipping point if crossed will lead us beyond mass extinction into total extinction.)
2. The extinction-accelerating, 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 greenhouse gas effect tipping point level. (This final global warming tipping point level leads to a total extinction event. This is because of our average global temperatures rising so high that Earth's atmosphere is ripped off into space and everything dies.)
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 publically 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 about to read, you probably would be angry, fearful, and in panic. Widespread public anger and fear would substantially interfere or delay governmental efforts to secretly prepare their survival plans. To think that the best-resourced national intelligence agencies do not have this information as well as the big data meta-systemic analysis skills to review current climate research studies and see the coming extinction emergency is naive beyond belief.
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 whole lot worse a whole lot faster. Therefore, as you read the four levels of extinction-accelerating tipping points below it is important to keep in mind 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 exponentially over time. (In the graph below the red line is an example of a linear gradual growth trajectory and the red line is an example of exponential growth curve and trajectory.)
The exponential growth of global warming consequences after we cross the four levels of tipping points discussed above means that few people or governments will be able to stay up with these escalating consequences for very long, but only if we do not come very close to hitting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. It also means that unless you have made emergency preparations and adaptations, and/or have migrated (where necessary) well before these four levels of tipping points are crossed, you will probably not have the time to do so later as things get worse faster and faster.
This is because the social, economic, and political systems will become more and more unstable and chaotic faster and faster as crossing more global warming tipping points pushes us into a steeper and steeper exponential curve (the green line above) of increasing severity, frequency, and scale in our global warming consequences. If you have not prepared well in advance for what is coming, you will find yourself in a living hell!
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 6 years left (until about 2025,) to slow down an unavoidable mass extinction process as well as our crossing the other 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.
The first major extinction-triggering tipping point that we will cross at or before 2025: the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point
Here is the critical new climate research update of 8.12.20: We have already gone over the climate cliff!
What has been known as the climate cliff is the climate point you go over which begins the runaway global warming process. Before discussing the more up-to-date climate cliff, it is essential to understand the idea of runaway global warming. It means that global warming will increase on a runaway course. Imagine a train going down a hill with no functional brakes and you have a good concept of it! Runaway global warming will also continue, of, and by itself with no practical way to stop or control it.
In our 2016-17 analysis, using the existing fossil fuel infrastructure, we calculated that the first climate cliff for triggering a runaway crossing of more and more amplifying global warming tipping points would occur between carbon 425 to carbon 450 ppm and at a 2 degrees Celcius temperature increase over preindustrial levels. Due to new research and a re-analysis of older studies, the updated carbon ppm level and temperature associated with the climate cliff has changed.
The beginning temperature limits for the former climate cliff needs to be updated from its previous temperature level of 2 -2.7° C above preindustrial levels to its new climate cliff starting point, which is staying below an average global temperature increase of 1.5C.
One of the major reasons for the new 1.5C climate cliff temperature level now being acknowledged among recognized climate scientists is that there are considerably more atmospheric carbon emissions than was previously predicted. These additional carbon emissions come from other amplifying carbon feedbacks and carbon sink failures. This additional carbon feedback and carbon sink issue will start to show up as a 1.5C average global temperature increase as soon as 2025. (The amplifying carbon feedbacks and carbon sink failures will be described in detail further below.)
Newer research also shows that staying at or below a 1.5 C average global temperature increase level (above preindustrial levels) is the only temperature level that excludes the runaway global warming threat or continuing to cross additional critical global warming tipping points. What this really means is that going above 1.5C would eventually lead to the mass extinction of most of humanity by mid-century.
Staying below the older 2C average global temperature increase only minimizes the possibility, but does not exclude, the mass extinction of most of humanity by mid-century. (Please note that this older 2C limit calculations by the United Nations IPCC did not include adequate tipping point calculations, it did wrongly include magical compensatory carbon capture calculations for technology that might not exist for thirty years, and it did not include many other critical calculation factors described here.)
By mid-century when the suffering and survival of most of humanity is at stake, just minimizing the current global warming extinction threat is insane! Additionally, in its eventual effect, any average global temperature increases above 2C is moot.
It is moot because any temperature increase of 1.5 to 2C also triggers runaway global warming and a mass extinction event fueled by crossing ever more critical global warming tipping points! And, if nothing is done by our governments to radically slow and reverse any temperature increases above 1.5C that are reached, total extinction will also be our eventual future.
Supporting this 1.5C new climate cliff is also the Siberia permafrost field research (rather than less accurate computer modeling) by Anton Vaks. This research puts the global permafrost "thaw-down" at 1.5C. This Siberian research means that when the world's permafrost crosses this 1.5C average global temperature increase tipping point, the world's permafrost begins a near-continuous meltdown. This means that after we reach this 1.5 C temperature increase, all permafrost stored carbon and methane will eventually be released from the permafrost.
This 1.5C permafrost release point plus other human-made carbon and methane releases put us squarely on the fast track for the worst global warming prediction scenarios. (Click here for more documentation on the permafrost meltdown.)
Another climate cliff shocker. . .
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated that reaching the carbon 420 ppm level is equivalent to a 1.6C average global temperature increase from preindustrial levels. If we can stay below a 1.5C temperature increase, we would have to have kept our atmospheric carbon level below 386 ppm, but as of 2020, we are already at carbon 414 ppm.
Crossing this 386 carbon ppm level also means that 2015 was around the time that we had already crossed over the 1.5C correct climate cliff. Because we went over the climate cliff in 2015, and because any average global temperature increase of 1.5 to 2C triggers runaway global warming, we now have to face we are already in a state of runaway global warming and that we can no longer stop a mass human extinction event by mid-century, but we can slow it down if we reach the 2025 targets.
Yes, you read that correctly! At this time, all we can do now is slow and delay this mass extinction event consequence and it will take a government-driven mass mobilization. This government-driven mass mobilization would have to radically reduce global fossil fuel use to get very close to the difficult to reach 2025 targets.
If the world governments do act immediately and reach the last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, more people will live longer and a bit more comfortably. And, maybe we can still save humanity from the only thing worse than mass extinction, - - - total extinction!
And finally, the most important thing to remember from this new research update on the older climate cliff level is that we have already fallen over the 1.5C, carbon 386 ppm climate cliff. We are on the pathway to mass extinction by mid-century.
Unless our governments get us to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, runaway global warming will move so fast that we will not be able to stop the total extinction of humanity and the collapse of civilization.
Here is how having already crossed the climate cliff and the accelerating crossing of more global warming tipping points occurs
The new carbon 386 ppm tipping point level is called our last chance climate cliff because it truly was our last window of opportunity to keep from going over the atmospheric carbon climate cliff and into the runaway multiple global warming tipping point processes. Once we go over this climate cliff, our average global temperature will inevitably rise to considerably above 1.5C - 2°C (possibly as much as 3.2 C in eventual equilibrium warming,) far, far faster than has ever occurred before over geologically scaled time spans. This means that what used to happen over millennia or centuries with our climate systems will now happen over decades in numerous tipping points.
Unfortunately, rapidly rising average global temperatures is not the worst effect of crossing the carbon 386 ppm level and climate cliff. These fast temperature rises will also create an additional and powerful climate momentum factor in addition to the existing atmospheric carbon climate momentum that will not only push our average global temperature even higher even faster, it will also literally force many of the 11 critical global warming tipping points (below) to be crossed much faster within the global climate and its subsystems.
(The illustration below lists the 11 major global warming tipping points. The arrows between the shown tipping points indicate that these tipping points also interact with each other and can trigger each other's main or subsystem tipping points. When this happens global warming temperatures will soar faster and faster triggering even more climate and human system tipping points.)
(We strongly recommend that you click here to learn more about what each tipping point above is and how they will work to bring us closer to mass and total extinction. This tipping point 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 as well as how they 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 impact that global warming tipping points will have on your future.)
What to expect in rising temperatures now that we have already have crossed the carbon 386 climate cliff
We have already passed carbon 386 ppm level back around 2015. Within about 5 years (2025 or less,) we can expect to lock in an eventual total increase in average global temperature of about 1.5C.
In August of 2020, we are now at carbon 414 ppm. If we continue to the carbon 425 ppm level, within about 5 years (2025 or less,) 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.
At just this 1.5 -2.7° Celsius increased average global temperature level, millions will starve and millions of additional people from all over the world will eventually be forced to either migrate or die.
Once we went over the carbon climate cliff of 386 ppm and hit 1.5 Celsius average global temperature increase level, the total heat-producing momentum of all of the previous carbon and other greenhouse gases that we have ever put into the atmosphere (particularly all that additional carbon we have added over the last 50 years,) along with the other factors mentioned further down this page, will quickly and inevitably continue to push our average global temperature even higher as well as trigger the crossing of even more tipping points at an accelerating rate!
This also means that since we have already gone over the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff, we have triggered this next level of accelerating climate system tipping point crossings (and additional heat-producing momentum,) we will be basically locked into continually increasing temperatures for as much as the next 30-50 years as well as crossing even more dangerous tipping points!
If we cross the carbon 425 carbon ppm tipping point, we will reach the next key carbon and temperature transition threshold level, where, because of crossing more future global warming tipping points at an accelerating rate, we will be unable to stop ourselves from continuing 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 ppm level,) the higher mass extinction accelerating temperature levels of 3°, 4°, 5°, and possibly even 6° Celsius will be all but locked in. This uncontrollable continuous rise in average global temperature which will cause mass starvation, death, and migration will be due primarily to:
1. the major global warming consequences will continue to intensify and cross-react as heat rises. (The following illustration below will help you to visualize how future global warming consequences will intensify separately and together as we cross more tipping points and global temperatures rise. Imagine all of the global warming consequences whirling around and colliding into each other and amplifying each other because of the agitation and "boiling effect" of ever-increasing heat. This is similar to how the rising heat under a steam cooker churns, whirls, and collides the boiling water inside the steam cooker faster and more violently.)
As increasing heat boils our planet, the above global warming consequences will intensify! (To learn more 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 of the 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 to be 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 once 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 cumulatively interact with each other,
4. our continuing to cross "points of no return" within the global warming tipping points processes. (Tipping points are illustrated further above.) 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 usually slow, difficult, and costly, or completely impossible.
5. the accelerating heat-producing carbon and other greenhouse gas momentum, (we continue to add more fossil fuel burning carbon to the atmosphere each and every additional year (at about 3 carbon ppm per year,)
6. numerous serious human system inertia and other human system mal-adaptation 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 other than to prevent ever crossing into this next highly dangerous transitional carbon 425-450 ppm threshold range and tipping point. At our current rate of carbon and other greenhouse gas atmospheric pollution, entering this range will begin, unfortunately, sometime around 2025 if we do not get very close to the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets.
There is something we can always be certain of in this horrible emergency. No matter what and in spite of all of the challenges and bad tipping point outcomes that are coming, the single constant truth for the best possible global warming 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 "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 own 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 read the rest of this document, we strongly recommend that you also 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.)
Here is what is most important to remember about any failure to get very close to our 2025 reduction targets and going over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point:
1. After we also go over the carbon 425-450 ppm range. We will cross so many more tipping points so fast, there will be little we can do to prevent total extinction.
The pure mathematics and physics of atmospheric carbon and the other greenhouse gases will take over after we go over the carbon 425-450 ppm level. This will drive our temperatures ever higher up to and through at least two more extinction evoking tipping points and many other global warming consequences described further below.
If we do not make the 2025 targets, our final window opportunity to effectively control our own destiny regarding preventing the final extinction evoking tipping points from being crossed literally closes. This is why our last chance carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point is truly our most important first non-climate cliff 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 other following tipping point sections below.)
2. Once we cross carbon 386 ppm as we have already done and we reach the carbon 425-450 ppm level, there will be so much global warming temperature increasing momentum built up from all of the previously emitted carbon (and other greenhouse gases,) that it will propel us near uncontrollably to even higher temperatures even faster! After we cross the climate cliff, stopping this ever-increasing global warming temperature increasing momentum will be like trying to stop a gigantic boulder from rolling faster and faster down a cliff that keeps getting steeper and steeper.
3. In case you're still somehow thinking or believing technology will save us at the last minute, no new carbon removal technologies (what we call magical carbon sucking unicorns,) will be able to save us in time. This is because even those who believe this technology 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! (Please click here if you still have any illusions about new carbon removal technology miraculously saving us at the last minute. The science found there will help you to understand that the only way out of this imminent catastrophe is to radically reduce fossil fuel use globally to meet the 2025 targets.)
4. According to James Hansen one of the world's most important climate researchers, just a carbon 450 ppm level would eventually correspond and develop into an average global temperature increase of 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) in this century and the complete end of human civilization as we’ve come to know it.
5. We are in an unacknowledged global warming extinction emergency and so far our governments are not even close to being on pace to hit the critical 2025 targets.
6. If we fail to hit the 2025 targets we lose our last chance to be able to stop ourselves from going over additional far worse global warming tipping points which will cause mass human extinction and economic, political, and social chaos within our lifetimes!
7. If we fail to hit the 2025 targets, global warming consequences will begin accelerating exponentially in frequency, severity, and scale.
Please see the blue Atmospheric CO2 carbon graph ( above) to see how dangerously close we are to this critical carbon 425 ppm tipping point already.
Additional thoughts on the critical importance of the carbon 425-450 ppm first extinction-accelerating tipping point
Because we have ignored 35 years of warmings, 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.
Most of the above-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 criminally negligent point of no return.
Distinguished Professor of Meteorology Michael Mann from the University of Pennsylvania recently stated that once we reach the carbon 405 ppm level in our atmosphere, a 2 degrees C average global temperature increase is already baked in! Once that happens there is nothing we can do to stop it! As of June 2020, we are currently at carbon 416 ppm.
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 spell the end of 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. 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 also a crucial way to think about this race to get to net-zero emissions before we cross more extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points.
Imagine that the captain on the Titanic suddenly sees the iceberg in front of him. To slow and steer the Titanic, 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. We have already gone over the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff and we are doing very poorly in trying to reach the last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and get closer to net-zero emissions. We have wasted so much time over the previous 35 years ignoring valid scientific warnings; we honestly may not have enough time remaining to "steer" away from extinction.
We already have a baked-in minimal 1.5 - 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 likely 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 climate cliff previously mentioned of carbon 386 ppm. As one can see, once we cross that carbon 386 ppm Planetary Threshold line, the stability of the planetary climate rapidly collapses into an over-heating uninhabitable Earth!
The most probable carbon feedback loops, loss of carbon sinks, points of no return, and tipping points to occur or be crossed after we have crossed the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff
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 releasing 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.)
Here is the most likely keystone tipping points to be crossed after crossing the carbon 386 climate cliff
There is an extinction tipping point area that is the most likely first candidate to significantly worsen 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 expand 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.
As 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 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.
The current climate cliff and 1.5C temperature increase threshold was the last threshold for excluding humanity's mass extinction threat by mid-century. Staying below 1.5C was also the last threshold where we still could have prevented a significant acceleration in crossing other more dangerous global warming tipping points. Without even reading the three extinction-accelerating tipping points below, one can see that while you do your best to encourage our governments to meet the 2025 targets, it is also now wise to start your personal global warming emergency backup plan and "Plan B!"
In summary
What not coming close to the critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets means and what is at stake:
1. If we fail, we will not be able to slow down a now unavoidable mass extinction event. (Mass extinction means that most of humanity dies by mid-century.)
2. Only by coming very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets do we have any reasonable chance of preventing an even worse total extinction event from ending all of humanity and civilization.
The second global warming extinction-accelerating tipping point that we will cross 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 do fail, here is more on how mass human extinction, as well as economic, political, and social chaos, will become our shared future from crossing the next 2 critical global warming tipping points within the next few decades.
As the current carbon rises, we will cross the carbon 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 has 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's 19 other related consequences) and, 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 rise up to 10 feet or more in just a few decades as it also has done repeatedly in Earth's past.
Take a moment to visualize the seas eventually but steadily and in 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 will hit carbon 600 ppm. When we cross the carbon 500 ppm tipping point we cross a steeper even more slippery slope and we will 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, make recovery much slower, harder and more expensive, and function, click here.)
Please keep in mind that as we pass this second tipping point, global warming consequences will continue to accelerate exponentially in frequency, severity, and scale.
The third global warming extinction-expanding tipping point we will most probably cross as soon as 2063-2072 or earlier: It creates runaway methane releases accelerating the total extinction threat
We will most probably also cross the carbon 600 ppm final extinction level which will result in raising the average global temperature to 5°C (9 degrees Fahrenheit) and bring about massive methane clathrate releases from ocean coastal shelves as it has done before in the Paleocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum 56 million years ago, and most notably the Permian–Triassic extinction event, when up to 96% of all marine species became extinct, 252 million years ago. (Please click here to watch a short video that brilliantly explains the extinction process once we start releasing methane clathrate from our coastal shelves. New research shows we actually begin this 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 a gas from methane clathrate is 86 times more potent than carbon as a temperature increasing greenhouse gas, it will once again rapidly spike up the average global temperatures.
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 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 hit the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, 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 on 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 enact 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 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 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 hitting our 2025 targets 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 for 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 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 3 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 a mass extinction event we are facing total extinction! This is because we will cross the carbon 600 ppm-level. This is the level where we will also enter the beginning phases of run-away global warming! (If you are not sure about how much worse it can possibly get if we enter a run-away global warming 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, a large portion of humanity will die by mid-century of starvation because of the devastating effect that increased heat will have on crop failure or 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 have reached the carbon 600 ppm level tipping point, global civilization will have begun collapsing. 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.
(The global warming consequences, tipping points, and human system factors (shown above,) will be interacting and colliding with each other 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.)
Please also keep in mind that as we pass this second tipping point, global warming consequences will continue to accelerate exponentially in frequency, severity, and scale.
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:
- evermore natural climate system tipping points.
- much larger naturally occurring methane releases from the tundra, permafrost, and ocean shelves.
- 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 average global temperature in an endless cycle. Unfortunately, these increasing temperatures will go on and on until after we are gone where 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 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 we 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 exp1osed ALL of humanity to an imminent and an 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 also will help you understand how the increasing methane releases from the tundra, permafrost, and ocean shelves will occur as well as 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:
- Its consequences are already intensifying in severity, frequency, and scale and will soon begin doing so exponentially.
- 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 developmental timescales which 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. When we pass the carbon 500 and 600 ppm tipping points, it 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. The accumulated destruction caused by global warming over the coming decades 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 not only threatens their nation and citizens, but also 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, itis also the ultimate no-win game!
If you still have any confusion on 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.)
The fourth and most dangerous global warming total extinction, runaway greenhouse gas effect tipping point, which will cross sometime after 2070
Welcome to humanity's ultimate mass 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 mass extinction event within our lifetimes. (If by chance, you still do not believe this mass extinction statement, click the previous link. After you read that link, then also please read about the global warming-caused tipping points at this link. This second link will make the step-by-step unavoidable mass extinction process painfully clear!)
One huge reason why this mass extinction event will occur and is now unavoidable is that we have ignored 35 years of scientific warnings. We missed the chance to fix global warming when we could have easily made the needed gradual changes to keep escalating global warming from reaching our current catastrophic point. This mass extinction event could cause the deaths of most of humanity by mid-century. Such a massive die-off would be due to soon crossing critical global warming tipping points as well as the combined future consequences of global warming particularly, mass starvation due to global crop failures of the most climate-sensitive crops.
This mass extinction event is also unavoidable because we will soon (about 2025) be unable to stop ourselves from crossing the three previously mentioned most dangerous global warming tipping points. We will be unable to stop ourselves because we will be unable to achieve the life-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets!
More regrettably is the fact that the mass extinction of a vast portion of humanity is not the worst global warming tipping point and global warming future consequence that we are facing. If we do not make or come reasonably close to the radical 2025 global reduction targets for our global fossil fuel use, we will also face the very beginning stages of a very real total extinction event.
A total extinction event could begin in as early as 50-70 years in the form of very high average global temperature and very high atmospheric carbon levels about carbon 750 ppm, which will support initiating the final runaway-global warming process, aka the runaway greenhouse effect. (Runaway global warming is also referred to as extinction-level global warming.)
Run-away global warming 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 to Venus 4 billion years ago, because of a very high carbon-rich atmosphere and exceptionally high average surface temperatures.
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.
At a 5-6 degree Celcius increase in average global temperature, the massive additional tipping point 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 first phases of runaway global warming.
Here is how this happens. At a 5-6 degree Celcius temperature increase, the costal 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. For reference, our climate was stable for hundreds of thousands of years at about carbon 270 ppm. We are currently at about carbon 415 ppm. (The recent carbon 270 to 415 ppm increase occurred since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which was powered by burning fossil fuels.)
The Final Lose/Lose Shocker: We will 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 Celcius (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 meltdown without stable and secure maintenance, it will not matter where you migrate to in the world. At 4 degrees Celcius, 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 is far-fetched, consider 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 Celcius (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 Chernoby-like nuclear reactors melting down. Once these reactors go critical, they will spew deadly radiation for centuries to thousands of years! (Currently, 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 total extinction event without the final runaway global warming 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 the 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 Would 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 to 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 of 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.) Additionally, these global warming safer 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 5 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 just an emergency to prevent global warming from getting worse. We are no longer in just 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 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 then 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 wealthiest individuals corporations, and nations will recognize their money and power won't save them from this monster. They will realize that we either cooperate and work together or die together.
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 global warming question for our collective and individual future is...
"How do we prevent a global warming-caused 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 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 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 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 meet the 2025 targets within the next 6 years, 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 global warming-caused total extinction event from occurring, while we are also simultaneously dealing with an unavoidable mass extinction event which is already occurring, is to begin the Job One Plan action steps in 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 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 total extinction emergency.
Please keep reading. The next sections will help motivate you to make the best possible actions in spite of all the bad news...
The hard facts for why must we press on and meet or get as close to the 2025 targets as is possible in spite of all the above challenges
If we do get close to the 2025 targets, as much as 50% of humanity will suffer and die due to starvation over a relatively short period (1-2 decades.) As horrible as much as 50% of humanity as well as a lot of animal and biological life suffering and dying is, this outcome is still far better than having most of humanity die by mid-century or even all of humanity suffer and die if we fail to reach or come very close to the 2025 targets.
There are three things we can always be sure of during this global warming extinction emergency. In spite of all of the challenges and adverse global warming outcomes that are possible and discussed above, the single constant truth for the best possible outcome for humanity is that; the faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use toward meeting or getting as close as possible to the 2025 targets:
a. the more people that will survive longer to carry on humanity, life, and our beautiful civilization into the future, (See Parts 3 and 4 of the Job One Plan for how to do this.)
b. the surviving future generations will suffer far less from an ever-increasing sequence of escalating global warming consequences and catastrophes, and
c. we will "buy" ourselves more time to prepare and adapt to what we can no longer avoid, (see the global warming Plan B and survival kit here.)
More people surviving longer and more people having time to get themselves, their families, and their businesses prepared for what is coming is an undeniable good particularly when you weigh it against the unavoidable consequences of doing nothing or failure to make the needed sacrifices to get global warming under control.
Conclusion:
(Read this if you are discouraged or, you don't believe we can meet the last-chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.)
As the research and analysis verification links in this document reveal, there no longer such a thing as a program of gradual fossil fuel reduction being a viable alternative any longer. We squandered that option with our last 35 years of procrastination, denial, and delay in effectively reducing our global fossil fuel use.
Crossing the carbon 425-450 ppm threshold and tipping point brings about:
1. unavoidable rising temperatures for many decades,
2. crossing more dangerous global warming tipping points even faster, and
3. a recovery process that will take hundreds to thousands of years.
Letting atmospheric carbon go over the 425-450 ppm tipping point is not only insane, but it is also unconscionable under any rationalization!
Because of our lost 35 years of denial and delay, what we need to do now will need to be radical, painful, and costly. That is now the price of our future if, we want to have any future at all.
Don't be fooled. This emergency is not far off in the future.
This emergency is not a "get to it later" problem for your children in their later life. It will directly affect you and your children within your lifetimes.
From now until 2025, if we are not close to being on-target for reaching our life-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, we will know we are locked into the path of high probability extinction. If that happens, we will be forced to see if we can save and salvage any livable future for humanity for the second half of this 21st century and for the centuries to follow.
What this implies is that we also will soon know if we are at the end of history and everything humanity has ever cared about. We will know if gone will be life, love, family, art, music, sexual intimacy, motherhood, and everything else.
We do not often engage in conversations about the extinction of our species, but now is the time to do so. Failure to hit the 2025 reduction targets means the destruction of humanity is on-the-line --- within our lifetimes! That is precisely what we at Job One mean when we say we are in a "global warming extinction emergency."
Right now this self-made suicidal tragedy is already affecting hundreds of millions of people around the world. Over the next 10 to 20+ years; it's just going to get worse even faster, affecting billions.
Most people do realize that mass human, animal, and biological extinction within their lifetime is unthinkably horrible. What they do not realize is that the global warming catastrophes and dying will start long before this extinction process runs its full course. Within the next decade or two, we will begin seeing a significant and massive acceleration of global warming disasters, catastrophes, and deaths.
These disasters will continue to increase in frequency, severity, and scale in an oscillating pattern where the oscillation of these weather extremes becomes worse and worse and occurs at closer and closer intervals. Long before this global warming-fueled mass extinction reaches its peak, our economic, political, and social systems will experience widespread chaos and collapse.
If you can imagine hell on Earth, you would be adequately seeing our developing future if we miss the 2025 targets. But, there are very good reasons to...
The good news
1. At this point, we recommend that you click here and watch this 4 Minute Global Warming Video by Greta Thunberg given at the United Nations on September 23, 2019. It may help you to understand and feel the seriousness of the global warming-caused mass extinction emergency we now face.
2. To prevent mass human extinction within our lifetimes, we must all stay calm and carry on. We must also get the world's politicians to act because we are not safe or secure until they do!
In the priority order given below, we must come together in action to take the following three life-critical action steps before it is too late:
a. if you can directly influence any politicians, get them to understand this emergency and then execute the critical 2025 global fossil fuel reducing actions (found prioritized in Part 3 of the Job One Plan.)
b. if you have any direct or indirect connections to the world's elites (ultra-wealthy corporations, individuals, celebrities, philanthropies, etc.,) get these elites to recognize this emergency is a no-win game for them as well.
Help them realize that no amount of money, power, or fame will save them in the long run. Once they understand this, many of them will use their powerful direct influence on the world's politicians to get them to get the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets achieved on time. (Please see Part 4 of the Job One Plan for help with this step.)
c. while doing a and b above as individuals and as businesses as best as you can, meet the critical fossil fuel reduction targets listed above and as described in the fossil fuel reduction actions found in Part 2 of our Job One Plan.
No matter what and. in every circumstance we face, the following still holds true. The more and faster we reduce global fossil fuel use, the more individuals who will survive longer and the more individuals who will suffer less
The big remaining question is...
are you going to do your urgently needed part to make these last chance fossil fuel reductions happen?
Your and your children's immediate future depends upon the choices you make right now about how to deal with this life and death emergency.
Please stop being fooled by the fossil fuel lobbyist funded illusion that there is ANY time left to make gradual or comfortable fossil fuel reductions! Only the radical 2025 fossil fuel reductions described in this document will slow down the coming global warming consequences enough to have any fair chance of preventing mass human extinction within our lifetimes. And,
we will either succeed together, or we will die together!
At this point, you may be feeling a bit overwhelmed by what you have read and the enormity of the challenge of what we must do to survive. You may believe that the level of reductions required is impossible. You may also believe the task is so enormous with such a low probability of success, why even try.
The following story should help you to begin to deal with those ideas and emotions.
The wise general
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, 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 of 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 causes 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 prevent mass extinction in our lifetimes.
b. If we miss the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, there will be a mass extinction of much of humanity within our lifetimes!
c. If we do not get very close to the 2025 targets, everyone goes extinct in a 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 mass 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 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 a government 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 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.
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.
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 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 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, 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 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.
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!
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!
Still Feeling Sad, Angry, or Anxious About Global Warming? Here is what to do.
Click this link and start feeling better.
Important technical details for the 2025 targets
It should be noted that many, many climate scientists have had the courage to say we are already well past the point of effectively stopping global warming from reaching a 2 degree Celcius increase in average global temperature (above our pre-industrial temperature levels.) Our average global temperature will reach a 1.5 degree Celcius increase because we have already crossed over the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff. This means that the other mass extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points described on this page will soon be triggered.
In essence, what these "it is already too late" climate scientists are now saying is:
a. All we can do now is prepare for and adapt to the horrible list of consequences described in this article.
b. We will not be able to avoid a mass extinction event and die-off. And,
c. The only thing our governments (not us as individuals) can still do is slow, save, and salvage what we can to still prevent a global warming-driven 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.
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 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 total extinction. It is just that simple! (Click here to see the many effective government actions needed to slow down the total extinction nightmare so more of us can survive longer.
Please send this article to politicians and social media all over the world. Ask your politicians what they are doing to prevent the coming mass extinction of most of humanity by mid-century?
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!
Is climate change & global warming ALREADY out of our control? You be the judge.
Overview
"You cannot be called an alarmist if there really is something to be alarmed about." Unknown
You are about to read some very alarming facts about our current global warming emergency (also often called the climate emergency, the climate crisis, run-away global warming, the global warming extinction emergency, the Holocene extinction, the sixth mass extinction event.)
We trust you will make up your own mind about what is valid and what to do after thinking carefully about the many disruptive reasons, facts and documentation that we are presenting below. As you read this difficult climate change and global warming news, never also forget that there are still many things we can do to improve our global warming future.
This article describes the many near-impossible 2025 global fossil fuel reduction target challenges and dilemmas that must be resolved by 2025 to delay mass extinction and save us from total extinction. This article illuminates the processes behind complex climate momentum factors, human and technological factors, and social inertia factors as well as the many other near-unsolvable global warming reduction challoenges we currently face.
This article assumes that you already understand the basics of what global warming is and how greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere such as carbon and methane from burning fossil fuels is driving our temperatures higher. (If you do not clearly understand the basic global warming causes and process, please click here for a simple illustration and explanation.)
At the end of this document, to help you deal with all of this bad news and help you manage these coming consequences, a practical and effective plan called the Job One for Humanity Plan is provided.
It will show you how:
1. to resolve or manage many of the challenges this document presents, and how
2. to prepare for and to adapt to the disruptive new facts described below.
We have also provided a link to the many benefits we will achieve as we face this emergency and enact the needed changes to manage its consequences. You will be pleasantly surprised by the many benefits that you (and humanity) will acquire as we resolve this challenge, opportunity, and adventure while always keeping in mind that, "our greatest challenges are also our greatest opportunities."
Introduction to why climate change and global warming is already our of our meaningful control
What you are about to read, defines many aspects of an escalating global warming emergency that we all now face. Most of you have seen the news about global warming-aggravated weather, like the record-breaking hurricanes, bomb cyclones, the horrible wildfires in California, the western U.S., and in Europe. Many of you have heard about the "worst in centuries" droughts and dust storms, or the super cold then warm winters, or the super storms in India or, the rain bombs worldwide where weeks or months worth of rain falls in a few hours or a few days.
Some of you already know that something bad is happening to the normal stability of our seasons and this pattern is getting worse. Some of you also know that 97% of scientific research done by qualified climate scientists clearly indicates that until we reverse our suicidal fossil fuel burning habits, the global warming consequences mentioned above will continue to significantly and regularly increase in frequency, severity, and scale and, these kinds of events will continue breaking all previous climate records.
Other than the fact that we have wasted 35 years of warnings by our best scientists, there is now a new shocking new reality concerning our global warming future that you will hear discussed only by a few courageous climate scientists, our organization, and one or two other global warming educational organizations. The number of individuals and educational organizations that will be speaking out about our soon-arriving global warming extinction reality (also described below,) will steadily grow as we continue to see larger, more frequent, and more severe climate catastrophes.
Unfortunately, the global warming facts in this document are also widely suppressed in the major media. This media gatekeeping protects the ongoing profiting on global fossil fuel use by the media's fossil fuel industry major advertising partners and owners.
Additionally, those suppressing this document's information are afraid of how you might react to this information. They are worried that if you truly understood what is on this page, you might panic, or you will angrily demand that our politicians immediately implement the 2025 radical cuts to our global fossil fuel use. (The 2025 cuts are described below and they are critical to what is needed to save us in time from unconscionable global warming consequences.)
These correct last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets would virtually mean the end of the fossil fuel business, which is currently one-third of the world's GDP (gross domestic product.) Fossil fuel is also the primary source of government income for many fossil fuel exporting countries.
The fossil fuel industry is never willingly going to allow its 29 trillion dollar-a-year business to collapse to a tiny fraction of its current self without a well-funded life and death struggle! If you think that is an exaggeration, think about how hard and long the minuscule by comparison cigarette industry has fought to maintain its death-dealing profits.
And once again, after reading about the huge global warming challenges we all now face (below,) please do not get discouraged. In the new Job One for Humanity Plan linked at the bottom of this document, you will find that there is still plenty that you (and we) can still do to make things better.
A little history on the global warming and climate change emergency first...
In the new book Climageddon published by the Job One for Humanity organization about 3 years ago, it was stated that if we were very lucky, global warming might not become uncontrollable (aka runaway global warming, extinction-level global warming) for as much as the next 30-50+ years. But that could happen only if we immediately mass mobilized the radical, costly, and correct 2025 global fossil fuel use reductions and, we did not cross the last chance tipping point (described further below.)
Almost 3 years after Climageddon's publication, we now know that the required 2025 fossil fuel reductions are not happening anywhere even close to what is needed. We also know that because fossil fuel carbon emissions are going up and not down, there is a very high probability that the necessary fossil fuel reductions may never happen.
The numerous reasons why hitting the necessary 2025 reduction targets will be so difficult also will be described in the many reasons listed below. Time is not on our side! In these materials, you will discover that individually almost all of the reasons listed below will require decades to resolve. Collectively it is even worse, resolving the most important reasons below will most likely require at least 50 or more years to resolve and probably far longer than that.
Once you grasp how the many reasons for our likely global warming reduction failure fit together and interact with and upon each other, you too will see how near impossible it will be to cut our fossil fuel use to meet or even get close to the 2025 targets.
The reasons we most probably will not reach the critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and global warming is already out of our control
The reasons below are not listed in the order of their importance for inhibiting society from resolving the global warming emergency. We will let you be the judge as to which of these reasons are the most important barriers to success.
Each of the many reasons below also has additional links leading you to the documentation proving that a particular statement is itself true.
Before we present the many reasons why we may not be able to achieve the 2025 reduction targets and why global warming may already be out of our meaningful control, it is essential to first explain:
a. how to measure honest global warming reduction status and progress,
b. the correct fossil fuel targets that we need to meet to avoid mass extinction within our lifetimes, and
c. then clearly define what we mean by "out of our meaningful global warming control."
Let's get started.
Below you see a graph showing the amount of carbon in our atmosphere.
The amount of carbon in our atmosphere in parts per million (ppm) is one of the best, if not the single most reliable predictor of future global warming temperatures as either increases or decreases. More carbon in the atmosphere equals higher temperatures and worse consequences and vice versa.
Look at the steeply increasing angle of the C02 graph. This rising graph shows us that we are not controlling escalating global warming!
When we say that we have probably already lost meaningful control over escalating global warming, we mean that:
1. although we may make further progress in reducing global fossil fuel use, those reductions are grossly inadequate compared to the 2025 global fossil fuel use reductions now required. Consequently, we will not be able to save ourselves from the worst consequences of global warming or slow down a mass extinction of most of humanity by mid-century.
2. we also will be unable to radically reduce our average annual increase in atmospheric carbon each year over the next 30-50 years. (Our average annual increase is currently at about three carbon ppm.) Why this is important will be explained in the further below in the reasons.)
3. we are entirely unable to get our total atmospheric carbon ppm levels (now at about carbon 414 ppm back down to anywhere close to our previously safe level for humans life of carbon 270-350 ppm. Carbon 270-350 ppm is our past human-safe level where our current climate could once again re-stabilize, but only after hundreds or thousands of years.
Unless we are successful in achieving the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets and we can resolve the many challenges to success discussed below to reaching those targets, it can easily be said by any rational person --- that our global warming future might already be out of our meaningful control.
Only if we achieve the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, do we have any practical hope of not going over the critical last chance carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and then quickly triggering the three other global warming extinction-accelerating tipping points (also described below.) While it still may be theoretically possible to reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets 2025, we also will have to overcome and resolve the many huge challenges listed below in time to be successful.
(Please note: Many of the most important reasons that global warming is most probably already out of our control are near the end of this list!)
25 reasons why climate change and global warming are most likely already out of our control
Reason 1: With only a few years left, we are still not making anything even close to the required fossil fuel reductions to meet or come close to 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets This reduction failure means we will not be able to avoid major global temperature increases, horrendous climate calamities, and a mass extinction event far sooner than imagined.
As you can see from the C02 carbon ppm graph above, we are not making the required cuts in our fossil fuel use to reduce the carbon going into our atmosphere to slow or reverse rising temperatures.
To adequately prepare you for the shocking REAL fossil fuel reductions that must be made to save humanity, it is necessary to see just how poorly our previous fossil fuel reduction actions have fared since we were first notified about the global warming extinction danger over 35 years ago.
What has been hidden from you:
1. We have increased fossil fuel use more this century than in the last two decades of the 20th century. More than half of all fossil fuel emissions released over the previous 25 years are more than was released in all of recorded history before 1990.
2. Even though we have had over 21 international conferences on fossil fuel reduction, and we had international treaties since at least 1993 pledging we would reduce global warming, we still are about 67% higher in carbon emissions than the early 1990s. (Atmospheric carbon emissions is probably the best way to measure future global warming.)
3. In 2018 carbon emissions increased another dramatic 2.7% and they are projected to rise 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 what our REAL lack of any progress whatsoever in reducing the rate of fossil fuel use increases, much less the complete absence of any substantive reductions anywhere across the world in reducing atmospheric carbon.
Keep in mind the above dismal failure of previous efforts to take fossil fuel reductions seriously and previous failures to reduce the rates of annual carbon increases. You are now ready to explore the REAL fossil fuel reductions that must be made to save our future. (If you still don't believe we are telling you the truth about our dismal failure in reducing global warming over the last 35 years, click here to view a short video by climate Professor Kevin Anderson in a recent presentation to the Oxford University Climate Society.)
To slow or prevent going over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point which leads to crossing two key extinction-accelerating tipping points, we need to radically and immediately reduce our global fossil fuel use.
The absolute minimum total fossil fuel reductions that must occur to prevent the high probability of going extinct not sometime after 2100, but within the next 3-5 decades are:
a. All industrially developed nations must reduce their total fossil fuel use by 75% by 2025 and then continue reducing fossil fuel use to net-zero carbon emissions by 2035. Net carbon zero emissions in this solution means that no additional fossil fuel emissions are going into the atmosphere that is not also simultaneously being removed from the atmosphere by natural means. (Only about 20 countries produce 70% or more of the world's carbon emissions.)
Think of developed nations like most members of the G 20 group; Argentina, Australia, Canada, the European Union, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, Japan, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the United Kingdom, the United States, China, and India. (See technical note one near the end of this page for why China and India had to be included in the list of developed countries.)
b. All developing nations must maintain their total fossil fuel emission levels as they are at the beginning of 2019 and not allow them to go any higher. Then by 2045, all developing nations must also be at net-zero carbon emissions. To do this they will need to drop their fossil fuel emissions by 6% each year. 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 majority of all carbon emissions in the atmosphere today. The developed nations have caused almost all of our current global warming extinction emergency. (See technical note two near the end of this page for more about justice and equity allowances.)
Please especially note that our above global fossil fuel reduction targets are not the same as the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC,) global fossil fuel reduction targets. This discrepancy is because the current fossil fuel reduction targets presented by the United Nations and used by governments all over the world are also dead wrong!
Those calculations have been politically manipulated to allow fossil fuel producing countries and companies to maintain their sources of income. Those calculations also have been regularly and significantly underestimated.
Some of the calculations have been "cooked" to allow for "post-2050 atmospheric carbon reduction compensations," for a projected and currently non-proven carbon removal technology. Even the IPCC says this projected new carbon capture technology will not exist, be able to be scaled-up adequately or ready until maybe sometime after 2050. (The calculations Job One uses (above) are based on current conditions as well as the correct mathematics and physics from legitimate and unafraid climate scientists like Professor Keven Anderson.)
To read about the politicizing of the science and math in the United Nations calculations, click here.
To learn about the cooked calculations for a 2050 carbon capture technology that does not exist in a usable form and which, allows the uninformed to believe that we are safe and secure, click here.)
Here are more details and another way of describing why the above 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets are so important to achieve. If we do not engage in anything less than the greatest government-driven mass mobilization in human history of all necessary resources directed toward radically cutting fossil fuel use to hit the critical 2025 global reduction targets, we will without a doubt go over what is called our "last chance" carbon tipping point. This last chance tipping point will occur at or shortly after we cross the carbon 425-450 parts per million (ppm) range. (See the blue Atmospheric CO2 carbon graph above to see how close we are to that point already.)
It is called our last chance tipping point because it truly is our last window of opportunity to keep from going over the carbon 425 to 450 tipping point. Once we go over this tipping point, our average global temperature will inevitably rise above 2°C far faster than ever before in geologic time. This very fast temperature rise will also create a powerful momentum that will then push our average global temperature even higher even faster.
This momentum is composed of many factors and processes including crossing additional global warming tipping points, which, unfortunately, we will also begin to cross at an even faster pace once we go over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point.
(To learn more about how crossing global warming tipping points [like those in the illustration above,] function, accelerate global warming temperature rise, consequences, causes sudden and complete climate, biological and human system collapses as well as make recovery from their consequences much slower, harder and more expensive, click here.)
If we continue only to the carbon 425 ppm tipping point level, within about 6 years (or less,) we can expect to lock in an eventual increase in average global temperature of about 2 -2.7° Celsius (4° - 4.9° Fahrenheit) from preindustrial levels. At just this 2°-2.7° Celsius increased average global temperature level, millions more will starve and millions of additional people from all over the world will eventually be forced to either migrate or die. This occurs in part because of:
a. global warming systemic as well as atmospheric carbon accumulation momentum factors,
b. serious human systems inertia and other problem factors, (Described in part on this page.)
c. more and other crossed tipping points.
Once we go over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and hit the 2.2°-2.7° Celsius average global temperature increase level, the total heat-producing momentum of all of the previous carbon that we have ever put into the atmosphere (particularly all that additional carbon we have added over the last 50 years,) along with the other factors previously mentioned (in a, b and c above,) will once again quickly and inevitably push our global average global temperature even higher!
This also means that for all intents and purposes, once we go over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point and climate and human system momentum and inertia factors we are basically locked into continually increasing temperatures for as much as the next 30-50 years!
If we cross the carbon 425 carbon ppm tipping point, we will reach the key threshold and carbon and temperature transition level where we will be unable to stop ourselves from continuing uncontrollably and far too quickly to 3°, 4°, 5°, and 6° Celsius average global temperature increases (5.4°, 7.2°, 9°, and 10.8° Fahrenheit.) Once we cross the 2°C carbon 425 ppm tipping point the even higher temperature levels of 3°, 4°, 5°, and possibly even 6° Celsius will be all but locked in due to:
1. our continuing to add more fossil fuel burning carbon to the atmosphere each and every additional year (at about 3 ppm per year,)
2. this ever-increasing heat-producing carbon and other greenhouse gas momentum, and
3. our being unable to stop ourselves from crossing many more global warming tipping points and triggering other positive feedback loops and points of no return within the many systems and subsystems of the global climate due to human system inertias and other problems.
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 threshold, range, and tipping point. At our current rate of carbon and other greenhouse gas atmospheric pollution, entering this range will begin, unfortunately, sometime around 2025.
There is something we can be certain of in this emergency. No matter what and in spite of all of the challenges and bad outcomes that are possible, the single constant truth for the best possible global warming outcome 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 see a red vertical "Must not pass, last chance battle line and range of carbon 425 to 450 ppm." As you can see, going over the carbon 425 tipping point leads us to a very steep and slippery downward slope to our own rapid extinction.
This illustration above also lists at what carbon ppm levels the six distinct phases of the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown occur (CS Phase 1-6.) After you read the rest of the document, we strongly recommend that you also review the detailed year-by-year global warming consequence timetables found in what we call the Climageddon extinction scenario and countdown.
Crossing the carbon 425 ppm tipping point unfailingly sets us up to rapidly cross with the next near-extinction atmospheric carbon tipping point level of carbon 500 ppm where the average global temperature will eventually increase to 4°C. If we miss the 2025 targets, carbon 500 ppm is predicted to happen in as soon as 20-25 years from now about 2038-2042. At a 4°C temperature increase above preindustrial levels, all ice on earth will melt, chaos will ensue and today's organized society can no longer exist or function!
Once we cross the carbon 500 ppm near-extinction tipping point, it is near-certain that we will also soon cross the carbon 600 ppm final extinction tipping point not too long after that. (Much more will be said about the carbon 500 and 600 ppm extinction tipping point processes and their consequences further down this page.)
When we cross this carbon 425-450 ppm "last chance" tipping point, in addition to leading us rapidly into mass extinction (most of humanity by mid-century,) the consequences we will experience will also be irreversible for centuries to thousands of years.
Unfortunately, our governments have been giving public global warming predictions that include a 25-40% underestimation factor as well as not including any calculations for any of the 11 key tipping points being crossed. When you add these factors back into the prediction calculations to correct them, it becomes obvious that we will be facing our worst nightmares of higher global temperatures far faster than we are even remotely prepared for.
(There is much more information including what our individual, business, and national annual fossil fuel reduction targets would be, what will happen if we don't hit the above targets and the technical footnotes that will help explain why the severity of these fossil fuel reductions. We strongly suggest you go to this highly recommended global fossil fuel reduction explanation page and read all the qualifying information on the absolutely essential fossil fuel reductions sometime before you put this document away.)
Getting real about what must be done to reduce fossil fuel use to the needed levels
To grasp how painful these cuts will be, imagine that in the next six years you will have to cut your total home, auto, plane, and business activities that use fossil fuels by at least 75%. Then once you have done that, you will have to cut back again to net-zero fossil fuel use within the next ten years after that. Now try to imagine everyone else in all developed nations doing the same.
If you live in a developed country, are you doing this now? Does that seem possible that you would voluntarily change your normal life and fossil fuel use so fast? Do you see the governments of the developed nations of the world coming together in a great act of cooperation passing the laws, verification procedures, and the enforceable punishments necessary to make sure we make the 2025 deadline?
You probably came up with the same answer we did, which is it is near certain we will not make the required fossil fuel cuts in time. It is more likely that the developed world citizens who did not understand the urgency or importance of why they needed to make these painful sacrifices, would throw their politicians out of office. They would also most likely overthrow any government that tried to enforce these radical fossil fuel reductions upon their comfortable or subsistence level lifestyles and livelihoods.
Now imagine all of the individuals, corporations, and governments in the developed nations which mostly depend upon fossil fuels seeing their livelihoods disappear by at least 75% in the next six years. How much of a fight and disinformation program would those individuals, industries, and nations put up or create to preserve their livelihoods and their futures?
It's hard to imagine what the fossil fuel industry would not be capable of doing to preserve a $28 trillion year market segment.
When the above 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets (and other factors described in the other reasons below,) are taken collectively into consideration, the 2025 critical fossil fuel reductions while theoretically still possible, are all but impossible to achieve at this time.
Reason 2: Our governments and other authorities keep giving us incorrect global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines that will not work in time to save us. Depending on where you live in the world, your politicians, governments, and even most of the world's environmental groups are giving you different and incorrect fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines. For example, many countries have set the target of becoming net-zero carbon by 2050. This wrong target issue even includes the US Democratic party. Other governments, the UN, and almost all environmental groups are promoting various levels of fossil fuel reductions and net-zero carbon by either 2050, 2040, 2035, 2032, and 2030.
For example, the UN is still using the incorrect global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines created by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC.) The IPCC is considered the world's leading authority on global warming and what should be done about climate change.
IPCC's most current incorrect target and deadline for global fossil fuel reduction is we need to make a 40% reduction in total global fossil fuel use by 2030 and then reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. The colossal danger with the IPCC's wrong targets is, these wrong deadlines and targets are now being used to set the correctional global warming strategies for the world's governments, NGOs, and largest non-profit environmental groups.
This makes it even less likely that we will come close to reaching the 2025 legitimate targets because our governments and NGOs are aiming at the wrong target destinations and deadlines. Click here to read the science for what makes the IPCC's current 40% reduction in total global fossil fuel use by 2030 and then reaching net-zero carbon emissions by 2050 so dangerously wrong!
The many incorrect targets and deadlines mentioned above are entirely inadequate and will not save us from extinction in time. Worse yet, when you have competing incorrect global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines forwarded by recognized authorities, it thwarts and delays humanity's ability to understand or execute the correct fossil fuel reduction targets.
Ironically, if we cannot get the world's recognized environmental leaders to promote the correct 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines, which at least have some reasonable chance to prevent a massive extinction event from occurring within our lifetimes, how likely is it that we will ever achieve the 2025 reductions?
In the other reasons below, you will discover additional IPCC incorrect calculations, allowances for nonexistent new technologies, and the many twisted ways that those who have been entrusted to lead us with the correct global fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines are not doing so.
Until these wrong targets and deadlines are corrected or removed, there is little chance we will re-organize to focus our efforts on accomplishing the right targets and deadlines. The time left until 2025 is running out fast. Only by hitting or coming very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets will we be able to avoid a mass extinction event within the next 30-50 years.
At this point, one could easily say that any entity promoting incorrect or inadequate fossil fuel reduction targets and deadlines is certainly not part of the global warming solution. Entities promoting the wrong targets and deadlines have now become a major part of the problem if we want to prevent a mass extinction event from occurring within our lifetimes.
Reason 3: The horrible agricultural side effects if we do cut fossil fuel radically to reach the 2025 levels described above. The main side effect is global agriculture will crash when we drastically reduce fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 targets. Agriculture is heavily dependent upon fossil fuels such as methane to make the essential fertilizers and other chemicals to allow mass food production to occur.
Agriculture also depends heavily upon fossil fuels to run the equipment essential to creating and processing our mass food production and its distribution. Once we come anywhere close to the crucial levels of global fossil-fuel reductions we need to execute to save the future, highly fossil fuel-dependent global agriculture will crash. Then up to 50% of the population will die of starvation not long after that.
What this means is that if we do not make the required 2025 global fossil fuel reductions, most of humanity will die by mid-century. If we do not make the required 2025 global fossil fuel reductions, as much as 50% of humanity will die of starvation in as little as 20 to 30 years. That is a difficult choice that few politicians are even willing to consider.
Reason 4: It is highly improbable we will ever make the needed cuts to our fossil fuel use because they will temporarily crash the world economy. Another primary reason it is unlikely we will make the required cuts soon enough to save ourselves is because of what is called Garrett's Global Warming Dilemma.
Professor Garrett's research states that because of the laws of physics and mathematics, almost all of our fossil fuel-based global economy must first collapse in a necessary and steep global recession or depression. Only this will produce the required cuts in our fossil fuel use in time to save humanity. Environmental groups around the world most often ignore this well-documented climate research by Professor Garrett because it also produces a horrible dilemma for which either answer is unthinkable as well as un-sellable to members.
Because of this dilemma, and because there is no public or political will to create a severe, but necessary global recession or depression to adequately reduce fossil fuel use, most environmental groups hide this critical research away and ignore it like dirty laundry. Because of this economic dilemma, it is hard to imagine that fossil fuels use will ever be cut to anything close to the critical levels needed. At least not until we are faced with massive global financial losses and billions dead.
Unfortunately, by that time, the worst consequences and higher temperatures of global warming also will be irreversible for timescales far, far beyond the human lifespan.
(If you're a science person, please click here and read a summary of Prof. Garrett's alarming research on atmospheric carbon, global warming, and the necessary fossil fuel reductions we must make to save the future.)
Reason 5: Green energy generation will not save us in time. This is because it will take far too long to produce enough green energy generation to replace the energy produced by fossil fuel energy generation. This is critical because we only have until 2025 to hit critical global fossil fuel reductions to save us from mass extinction.
Over-hyping how fast green energy generation will replace fossil fuels energy generation is a near-universal illusion held by many individuals and environmental organizations alike. For the facts on this near-universal global warming illusion, please see this Massechutes Institute of Technology (MIT) study to verify we are a long, long way (about 400 years by MIT's estimates) from replacing most fossil fuels uses with green energy uses. The projected real length of time it will take to move away from global fossil fuel energy generation to green energy generation to replace it.
This new information means that any realistic hope we had for a fast transition (in less than 50-100+ years) to full green energy generation to replace all fossil fuel energy generation is entirely unrealistic. Much of humanity will be long gone before the full green energy generation revolution takes hold.
Reason 6: The promised other new "miracle" technologies like carbon capture and geoengineering will not save us before it is too late! Some of you may hear the news that global warming is out of our control and will think, "aren't they working on inventions it will suck the fossil fuel burning carbon particles out of the atmosphere in time to save us?" If you think that this is our easy out and easy solution to continue our fossil fuel burning "business as usual," please click here.
Here you can read why the currently nonexistent carbon capture technology is a silicon valley and techno-optimism delusion that will not save us in time. You will also learn why carbon capture technology is also a mathematical and physical near impossibility.
Today you find carbon capture technology being forwarded mostly by impatient, profit-hungry entrepreneurs, and mechanical engineers looking to make billions on the greatest catastrophe of human history.
In summary, believing that atmospheric carbon capture schemes will save us at the last minute from our ill-advised actions (instead of changing our behaviors,) is equivalent to believing in magical carbon sucking unicorns.
Reason 7: There is still no verifiable or enforceable international agreement that could execute and enforce the critical 2025 fossil fuel reduction levels needed. There is no adequate verification or enforcement of our existing international global warming reduction agreements. Our existing international agreements do not require anything even close to 2025 global fossil fuel reductions to make matters even worse!
The required levels of global fossil-fuel reduction could occur if there was a total governmental commitment and an immediate mass mobilization by all nations to begin cutting fossil fuel to the 2025 percentages listed above. There would also need to be some form of an overarching international agency that had real verification, enforcement, and punishment rights over all nations that might violate the global warming reduction treaties or agreements. That kind of power implies some form of functional global government which is estimated to be decades away at the earliest.
Because there are no such verifiable and enforceable international reduction agreements among governments or, any current governmental mass mobilization to implement the critical reductions, it means that we will be adding carbon to the atmosphere at our current average annual rate of about three or more ppm per year for about the next 30- 50 + years. This would add at least, another 90-150 carbon ppm to our current 414 ppm total, or carbon 504 to 554 ppm. (See atmospheric carbon graph further above and imagine the steepness of the graph line as another 150 carbon ppm points is added to it over the next 50 years.)
Reason 8: The human race is significantly distracted and limited by day-to-day survival issues, current media distractions, and a fatal global warming evolutionary disability. Because of this and other factors, humanity will not collectively realize it is in an extinction emergency until it is far too late!
Because of many distraction factors, it is not unreasonable to say that 95% of the population is so distracted by the day-to-day activities that they do not have the time or available bandwidth to process and respond to such a complex problem. It would also be fair to say 95% of people are unable to understand this emergency because of a natural evolutionary disability to understanding slow-moving threats like global warming.
This natural inherited "disability" is our innate fight or flight protective evolutionary mechanism, which was designed over millions of years of evolution to respond mainly to immediate, highly visible threats. Global warming is a slow-moving nearly invisible threat.
Reason 9: The unstoppable and continuing increase in average global warming temperature due to increased fossil fuel use because of the ever-increasing population. Because of the laws of physics concerning adding new atmospheric greenhouse gases like carbon, global temperature will continue to rise as we keep adding more carbon particles into the atmosphere. Adding three or more carbon ppm per year for the next 30-50 or more years (as we are doing now,) does not include adding any other annual carbon ppm amounts for the additional energy used as the human population soars from 7 to 14 billion people. That three-carbon ppm per year also does not include many more people from the developing world who will move into the middle class, demanding the same high fossil fuel comforts of the developed world. This near doubling of population, as well as the massive increase in new middle-class energy demand, could increase current fossil fuel use by another 25 to 40%.
When you look down the road 30-50 years from now and add only the additional 90-150 carbon ppm to our most current carbon 414 ppm total, it is easy to see there is no way for us to keep from crossing the carbon 500 ppm near-extinction level. (We are averaging an additional 3 ppm of carbon each year. 30 x 3 = 90 and 50 x 3 = 150. More will be disclosed below about the lasting effects of atmospheric carbon levels at or above the carbon 500 ppm level as well as at or beyond the carbon 600 ppm tipping point extinction level.)
Reason 10: The 20-40% miscalculation of current global warming consequence timetables for many of the 20 worst global warming consequences steals the needed public urgency to act. The world's leading climate authority (the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC]) regularly miscalculates where we are now or where we will be on our global warming consequences and timetables by 20 to 40%. This underestimation then causes the public to underestimate our current real global warming status and condition. They do not realize that things today are already much worse than we are being told.
Therefore, the public mentally starts with the wrong starting point and a misguided sense of urgency. To see how these reoccurring gross miscalculations have occurred by our authorities because of the politicization of the science and other factors, click here.
(After you have read the above gross miscalculation by our authorities article, be sure to learn about the 20 worst global warming consequences here. Most of the consequences will continue to increase in severity, frequency, and scale over the next 50 years while we try to resolve the problems with reaching the 2025 targets listed on this page. Understanding global warming consequences is essential to understanding how most of humanity will die by mid-century.)
The 20 worst global warming consequences illustrated below create a steadily intensifying "vortex" as heat increases. This intensifying heat draws all the consequences into closer interaction and collision with each other. This process ultimately churns these consequences toward ever-higher levels of global destruction.
(Click the following link for more information on the 20 worst global warming consequences.)
Reason 11: Society's fear of change is also a major cause for the 35 years of social inertia concerning doing what must be done to ever resolve this extinction emergency. If we do not handle this dominant fear of change factor by assuring those whose jobs, livelihoods or assets are threatened we will assist them in this transition and help minimize any losses, it is highly unlikely we will be successful making the required 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. We must create adequate national and international new job transition training and recovery subsidies and funding that would assist all individuals, businesses, and nations that will suffer significant financial losses or closures because of the rapidly falling use of fossil fuels.
For example, carbon Fee and Dividend revenues (as well as other needed transition taxes,) could help compensate and assist developing nations in stopping using fossil fuels. It will also help developing nations leapfrog over the building or expanding any current fossil fuel energy generation systems directly into building or expanding green energy generation systems like solar or wind power.
We cannot forget to financially both compensate, subsidize and actively assist all of those individuals, businesses, and nations who will be harmed financially in this rapid transition away from fossil fuels. This support would naturally also include providing new job training in positions for the new green economy or positions in other industries.
This step is critical to the success of all global fossil fuel reduction procedures, especially when the needed 2025 reductions are so severe. It is the unsurfaced fear of change and how it will harm the current status quo, which is a major source of the inertia that has prevented humanity from effectively managing the global warming extinction emergency over the last 35 years. (Please see the following research article on cultural trauma, social inertia, and climate change for a deeper understanding of the critical early importance of implementing this fear of change management and compensation step. This research paper will provide a stunning explanation of the many massive social fear barriers we must over-come with little time left. After you read this article, you may come to believe this social fears reason is one of the very biggest challenges we must overcome initially.)
Unfortunately, this is not happening now, has not happened over the last 35 years, and is highly unlikely to happen adequately before we miss the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. (The above was drawn from Part Three of the Job one for Humanity plan.)
Reason 12: The near insolvable problem of global warming justice definitions and global warming restitution and aid processes. In general, the industrialized and northernmost countries of the world have produced by far the most atmospheric carbon which causes global warming and its many consequences. The northern industrial revolution countries have also created most of the global warming consequences for most of the developing world.
In the illustration below, most of the developing world is located mostly between the 45th parallel north and the 45th parallel south. Ironically, the northern industrialized nations that have predominantly caused the global warming problem will often also temporarily benefit from the changes global warming creates to the climate in their countries.
The northern nations who are also most responsible for the global warming harms caused to the developing world are unfairly resisting paying for the damage that they have done to these nations. At the same time, the northern nations are also resisting taking in the existing millions (or the coming billions,) of new global warming climate refugees (climagees.)
In the following illustration, the lands above the 45th parallel north (above the orange line at the top of the illustration.) are where most of the human population will have to migrate to as global warming continues to accelerate.
It appears that the developed nations do not want to pay fair and just damages to the developing nations. There also are no international standards of enforceable justice for the undeveloped world to obtain restitution for the damages that the developed world has done to it. This is because there is no standard global definition of justice or responsibility for an ecological and atmospheric damage issue such as this.
With no definition for ecological atmospheric justice and responsibility, it will be all but impossible for the developing world to receive what it should from the developed world. Additionally, the definition of justice and responsibility around the world not only changes in different nations, but it also varies in different cultures, religions, and ethnicities.
Coming to a standard definition of justice and responsibility on who pays fairly for the global warming damage they have caused will likely never happen. As an ongoing sign of this injustice, the developed world has not even paid the previously agreed upon and grossly inadequate amounts that they agreed to pay to the developing world in previous global warming agreements.
This justice issue is highly relevant to eventually resolve the global warming emergency. This is a huge problem because the developed world most likely will never pay a fair and adequate restitution (or assistance,) to the developing world for the damage they have caused. This is because:
a. those restitution costs are not paid just once. They will continue to rise exponentially as global warming accelerates. Damages to the developing countries will run into the hundreds of trillions of dollars.
b. developed countries will need all of their current financial resources to survive and stay up with the ongoing global warming catastrophes occurring in their own countries, and because of
c. inherent known and implicit biases against the cultures, religions, or ethnicities of the developing world by the developed world.
Because of the above, developed nations will also not provide adequate funding to assist the developed world rapidly transition from fossil fuel energy generation to green energy generation and fossil fuel use to green energy use. This means the northernmost countries will use the resources they already have to convert their nations to green energy generation. While at the same time, the developing nations will not have adequate funding to do the same.
This ultimately means that the developing world where most of the world's population now lives will have to continue using fossil fuels at ever-increasing levels as their nations grow. This means we will not be able to stop the global warming extinction emergency and the coming catastrophes because most of the world will not be part of the solution.
Reason 13: The recent and projected crossings of more global warming tipping points, positive feedback loops, and points of no return within the climate system. As we continue crossing more global warming tipping points, more global warming consequences 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 a "slippery slope" situation. In this "slippery slope" situation, it becomes far easier for that consequence to worsen 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 global warming tipping point processes will also significantly amplify either the positive or negative consequences of that tipping point, and
4. a crossed tipping point within a system or subsystem tends to push other tipping points over their tipping points in the subsystems or systems interconnected to or interdependent with the original tipping point.
Understanding the 11 major global warming tipping points along with the Climageddon Scenario is essential to understanding how and why most of humanity will die by mid-century. This horrible outcome will occur if we fail to hit the critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets mentioned above.
Please click here to read more about the 11 critical global warming tipping points below and what they will mean to how fast your life will change as more of them are crossed.
Reason 14: The steady rise of methane in the atmosphere from new releases of methane from fracking, melting permafrost, tundra, and leaking natural gas lines act as a hidden source of our global fossil-fuel reduction failure.
Unfortunately, we will most probably cross the carbon 600 ppm final extinction level. Crossing carbon 600 ppm will result in raising the average global temperature to 5°C (9 degrees Fahrenheit) and bring about massive methane clathrate releases from ocean coastal shelves.
This has happened 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 begin this release process once we reach 5°C and by 6°C, it is in full bloom.)
Because methane released as a gas from methane clathrate is 86 times more potent than carbon as a temperature increasing greenhouse gas, it will rapidly spike up the average global temperatures once again. The following is a methane graph (found at https://www.methanelevels.org)in which you can see how total atmospheric methane levels from all sources have exponentially skyrocketed, particularly during the last 50 years.
If methane also continues to rise to help push us toward the carbon 600 ppm tipping point and an average global temperature of 5°C, it will eventually bring about the extinction of most if not all of humanity (most of humanity) and the end of civilization as we know it.
(Please note: There is also a concerted effort by the fracking industry to prevent the accurate measurement of methane in the atmosphere to keep the growing total methane release amounts from the fracking process hidden from the public.) When you add in the effects of methane (measured in part as CO2e,) for raising our temperature along with the impact of carbon, we are probably already well above our current carbon 414 ppm [around 430 CO2e+].)
Reason 15: The publicly unknown effects of the soon crossed two key extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points. The general public has been kept unaware that unless we hit or come very close to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and staying below carbon 425-450 ppm, there is no mathematical way to prevent crossing the carbon 500 ppm tipping point where all ice on earth will melt!
Beyond the math, there are numerous climate scientists who also believe that crossing the carbon 500 ppm is ALREADY inevitable because soon we will be passing other climate, biological and human system tipping points discussed on this page (and at this page.) This being locked into carbon 500 ppm already factor does not include the other accelerating global warming positive feedback loops occurring as you are reading this throughout our climate system. (Positive feedback loops enhance or amplify changes; this also tends to move a system away from its normal equilibrium state and make it more unstable. In this way, positive feedback loops are not too unlike tipping points.)
If we do cross the near-final extinction tipping point of carbon 500 ppm, it is highly probable that not long afterward (about 20-30 years,) we will not be able to stop ourselves from reaching the carbon 600 ppm final extinction tipping point.
The climate scientists who believe that we cannot prevent crossing carbon 500 ppm also believe that no matter what we do now, we also have already missed our window of 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 the insane carbon 800 ppm-level. (Reaching carbon 800 ppm could also occur because of our adding more carbon in the atmosphere and because of the total accumulating effects of crossing more and more global warming tipping points, which will occur even more rapidly after crossing the carbon 500 ppm threshold.)
Our reading of the current science indicates that if we do not immediately reach the previously described 2025 radical fossil fuel reductions, we will cross the carbon 600 ppm-level. Even if we do achieve the necessary 2025 global fossil fuel cuts or, get very close to them, we still may be able to slow down crossing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point long enough to save a small portion of humanity and transfer needed infrastructure into global warming safer zones.
At worst, even if we can not still prevent crossing the carbon 600 ppm level, we can at least, slow it down as well as some of the other worst coming global warming consequences. Slowing down crossing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point will be a Herculean task. It will take a massive global governmental cooperation and mobilization.
There is some good news here. The probability that we can at least temporarily, slow, and delay some of the 20 worst global warming consequences by hitting our 2025 targets is still achievable. 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!)
What do the two extinction-accelerating tipping points mean to you right now?
It is essential to be realistic for your future planning. As you can see the probability that we will cross the carbon 500 and carbon 600 ppm tipping points are far too high. By 2025 if we have not made the radical fossil fuel cuts necessary the final window of opportunity to prevent passing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point will close
This is because of the:
a. temperature momentum already "baked" into the climate system (the existing carbon 414 ppm level already in the atmosphere,)
b. the additional three or more carbon particles per million we continue to add to the atmosphere each year (as we keep failing to reverse our fossil fuel use adequately,) and,
c. The additional global warming tipping points we will continue to cross at an 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 a mass extinction event we are facing total extinction! This is because we will cross the carbon 600 ppm-level. This is the level where we will also enter the beginning phases of run-away global warming! (If you are not sure about how much worse it can possibly get if we enter a run-away global warming total extinction phase, click its link in the previous sentence.)
Also never forget that at the 5°C average global temperature increase which will occur once we hit carbon 600 ppm and above, a large portion of humanity will have died of starvation. This starvation will be due to the devastating effect that increased heat will have on crop failure.
This mass starvation will also come from global warming's other consequences or critical tipping points being crossed. Economies, governments, and societies also will collapse in many areas of the world between the 45th parallel north and the 45th parallel south.
As we reach the carbon 500 ppm and carbon 600 ppm tipping point levels, we will cross into most dangerous later phases (4 and 5) of the 6-phase Climageddon Extinction Scenario and Countdown model (Climageddon Scenario.) At this point, please review the following Climageddon Extinction Scenario illustration starting from the bottom up! (It is the large diagram two sections down.)
The top of the diagram below shows you the later Climageddon Scenario consequences. The bottom shows you the earlier consequences.
At this point, it is necessary to take a slight detour before continuing with the reasons why the 2025 target failure is probable. This detour is because most individuals do not understand how and why will become our of our control if we cross the carbon 425, 500, and 600 ppm levels.
How the three extinction-accelerating tipping points of carbon 425, 500 and 600 ppm collectively further create the condition where global warming becomes out of humanity's future control
What most people really do not realize about crossing the above three extinction-accelerating tipping points of carbon 425, 500 and 600 ppm is that, at some point not long after passing them, it will be "too little too late" to make any real difference in avoiding the worst global warming catastrophes at some future point when we finally do begin making the required fossil fuel reductions. This loss of control is because soon after we cross the carbon 425 ppm tipping point, we begin to trigger other natural climate system tipping points. After we cross carbon 425 ppm, we trigger larger naturally increasing methane releases from the tundra, permafrost, and ocean shelves. We will also eventually trigger massive additional natural carbon releases from our deep oceans, trees, and soils.
Eventually, these natural system tipping points will also go into positive feedback loops with each other. These activated positive feedback loops will further intensify the crossing of more natural tipping points.
These positive feedback loops within the climate's natural systems increase the average global temperature. This further triggers increased-heat caused releases of more naturally generated methane and carbon from the tundra and permafrost, which once again, further increases average global temperature in an endless cycle. Unfortunately, these increasing temperatures will go on and on until the Earth finally corrects itself hundreds or thousands of years in the future.
Unlike humanity's remaining ability to control its use or not use of fossil fuels, if we cross the three previously mentioned natural climate system tipping points, the future is almost exclusively under nature's control! There is little to nothing we can do to keep the other natural sources of carbon and methane from becoming a runaway train of ever-increasing average global temperature.
Humanity's inability to control these large and complex natural systems, tipping points and positive feedback loops IS the crucial reason why we cannot fail to meet the 2025 global targets or get very close to them. If we do, as soon as 2025, we will let any remaining control of the global warming extinction emergency slip out our hands for many human lifespans.
We do not have until 2050 to make the required global fossil fuel reductions to save ourselves as many governments and fossil fuel companies want you to believe. We also do not have until 2040, 2035 or 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 cuts to prevent going over the carbon 425 ppm tipping point and losing all meaningful control of our global warming future!
This emergency creates a 600 trillion dollar question hanging in the air. Why aren't the brightest minds in the world's intelligence agencies screaming at their national politicians about this nearly out of control emergency? Why aren't they making our politicians understand this is our last window of control to keep a super-destructive new global warming Pandora from getting out of her box? (600 trillion dollars plus is the estimate for the total global costs that we will occur if we survive, and if we go over the tipping point and trigger the carbon 500 ppm near-extinction tipping point and the carbon 600 ppm final-extinction tipping point as discussed above.)
Why aren't our intelligence agencies (as well as the world's wealthiest individuals and corporations,) shaming our politicians into realizing that they have exposed ALL of humanity to an imminent and irrational extinction risk?
Why aren't these recognized as risk and threat levels that should NEVER be endured or justified?
So, let's work together with the appropriate urgency and do what needs to be done using the Job One Plan to fix this emergency before it is too late.
(The above listed natural climate tipping points and positive feedback loops are complicated, but we have simplified their descriptions and interactions on this page. This page will help you understand how the increasing methane releases from the tundra, permafrost, and ocean shelves occur. It will also help you know how massive new carbon releases from our deep oceans, trees, and soils will occur.)
Why Climageddon awaits us if we miss the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets
The Climageddon Scenario Cascading Meltdown and countdown illustration below reflects the unfolding natural progression of ever-worsening consequences, tipping points, and human system processes that will accelerate as the global warming emergency continues. These consequences, tipping points, and human systems will individually and collectively collide with each other.
This will cause them to adversely interact, which then will multiply and synergize many of each other's most harmful effects. It is these ever-increasing, heat-fueled cumulative interactions among and between worsening global warming consequences, tipping points, and human systems that will make almost every one of them worse faster and faster.
This illustration below illuminates the final core 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 a continuous onslaught of crises and catastrophes that we are already beginning to experience. These levels of interaction foretell our eventual extinction.
Starting reading this illustration from the bottom because that is how Climageddon will unfold.
More about the carbon 600 ppm extinction level tipping point
When we reach the carbon 600 ppm tipping point, we trigger the final processes that will bring about the extinction of most of humanity (if not more and as soon as 2063-2072, or earlier.) Where in that 2063-2072 time range, we will reach carbon 600 ppm will be determined by which tipping points we cross and how much we add more carbon to our atmosphere each year.)
But, extinction will not begin only when we reach carbon 600 ppm. Global civilization will have begun collapsing and mass die-offs will occur long before we have reached the carbon 600 ppm tipping point level. At or near carbon 600 ppm the unlucky survivors will enter into an ecological and climate hell. A new dark age will make the survivors of the following centuries curse us and wish they were dead.
(The global warming consequences, tipping points, and human system factors (shown above,) will be interacting and colliding with each other 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.)
As if the proceeding reasons alone are not enough to prove that global warming is already out of our meaningful control for the next 30-50 years, here is another reason.
Reason 16: No one is really driving the global governance "car."
We do not have any effective global government or governance (the car without a driver) overseeing the wellbeing of humanity and the Earth as a whole. What we have now is competing nations seeking their own selfish best interests most frequently at the expense of other countries, peoples, and the environment.
One does not have to be a genius to know cars in motion without a driver always eventually crash!
It is unlikely that we will establish a true global government or some other form of effective global governance with legislative, executive, and judicial powers working for the benefit of ALL humanity as a whole within the next 3-5 decades if ever. Consequently, it is near certain that will we not get all of the needed global warming extinction prevention actions listed in Part 3 of the Job One Plan done in time. Consequently, the car of humanity without an effective global government will crash and go over the carbon 425-450 ppm tipping point.
Reason 17: The adverse effects of climate momentum and inertia factors which also discourage public action and change. Because of complex climate momentum and inertia factors which will delay experiencing the results of any fossil fuel reductions we make today by 20-30 years or more. This will make the painful changes we need to make today without seeing results for decades far less likely to occur.
Politicians telling their citizens they will need to make painful sacrifices now and not see any results of those sacrifices for decades is not likely to be a popular or successful process. (The many complex climate momenta and inertia factors are discussed in detail in the book Climageddon.)
Additionally but related, climate change occurs within a complex adaptive system. Complex adaptive systems are, by nature very very complex and sophisticated and well beyond the understanding of most of the population. To truly understand what is happening with climate change and global warming, one would have to extensively study the topic and think from a dialectical complex adaptive systems perspective. With the average human intelligence level being at about a 100 IQ level, the more profound understanding of the urgency and truth of the global warming extinction emergency is unfortunately out of many individuals' reach.
Reason 18: The citizens of the world rising as a single powerful voice to demand their politicians act immediately to save the future may not likely happen in time to save us either.
This is because:
a. at the current time, there is too little cooperation between the world's environmental organizations to mass organize the world's population to get enough of the population (a minimum 3.5% to have a 50% chance of success,) protesting in the streets at the same time on the singular issue of the global warming extinction emergency. (Please see this just published [as of February 17, 2020,] very important new article for what would have to happen quickly for us to have a 3.5% or more public protest success in this area.)
b. unless there is a cooperation miracle or some new global warming catastrophe similar in impact to the 2020 COVID19 global pandemic bringing us all together in a shocking awareness of how bad it is and for the need of immediate change, creating a general understanding in the public of how bad things are and then getting the public to demand their politicians' act will probably take decades at the minimum. This time delay is because of the slow-moving process of education and consensus-building. It is also because of widespread global warming denial and the intentional and well-funded disinformation programs being executed by fossil fuel-related industries and the politicians they control.
c. there is a well-financed and highly effective global disinformation campaign run by the fossil fuel industries. The purpose of this disinformation is to try to confuse or impair the ability of average citizens to understanding how bad global warming is right now. It's purpose also is to ensure average citizens do not know how bad it is going to get, or how soon things are going to come crashing down on top of us. These disinformation campaigns freeze the average citizens in continuous doubt and uncertainty loop. This disinformation also freezes the desire or ability of the world's citizens to act and demand the needed changes. It helps maintain public inaction and inertia.
d. making the required fossil fuel reductions will impose incredible hardship and discomfort on the individuals of the world. The painful sacrifices needed will make it very difficult to get billions of people demanding less comfort and mobility from their politicians.
e. understanding the global warming extinction emergency is incredibly complex. To adequately understand the threat, an individual would have to have above-average intelligence, (IQ 130+.) They would also have to have read thousands of pages of global warming research, understand systems theory or, have an equivalent of a Ph.D. in climatology.
f. 16% of the human population can't read at all. A significant remaining percentage of the human population does not have the discipline or ability to educate themselves sufficiently on the nature of this complex challenge to understand it as a real emergency.
This above educational and political process most likely will not happen in time with this kind of complex educational emergency. There is not enough time before 2025 to get everyone educated on this issue. There also is most likely not enough time to get the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets met once the politicians are finally influenced to act.
The primary and most likely good that will come out of increasing mass public protests is that we will get the politicians to act sooner. That will slow down the global warming extinction nightmare just enough so that those individuals forewarned have extra time to prepare and adapt so that their lives are longer and more comfortable during the extinction process.
Reason 10: The COVID-19 pandemic.
The COVID-19 pandemic presents a unique set of problems for reducing global fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 targets. During the pandemic, people are so pre-occupied with pandemic precautions and limitations that most global warming protest actions have come to a screaming halt.
Economies have dropped fast in most countries, and far more people have become concerned about eating their next meal, losing their jobs or being evicted. There is little bandwidth left for the looming long-term global recession or depression, let alone the slower-moving, far worse global warming extinction emergency.
COVID of itself has caused a deep global recession or depression. Reducing fossil fuels enough during then pandemic to meet or get close to the 2025 global targets will push the current global economic recession or depression into a far deeper hole. Few politicians would support significantly worsening the economy when it has already been knocked to the floor, and no one is sure how long it will take to recover from our COVID mistakes.
Think about our history here. We did not prepare for or prevent the global spread of COVID-19 when our best scientists told us exactly how to do that for decades. How are we ever going to manage the consequences of the far worse emergency of accelerating global warming?
This pandemic will temporarily reduce fossil fuel use as people shelter-in-place because they will not travel as much. But that too will go back to normal. It is highly unlikely any temporary COVID reductions in global fossil fuel use will come anywhere close to getting us to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. (Please click here to read an article dedicated to getting our governments to act. You can again see how the pandemic will ultimately further slow global warming reduction.
Reason 20: Humans are terrible at recognizing and adapting to slow-moving, nearly invisible, small incremental changes. If a tiger is chasing us and we see it, we mobilize quickly to flee. But with the slow-moving, almost invisible, and small incremental changes of escalating global warming, we are like the experimental frogs that do not jump out of a slowly heating pot until they are cooked alive.
Additionally, humans do not seem to learn quickly or efficiently without a painful experience or tragedy. Few (less than 5%,) learn from reviewing hard data or history. Collectively our learning ability seems even worse. History has shown us with a preponderance of the evidence that governments, organizations, and groups seem to learn and set new policies and take new actions only after some horrendous tragedy or catastrophe has occurred. This collective learning and prevention inability happens over and over again throughout our history, even though the tragedy or catastrophe was visible and discussed long before it occurred.
This seeming evolutionary disability is what may be one of the most compelling reasons to doubt that we will effectively manage the global warming extinction emergency before it is too late.
Reason 21: Accelerating global warming is not our only current major global emergency! There are 12 other major global emergencies that will interact with global warming and continue to draw needed human and financial resources away from resolving the global warming emergency. Click here to read about these other 12 major global emergencies and how they will interact with global warming, making it far harder to solve.
Reason 22: Our governments are not even close to mass-mobilizing all of the needed human, financial and other resources to meet the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.
One of the most important reasons we will not get close enough to the 2025 targets is left for last. Individual actions alone, not even if done by hundreds of millions of us, will get us to the 2025 global reduction target levels. To succeed in reaching the 2025 targets, only a massive global mobilization done and led by our governments can work. It must be completed with a Manhattan Project or World War II mass mobilization-like urgency. (The Manhattan Project was the highest priority research and development undertaking during World War II that produced the first nuclear weapons in just four years. No expense or resource was denied to this most senior project. No expense or resource was also denied to the US military while mass mobilizing for World War II.)
Without the following actions being done with the urgency of a Manhattan-like project or WWII like mass mobilization by almost ALL world governments, there is little to no realistic hope we can avoid a mass extinction of most of humanity by or before mid-century.
These last few reasons maybe what are the most important reasons of all.
Reason 23: We already went over the climate cliff in 2015.
What has been known as the climate cliff is the climate point you go over which begins the runaway global warming process.
Before discussing the climate cliff, it is essential to understand the idea of runaway global warming. It means that global warming will increase on a runaway course. Imagine a train going down a hill with no functional brakes and you have a good concept of it! Runaway global warming will also continue, of, and by itself with no practical way to stop or control it.
In our 2016-17 analysis, using the existing fossil fuel infrastructure, we at Job One calculated that the first climate cliff for triggering a runaway crossing of more and more amplifying global warming tipping points would occur between carbon 425 to carbon 450 ppm and at a 2 degrees Celcius temperature increase over preindustrial levels. Due to new research and a re-analysis of older studies, the updated carbon ppm level and temperature associated with the climate cliff has changed.
The beginning temperature limits for the former climate cliff needs to be updated from its previous temperature level of 2 -2.7° C above preindustrial levels to its new climate cliff starting point, which is staying below an average global temperature increase of 1.5C.
One of the major reasons for the new 1.5C climate cliff temperature level now being acknowledged among recognized climate scientists is that there are considerably more atmospheric carbon emissions than was previously predicted. These additional carbon emissions come from other amplifying carbon feedbacks and carbon sink failures. This additional carbon feedback and carbon sink issue will start to show up as a 1.5C average global temperature increase as soon as 2025. (The amplifying carbon feedbacks and carbon sink failures will be described in detail further below.)
Newer research also shows that staying at or below a 1.5 C average global temperature increase level (above preindustrial levels) is the only temperature level that excludes the runaway global warming threat or continuing to cross additional critical global warming tipping points. What this really means is that going above 1.5C would eventually lead to the mass extinction of most of humanity by mid-century.
Staying below the older 2C average global temperature increase only minimizes the possibility, but does not exclude, the mass extinction of most of humanity by mid-century. (Please note that this older 2C limit calculations by the United Nations IPCC did not include adequate tipping point calculations, it did wrongly include magical compensatory carbon capture calculations for technology that might not exist for thirty years, and it did not include many other critical calculation factors described here.)
By mid-century when the suffering and survival of most of humanity is at stake, just minimizing the current global warming extinction threat is insane! Additionally, in its eventual effect, any average global temperature increases above 2C is moot.
It is moot because any temperature increase of 1.5 to 2C also triggers runaway global warming and a mass extinction event fueled by crossing ever more critical global warming tipping points! And, if nothing is done by our governments to radically slow and reverse any temperature increases above 1.5C that are reached, total extinction will also be our eventual future.
Supporting this 1.5C new climate cliff is also the Siberia permafrost field research (rather than less accurate computer modeling) by Anton Vaks. This research puts the global permafrost "thaw-down" at 1.5C. This Siberian research means that when the world's permafrost crosses this 1.5C average global temperature increase tipping point, the world's permafrost begins a near-continuous meltdown. This means that after we reach this 1.5 C temperature increase, all permafrost stored carbon and methane will eventually be released from the permafrost.
This 1.5C permafrost release point plus other human-made carbon and methane releases put us squarely on the fast track for the worst global warming prediction scenarios. (Click here for more documentation on the permafrost meltdown.)
The big climate cliff shocker. . .
The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has calculated that reaching the carbon 420 ppm level is equivalent to a 1.6C average global temperature increase from preindustrial levels. If we can stay below a 1.5C temperature increase, we would have to have kept our atmospheric carbon level below 386 ppm, but as of 2020, we are already at carbon 414 ppm.
Crossing this 386 carbon ppm level also means that 2015 was around the time that we had already crossed over the 1.5C correct climate cliff. Because we went over the climate cliff in 2015, and because any average global temperature increase of 1.5 to 2C triggers runaway global warming, we now have to face we are already in a state of runaway global warming and that we can no longer stop a mass human extinction event by mid-century, but we can slow it down if we reach the 2025 targets.
Yes, you read that correctly! At this time, all we can do now is slow and delay this mass extinction event consequence and it will take a government-driven mass mobilization. This government-driven mass mobilization would have to radically reduce global fossil fuel use to get very close to the difficult to reach 2025 targets.
If the world governments do act immediately and reach the last chance 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, more people will live longer and a bit more comfortably. And, maybe we can still save humanity from the only thing worse than mass extinction, - - - total extinction!
And finally, the most important thing to remember from this new research update on the older climate cliff level is that we have already fallen over the 1.5C, carbon 386 ppm climate cliff. We are on the pathway to mass extinction by mid-century.
Unless our governments get us to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, runaway global warming will move so fast that we will not be able to stop the total extinction of humanity and the collapse of civilization.
The carbon feedback loops, loss of carbon sinks, points of no return, and tipping points that are occurring after we crossed the carbon 386 ppm climate cliff
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 releasing 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 also warming twice as fast as the rest of the world. This permafrost melting also has the potential to cause new 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 and 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.)
Here is the most likely keystone tipping point to be crossed after crossing the carbon 386 climate cliff
There is am extinction-accelerating tipping point area that is the most likely first candidate to significantly worsen 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 expand 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.
As 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 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.
The current climate cliff and 1.5C temperature increase threshold was the last threshold for excluding humanity's mass extinction threat by mid-century. Staying below 1.5C was also the last threshold where we still could have prevented a significant acceleration in crossing other more dangerous global warming tipping points. Without even reading the four other extinction-accelerating tipping points in this link, one can see that while you do your best to encourage our governments to meet the 2025 targets, it is also now wise to start your personal global warming emergency backup plan and "Plan B!"
(Click here to see what is happening now and going to happen now that we have gone well over the climate cliff. It will explain the four extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points that we are racing towards and what we must do to prevent extinction!)
Reason 24: We are already well over the safe limits. Because we have ignored 35 years of warmings, we are already deep into the global warming trajectory toward the collapse of civilization. This collapse outcome is highly likely because 9 of the known global warming and climate change tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have all been activated toward their own internal tipping points.
The nine tipping points below can trigger abrupt and significant carbon releases back into the atmosphere, such as the release of carbon dioxide and methane caused by the irreversible thawing of the Arctic permafrost.
After these 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 interacting with global warming tipping points 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 criminally negligent point of no return.
Because of these global warming tipping points and feedbacks, 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 and, 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 reach the carbon 405 ppm level in our atmosphere, a 2 degrees C average global temperature increase is already baked in! Once that happens there is nothing we can do to stop it! As of June 2020, we are currently at carbon 414 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".
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!
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 also a crucial way to think about this race to get to net-zero emissions before we cross more extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points.
Imagine that the captain on the Titanic suddenly sees the iceberg in front of him. He needs at least 3 miles to slow and steer the Titanic, but he is only 1 mile away from the iceberg. The titanic is already doomed the moment the captain notices the iceberg.
This Titanic example is not much different than our current situation. (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 probably do not have enough time remaining to "steer" away from extinction.
We already have a baked-in minimal 2 degrees C in average global temperature increase and, we have triggered a global tipping point cascade effect, which will quickly get us to 4°C and the collapse of civilization. These facts will rapidly take us to a far less habitable planet and climate regardless of any additional fossil fuel emission reductions we might now make.
(At the end of this document, you can learn more about the Job One for Humanity Plan, which will make the best of either situation. Us either hitting the 2025 global targets or, what we need to do prepare over the next few decades as our civilization collapses.)
And finally. . .
Reason 25: Could this be the ultimate reason why our governments must work together and mass-mobilize all of the needed resources to at least, get very close to the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets or NO ONE may survive?
As if the above 24 reasons were not bad enough, there are other hyper-critical factors that need to be carefully considered and planned for in the nightmare post-carbon 500 and carbon 600 ppm global warming scenario that we are now all facing:
1. Bt this point, every rational individual should be convinced that they need to do everything they can to get their governments to do everything described in Part 3 of the Job One Plan to slow and lessen global warming so they can survive. Unfortunately, there is still more very bad news.
As global warming worsens to its near-extinction levels, we will also have to deal with the following humanity and civilization-ending realities:
a. Nuclear reactors in global warming unsafe zones between the 45th parallel north and south (about 400,) will no longer be able to be kept secure or maintained by stable or functioning governments as global warming worsens and many of these governments enter social chaos and fail. If these nuclear reactors go critical and meltdown, it will not matter where you migrate to in the world.
No location or bunker will be safe from the massive continuous fallout and radiation from scores if not hundreds of reactors that will eventually go critical and spew radiation for centuries! The same holds true for all biological and chemical weapons or toxic chemicals stored in any areas with collapsing or collapsed governments. Once those areas are generally abandoned and are lawless and in chaos and no longer properly managed by functioning governments, these world-ending toxic commodities will slowly leak out or be seized and poison and kill areas far beyond their original locations.
b. Critical food production above the 45th parallel north or below the 45th parallel south will be extremely limited because the general soil quality and then lower seasonal sunlight amounts will be grossly inadequate using traditional or existing methods to grow enough food for the desperate billions of climagees migrating to these areas. Somehow the governments of the world will have to cooperate to justly and carefully limit how many people can occupy the very limited global warming safer zones and still be fed adequately.
Trying to carefully limit the number of people who can inhabit the few global warming safer zones by force or special lottery will of itself create unimaginable mass social chaos, panic, and conflict that will keep those living in the global warming safer zones under continuous threat and uncertainty. Anyone living in those very limited safer zones will only have temporary relief.
c. On the other hand, if you do not allow enough diverse individuals from the global warming unsafe zones to migrate, there will not be enough human genetic diversity to survive the waves of new diseases that will burn through the far north or far south because of thousands of-year-old unknown and known pathogens released from the melting permafrost (which humanity has never seen before and has no immunity.) Additionally, these global warming safer zones will also be under threat from new pathogens or existing pathogens that are always mutating. Only adequate genetic diversity will be our best guarantee that at least someone will survive.
d. In order for any of us to survive in any way close to what we are used to, the world’s key infrastructure for a modern functioning civilization to continue must be moved within the next 5-15 years using all of the relative political, economic and social stability which still remains. This means we need to begin immediately moving key industries like medical, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, etc. as well as key and adequate administrative, policing, and other social structures into the global warming safe zones above the 45th parallel north or below the 45th parallel south.
e. As nations struggle to deal with the rising chaos and demand lands in the safer zones from their neighbors, we will be very lucky if nuclear or biological war does not break out before global warming ends us first
f. And finally, if we miss the 2025 targets by a significant amount, we will also move from just the horrendous threat of an unavoidable mass extinction event (where most of humanity will perish,) to the ultimate danger of a total extinction event where temperatures will keep rising in an unstoppable run-away effect, and nothing will survive.
At some point, even the most optimistic person will recognize nothing will save them from this global warming meltdown monster if we don't get global fossil fuel usage under control by 2025. From that total of everything we are facing, they will also realize that we either cooperate and work together or we die together.
"We are no longer in just an emergency to prevent global warming from getting worse. We are in an all-out war to slow down the mass extinction of most of humanity by mid-century.
As long as we keep thinking about preventing global warming from getting worse or just dealing with "climate change," we are continuing to focus on the wrong targets and we will most likely fail to prevent our own extinction. We and our governments need to shift our total focus to the sole goal of slowing down the coming global warming mass extinction predicted by mid-century. If we do this, we might also prevent total extinction occurring even later." Lawrence Wollersheim
If you have not read about the six phases of the Climageddon Scenario, which take you through the painful details level-by-level as humanity moves closer to extinction, please do so soon by clicking here.
We now face humanity's unimaginable mass 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 mass extinction event by about mid-century. (If by chance, you still do not believe this, click the previous link. After you read that link, please read about the global warming-caused tipping points at this link. This second link will make the step-by-step unavoidable mass extinction process painfully clear!)
One huge reason why this mass extinction event will occur is that we have ignored 35 years of scientific warnings. We missed the chance to fix global warming when we could have easily made the needed gradual changes to keep escalating global warming from reaching our current catastrophic point.
This coming mass extinction event could cause the deaths of most of humanity by mid-century. Such a massive die-off would be due to soon crossing critical global warming tipping points as well as the combined future consequences of global warming particularly, mass starvation due to global crop failures of the most climate-sensitive crops.
The coming mass extinction event is also unavoidable because we will soon also be unable to stop ourselves from crossing the three most dangerous global warming tipping points. We will be unable to stop ourselves because we will be unable to achieve the life-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets!
More regrettably and worth repeating is the fact that the mass extinction of most of humanity is not the worst global warming future consequence we are facing. If we do not make or come reasonably close to the radical 2025 global reduction targets for our global fossil fuel use, we will also face the very beginning stages of total extinction.
A total extinction event could begin in as early as 50-70 years in the form of very high temperature and very high atmospheric carbon levels, which support initiating the final runaway-global warming process, aka the runaway greenhouse effect. (Runaway global warming is also referred to as runaway greenhouse effect or extinction-level global warming. Run-away global warming describes the circumstances in which the 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 to Venus 4 billion years ago, because of a very high carbon-rich atmosphere and exceptionally high average surface temperatures.)
Runaway global warming will create a literal Climageddon meltdown where nothing will survive because there will be no atmosphere. This total extinction event could enter its first phase as soon as our average global temperature rises above 6 degrees Celcius.
At a 5-6 degree Celcius increase in average global temperature, the massive additional tipping point releases of methane from coastal deposits and permafrost will skyrocket atmospheric carbon levels and average global temperatures. This will accelerate the earliest phases of runaway global warming.
Here is how this happens. At a 5-6 degree Celcius temperature increase, the costal deposit and permafrost "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. (For reference, our climate was stable for hundreds of thousands of years at about carbon 270 ppm. We are currently at about carbon 415 ppm. This carbon 270 to 415 ppm increase has occurred since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, which was power by burning fossil fuels.)
There is also another way we could enter into a global warming-caused total extinction event. That would be as global average temperatures reach a 3-6 degrees Celcius increase. At those temperature increase levels, there will be increasing mass starvation and a mass migration of desperate climagees (climate refugees.)
To survive, countries in the many unsafe zones will demand land and resources from countries in the safer zones. Regional and international conflicts and wars will break out over the safer land areas and remaining resources.
These wars will be of ultimate desperation and will undoubtedly include chemical, biological, and even nuclear weapons. Any weapons available will be used to force those governments in the global warming safer zones to open their borders to the billions of 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 humanity's last fight for survival!
What is also essential to keep in mind when viewing our potential for a runaway global warming total extinction event beginning in about 50-70 years, is that a mass extinction event is already unfolding at an accelerating pace and, it will come to full realization by mid-century. But, we only have about 5 years left to reduce global fossil fuel enough (by coming as close as possible to the 2025 targets,) to prevent crossing the three most deadly global warming tipping points and bringing about the beginning phase of total extinction.
The REAL crisis, challenge and ultimate global warming question for our collective and individual future is...
"How do we prevent a global warming-caused total extinction event from occurring, while we are simultaneously dealing with an unavoidable mass extinction event, which is already occurring?"
By this time you know the answer.
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 called the Job One for Humanity Plan that if honestly executed, has a reasonable probability of preventing the 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 total extinction of humanity.
The best news about the Job One for Humanity Plan to manage the global warming extinction emergency is that...
if we can get our governments to act effectively on this emergency and meet or come close to the 2025 targets by 2025, those of you who start preparing and adapting now, should be able to survive and thrive through what much of humanity will not. The only way to solve the dilemma of preventing a global warming-caused total extinction event from occurring, while we are simultaneously dealing with an unavoidable mass extinction event, is to begin the Job One Plan!
Click here to overview the 4 Parts of the Job One for Humanity Plan to resolve the global warming emergency and prevent 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 total extinction emergency.
In spite of the horrible odds for success, there are other good reasons for why must we press on and get as close to the 2025 targets as is possible in spite of all the above challenges!
The most important reason that we must press on and meet or get very close to the 2025 targets is simple and powerful. If we do get close to the 2025 targets, most of humanity will suffer and die due to starvation over a relatively short period (1-2 decades before mid-century.) As horrible as most of humanity as well as a lot of animals and biological life suffering and dying is, this outcome is still far better than having all of humanity suffer and die by about mid-century. That is also likely to happen if we fail to reach or come very close to the 2025 targets.
There are several things we can always be sure of during this global warming extinction emergency. In spite of all of the challenges and adverse global warming outcomes that are possible and discussed above, the single constant truth for the best possible outcome for humanity is that; the faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use toward meeting or getting as close as possible to the 2025 targets:
a. the more people that will survive longer to carry on humanity, life, and our beautiful civilization into the future, (See Parts 3 and 4 of the Job One Plan for how to do this.)
b. the surviving future generations will suffer far less from an ever-increasing sequence of escalating global warming consequences and catastrophes, and
c. we will "buy" ourselves more time to prepare and adapt to what we can no longer avoid, (see the global warming Plan B and survival kit here.)
d. we give ourselves at least some chance of avoiding total extinction.
Furthermore, many people surviving longer and more people having time to get themselves, their families, and their businesses prepared for what is coming is an undeniable good particularly when you weigh it against the unavoidable consequences of doing nothing or failure to make the needed sacrifices to get global warming under control.
Click here to see where we are today on the Climate Change and Global Warming Doomsday Clock.
A mini summary
We have wasted decades of scientific warnings, and now our global warming bill has come due. The combined consequences of escalating global warming will most probably cause massive biological, economic, political, and social collapses and will end the lives of most of humanity by mid-century.
Our government leaders utterly failed to see the coming pain and suffering of the COVID-19 pandemic, nor did they adequately prepare for it. Our government leaders are also not seeing or adequately preparing for the global warming extinction emergency, which is already happening and, will be far, far worse than COVID-19!
Global warming is not irreversible. It is likely just out of our meaningful control. If we do not fix it, once we are extinct, nature will rebalance itself, and it will take centuries to thousands of years to get atmospheric carbon back down to safe pre-industrial levels.
Because of all of the above reasons, unfortunately, we will most likely not reach or even get close to the life-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. Additionally, based upon global warming's many coming unavoidable consequences, global warming is already out of our meaningful control for at least the next 30-50 + years.
Worse yet, consequences such as global warming-related mass starvation and mass migration are not 20, 30, or 50 years away. Unfortunately, famine is already happening to millions. Soon it will be happening to tens of millions and then to hundreds and hundreds of millions more over the next 10 to 20 years. Within 30-50 years, billions will need to migrate or die of starvation and the other global warming consequences.
Because of all of the above as well as the other global warming caused or aggravated consequences, if we do not radically and immediately and radically reduce our fossil fuel burning behaviors by getting as close as possible to the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, crop failures, mass starvation, and mass migrations will continue to get worse and eventually affect most of humanity if not all of humanity in a total extinction event.
Because of all of the above, we now need to get real about our future and what we can still do about it. We need to start executing plans like the Job One for Humanity plan (below.)
Never forget that all this bad news does not mean that nothing can be done!
Equally important to understand is that --- this does not mean everything is hopeless and we should give up our efforts to improve whatever we can. There is still much we can do to slow and lessen escalating global warming to save more of humanity for a more extended period. There is still much to do to give us more time to prepare and adapt so that hopefully a few us will survive.
To help you do prepare, adapt, and better enjoy the time you do have left we have provided this link to the 4-part Job One for Humanity Plan. It will also show you how you can help slow down this escalating extinction emergency while you prepare for and adapt to it with the time we have left. Our Job One Plan will provide detailed information on how to better protect your family, assets, business from the many unavoidable global warming catastrophes that will be arriving soon.
For information and practical actions for what you can still do to help the world get as close as possible to the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets and make the best of a desperate situation for yourself and your family and business, please click here.
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. Many of the pages of our website are about showing you the exact science behind these three simple statements so that you can verify what we are saying is true. You can start or continue that verification process here.
At this point, we also strongly recommend that you read this article in the New Yorker magazine! It will help you come to terms with the painful truth of what you have been reading. At this point, you most likely also better understand why many climate-informed individuals now believe we will not be successful in achieving the life-critical 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.
Click here to see where we are today on the Climate Change and Global Warming Doomsday Clock for our own Climageddon!
What have you decided about global warming already being out of our meaningful control?
Some of you will decide that we can overcome the 25 reasons listed above and we will somehow get global warming under control. Most of you will decide differently. You will come to decide that even though we still theoretically have enough time left to get close to the 2025 targets, we will not do so. Many of our staff, website members, and visitors have already come to that conclusion and have begun taking the appropriate actions described in the Plan B below.
Those who do not think we can control global warming at this point see that our governments do not have either the understanding or the courage to make the tough decisions that are now necessary. They also understand our governments are currently doing virtually nothing that will give a reasonable person hope we will come even close to the life-critical 2025 targets.
Realizing this, those individuals are focusing their influence, attention, and resources on the Plan B sections of the Job One for Humanity Plan where they believe they can still do the most good. This way, they do not also waste valuable time, energy, and resources fighting battles that cannot be won, especially when there is so much to be urgently done in other areas to get prepared for what is coming.
Most individuals who have come to the painful conclusion concerning our ner complete lack of ability to even come close to the 2025 targets immediately start our the Plan B sections of the Job One Plan, which is your survive and thrive kit.
How to better keep the difficult and disruptive facts on this page in a more 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 still 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 still make a significant difference and stabilize and save the future from total extinction 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.
Additionally, so that more of us can survive longer and suffer less, we at Job One will continue to do everything we can to support lowering total global fossil fuel use as fast as is possible. This way, if we can make significant progress, we will have more time to prepare for and adapt to what is coming. This way more of us can have meaningful and enjoyable lives for as long as is possible.
What You Can Do Today to Help Slow Down Our Global Warming Extinction Consequences and Improve Your Individual Chances of Survival?
We have created the Global Warming Plan B survival kit. It is several sections withing the Job One for Humanity Plan. It will help you and society prepare for and adapt to the harsh global warming extinction emergency reality. Its action steps will also help us save and salvage as much of humanity and civilization as is possible. If completed successfully, it should allow us all to thrive once again sometime in the future.
The Job One Plan is a critical deadline-driven “first things first” plan designed to help individuals and groups:
- do everything within their power to slow down the crossing the final extinction tipping point by cutting all global carbon emissions by the 2025 global targets mentioned previously. (See Part 3 of the Job One Plan and Part 4 of the Job One Plan.)
-
make the necessary emergency backup and recovery preparations before it is too late, (Part 1 of the Job One Plan,)
- adapt locally to the new realities of out-of-control global warming. Click here for details on how to do this in Part 1 and Part 2 of the Job One Plan,
- plan and execute the necessary migration of individuals, families, businesses, and communities as well as create the critically needed infrastructure in areas that will be much safer from the 20 worst consequences of global warming, Part One Of the Job One Plan,)
- implement effective global warming slowing strategies wherever possible in your current location as an individual, (Part 2 of the Job One Plan,) And
- promote effective sustainable lifestyle and livelihood action steps so that when however few of us do get through this with whatever is left of humanity, we have already created the necessary new practices that will re-stabilize our climate at or near its original state about carbon 270 ppm --- the state which has successfully sustained humanity and humanities ancestors for hundreds of thousands of years, (Part 2 of the Job One Plan.)
Never forget, if we fail and cross the carbon 425 ppm extinction threshold, there is no livable future that any rational person would want to inhabit (if we do not make or come very close to the required 2025 fossil fuel cuts mentioned previously. (Part 3 of the Job One Plan in section 2 describes why the future may not be survivable)
Never forget we are not talking about vague or low probability statistics and possibilities here. We are talking about the lives of you, your family, and billions of other individuals, families, and children all over the world!
Additional good news, hope, and surprise benefits to help you keep this heartbreaking news in a healthy and balanced perspective
Even though global warming has now reached a level of being out of control for at least the next 30-50 years, depending upon where you live in the world many of us still have a significant amount of time left to make our emergency preparations, adapt our environments, lifestyles, and livelihoods wherever possible, and where necessary, migrate to say for global warming safe zones to save ourselves, much of humanity and our civilization. Once we have wisely made our emergency preparations, adaptations, or migration if necessary, we still may have a few decades left to live meaningful and enjoyable lives, but only if we are knowledgeable about what is coming.
The following expanded good news is most certainly needed to counterbalance the above difficult news. The full good news is:
1. We are intelligent and adaptive beings and we are able to solve or adapt to almost anything.
2. In order to create the best possible outcome for ourselves and those we love, we can and need to squarely face this emergency and prepare for and adapt to it. If we start immediately, and we work together using an effective, prioritized plan like the one we have created called the Job One for Humanity Plan, many of us will still survive and thrive (if we are very lucky about 10-30 % of the world's population,) when this is over.
3. The future is unknown and full of unpredictable negative and positive wild cards. This also means that there is still hope for some of humanity and civilization to survive, but only if we quickly exercise responsible, intelligent and effective, "first things first" Job One Plan critical path adaptive actions to survive the global warming extinction emergency.
4. We can still fully enjoy each day (as best as we can, even in spite of the rapidly destabilizing climate, escalating global warming catastrophes and other deteriorating or retrogressing other major converging global challenges that will be made much worse because of global warming. We can and should make our lives as happy and as meaningful as they can be during this global warming retrogression and transitional period. We can continue to live meaningful and enjoyable lives for many years to come if we are wise and act immediately to radically reduce fossil fuel use and to prepare and plan for what is now unavoidable!
5. Overcoming this global warming extinction emergency as well as our other major converging global challenges will also help us better solve even our currently unknown future challenges as one effective and united human family, and it will eventually help us create a sustainable prosperity for all. It is important to understand our other major converging global challenges because our current global warming extinction emergency is also occurring simultaneously while these other challenges are unfolding.
Additionally escalating global warming is also a multiplier of these other challenges. These other major converging global challenges in many cases also help cause and/or magnify the global warming extinction emergency. Some of these other major converging global challenges contain the roots of the deepest causes behind the global warming extinction emergency.
6. Hopefully, enough of us should be able to make it through this escalating global warming evolutionary bottleneck and minimize the worst of this temporary transitional evolutionary retrogression that we are currently in (and creating.) Life and humanity have had many species ending evolutionary retrogressions in the past.
7. Working together we will by necessity need to build many new sustainable eco-communities in the global warming safe zones. These new eco-communities will serve as a critically necessary backup plan for humanity and civilization. They will also act as successful examples and "beacons of light" teaching the new sustainable lifestyles and livelihoods vital to even have a future. (For more information on these eco-communities see the new eco-community model at our sister website.)
8. We should be encouraged by the fact that in the last 4.5 billion years of Earth's evolution, some form or aspect of life has survived 5 previous mass extinctions.
9. There are more good news and surprise benefits about the global warming extinction emergency that offers additional hope for the evolution of humanity, click here for them. This surprise benefits page is one of the most-read pages on our website with over 2 million views!
As Michael Dowd, the evolutionary teacher likes to say "what really matters is coming back into the right relationship with reality." Because we have failed to effectively resolve escalating global warming over the last 35 years of warnings by our best scientists, we will now literally be forced by its escalating consequences to come back into a new right relationship with reality or we will perish!
To create a right relationship with the reality of out of control global warming our organization has also evolved into an eco-community of sustainability advocates and Evolutioneers that value the wisdom of appropriate threat preparedness, adaptability, and living sustainably. We are not fear manipulated or fear dominated, but we also will never ignore painful data that should trigger protective and useful evolutionary fear reactions, like our current global warming extinction emergency. We use such "warning feedback" and appropriate evolutionary fear to wisely anticipate, avoid, prepare and/or adapt.
We are preparing and growing our local eco-community in advance for this transitional global warming crisis and its new kind of evolutionary bottleneck and retrogression. We are doing this solely because the current facts clearly shout that many of our ecological (and in some areas even our economic, political and social systems,) are in severe challenge or, are nearing critical tipping points or collapse with no or low remaining recovery resilience left to "right the ship." Nowhere is this now more true than in the catastrophe amplifying and multiplying area of our escalating global warming extinction emergency.
To the discerning evaluator and researcher, both human history and the current global warming facts indicate that many of our other non-global warming converging global challenges will continue to get worse faster with little realistic hope of correction before a chain reaction of multiple or, cascading global catastrophes and crossed tipping points shakes us and wakes us to the need for drastic and immediate evolutionary improvement toward more sustainable livelihoods and lifestyles.
Because of what we are now doing as a species (expanding fossil fuel use and its consequent atmospheric carbon pollution,) and not doing, (immediately establishing strictly enforceable international carbon pollution limitation laws,) global warming is rapidly getting worse now on an exponential curve. And, it will get much, much worse in the decades to come. And, if we don't hit the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets, we really can't do much about it at this late date with our current political and economic global warming remedial actions, conditions, and inertia.
We are not detached survivalists waiting for the end of the world! We are engaged sustainability advocates and Evolutioneers working actively to create a better world. We believe whole-heartedly in working for the best possible future (doing everything possible to hit the 2025 targets,) while at the same time wisely being prepared for the worst possible and temporary transition period.
To help deal with this global warming extinction emergency, we also envision that by necessity and as a safeguard, there also needs to be a widespread establishment of multitudes of new eco-communities in all of the global warming safe zones. They will play an essential (and possibly major,) role in securing the survival of humanity and civilization and in the establishment of the new sustainable prosperity vision within the post-global warming culture.
By helping to create these new backup eco-communities in the global warming safe zones, driven into creation by the urgency of the global warming extinction emergency, we together can help ensure a better path for the long-term future of humanity and our civilization.
We will enact our mission and message only by using only peaceful and evolutionary means and where we can still find enjoyment and joy in the relationships and experiences of our day to day lives.
And finally, even if the escalating global warming extinction emergency and the convergence of it with humanity's other major converging global adaptive challenges was somehow resolved in the next 30 to 50 years or turned out to be not as bad as is currently predicted by current science, we would be better off for our implementation of sustainability practices, and these new eco-communities would function even better and more joyously on their other goals of helping to co-create the necessary restructuring and re-alignment of society necessary to create:
a.) a sustainable prosperity for all of humanity (and because of the dangers of ignoring the 5000-year Sustainability rule,)
b.) a just and equitable civilization and
c.) thriving and meaning-filled individuals and communities --- all of which will better align with and forward the progressive evolution of life in the universe.
The most important facts on this page!
Because of the above, we have a very limited ability remaining (until 2025,) to adequately reduce atmospheric carbon levels caused by our burning of fossil fuels to prevent global warming's 20 worst consequences from getting far worse and crossing more of global warming's 11 critical tipping points. This out of control global warming reality has consequences of such severity that it will most probably end the lives of most of humanity by mid-century.
The reality of our out of control global warming has been predetermined by the immutable cause-and-effect laws of physics and the inescapable mathematics and momentums of the rising past and present carbon ppm levels in our atmosphere. No amount of fossil fuel disinformation or conservative or progressive denial can change the physics and math of the deadly emergency we are caught in. The apple will fall from the tree just as the law of gravity has predicted.
Most conservatives in the US deny global warming. Most progressives do not deny that there is global warming, but they do either deny or are grossly ignorant about how bad global warming is really going to get as well as how soon those really bad consequences are going to happen.
The question of the century has now become; do we continue to deny global warming reality and, alternatively fail to slow it as much as we can while we also simultaneously prepare ourselves and adapt to what is now unavoidable?
At this point, our greatest task may be, to begin to save and salvage whatever we can of humanity and our civilization before even that is too late.
If we continue to deny the new global warming reality of being out-of-control for as much as the next 30-50 years, we will not prepare or adapt in time. If we continued to deny, we will also not promote the necessary immediate mass global mobilization and governmental actions for radically cutting fossil fuel use to 2025 target levels in order to help save as many individuals as possible and preserve the critical infrastructure of civilization. (Part 3 of the Job One Plan.)
Crossing carbon 500 ppm tipping point is the super-slippery, very steep, and fast slope to reaching the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point level.
Crossing just the carbon 425-450 level condemns us to cross more global warming tipping points, which then directly leads to the carbon 500 ppm near-extinction tipping point level consequences growing in frequency, severity, and scale across climate, human, and ecological systems.
There is still hope that we can prevent the later phases of the Climageddon Scenario end-of-the-world climate model from occurring, but only if we act now and make the 2025 radical and immediate global fossil fuel use reductions as described above while we also enact the other steps of the Job One Plan!
At this point, maybe you have decided we are near-certainly headed to a mass extinction event. All you want to do is protect your loved ones for as long as you can, while you try to live out the rest of your life as happily as you can. No one here will blame or judge you. If that is what you want to do, then see the global warming Plan B and survival kit here and adjust it as needed.
Click here to see where we are today on the Climate Change and Global Warming Doomsday Clock.
If you are still feeling quite sad, upset, depressed, angry, or anxious about the global warming emergency, what to read next
There is a lot of horrible news to digest about global warming. Any person who realizes that our governments are not doing enough to save us from unthinkable suffering and loss will naturally experience sadness, anger, depression, or significant anxiety.
The Job One for Humanity staff also has had to digest all the dreadful global warming news. To get our team though it emotionally, we learned about something called the Kubler Ross model of change. This emotional management model helped our team deal with all of the challenging emotions that today's global warming news evokes.
We felt it would be irresponsible to leave our readers without some of these tools to manage the intense feelings that the global warming emergency can create. Accordingly, we are providing the following images and tools that should help you come to emotional terms with the new realities of global warming. Here's how these global warming caused emotional reactions, transitions, and healings usually look for most people:
1. If you're like most people, what you have learned about the global warming emergency will cause you to initially react with denial and shock.
2. If you have the tenacity to explore more concerning how bad our governments have let global warming become, you will likely also become frustrated and angry at "how could our politicians and governments ever allow this to happen.
3. If you continue examing the facts of the global warming emergency and its solutions, you will most likely then enter into a bargaining or experimenting phase to find some way to deal with such disturbing and disruptive information on your life and future.
4. If you continue verifying the facts of the global warming emergency as well as it's honest but difficult and painful solutions, you will most likely next enter into a transitional feeling of grief or depression.
5. As you work your way through your grief or depression, you will eventually come to a level of acceptance of what is scientifically accurate. (Even though it is currently is being suppressed by the fossil fuel industry, mass media, and the politicians owned by the fossil fuel industry.)
A bit more about the Kubler Ross Model emotional management model
The five primary emotional transition levels above are vital parts of the Kubler Ross model. Over time, this model is a useful tool to help you deal with the global warming denial, anger, fear, grief, or anxiety that any healthy person would experience once they truly realize the current nature of our global warming emergency.
The Kubler Ross model is used to help people deal with the medical news that they are going to die. But, it still has powerful relevance here.
This is true because as you wrestle with the new global warming realities, you will most likely go through these five emotional phases over and over again. You will do this in numerous waves until you finally reach a profound and deeply stable state of acceptance, peace, and hopefully motivation to do whatever you can to reduce this threat.
When you finally realize how bad our global warming emergency is, the challenging emotional affects are a real thing! If you don't believe us, please click here to read about a new report called, The Psychological Effects of Global Warming on the United States and Why the U.S. Mental Health Care System Is Not Adequately Prepared.
Reaching necessary emotional acceptance and getting into action
Once you reach a level of emotional acceptance for what you have learned about the global warming emergency, you will be more willing and ready to begin new ways to solve the global warming emergency. You also will find yourself being better prepared to make new decisions on how to adapt and integrate this critical information into your life and business.
You may begin even emergency preparations for the unavoidable coming global warming consequences. This way, you are better able to protect you, your family, and business and wisely maximize the chances of staying out of harm's way.
Once one reaches the critical state of emotional acceptance of the reality of what one is facing, most mature adults do as they have done for millennia. They accept what they cannot change and start finding ways to adapt to it. (There are also many adaptation steps found in the Job One Plan.) They also accept the truth of the bad news, and they get busy working on whatever they can do to change and improve it. (In this case, the get active on the Job One Plan action steps.)
We at Job One have found that the best thing to help minimize the emotional pain and trauma is to get busy completing the action steps of the Job One Plan. This is true even if you have not fully reached the acceptance level of your emotional recovery. The Job One Plan's many action steps proactively focus your attention on what can still be done. This focus on the needed action also minimizes your available attention on the negatives (once they have served their purpose of redirecting you toward action on the deeper truths of this emergency.)
Therapy or support groups also can help you work through having the painful realization that humanity is in the worst existential crisis on its history and, we do not have much time left (until 2025,) to effectively prevent mass extinction. Therapy or support groups can also help get you motivated to do whatever you can on the many action steps of the Job One Plan.
As you continue to understand the scale of our global warming emergency, you may also come to realize that our lives and our children's lives are going to be far shorter than we ever imagined. But that still can be changed if we immediately react to the challenge of radically reducing our global fossil fuel usage to meet the 2025 targets!
One great emotional recovery tip
Not everything about our global warming extinction emergency is emotionally disheartening. There are many surprising benefits to this emergency. Click here to read the single most read page on our website on these many benefits. At Job One we review this list regularly to maintain the mental well-being of our own staff. We also discovered that regular review of this good news and benefits list was critical to keeping our volunteers on-mission and maintaining their motivation as well.
Additionally
Because most of you that have understood the previous facts (that do not fall into a defensive denial,) will naturally and appropriately feel shocked, sad, angry or even betrayed, the most logical and the best thing to do to deal with those often overwhelming feelings is to work for "the best" while you prepare for "the worst," just in case we fail. What this means is that you will need to focus as much as your energy and resources on just two main action strategies:
a. Get busy on getting the 2025 reduction targets met by getting our governments enacting and enforcing the laws needed to reach the 2025 targets. (Click here to learn what you need to know to get started on this.) and,
b. Get busy with emergency preparations and adaptations for you, your family, and/or your business for many of the now unavoidable consequences that will be arriving soon. (Click here to begin this process.)
These two action-based strategies will minimize the natural feelings of being shocked, sad, angry, or feeling completely betrayed by our current world leaders until you can get additional emotional support or assistance from other outsides sources or from working through the above Kubler Ross model on your own.
There is only one thing we can always be certain of in this emergency. No matter what, and in spite of all of the challenges and bad outcomes that are possible, the single constant truth for the best possible global warming outcome for humanity is that the faster and more we reduce global fossil fuel use:
a. the more people that will survive to carry on humanity, life, and our beautiful civilization into the future, and
b. future generations will suffer far less from an ever-increasing sequence of escalating global warming consequences and disasters.
Help us get the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction goals met by signing the global warming extinction emergency petition now.
A final motivational booster
So what MUST we do individually and collectively at this critical moment in time if we are to survive? First of all, You must make a decision about the rationality and factual nature of what you have just read. If you find this information credible and reasonable, you must decide what you are going to do to manage or adapt to what you have learned.
As this document clearly shows, there is no escape or easy solutions. There will be unconscionable, unbearable and unthinkable pain whether we are successful in radically reducing fossil fuel usage to the 2025 targets or whether we are not successful.
But no matter what, We are STILL left with this. We either make the radical 2025 fossil fuel cuts necessary and allow the world economy to go into a severe recession or depression and a huge portion (up to 50%,) of the human population consequently suffers and dies or, we do not make the radical fossil fuel cuts and most of humanity (if not all,) of the human population dies and our civilization ends as well.
In spite of all of the many challenges and painful difficulties of radically reducing global fossil fuel usage to the required 2025 target levels to prevent most if not all of humanity from going extinct, what other real choice is there? If we do not begin and make fossil fuel reductions immediately, we can't even hope to slow down global warming just enough so that at least some small percentage of humanity will survive and civilization will go on.
Therefore in every situation above, the only way we save our future is to cooperate globally at the highest governmental levels and radically reduce global fossil fuel use to the 2025 reduction numbers mentioned on this page! Even in spite of inevitably crossing the carbon 500 ppm near-extinction tipping point (and the likelihood of also crossing the carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point,) no matter what, we must still immediately do whatever we can to make the best of this horrible situation.
While there will be unimaginable pain either way, but at least, if we are successful with our 2025 fossil fuel reductions, some of humanity and our civilization will go on. And even if we are not successful with our 2025 targets, at least if we're making radical progress towards them progress towards them, more people will live longer more comfortably. And that alone is a tremendous value to the future.
So here is what needs to happen.
We now need to come together immediately as individuals but even more importantly our governments need to come together and get very busy in a mass global mobilization to do what we still can do while we still have time left to do it! (What our governments must specifically do is in Part 3 of the Job One Plan. What we must do is in Parts 1,2 and 4 of the Job One Plan.)
At this point, you're probably feeling a bit overwhelmed by what you have read and the enormity of what we must do to survive. You may have also reached the point of saying it's impossible or, the task is so large with such a low probability of success, why even try. The following ancient story and subsequent materials should help you deal with these natural mindsets to just give up or deny the problem even exists.
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 truly understand the rapidly approaching consequences of our global warming extinction emergency, you too should no longer retain any illusion of any real long-term escape for you or your family, business, nation or for humanity or our civilization. What you also may not have realized yet is that our 35-year failure to have previously executed effective control of the escalating global warming extinction emergency means that we too, in effect, have already burned our escape boats! We are now at the last chance 2025 fossil fuel reduction tipping point.
Yes, this is the perilous tipping point that we have come to because of our inaction and ineffectiveness in addressing global warming for almost 35 years. If we are very, very lucky, we will make the required 2025 critical fossil fuel cuts.
By doing nothing to get our governments to radically and immediately lower fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 targets, even if we fail, your inaction will only shorten the critical time frame necessary to move people, technology, and infrastructure to the far north or far south so that possibly you or those you love can be temporarily safe and live a little bit longer with a little less suffering. All rational people would agree that living for a temporarily longer period with a better quality of life is far better than suffering more and dying sooner.
Better yet, if we act wisely together and get our governments in action to radically cut fossil fuel use now to meet the 2025 targets and, we are very lucky, humanity and civilization will continue. In the end, the simple truth is once again, we either cooperate and work together in a government-driven mass mobilization or we ALL die together!
What do you have to lose and, what rational alternative do you have other than to act immediately to get our governments to radically reduce global fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 targets, and at the same time get prepared for the coming horrible consequences that are already unavoidable? What you need to realize unequivocally is that hitting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets IS our last small chance to avoid mass extinction and chaos in our lifetimes! It is just that simple.
What legitimate excuse is there for you to not also help our organization mobilize more people like yourself to face and deal with this humanity ending emergency.
Other Relevant Information:
(The Sections below this line are still in draft mode.)
What are the timetables for the worst of the now unavoidable global warming consequences that will occur before we reach the extinction-level consequences?
How fast it gets worse from where we are today and how much time we have left before the worst of the 20 major coming consequences global warming consequences begin to directly or indirectly affect you, your family, business or nation depends completely on your current location and, our hitting or not hitting the 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets. If we do not hit the 2025If we do not hit the 2025 targets, the following consequences and time frames will occur even sooner.
Many individuals around the world are experiencing many severe consequences already. In about 10 to 15 years, the 20 major consequences of global warming, the accumulating mass migrations of climagees (climate migrants), and the global warming aggravated economic, ecological, political, and societal effects will have increasingly severe and destabilizing impacts in almost all areas of the world.
But global warming consequence severity will increase most rapidly within the next 5-10 years in the areas between the 25th parallel north and the 25th parallel south. Within the next 10 to 15 years, the areas of increasing consequences severity will generally expand throughout the areas between the 35th parallel north and the 35th parallel south.
Within 15 to 25+ years, life will more regularly become unbearably chaotic and unstable for those unfortunate individuals and businesses still trying to live and operate below the 45th parallel north or the 45th parallel south. The key factors that will drive these mass migrations will be, crop failures and starvation because of increased heat and drought, sea-level rise, crashing property values in unsafe zones, soaring property values in safer zones, breakdown of law order and society, increased resource conflict and war, wildfires, rain bombs and other types of severe storms and other major global warming consequence increasing in frequency, severity, and scale.
Depending on your current and ultimate location, financial loss, and death tolls from global warming-related catastrophes will continue to rise steadily until we reached what we call the last phases of the Climageddon Scenario. This is where most of humanity by mid-century. This will occur primarily because of more crossed global warming tipping points as well as starvation, migration wars, civil unrest, and many of the other 20 worst global warming consequences.
Depending upon your location and our 2025 fossil fuel reduction success, during this remaining time window to prepare, adapt, or migrate, those who understand this page will still have control of a good portion of their lives, far longer than those individuals who deny, ignore or are unaware of the new reality that global warming is rapidly becoming out of meaningful control for as much as the next 50 years. In general, the many coming global warming consequences will almost always increase in severity, frequency, and scale over time and, their progression will not be a slow and steady linear progression. In many cases and locations, it soon will be an exponential progression with massive climate, biological and human system crashes and collapses.
Now that you have a useful and relevant developmental time window for our global warming extinction emergency, you are ready to learn more about what out of control global warming is as well as how it will inescapably adversely affect your future, family, finances and nation, and what you can still do about it. At the end of this document, you will also find some good news and other surprise benefits that will also help you maintain a more positive "bigger picture" context for the incredibly difficult situation we find ourselves in now that global warming has in many ways already become out of our meaningful control (as described throughout this document.)
The other materials below on why global warming is most likely already out of meaningful control will also help you understand the other longer-term critical global warming extinction emergency time frames and critical junctures that are unfolding as you read this and that will have powerful and catastrophic effects on our ecological, economic, personal and political futures. As you continue reading so much difficult news do not forget, if we are smart and move quickly, we can also still slow and lessen some of the worst of the 20 major coming consequences.
How long will it take for our out of control global warming to become controllable once again if we hit our 2025 targets and prevent extinction?
The preceding information means that it is highly likely various climate systems and subsystems will still continue in a positive feedback loop of ever-increasing average global temperature. Consequently, because of all of the factors discussed above this point we are, in fact, already in an uncontrollable cycle of irreversible global warming for at least another 30-50 years with more unavoidable catastrophes coming soon that will occur at a greater severity, frequency and scale no matter what we do!
Keep in mind that as the temperature continues to rise, we will always cross more tipping points faster and faster, which will result in faster and faster even spiking increases in average global temperatures and a cascading climate meltdown. (Please see the new book Climageddon for all the details on exact Climageddon Scenario meltdown.)
Additionally, it is wise to remember that at the minimum, the relative time frame for removing (sequestering) the carbon ppm particles we are currently adding to our atmosphere is centuries to thousands of years. This means that long, long after we stop actively polluting our atmosphere with fossil fuels (at least 50 years from now,) the 20 most deadly consequences of those actions will last for many, many generations.
Viewing the dangerous rise of human-caused atmospheric carbon in parts per million (ppm) from a historical perspective will help you understand just how bad it really is!
The following graph will help illustrate what will happen to our carbon ppm levels in the future from a perspective of hundreds of thousands of years in the past. As you can see in the last part of the graph, which has been broken out in the smaller yellow box to better illustrate the last 1,000 years, it clearly shows we have entered a whole new much higher range of increased atmospheric carbon risk and threat exposure. We have deviated from Ice Age long-term cyclical carbon ppm highs of about carbon 275 ppm to over carbon 400 ppm. (As of May 2018 we are at about carbon 411 ppm.)
Image via Robert A. Rohdes, Wikimedia Commons. (Parts per million by volume [ppmv] includes other pollutants and trace greenhouse gases, such as methane.)
For hundreds of thousands of years, we always stayed below 275 carbon parts per million by volume (ppmv)--the range conducive for human life. But with the advent of the Industrial Revolution and fossil fuel use, average global temperatures and carbon ppm have soared to levels unseen for millions of years (about 1.5° to about 2.7° Celsius.
This is very bad for our future and our civilization because carbon 425 to 450 ppm is roughly double the previous civilization safe highest Ice Age cyclical average point of about carbon 275 ppm for the last 400,000 years. At this 425-450 ppm level, we will be crossing more global warming tipping points at a faster and faster rate.
Still, don't believe that global warming is out of control for at least the next 30-50 years? Let us continue to prove it to you!
All of the preceding, and far more information about how we have created our current out of control global warming nightmare and global warming extinction emergency can be found in the new Climageddon book. If you want to get a printed or ebook versions of Climageddon from Amazon, click here.
Each purchase of a printed version of Climageddon helps support the Job One for Humanity nonprofit organization and our Job One Plan to help you survive and thrive through our current global warming extinction emergency.
So what does all of the above really mean to the probable likelihood of either you or your children having anything like a long, relatively stable, peaceful or prosperous future?
Based on the validity of the information on this page and the principles of rationality, we must now do everything within our power to actively limit the coming total damages and save and salvage what we can by:
1. getting very close to reaching the 2025 fossil fuel reductions required, and
2. preparing for and adapting to whatever global warming consequences we can no longer avoid so that we can save as much of humanity and civilization as possible.
What this also means is, that while you are working as hard as you can to get our governments to radically reduce fossil fuel usage to meet the 2025 targets in Part 3 of the Job One Plan, and depending upon if your current location is in global warming safe zone or how well you are preparing for what is coming as described in Parts 1 and 2 of the Job One Plan, you should still be able to fill your life with as much joy and satisfaction as is possible for about the next 10 to maybe 20 years. Therefore, the time to enjoy your life is now because the escalating global warming extinction emergency is going to make life progressively worse faster and faster.
Never forget there are no guarantees we will be successful in the Herculean mass mobilization task of getting our governments acting in unison to radically reduce fossil fuel use and meet the 2025 targets to prevent or at least slow our crossing the final carbon 600 ppm extinction tipping point.
Will escalating global warming ever end and our climate return to normal?
Over many hundreds of thousands of years, our planet's climate has remained relatively stable and highly conducive to the development of humanity and our civilization. During those hundreds of thousands of years, the atmospheric level of carbon particles in our atmosphere was consistently around carbon 270 ppm. If atmospheric carbon moves much above or much below that 270 ppm level things do not work out nearly as well for humanity and civilization.
Our current out-of-control global warming over as much as the next 30-50 years also describes the process of the earth’s average global temperature increasing or being maintained at an unsafe level over extended periods of time far longer than multiple human lifespans. At the minimum, the relative time frame for removing (sequestering) the carbon particles we are currently adding to our atmosphere through natural means is centuries to thousands of years.
This means that long, long after we stop polluting our atmosphere with fossil fuels, the 20 most deadly consequences of those actions will go on and last for many generations, and both we and future generations will suffer dearly for our failures to address and resolve this emergency now. Luckily, nature has an amazing ability to heal itself over great spans of time.
To lower the world's average global temperature and atmospheric carbon levels back to the relatively safe preindustrial levels of carbon 270-350 ppm, we must scale up green energy generation over the next several centuries to replace all fossil fuel energy generation and we must radically cut fossil fuel use by the 2025 percentages and deadlines described previously. If we do that it may take centuries to thousands of years, but nature will take care of itself and clean our atmosphere.
Therefore, What each of us needs to realize unequivocally is that hitting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets IS our last chance to avoid mass extinction and chaos in our lifetimes! It really is that simple.
In order to help you, your family and business as well as society prepare for and adapt to the current global warming extinction emergency and more importantly, radically reduce global fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 targets to slow global warming's avoidable consequences, our organization forwards the brutally honest, prioritized and practical 4 part free Job One for Humanity Global Warming Plan.
If you are wondering how did this gross misinformation of the general public and our current state of out of control global warming and crisis happen?
Click here for the full story.
More information on why we may already be out of meaningful control of global warming for as much as the next 30-50 years
The initial temperature range for triggering the beginning of being in a state of out of control global warming varies between 1.7 to 2.2° Celsius (about 3- 4° Fahrenheit.) This is, unfortunately, the last chance tipping point where we are at now or, very close to that (or even beyond that,) temperature when you also add in and compensate for the following factors:
1.) all of the gross miscalculations and,
2. all other "already committed" or “baked in” temperature increasing factors due to carbon soot, climate, ecological, geological, and human system momentums and inertias that are already active and which, are explained in part in on this page in the 13 reasons section. (Committed global warming simply means that even though we are not there yet, we are unavoidably committed to reaching some certain temperature level in the near future first because of what has happened in the past, but also what is happening now. Committed or "baked in" global warming occurs due to complex climate processes, including numerous climate system and climate subsystem momentums and inertias which are too complex to describe fully here, but are fully described in the new Climageddon book.)
Deriving its foundation from points 1 and 2 (just above,) out of control global warming is a distinct new climate state created by the combination of:
a. increasing average global temperatures for as much as the next 30-50 years,
b. currently crossed and soon to be crossed additional key global warming tipping points,
c. the many global warming caused consequences of the climate system interacting among themselves and with biological, ecological and human (social, economic and political,) systems with increased severity, frequency, and scale, and,
d. the multiple self-reinforcing climate system and subsystem positive feedback loops that will continue occurring. (If you are not sure of what a positive feedback loop mentioned above is and why it will be so bad for your climate future, please take the time to explore this link.)
At the minimum, the relative time frame for removing (sequestering) the carbon particles that we are currently adding to our atmosphere at about 3 ppm every year is centuries to thousands of years. This means that long, long after we stop polluting our atmosphere with carbon ppm from fossil fuels, the two carbon 500 ppm and 600 ppm near-extinction and extinction-level tipping points as well as many of the other 20 most deadly consequences related to those tipping points, will last for many, many generations.
Both we in the near future and future generations will suffer dearly for our failures to address and resolve this emergency now.
From all of the preceding facts on this page, you should now be able to clearly see that the truth behind why global warming is most likely already now out of our meaningful control for as much as the next 30-50 years. It is also because of:
a. all of the above prevents us from having the ability to either radically reduce our fossil fuel levels as now required and as described previously or, to radically reduce our average annual increase in atmospheric carbon (of about 3 carbon ppm per year,) and far more importantly, this then also results in...
b. our not being able to get our atmospheric carbon ppm levels back down anywhere close to the safe carbon 300 to 270 ppm levels where it has been for hundreds of thousands of years and, where our climate would re-stabilize at preindustrial levels and we would be safe and flourish once again.
And here's the biggest takeaway. Because we are most likely already out of meaningful control of global warming for as much as the next 30-50 years, we are now facing an imminent extinction threat and event. Imminent is the correct word because the processes leading to the extinction of humanity is already well underway and, most of humanity will suffer and die by mid-century, which is also well within the lifetimes of most people alive today.
From all of the above on this page, you can see that there is no escape. In every situation, the only way we save any part of a liveable future is to radically and immediately cut fossil fuel use to slow things down enough that we have time to prepare, migrate and adapt as well as possible so that some of humanity and civilization survives.
In all of the above-discussed scenarios, no matter what, we must do what we can and make the best of a horrible escalating emergency. We need to come together immediately and get our governments very busy in a mass global mobilization with what we still can do!
If we fail to hit the 2025 reduction targets here is a bit of very dark "good news" that may also save a small portion of humanity
There is another dark and chaotic possibility for our future that would also allow a small portion of humanity to survive. If we do not successfully and immediately cut fossil fuel use by the radical 2025 percentages listed in this document, the other most probable way that we will finally and successfully radically reduce our fossil for use is through a massive die-off of about 70 to 90% of the human population before mid-century. If we do not make our 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets this will naturally occur and continue to escalate over the following 3-5 decades. As mentioned before, this will occur naturally because of massive crop failures, starvation, and the other economic, social and political conflict, breakdown and chaos.
As billions die of starvation, or in desperate migration and resource wars or because of the accelerating worst consequences of global warming and its tipping points, fossil fuel use will drop radically simply because there will be far, far fewer humans using fossil fuel. This is what may be the dark "last resort solution” that hopefully saves a small portion of humanity and civilization in the end if we do not radically reduce fossil fuel usage ourselves and if we somehow manage the threat of nuclear reactors and biological and chemical weapons being unsecured in the failed states of the unsafe global warming zones.
But even if this happens because we fail to radically reduce our fossil fuel use to the required 2025 targets, it will still take centuries to thousands of years before the average global temperature and the planet recovers from what we have already done to it! Any unlucky survivors will be living a nightmare of higher temperatures, extreme weather, and chains of other consequences we can barely envision just from what we have already done to our atmosphere.
What else needs to happen to save your future and the future of humanity and our civilization?
As you can see from the first atmospheric carbon ppm graph on this page, we are not making anything even close to the required radical cuts in our fossil fuel use to reduce the carbon going into our atmosphere. To make the necessary fossil fuel use cuts, all global carbon emissions would have to be cut as is presented in these 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.
Those are the real fossil fuel use needed reduction numbers and not the grossly miscalculated and misleading reduction numbers better forwarded by the IPCC and most governments of the world.
We are not making anything even close to these levels of mass extinction prevention fossil fuel cuts!
If you're a pragmatist, because of the many reasons above we may not be able to stop escalating global warming for at least another 30-50 years, this also means we will not be able to prevent massive global temperature increases, horrendous climate calamities, and the near extinction or complete extinction of humanity far sooner than imagined.
This means that we may have already passed the point of being able to control rising global warming as well as all of its related unavoidable and unthinkable consequences for as much as another 30-50 years unless we can immediately radically cut our fossil fuel use by 2025 and the required percentages described previously on this page. But can we really make those life-critical cuts in time?
If your pragmatist, you will most likely believe that it is highly improbable we will ever make the critically needed cuts to our fossil fuel usage by 2025 to save ourselves. There are several reasons you may be correct.
One is that each year we continue to delay in making the needed 2025 radical fossil fuel usage cuts means that any future cuts will need to be even more extreme, which makes them even less likely to be done because of the even more severe hardships and costs that they will impose globally.
As mentioned previously in the reasons above, another major reason it is unlikely we will make the needed radical fossil fuel cuts soon enough to save ourselves is because of what is called Garrett's Global Warming Dilemma. This research states that because of the immutable laws of physics and mathematics, almost all of our fossil fuel-based global economy must first collapse in what will naturally become, a steep but necessary global recession or global depression in order to produce the required cuts in our fossil fuel use to save humanity in time. And, if the world economy collapses to the level that is necessary to hit our 2025 fossil fuel reduction targets, it is estimated that as much of 50% of the world's population will die of starvation because modern agriculture will collapse without fossil fuels for fertilizer and to power its machinery.
This well-documented climate research is the research most often ignored by environmental groups around the world because it produces a horrible dilemma for which either answer is unthinkable as well as un-sellable to members and donors. Because of this fossil fuel reduction dilemma, and because there is little organized and effective public or political will to create a severe, but absolutely necessary global recession or depression to radically reduce fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 targets, most environmental groups hide this essential and critical research away and ignore it like dirty laundry. (If you're a science person, please click here and read a summary of Prof. Garrett's alarming research on atmospheric carbon, global warming, and the necessary fossil fuel reductions we must make to save the future.)
Because of all of the preceding on "why global warming is out of our meaningful control for at least another 30-50 years factors," it is hard to imagine that fossil fuels use will ever be reduced to anything close to the critical 2025 target levels needed, until as mentioned before we are faced with truly massive global financial losses, collapsing governments and billions dead and suffering!
If you are a pragmatist and a mature adult, at this point you realize that for all intents and purposes, we have already "baked in" everything needed to cross the carbon 500 ppm point! You have also probably realized that we have only the tiniest of chances for not crossing the 600 carbon ppm level over the next 50-60 years.
Is there a message conflict on this page?
At times it may sound like our global warming message is conflicted, but it is not. We are truly at our last chance to turn things around, and the odds that we will do so are weighted VERY heavily against us. We do not sugarcoat or hide the fact from you that it is going to be extremely challenging to achieve the last chance 2025 reduction targets.
It easily can be considered highly probable that we will not make the necessary global fossil fuel reductions in time. We will once again do too little too late or, self deceive ourselves once again just like we have done for the last 35 years.
We have given you the good, bad and the ugly truths about our global warming extinction emergency because we know that it is important for you to have all of the information to evaluate for yourself in order to make the best possible choices for you and your loved ones.
In spite of the unbelievable mess, we find ourselves in, you can rely upon the fact that we are always working for the best possible outcome (making the immediate radical 2025 global fossil fuel cuts required,) while at the same time preparing for the worst possible outcome (preparing to save and salvage whatever we can of humanity and civilization in case it all goes terribly bad which, unfortunately, now appears more likely than not.)
Working for the best possible outcome while also preparing for the worst possible outcome is not a conflict, but a highly rational and optimized way of managing known and imminent risk and threat.
For example, once we have done what is necessary to logically prepare for the worst possible outcome with a backup plan, (Part 1 of the Job One Plan,) we then forget about all of our emergency preparations and focus ALL of our energies upon working for the best possible outcome --- making the 2025 radical fossil fuel reductions in time to prevent the extinction of most if not all of humanity OR, at worst and at least, slowing escalating global warming down enough so that more people can live longer more comfortably (Part 3 of the Job One Plan.)
This preparation for the worst practice is not much different than what you are told before every airline flight in case there's a sudden change in altitude. You are told to always first put on your own oxygen mask before putting your children's masks. This way at least someone is still able to function at the minimum required level to save and salvage the children.
Similarly, we ask the same of you. Get prepared for what is coming so you too can help us by focusing all your energies on meeting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets.
Even if we don't hit our 2025 reduction targets, our message never loses sight of the truth that the more and faster we radically reduce global fossil fuel use, the more we can still slow and lessen both the unavoidable as well as avoidable global warming consequences and, more importantly, more people can live longer and more comfortable lives around the world.
Our message also never loses sight of the functional and practical truth that if we miss the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, our odds of avoiding mass extinction within our lifetimes is unthinkably low to nonexistent.
There is a simple near-absolute equation of the highest possible human value that we never forget when forwarding our mission.
"The more and faster our global fossil fuel reduction reaches or closely approaches the 2025 global warming reduction targets, the more of us that will live longer at some near-acceptable level of normalcy and security, and vice versa."
Still Feeling Sad, Angry, or Anxious About Global Warming? Here is what to do.
Click this link and start feeling better.
We should be able to keep most of humanity from extinction by immediately enacting ALL of the critical actions described in part three of the Job One Plan.
For information on the exact tipping points and consequences of the global warming extinction emergency, click here.
For more information on the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets, which we cannot miss, click here.
There are other very challenging reasons why we won't make the 2025 targets in time. These reasons involve different climate, human, and biological system inertias and momentums to complex to discuss in a short article. These additional reasons are found on other pages on the Joboneforhumanity.org website or in the new book Climageddon published by our non-profit organization.
Sign Up To Learn More & Take Action!
Please send this article to politicians and social media all over the world. Ask your politicians what they are doing to prevent the coming mass extinction of most of humanity by mid-century?
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!
The Climageddon Extinction Scenario: A Climate Change and Global Warming Extinction Prediction Model
(At the end of this article, you will find a link to a comprehensive four-part plan for what you can do to help manage global warming. To counterbalance these disruptive facts, in this article, you will also find a link to the many surprising benefits that you will experience as we work toward resolving this great challenge, opportunity, and evolutionary adventure.)
Prologue
"You cannot be called an alarmist if there really is something to be alarmed about." Unknown
You are about to read alarming facts about our current climate change and our current global warming extinction emergency (aka the climate extinction emergency, Holocene extinction, sixth mass extinction event, climate crisis, climate emergency, or run-away global warming challenge.) It would be naive to believe that well-funded and well-staffed intelligence agencies around the world do not also have most of the information within this article, but unlike our organization, these agencies have chosen not to make it pubic outside of highly restricted circles.
We have learned that not everyone decides to take the same remedial, protective, or preparatory actions once they verify and process the stress of what they are about to read. Because of this, we have also provided the Job One for Humanity global warming management and survival plan, which contains numerous options for different individual or collective positive responses to the many serious consequences presented in this global warming extinction model.
While reading, also keep in mind that if we reach the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets by plus or minus 5 percent, we will avoid the worst consequences of the Climageddon Scenario described below in the 6 parts of this article! Life over the millennia always seems to find a way to solve its previous extinction challenges and if we act soon and together, we should be able to do this too!
The Climageddon Scenario extinction model was first released in 2017 in the book Climageddon. Since its release, every major global warming consequence prediction it made has come true as predicted. Unfortunately, a few of its predicted consequence timeframes are occurring even faster than was predicted.
For instance, in addition to more ice all over the planet melting considerably faster than previously predicted, new research also shows that the world's critical carbon-absorbing forests are reaching the carbon releasing tipping point far quicker than predicted. Our forests were removing about 30% of the heat-producing carbon from the atmosphere. Now more of our forests are becoming carbon neutral the critical step before they become carbon releasing.
This quickly evolving forest tipping point issue bodes poorly for controlling global average temperature. This tipping point alone could spike up global temperatures far faster than anyone can yet envision. All of this has moved the Global Warming and Climate Change Doomsday Clock very close to midnight as you can see in the illustration below.
What is also new in this updated version is more detailed global warming tipping points, consequences, timetables, and other global challenges integrated and prioritized within the Climageddon Scenario phases. This allows for even better, more comprehensive longterm planning for individuals, businesses, and nations.
Introduction
Climageddon is a new word that combines the words climate and Armageddon. Armageddon is the word that is often used to refer to any end-of-the-world scenario.
Climageddon describes a global warming end-of-the-world extinction model and extinction process in a year-by-year accelerating consequence countdown that could easily occur within our lifetimes if we continue the way we are. We call this complete global warming extinction process the Climageddon Scenario and Extinction Countdown (CSEC,) or for short the Climageddon Scenario (CS,) or the Climageddon Countdown (CC.)
The Climageddon Extinction Scenario describes a new global warming prediction model to help individuals visualize the six distinct waves of increasing coming global warming consequences. These six waves of consequences if allowed to occur, will lead us to the near-complete to complete extinction of humanity within about 50-70 years.
In part, the Climageddon Extinction Scenario is based upon our crossing four extinction-accelerating global warming tipping points. It illuminates the complete process of escalating global warming consequences and catastrophes, which eventually result in a predictable mass human die-off. Fortunately, this mass-to-total extinction process will only run its course if we do not achieve the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets and we tumble into the latter of the six Climageddon phases and waves.
When you think about the Climageddon Extinction Scenario, realize that extinction emergency and global cataclysm are entirely appropriate terms to use. The unfolding global warming processes are happening shockingly fast. They are developing most destructively over the next 30-50 years and could take less than a century to fully manifest in a mass die-off.
This is a shockingly short timeframe when compared with the far longer geological time frames which were needed to evolve Earth's five earlier mass extinction events. Humanity's five previous mass extinction events evolved over hundreds of thousands to millions and millions of years.
The Climageddon Extinction Scenario is activated by global warming's 20 worst consequences and 11 key tipping points interacting and getting worse. The 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario weaves the consequences and tipping points into:
a. one continually evolving collection of interacting and reacting climate, human, and biological systems and processes. And,
b. an interconnected and interdependent whole system.
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 accuracy, imagine these waves of asteroids have already begun and will continue throughout 10-60 years.
(Please see the illustration below which will provide a quick but necessary minimal overview of the many consequences of 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario for the sake of the asteroid story. The temperatures listed below in both Celsius and Fahrenheit are the predicted increases in average global temperature that will most probably occur at each of the 6 phases of the Climageddon Scenario due to increasing global warming consequences.)
Now that you can see that temperatures (consequences,) will continue to rise at each new Climageddon Scenario phase, you are ready to continue with the asteroid story and metaphor.
At first, the asteroid waves are made of smaller asteroids and the waves will be farther apart. In the earlier asteroid waves, the asteroid impact consequences grow in a slower, gradual, and linear manner. In later waves, the asteroids grow larger and the waves now grow closer and closer together in time. Unfortunately, in the later larger waves, the asteroid consequences will grow faster and exponentially.
Next, imagine that each new wave of the asteroids almost always hits the earth in the illustration below between the 45th parallel north and the 45th parallel south (between the two yellow/mustard colored lines.)
These would be the most asteroid-unsafe areas to live in in the future.
And finally, imagine the last wave of “planet-killing” 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 also enter the survival shelters bypassing the lottery. Not surprisingly, they are top government officials, top military brass, key scientists, and powerful corporate elites.
Around the world, the lucky and the pre-selected few go to the underground shelters, which also contain seeds for every species of plant, important viable animals, as well as massive food supplies for the would-be shelter survivors.
The first asteroid mass impacts Cape Hatteras in the Atlantic Ocean, causing a tsunami up to 3,500 feet (1,100 meters) high. The second mass is due to impact western Canada, creating a cloud of dust that will block out the sun for two years, killing all unsheltered life on Earth in a matter of weeks.
At the last minute, the damaged spacecraft carrying the remaining nuclear weapons hits the larger second mass in a suicide mission, breaking it up so that most of it burns up in the atmosphere or misses the planet completely.
After the survivors finally come out of their shelters, the President speaks to a large crowd, telling them they've been blessed with a second chance to call Earth their home...
Here's what's important about this story and metaphor in relation to its similarities to the unfolding Climageddon Scenario. In the preceding metaphor and story, the most obvious parallels to the escalating global warming emergency and the Climageddon Scenario are:
1. Just as they are in the asteroid wave metaphor, our global warming consequences will come faster and faster and grow larger and larger with each new phase of the six Climageddon Scenario phases. (Worse yet, in the mid to later phases of the Climageddon Scenario our consequences (which you will be reading about soon,) will begin growing exponentially.)
2. As we move through the six phases of the Climageddon Scenario there will be many of the other unthinkable consequences that occur within our social, economic, and political systems just as in the movie when humanity faces its end. Some of those are rare and noble sacrifices, others widespread panic, chaos, looting, crime, cruelty, and loss of basic human rights.
2 As global warming consequences continue to worsen in the later phases of the Climageddon Scenario, governments will be forced to declare martial law, and there will be lotteries and secret pre-selection and quotas for who still will be able to move to the global warming safer zones near or above the 45th parallel north or near or below the 45th parallel south to escape the chaos occurring within that middle highest danger zone a little longer.
3. If we keep going as we are now without radically reducing global fossil fuel use to meet the 2025 global fossil fuel reductions targets and we somehow survive the coming global warming consequences, most of humanity will die and there will have to be a massive, difficult, and costly rebuilding of civilization by the few remaining survivors if there are any survivors.
As you continue to think about the many kinds of facts in the Climageddon Scenario article, please keep in mind the Deep Impact end-of-the-world asteroid movie story because its unfolding process is a good metaphor for how the Climageddon Scenario’s most serious consequences will also grow worse, closer and closer, and faster and faster over time. Also, please don't forget we still do have a last chance for humanity and civilization to survive, but only if we successfully reach the challenging 2025 global fossil fuel reductions targets.
Who most needs to understand how the Climageddon Scenario Extinction Countdown unfolds
Understanding the rapidly unfolding progression of the 6 phases of the Climageddon Countdown scenario is critical for every individual, business, or nation that wants to thrive or survive over the next 5, 10, 20, 30 or more years and takes planning for their or financial, physical and political future security seriously.
Understanding the Climageddon Scenario is crucial information for anyone involved in:
- personal, financial or security short or mid- to long-range planning,
-
city, corporate, or national mid- to long-range planning,
- 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
- 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 have 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.
And 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, 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 upon 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 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 Europen 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, 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 temperatures 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:
- 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.
- Even though we have had over 20 international conferences on fossil fuel use reduction, and we had international treaties since at least 1993 pledging we would reduce global warming, worldwide we still are about 67% higher in carbon emissions than the early 1990s. (Atmospheric carbon emissions is probably the best way to measure future global warming.)
- 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 what our REAL lack of any progress whatsoever in reducing the rate of fossil fuel use increases, much less the complete absence of any substantive reductions 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:
- 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 means that no additional fossil fuel emissions are going into the atmosphere that is 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:
- 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.
- tipping points when crossed create sudden and extremely difficult to recover from steep drop-offs or complete system crashes,
- 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
- 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:
- we will be able to maintain the previous average annual increase of only carbon 3 ppm. (In part it will probably go higher because of the Earth's population soaring to 9 billion, causing our estimated energy needs to skyrocket by 40% as more of the world’s population enters into the middle class.) And, most importantly
2. because of our fossil fuel burning momentum and human system inertias, once we hit the 425 to 450 carbon PPM range we will not be able to keep from rapidly sliding down a much steeper and 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 safe? Here is some other research that while we feel that it still suffers from politicizing underestimation errors and lack of factoring in the crossing of any tipping points, it is still worth reviewing so you know it is not just us warning you how bad this threshold is.
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 releasing 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 am 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 expand 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 35 years of warmings, 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 increase 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 of 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 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 because most of the natural resources available during the original Dark Age already will have been depleted, and much of the planet will be toxic. 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 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 habitat 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 near 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, 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 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 to first watch 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 a 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 identity 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 the 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, 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:
- new critical relationships and processes occurring between the climate, human, and biological systems,
- new qualifying and conditioning climate, human, and biological contexts, and finally,
- 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 used to quantify the many risks and hazards of asteroids of different sizes hitting the earth.
2. The DEFCON 5-1 levels used by the U.S. government and military regarding preparedness for nuclear or conventional war. And,
3. The current US Homeland Security Advisory System.
Here are the three risk analysis and how they are used to rate the six phases of the Climageddon Scenario:
1. The Torino Impact Hazard 0-10 Scale used to quantify the many risks and hazards of asteroids of different sizes hitting the earth. (The Torino Scale goes from 0 to 10, where a 0 rating is no hazard or threat and a 10 is “a collision is certain, capable of causing a global climatic catastrophe that may threaten the future of civilization as we know it, whether impacting land or ocean.”)
There is a good reason to use the Torino Impact Hazard Scale with the Climageddon Scenario. Depending upon what phase of the scenario we enter, how we adapt to the threat may be uncannily similar to how we might adapt to survive impacts of ever-increasing asteroid sizes hitting the earth in repeated waves.
For example, if we knew well in advance that a small, survivable asteroid would hit the earth, using the Torino scale threat level 3 advisories could provide enough time to relocate almost everyone from the local hazardous area of impact. If a larger but still survivable asteroid were to hit, once again using the Torino scale threat level 4 advisory, we could have time to relocate almost everyone from the larger regional area of impact.
Similar to these asteroid impact scenarios, as the escalating global warming emergency continues through the 6 Climageddon Scenario phases, it will also eventually force us to relocate first millions, then billions of people. We will relocate them first locally, then regionally, nationally, and eventually internationally to the far north or far south. But, we may be able to move only as much of the total human population as can survive in the poorer soils and shorter growing seasons of the northernmost and southernmost countries of the world (above the 45th parallel north to Canada, Russia, Scandinavia, Alaska, Iceland, and Greenland, etc), and also below the 45th parallel south like some areas on 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, 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 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.
The July 2020 Special Update on changing preparation and adaption timeframes for the global warming emergency: 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 this 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.
Please send this article to politicians and social media all over the world. Ask your politicians what they are doing to prevent the coming mass extinction of most of humanity by mid-century?
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!
Eleven critical climate change and global warming tipping points defined
Prologue
The not-for-profit Job One for Humanity organization is primarily a place focused on educating individuals and businesses on how to both survive and thrive through the soon-coming climate change and global warming catastrophes. At the end of this article, to counterbalance these highly disruptive global warming facts, you will find a link to a comprehensive four-part plan for what you can do to help manage the global warming emergency!
You will also find a link to the many surprising and significant benefits that you and humanity will acquire as we resolve the global warming challenge, opportunity, and adventure. We must not forget "that our greatest challenges are also our greatest opportunities."
If you do not understand the basics of what global warming (aka climate change,) is or how it works, we strongly advise you click here first to view some basic illustrations that explain it. If you are not familiar with the 20 major and worst consequences of global warming we strongly recommend you review this page first as it will deepen your understanding of how the global warming tipping points can interact with these other climate change and global warming consequences to create a global warming mass human, animal, and biological extinction scenario [aka the climate extinction emergency, Holocene extinction, sixth mass extinction event, climate crisis, climate emergency, run-away global warming,] within our lifetimes.
Introduction
"You cannot be called an alarmist if there really is something to be alarmed about." Unknown
While you are learning about key global warming tipping points, it is critically important to understand that no compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC,) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs.
This horrific failure to include crossing any global warming tipping points in our current global and national fossil fuel reduction calculations is also true for the world's most recent 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. As you will soon discover this omission of including proper calculations for crossing global warming tipping points as the world continues to warm is the recipe for mutually assured destruction.
Yes, this failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement targets is also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. In other words, our current global fossil fuel reduction calculations are based on the inconceivable belief that "everything will work perfectly within our rapidly warming climate systems all of the time and we will never crossing any key global warming tipping points." Unfortunately, the immutable laws of mathematics and physics also do not work that way, particularly as we simultaneously continue to add massively more carbon and methane to our atmosphere each year.
We all know how "everything always goes perfectly as planned all of the time" so, there's nothing really to worry about here or, is there? As you explore the key global warming tipping points described below the shocking meaning to your future wellbeing of our government's not including crossing any global warming tipping points in their calculations for how much we have to reduce our global and national fossil fuel use to prevent extinction will become much clearer to you...
Why global warming tipping points are important to your future:
- If we can determine where the global warming tipping points are, we can better predict system collapses and future catastrophes and prepare for them, as well as locate other interconnected tipping points.
- Tipping points can create highly dangerous positive feedback loops. Positive feedback loops—endless, self-reinforcing cycles can speed a global warming process so much that it will jump from a gradual, linear progression to a very steep, exponential progression or a falling off a cliff progression or complete system collapse which can lead to mass human extinction within our lifetimes.
- The global warming tipping point information disclosed below presents a grave extinction threat for humanity as well as animal and biological species.
What is a global warming tipping point?
Tipping points do not occur only within the climate. They can and will occur in almost any area of life, causing large and unexpected changes. Knowing when they're coming is essential if you do not want to be blindsided by catastrophic global warming consequences.
This document contains everything you need to know about global-warming-related tipping points. Because of the complexity of tipping points and their initiating processes, this document may be more challenging, but you do not have to understand everything about tipping points perfectly!.
By the time you finish this, you will have gleaned enough about the critical and dangerous role of global warming tipping points to understand their high potential impacts both on your present day-to-day life and your future. To make this document a bit more manageable, the most complex science has been placed just before the end along with a humorous 11-minute animation link to help you visualize important tipping points and principles.
Although this page is science-filled, it is essential reading to understand the depth of our current global warming emergency and the Climageddon Extinction Scenario global warming prediction model.
The simple definition of a global warming tipping point is:
The point where some process or new stimulus causes a sudden and significant change in the status of the ongoing process or system, causing it to jump from one state to a new, significantly different state. This sudden change is not only significant; it is often extreme!
As an example of a sudden and significant change, imagine a wine glass tipping over and going from the state of being full to empty. After the wine glass tipping point has been passed, a transition to a new state quickly occurs.
Like the falling of the wine glass, tipping points can often lead to the sudden collapse of a process. If you think about a tipping point on a graph causing a steep slope change, you will understand why knowing when tipping points will occur is so important. (See the Tipping Points Have Points of No Return graph below for what a tipping point does to the slope of a graph line.)
Tipping points are often also irreversible, comparable to wine spilling from the glass. No matter how hard you try, standing up the wine glass will not put the wine back into it. Similarly, many global warming tipping points are also irreversible or almost irreversible in any time frame relative to a human lifespan!
For example, the West Antarctic ice shelf appears to have passed its tipping point and is now in an irreversible melting process. Once escalating global warming is finally ended, it may take tens of thousands of years to restore that ice shelf—if it ever could even happen.
Points of no return
Before a tipping point is reached, there is another key milestone in the process. It is the point of irreversible process momentum toward that tipping point, or what is commonly known as the point of no return. In simple mechanical systems like in the wine glass example, the point of no return can occur very close to the actual tipping point. Even though the point of no return may be close to its tipping point, the two are separate parts of the tipping point process.
In complex climate, human, biological or geological systems, the point of no return can occur long before the actual tipping point. This is because global warming and our climate are complex adaptive systems. The developmental processes that eventually trigger a tipping point usually involve many factors and many processes beyond a single mechanical balance point or a simple mechanical falling process as in the wine glass spilling example. (If you're curious, at the end of this document you will find a section that provides more information about the complex qualities and nature of complex adaptive systems).
In the wine glass example, the point of no return is the moment of directional motion and momentum where the forward-falling glass is no longer able to teeter backward and maintain or return to its original upright position and stability. In the wine glass tipping scenario, the point of no return is quite visible. Once it falls past this last balancing point of still reversible direction and momentum and crosses its point of no return, it can no longer stop itself from falling further and crossing the wine glass’s last balancing point, thus irreversibly tipping and spilling the wine out of the glass.
By contrast, global warming points of no return tend to be largely invisible—i.e., irreversible fates are set in motion before we know they are happening. However, if you can determine the point of no return for any global warming tipping point, you can “buy” yourself critical forecasting capabilities that can give you some warning for approximately when that tipping point will be crossed. Being aware of global warming process points of no return will be extremely useful in preparing for and predicting global warming tipping points and catastrophes.
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
There are many global warming system and subsystem tipping points within the climate, human, and biological systems. The key process that directly or indirectly causes the global warming tipping points to be crossed is increasing heat, as is implied in the term global warming.
When global warming tipping points are crossed, one or more of them can trigger processes leading to:
- sudden large-scale catastrophes in climate, human, and biological systems,
- irreversible global warming,
- irreversible climate destabilization, and/or
- extinction-level climate destabilization.
The major global warming tipping points (other than increasing temperature,) within the interacting climate, human, and biological systems are:
- The total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor is the gaseous state of water. It is the most important natural greenhouse gas. When it condenses onto a surface, a net warming occurs on that surface. In the atmosphere, water vapor increases as heat increases. Increased heat evaporates more water from oceans, lakes, and rivers, which creates more water vapor and heat in an endless self-reinforcing cycle—another positive feedback loop. At some point, this positive feedback loop triggers a tipping point, and the process goes from a gradual linear heat producing progression into a steeper exponential progression. The result is that the average global temperature increases even faster. Humans cannot survive if the air is too moist and hot, which would happen for the majority of human populations if global temperatures rise by 11–12 °C, as land masses warm faster than the global average.
-
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).
-
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.
-
The release of methane from the warming of polar permafrost and tundra. As the temperature continues to increase, a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop triggers a permafrost and tundra methane release tipping point, leading eventually to the exponential progression mentioned before. This could be a very critical tipping point because methane produces 20 to 100 times the heat-creating effect in the atmosphere as compared to carbon dioxide. This increased methane within our atmosphere will also remain there from three years to decades before it decays back into simple carbon. To emphasize how dangerous this is for our future, in February 2013, scientists using radiometric dating techniques on Russian cave formations to measure melting rates warned that a 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) global rise in temperature compared to pre-industrial levels was enough to start a general permafrost melt. (From David Spratt’s Climate Reality Check). We are almost at 1.5° Celsius right now, and even higher temperatures are inevitable. Please also note that melting permafrost in tundra also has the potential to cause local and global pandemics caused by ancient viruses and bacteria being released from the permafrost. Already in Siberia, they have had anthrax and smallpox outbreaks because of melting permafrost and tundra.
-
The die-offs of carbon-eating and oxygen-producing sea plankton because of the warming, carbonization, and acidification of the oceans. As this continues to intensify, it also creates a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop, which triggers a tipping point, and the die-off process goes from a gradual linear progression into a steeper exponential progression. This results in sudden and rapidly increasing die-offs in the ocean fish populations that live on this plankton, as well as sudden and rapidly increasing drop-offs in the ocean’s oxygen-producing capabilities. (Oxygen-producing plankton are critical to our future. They produce 50% - 80% of the world’s total oxygen supply).
-
The ever-increasing atmospheric heat captured and stored by the oceans and sent to lower levels of the ocean. These captured and stored masses of deep warm water can suddenly rise to the surface again. This will release a massive amount of additional heat directly into the atmosphere and quickly spike the average global temperature.
- 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.
- 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.
- The changes in major ocean currents that help to stabilize our weather and seasons. Research is now expanding on how increasing heat will affect currents like the North Atlantic current. Because of global warming, if the North Atlantic current were slowed down or diverted from its presently established pathway, it would create very significant changes in weather patterns, which would affect growing seasons, rain, snowfall, and temperature—all of which have strong effects on vital crop yields.
- 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.
- Total weight of rising seas and melting ice shifting. Although research is sparse in this area, it has been posited that the total massive weight change from all ice melt areas (where ice covers land masses) as well as the heating, expanding, and shifting weight effect on seas caused by global warming can move existing tectonic plates. This plate motion could cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at an unprecedented scale. If the shifting of these tectonic plates causes numerous or massive volcanic eruptions around the planet, we could also go into a volcanic winter. If the shifting of tectonic plates triggers a supervolcano-like eruption, the years that the sun would be blocked could kill off most of the human population.
There are many other known and unknown tipping points in both climate and biological systems not mentioned above. The 11 above are only the ones that are the most important and the ones we know the most about.
When you are thinking about the collective 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 which normally occur when the tipping point is crossed and then our social, economic, and political human systems will begin experiencing extreme stress. This will then also push them over there own internal tipping points.
One way this could happen is as follows. As crops fail from droughts, rain bombs, and extreme temperatures, food prices will skyrocket, populations will riot and then, law and order will break down as more people die. Eventually, the weaker countries will collapse under the weight of these internal climate catastrophes and resource conflicts.
Next, as the weaker nations collapse they will create more desperate climagees (climate migrants rushing into the stronger nations.) As this happens, the strongest nations will also experience a breakdown in law and order, and, in the later phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario, they too will experience a complete social and political breakdown.
Why understanding global warming tipping points is critical to your future
To demonstrate why understanding tipping points is so important, it is necessary to also understand the many dangers found within the complex interactions, processes, and consequences of the global warming tipping points. When you understand these additional dangers, you will also understand how the phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario build upon each other.
Overview of the biggest dangers of global warming tipping points:
-
Exponential expansion: Once a tipping point is crossed, its consequences will cease progressing in a steady, gradual, and linear way (1, 2. 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) and will typically shift into a steep, nonlinear, exponential progression (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024). Notably, one of the hardest things for individuals to do is visualize real-life scenarios of the difference in results between a linear and an exponential progression. Using the sample above, in just the 10 linear steps, the last linear progression number noted is 10. That is about 100 times less than the last and 10th step of the above sample exponential
-
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).
-
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.)
-
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.).
-
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.
-
Crossed tipping points can have both linear cause-and-effect relationships as well as dangerous and currently unpredictable nonlinear cause-and-effect relationships. These nonlinear relationships can occur between global warming tipping points and human and biological system tipping points (economy, politics, mass species die-offs, war, and conflict) as well as within and between any other part of the climate system and its subsystems. The presence of counter-intuitive, nonlinear tipping point, and system relationships mean that causes and effects within the climate and global warming systems and subsystems are sometimes not logically connected, clear, or predictable. This means that within a complex adaptive system like global warming and the climate, an area that happens to be a part of its system or its subsystems can create an effect in some other completely different system or subsystem where there seems to be no apparent cause and effect relationship between the two systems or subsystems. The huge danger here is that if a global warming tipping point triggers a nonlinear reaction in another climate or human system or subsystem, we could quickly find ourselves caught in a catastrophic situation without ever being able to predict it or prepare for it.
A complex adaptive system such as the climate reacts with its subsystems in both predictable and unpredictable ways. In the illustration above, an action X in system A causes the obvious linear effect Y in system B, but it can also cause a seemingly unconnected nonlinear XY reaction in system C. It is this nonlinear unpredictability in other interconnected and interdependent systems which also should cause us great concern as we add more fossil fuel carbon to the atmosphere.
-
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.
-
Invisible momentum and inertia factors: It's important to understand the technical meaning of momentum and inertia to understand their important relationship to global warming tipping points. In classical mechanics, momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. For example, a heavy truck moving rapidly has momentum—it takes a large or prolonged force (generally an engine and fuel) to get the truck up to speed, and it also takes a large or prolonged force to bring it to a stop afterward (brakes). If the truck were lighter or moving more slowly, it would have less momentum and it would take less force to get it moving or to stop it.
Inertia is defined as the resistance of any physical object to any change in its state of motion (this includes changes to its speed, direction, or state of rest). It is the tendency of objects to keep moving in a straight line at a constant velocity or to stay in the state they are in.
Global warming tipping points can have inherent momentum and/or inertia factors within their processes. These two factors can cause either a time accelerator—pushing a process over a tipping point faster, or a time delay—helping to prevent a process from going over a tipping point.
Including both momentum and inertia factors is critical to the accurate prediction of global warming, climate, human, and biological systems outcomes. For example, the momentum or inertia factors in global warming tipping points for ocean heat capture or release are regulated by atmospheric heat. Oceans take up and release atmospheric heat very slowly, and they pass that heat to deep ocean layers slowly. There is an inertia-related time lag due to that slow absorption rate. This is due to the ocean’s pre-existing water temperature. It also has inertia-related time lag as it seeks to maintain its current temperature by changing slowly.
There is also a momentum factor for how the ocean eventually releases its previously captured atmospheric heat back into the atmosphere, which would once again spike average global temperatures. It appears that once deep warm water is released, it builds its own momentum, eventually rising to the surface and then quickly releasing its heat. Once a certain temperature or set of conditions is triggered, nothing will stop this inherent momentum from the rising of the warmer water from deep ocean layers.
- 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.
- No compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC,) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs. This failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the critical national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement targets is also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. This means we are using the wrong needed fossil fuel reduction calculations to save us from extinction within our lifetimes.
Now that you understand what the main tipping points are and their dangers to our future, there are other essential facts about tipping points important to know.
What is a keystone tipping point
There is a uniquely important type of tipping point relevant to global warming and the climate. It is called a keystone tipping point.
If you have seen a Roman architectural arch, you already know a little about what a keystone is. It is the central, usually triangular-shaped stone at the top center of the arch. It is also the critical supporting stone that holds all the other stones in place and maintains the integrity and strength of the arch.
If you pull a keystone out of a Roman arch, the whole arch immediately crumbles and completely falls in on itself. Like the keystone in the Roman arch, if we cross any keystone global warming tipping point, all dependent or interconnected global warming systems and subsystems can also begin collapsing faster than we can be prepared for or recover from. If we cross any currently unknown or known keystone tipping point, every projected time frame relating to global warming consequences would suddenly and radically change for the worse. Consequences that were predicted to be many decades away could now become just one or two decades away or less.
You're probably curious about which of the previously mentioned global warming tipping points are keystone tipping points. The difficult truth is that increasing heat itself, as well as all of the previously mentioned tipping points (except the pandemic tipping point caused by melting ice and permafrost), could become keystone tipping points. The painful truth is that if the conditions surrounding any global warming tipping point worsen enough, it could act as and become a keystone tipping point, which could ignite a cascading meltdown and triggering of multiple other tipping points, leading to sudden and catastrophic results.
A keystone tipping point will also be the most likely trigger and/or deepen the irreversible global warming process
Irreversible global warming (aka runaway climate change or the runaway greenhouse effect) is defined by its processes and what will happen after we cross any keystone tipping point (or we cross multiple important tipping points, which will cumulatively act like a keystone tipping point). The crossed irreversible global warming tipping point then causes the global climate to dramatically change—this is the climate destabilization process in action. But, keep in mind that irreversible climate destabilization and irreversible global warming are different things. Irreversible global warming can also be caused by many other factors working together as discussed here.
Warning signs that a tipping point may soon be crossed
Many times, just before a tipping point is crossed and crashes, it experiences a period of increasing oscillations, “flipping” more rapidly from one state to another. Not only does it oscillate from one state to another 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 type of intensified oscillation pattern occurring, whether it's in climate or biological systems or the stock market, it is the harbinger of big changes.
In general, the further up the local, regional, national, or global climate that climate, human, or biological systems or subsystems are:
- oscillating,
- tipping points are being crossed, or
- extreme weather problems are expanding,
the more trouble we are in! If the global climate is oscillating more frequently and severely, we are in a lot more trouble than if it is only our local climate that is oscillating similarly. Additionally, smaller systems and subsystems will move to a state of chaos more readily than larger systems and subsystems due to smaller systems and subsystems usually having less inertia to resist the change.
Which global warming tipping points will most likely be crossed first
While it is difficult to set specific dates for crossing a tipping point, in general, the melting of sea and glacial ice around the world—particularly in the polar regions—appears to be the tipping point area of greatest immediacy and concern. There are a few key reasons for this:
- At the far north and far south, global warming has seen double the temperature increases as compared to increased temperatures elsewhere on the planet.
- Ice melting directly or indirectly links to other critical tipping points: the albedo effect, methane releases from melting permafrost and tundra, changes in ocean currents, deep and surface-level ocean temperature increases, die-offs in ocean life, and potential pandemics caused by ancient viruses and bacteria being released from the permafrost.
From the above list of tipping points, shrinking sea ice will cause massive ice shelves in Antarctica and Greenland (that are held in place by the surrounding sea ice,) to quickly slide off the land they sit on and into the sea. This could be one of the two biggest sudden shocker tipping points that hit us far harder than we are planning for regarding our rising sea level.
This is because melting sea ice (icebergs) already floating in the sea does not raise sea level. But on the other hand, massive ice shelves currently sitting on land in Antarctica and Greenland which then slides into the sea can raise sea levels far faster as well as far more than we are prepared for.
Several times in earth's history massive ice shelves have quickly slid off Greenland because the melted floating sea ice which had previously buttressed it up had melted. This sudden sliding of the ice shelf into the sea raised sea level by as much as 3-10 feet in as little as a decade or two. Imagine what would happen to any coastal cities in the world with sea level rising 3 to 10 feet in as little as a decade or two. What kind of economic, political, and social chaos would result from such a sudden sea-level rise across all of our global coastal areas?
Right now the sea ice surrounding many of the largest ice shelves in the world is melting at unprecedented rates. At just our current carbon levels, the stability of the bellwether West Antarctic ice sheet has already been breached and this ice loss is now irreversible. This rapidly melting West Antarctic ice sheet is an excellent example of another great global warming consequence evolving into a global warming tipping point that the world has hurdled past far faster than anyone had predicted or foreseen.
The most likely major tipping point to be crossed and worsen
There is a tipping point area that is the most likely first candidate to significantly accelerate the beginning of the end of humanity. It is the increased melting of summer and year-round arctic polar ice due to global warming.
It will truly have profound effects not only on worldwide weather but more importantly, on lowering global crop yields and increasing global crop failures. It will cause an accelerating massive global starvation, which will then also destabilize national economics, politics, and society.
In the summer, when Arctic ice melts there is less cooling of all of the growing season areas affected anywhere by arctic weather. The more polar ice melts each year the less cooling and the more heat in and during these critical growing season areas.
To make matters worse, food crops are more sensitive to heat when there are droughts and, they are more sensitive to heat, rain bombs and cold spells when they are just beginning to grow. Unfortunately, because more ice is melting in the Arctic ocean almost every summer and staying melted longer in the year we are losing more and more critical cooling for our absolutely vital food crop growing season.
The five major food grains are the largest source of the world's food supply. They are corn, wheat, rice, soybeans, and sorghum.
All of these grains have upper and lower temperature limits. Most of them cannot survive more than 10 days during their growing season over 100° Fahrenheit particularly, if this heat comes early in their growing season or when their soils are drought dry.
Because of the continually increasing loss of the cooling effect on growing regions below the Arctic because of the continually diminishing Arctic ice, the number of growing season days with temperatures over 100° will continue increasing steadily as more and more Arctic ice melts and remains melted longer throughout the year.
This means that the world is going to experience more and larger crop reductions and failures as more polar ice melts and stays melted longer. To make matters even worse, corn is one of the largest food staples for humanity and it is also one of the most sensitive crops to increasing 100 degree plus temperatures and drought.
Reduced polar ice also reduces the albedo effect, which simply is that white snow or ice reflects heat back away from the earth and out into the atmosphere keeping the earth cooler. As more Arctic polar ice is melted the darker polar oceans absorbs the heat and then heats up more this once again, causes more global warming.
Already in the growing belt of the United States, we are seeing increased and record-breaking heat, droughts, rain bombs, and other extreme seasonal weather that is having a direct effect in reducing crop yields and crop failures in the most vulnerable areas. This pattern of greater crop yield reductions and crop failures will continue to increase as long as more polar ice disappears and the Arctic remains relatively ice-free into longer and longer summers.
The following is from Wikipedia:
“Since 1979, the minimum annual area of sea ice in the Arctic has dropped by about 40%, as measured each September. From sea ice models and recent satellite images, it can be expected that a sea ice-free summer will come before 2020. Models that best match historical trends project a nearly ice-free Arctic in the summer by the 2030s. However, these models do tend to underestimate the rate of sea ice loss since 2007.” (If you would like to see a video of how more polar ice is melting each summer as the years go by click here for this NASA video.)
The increasing melting of arctic polar ice is a clear warning sign of increasing global warming and future serious reductions in major future crop yields as well as serious increases in future crop failures. This means not only higher prices but ever-increasing food scarcity and increasing global starvation.
This is not something far-off in the future. It is already happening in many areas of the world.
It is also already causing major migrations. This expanding and increasing polar ice melting is a major “canary in the coal mine” for increasing future mass starvation not way off in 2100 as we have been told but in the near years and new few decades to follow.
As the process of massive crop reductions and failures expand and 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 be crossing more of the tipping points listed above will get shorter. But that will not be the only significant effect of melting Arctic ice due to global warming.
Because melting Arctic ice also affects and disrupts the jet stream and ocean currents like the Gulf Stream, you will also have radical and unseasonable cold spells appearing during the prime crop growing seasons around the world. This will also reduce food yields and produce more crop failures during the fragile growing season. Paradoxically, according to new studies, you will also have more extreme cold and heavier snows during the US winters because of ongoing disruptions caused by the continual annual expanding melting of Arctic polar ice.
Regarding the above two sections, this melting-ice-related cluster of interconnected and interdependent tipping points alone and of itself can usher in the end of humanity or hell on Earth. The next group of tipping points to monitor would be the total global water vapor levels and the carbon-releasing and carbon-eating condition of trees and soils. The last and slowest developing risk will be from increased earthquakes and volcanoes due to changing glacier-related weight over the Earth's tectonic plates.
More detailed time estimates on when we will cross more climate, human and biological systems tipping points will be found in the Climageddon Extinction Scenario by clicking here. Estimates for exactly when we will cross the many global warming tipping points will continuously evolve as new research is released.
In general, if temperatures continue rising, the time frames in which we will be crossing more tipping points will get shorter. (There is an easy way to educate yourself about this as new global warming research comes out that can and will affect you, your business, and nation. If you have not done so already, sign up for the Global Warming blog RSS feed by clicking here. By doing so, you will automatically receive a monthly email update with the latest news on national and international global warming reduction successes and losses.)
The carbon levels we should be most concerned about
Above and beyond keystone tipping points, there is another important danger level. It exists as a collection of crossed tipping points.
"Monthly Keeling Curving CO2 Widget” courtesy of Show. Earth56
A dangerous collective juncture of several crossed tipping points from different areas of the climate system interacting with each other is highly probable once we reach the carbon 425-450 ppm level. This danger level aligns with climate researcher James Hansen’s statements that even a carbon 450 ppm level (which will occur in about 10-15 years at present carbon pollution rates) would eventually correspond to an average global temperature increase of 6° Celsius (10.8° Fahrenheit) in this century and the end of human civilization as we’ve come to know it.57
Which other global warming tipping points are likely to be crossed in the near future
New research and evidence suggest that more systems and subsystems within the interconnected and interdependent climate system may be heading toward global warming tipping points or experiencing worrisome qualitative change toward their points of no return. These global warming-related climate systems include:
- accelerating ice mass loss from Antarctic ice shelves and the vulnerability of East Antarctic glaciers;
- the vulnerability of Arctic permafrost exemplified in part by the proliferation of Siberian methane craters;
- declining carbon efficiency of the Amazon forests and other carbon sinks (oceans, soils etc;) and
- the slowing of the major sea current known as the Atlantic conveyor, likely as a result of cumulative and significantly increased global warming.
In late 2015, a chilling report58 released by the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative warned that the 2015 Paris commitments from the IPCC conference:
“... will not prevent our ‘crossing into the zone of irreversible thresholds’ in our polar and mountain glacier regions, and that crossing these boundaries may result in processes that cannot be halted unless temperatures return to levels below pre-industrial.”
And in a similar vein, the Climate Reality Check stated:
“To put it most bluntly, only a new ‘Little Ice Age’ may re-establish some of today’s mountain glaciers and their reliable water resources for millions of people; or halt melting polar ice sheets that, once started, irrevocably would set the world on course to an ultimate sea-level rise of between 4–10 meters or more...some of these cryosphere thresholds, including potential fisheries and ecosystem loss from polar ocean acidification, cannot be reversed at all.” —From David Spratt’s Climate Reality Check.59
Crossing more global warming tipping points is not going to happen far off in the future. It is happening right now!
How global warming tipping points are unfolding
What we do know is that:
- We are already crossing important tipping points in the Arctic and Antarctic regions.
- 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.
- Unknowingly, we may have already crossed key global warming tipping points or points of no return.
- 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:
- 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.
- Which specific global warming tipping point will act as the keystone tipping point that will trigger many other tipping points, deepen other already out of control global warming process, and set off the critical end-of-the-world Climageddon Extinction Scenario last phases.
A special atmospheric carbon ppm zone that acts as a tipping point
Steadily rising temperatures will feed and accelerate the processes of crossing more points of no return, positive feedback loops and global warming, climate, human, and biological system tipping points pushing us ever closer to dangerous carbon 425 to 450 ppm range. This range is found in later phase 1 of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario.
The probability of maintaining only a gradually increasing average global temperature after reaching this carbon PPM range without random tipping point-related temperature spikes is highly unlikely (less than 10-20%.) This is because as the temperature goes up the probability of crossing more tipping points goes up as well.
It is important to keep in mind that as we continue crossing more global warming tipping points, the 20 worst global warming consequences and the consequences of the tipping points themselves will of themselves continue to increase in severity, frequency, and scale. This is again in summary, because:
1. The points of no return before a tipping point is crossed as well as the crossed tipping point itself, create "slippery" conditions where it becomes far easier for that condition or consequence to worsen far more quickly and at a far steeper gradient.
2. tipping points when crossed create sudden and extremely difficult to recover from steep drop-offs or complete system crashes,
3. any positive feedback loop contained within the tipping point processes will also significantly amplify either the positive or negative consequences of that tipping point, and
4. a crossed tipping point within a system or subsystem tends to push other tipping points over their tipping points in the subsystems or systems associated with or interconnected to the original tipping point.
Unless we make the required radical global fossil fuel reductions found here, it is also unlikely that:
1. we will be able to maintain the previous average annual increase of only carbon 3 ppm. (In part it will probably go higher because of the Earth's population soaring to 9 billion, causing our estimated energy needs to skyrocket by 40% as more of the world’s population enters into the middle class.) And, most importantly
2.) because of our fossil fuel burning momentum and human system inertias, once we hit the 425 to 450 carbon PPM range we will not be able to keep from rapidly sliding down a much steeper and even more slippery slope into and through the other 5 following Climageddon Extinction Scenario phases.
At the 425 to 450 carbon ppm range, there will be so much climate system momentum from previously committed carbon and other greenhouse gas pollution of our atmosphere towards moving quickly to even higher temperatures, that stopping this momentum will be like trying to stop a gigantic boulder from rolling faster and faster down a hill that keeps getting steeper and steeper.
The terrifying thought that is completely real and critical for you to burn into your brain is that most of humanity will die by mid-century, but our ability to have any real or meaningful control over this looming emergency ends around about 2025 sometime after we enter the carbon 425-450 ppm range. But, this will only occur if we fail to successfully execute these global fossil fuel reductions.
And in case you're still thinking technology will save us at the last minute, no new carbon removal technologies (that we call magical carbon sucking unicorns,) will be able to save us in time because even those who believe they might save us are projecting that they will not even be available at the earliest until sometime after 2050. This will be long after the damage is done and long after anything can be done for the billions of people who will suffer and die!
Because of the preceding, we have no other rational alternative other than to prevent ever crossing into this highly dangerous transitional carbon 425-450 ppm range and tipping point, at which our current rate of greenhouse gas pollution will begin sometime around 2025.
Do you still have doubts if the 425 to 450 carbon ppm range safe? Here is some other research that while we feel that it still suffers from politicizing underestimation errors and lack of factoring in the crossing of any tipping points, it is still worth reviewing so you know it is not just us warning you how bad this threshold is.
“The OECD Environmental Outlook to 2050: Key Findings on Climate Change” summarizes predictions by climate scientists’ models: we have a 50% chance of stabilizing the average global temperature at a 2°C increase over the pre-industrial period if we keep concentrations of CO2 under 450 ppm. A November 2013 report by PwC, Busting the carbon Budget, says that at our current rate of fossil fuel usage in the global economy, we will exceed that limit by 2034.
Click here to learn more about how another 10 climate scientists view the serious dangers of crossing the 425 to 450 carbon ppm range.
Our exponential exposure and vulnerability as we cross more global warming tipping points
Crossing any global warming tipping point creates an extreme vulnerability and exposure because the danger is neither singular nor constant. It is not a singular threat because, at a minimum, many tipping points and points of no return reside within the climate, human, and biological systems and subsystems—any of which could be crossed and feedback into other interconnected systems or subsystems, triggering a cascading meltdown of more crossed global warming tipping points across more and more systems.
There is not just the threat of a single keystone tipping point. There are potentially many tipping points that, if collectively crossed, could act as a keystone tipping point and lead to the final phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario. Crossing tipping points is also not a linear steady threat. With each rising degree of average global temperature, the threat, vulnerability, and exposure boils and rises exponentially! See the boiling pot illustration below.
Our estimated risk level for going over more global warming tipping points
To better evaluate risk, let’s first put the scope and intensity of the irreversible global warming risk in a comparative context. From the standpoint of total cumulative harm to be wreaked, consider that a 40% risk for a series of global warming millennial superstorms costing $1 trillion each actually presents a comparatively smaller risk of harm than a 1/100th of 1% risk of irreversible global warming with its end-of-the-world consequences. Yes, this means that a 40% risk of millennial superstorms poses far less of a risk of destructive consequences than a 1/100th of 1% risk of irreversible global warming.
We’ve already experienced global warming-related extreme storms and know the damage and havoc they leave in their wake. What we are seeing now pales in comparison to irreversible global warming’s full potential for global destruction and chaos. This helps put the enormity of risk into a comparative perspective, which helps drive home how utterly serious and urgent the global warming emergency is.
To further help quantify this global warming tipping point risk level, now consider that one of our most respected climate scientists, Michael Mann, has estimated the current risk level for going over a global warming tipping point at not 1/100th of 1%, not 1%, but at approximately 10%!60 If one of our best climate scientists has set a 10% risk level for us crossing more global warming tipping points, how should you begin to think about this level of risk to your future? (Keep in mind that any global warming tipping point also has the potential to become a keystone tipping point).
It’s reasonable to suppose the nations of the world would not allow even a fraction of 1% of a risk level for global thermonuclear war to go less than 100% managed and controlled. So how should we be managing our tipping point risks? How can we rationally continue to allow a 10% risk level of crossing more global warming tipping points to still go unmanaged when it can quickly lead directly to the extinction of humanity and the end of civilization?
Because of the difficulty of quantifying known and unknown factors involved within developing points of no return and tipping points themselves, the risk of going over more global warming tipping points is likely much higher than 10%.
Understanding the many unique dangers of global warming and crossing its tipping points is critical to your future quality of life. Once you understand tipping point risks are real and how they work, you are hopefully more likely to use the information in this document for managing them.
More about out of control global warming, climate destabilization, and tipping points
Global warming causes climate destabilization, but climate destabilization can also cause global warming. These processes can work both ways. For example, already destabilized burned forests and acidified oceans can’t absorb as much carbon. Because they cannot absorb as much carbon, more carbon stays in the atmosphere, causing more global warming heat.
There are also hopeful transition points between the processes of deepening irreversible global warming and the levels of climate destabilization. Climate destabilization transforms into irreversible warming only if there is a cascading meltdown of many tipping points, or a keystone tipping point is crossed.
Why and how we will go extinct. The four most critical levels of global warming tipping points that we will cross in our near future.
Below are the four most important global warming tipping point levels within our complex climate system, which will involve interacting climate, biological and human systems, and subsystems. Those four tipping point levels are:
1. The 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 total extinction event. This is because of our average global temperatures rising so high that Earth's atmosphere is ripped off into space and everything dies.)
You now have a very good understanding of tipping points, but there is one more very important thing to know about how they will unfold and when. Before you continue to read the following tipping point conclusion sections on this page, we strongly recommend to first read our four most important global warming tipping point levels page. As you read about these four major global warming tipping point levels and when they will occur, our current extreme extinction threat will become far more vividly true, frighteningly real, and fully understandable to you.
This critical tipping point levels page also contains the four most critical reasons why we have only about 6 years left (until about 2025,) to slow down a now unavoidable mass extinction process as well as our crossing the total extinction-accelerting global warming tipping points.
(This tipping point levels page is the single most important and regularly updated page on our website! You will not regret taking the time to read it now before continuing.)
Your preparedness, survival and the speed of crossing more global warming tipping points
Something important to remember is that as we cross more and more global warming tipping points, the worst global warming consequences will increase faster and faster. They will not grow gradually and linearly. They will grow exponentially over time. (In the graph below the red line is an example of a linear gradual growth trajectory and the red line is an example of exponential growth curve and trajectory.)
The exponential growth of global warming consequences after we cross the four levels of tipping points discussed above means that few people or governments will be able to stay up with these escalating consequences for very long, but only if we do not come very close to hitting the 2025 global fossil fuel reduction targets. It also means that unless you have made emergency preparations and adaptations, and/or have migrated (where necessary) well before these four levels of tipping points are crossed, you will probably not have the time to do so later as things get worse faster and faster.
This is because the social, economic and political systems will become more and more unstable and chaotic faster and faster as crossing more global warming tipping points pushes us into a steeper and steeper exponential curve (the green line above) of increasing severity, frequency and scale in our global warming consequences. If you have not prepared well in advance for what is coming, you will find yourself in a living hell!
One more tipping point super-shocker
You will be shocked by how dangerously global warming tipping points are being mishandled and consequently hidden by the world’s recognized authority on the climate. Click here for more information on this.
What to never forget about the danger of crossed tipping points
As we continue crossing more global warming tipping points, the 20 worst global warming consequences and the consequences of the tipping points themselves will continue to increase in severity, frequency, and scale. This is because:
1. The points of no return before a tipping point is crossed as well as the crossed tipping point itself, create "slippery" conditions where it becomes far easier for that condition or consequence to worsen far more quickly and at a far steeper gradient.
2. tipping points when crossed create sudden and extremely difficult to recover from steep drop-offs or complete system crashes,
3. any positive feedback loop contained within the tipping point processes will also significantly amplify either the positive or negative consequences of that tipping point, and
4. a crossed tipping point within a system or subsystem tends to push other tipping points over their tipping points in the subsystems or systems associated with or interconnected to the original tipping point.
There are also important "outside" non-global warming global challenges and contextual factors that directly or indirectly will interact with the global warming tipping points to significantly worsen them
The many tipping points of global warming do not take place in a vacuum. They take place within a global context in which there area 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.
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, 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 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.
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:
- the nature of the global climate,
- the processes of climate destabilization,
- how human, climate and biological systems might react, and
- global warming as a complex adaptive system.
Envisioning how complex adaptive systems interact with each other through their many interconnections, interdependencies, nonlinear processes, and contexts, relationships, and transformations is indeed challenging.
To illustrate this challenge, imagine each global warming subsystem within the master climate system as a tangle of cooked spaghetti. Now imagine several such tangles of spaghetti interconnected by most of their strands. Sorting out what the connections are would be quite the challenge, yes?
Although that's not the best image for the overall complexity and interconnectedness of global warming, the climate, and our human and biological systems and subsystems, it will at least open the door to envisioning the research and prediction challenges climate scientists face. In spite of this inherent complexity, it is well worth the extra effort to understand the context and principles behind these relationships, processes, and transformations within global warming processes, the climate, and our human and biological systems and subsystems.
To better grasp the nature of this “spaghetti,” it is useful to understand global warming, the climate, and human and biological systems as complex adaptive systems.
Complex adaptive systems by nature:
- Are complex (multifaceted, multilayered, etc.)
- 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).
-
Evolve and adapt (they can respond with both reactive and adaptive changes as needed to maintain internal balance and system integrity and stability).
-
Contain elements of spontaneous emergence (something coming into being that was not predicted or completely unpredictable).
-
Can contain tipping points (points of sudden significant change or collapse).
-
Can contain points of no return (where the momentum of some process will sooner or later trigger the tipping point).
-
Contain linear and nonlinear cause-and-effect relationships between the various parts of the system and its subsystems.
- 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
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.
Summary
- Crossed tipping points can cause sudden and unpredictable severe changes and immediate or complete system crash or collapse.
- Crossing global warming tipping points is not as rare as the fossil fuel industry would like you to believe. We have already crossed several global warming tipping points and it is likely we will cross more.
- In general, when a tipping point is crossed, unpredictability increases along with the speed of change. Our ability to control the disruption of a tipping point and reverse it drops radically as the system tumbles towards collapse.
- Once a point of no return is crossed, it is just a matter of time before its tipping point is crossed.
- Because the climate and global warming are complex adaptive systems, when any global warming tipping point is crossed, it makes it significantly more likely that more tipping points will also be crossed in interconnected or interdependent systems or subsystems.
- Because of inherent pre-existing momentum or inertia factors within one or more of the global warming tipping points, and the possibility that points of no return have already been crossed, we may have already crossed more of the global warming tipping points and be inevitably locked into crossing even more tipping points no matter what we do.
- At this point, at the least what we must do is prevent our crossing any keystone tipping point, which would deepen irreversible global warming and the later stages of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario.
- Any global warming remedial plan based on everything going perfectly will become the perfect plan for failure.
- The most important process that directly or indirectly causes global warming tipping points to be crossed is increasing heat.
- Humanity successfully survived the first great evolutionary bottleneck. We have many more advantages today, which should be of help in getting us through the current emergency we are facing.
- Understanding the 11 major global warming tipping points along with the Climageddon Extinction Scenario is absolutely essential to understanding how and why 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!
What You Can Do Now!
Sign the Declare a Global Warming State of Emergency Petition
Sign up for Our Free Global Warming Blog
Start the Job One Plan to manage global warming by clicking here.
Learn how to prepare your family and business for the rapidly escalating consequences of global warming.
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.
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