Irreversible global warming may be the most practical and essential definition to know concerning irreversible climate change. You have likely seen news about more severe, frequent, and larger-scale weather driven by global warming, such as powerful hurricanes and devastating wildfires in Northern California, across the West Coast, and across Europe and Asia. Unfortunately, what you are witnessing is the early phases of irreversible global warming, defined below.
No one wants to hear very bad news about climate change. But sometimes it’s necessary to manage the situation and get to the good news. You are about to get some bad news about the current state of global warming and its level of irreversibility, but the good news is that there is still hope and work to be done to protect your well-being and humanity’s future.
What exactly is irreversible global warming?
Irreversible global warming is created by and driven by:
a. rising greenhouse gases (carbon, methane, nitrous oxide) in the atmosphere,
b. rising temperatures,
c. the crossing of additional global warming tipping points, and
d. multiple self-reinforcing positive feedback loops within the climate and its subsystems.
These factors, acting collectively and synergistically, cause the global climate to change until it reaches a new, higher temperature level that is irreversible on time scales far, far longer than the average human lifespan (centuries to thousands of years).
Irreversible global warming creates both of the following humanity-endangering consequences:
1. Earth’s average global temperature will continue to increase. The distinct, unique, and relatively stable climate state that has enabled humanity to flourish over the last 10,000 years will be progressively lost over the next several decades.
2. Many of global warming’s and climate change’s scary primary and secondary consequences will also persist for decades to potentially centuries. The time frame for sequestering (removing) the gigatons of carbon particles we have already added to our atmosphere is centuries to thousands of years. This, unfortunately, means that long after we stop polluting our atmosphere with fossil fuels, future generations will live in “Hell on Earth” and curse our selfishness and stupidity.
The three phases of irreversible global warming
It is best to think of irreversible global warming in three distinct phases. Each stage has worse consequences that will last longer, causing greater global damage.
Phase 1: According to James Hansen, the world-renowned climate scientist, we entered the first phase of irreversible global warming in 2016, when we crossed the 386 ppm threshold of atmospheric carbon. Once we crossed that threshold, we were committed to a 1.5°C increase in average global temperature over pre-industrial levels. As a reference point, 350 ppm of carbon is the level humanity needs to stay below to ensure a safe and stable climate. Before the Industrial Revolution, the average atmospheric carbon ppm was about 270.
Phase 2: Once humanity crossed into the zone of carbon 425 to about carbon 450 ppm, it entered what we call the second phase of irreversible global warming. In the second phase of irreversible global warming, we can’t stop carbon ppm levels from continuing to rise at approximately 2.7 to 3 ppm+ or more per year for at least another 30-50 years. Once we crossed that 425 ppm threshold, we were committed to a 2-2.7°C (or more) increase in average global temperature relative to pre-industrial levels.
Phase 3: Once humanity crosses the 450 ppm threshold and moves toward 500 ppm, 600 ppm, and 700 ppm and beyond, humanity is condemned to a future hell on Earth. Once we cross the 450 ppm threshold, we will be committed to an unsurvivable increase of 3 to 5 degrees C (or more) in average global temperature over pre-industrial levels for much of humanity. Worse yet, because this is the third and final phase of irreversible global warming, the average global temperature could go much higher, with some forecasts showing up to 12°C by 2100.
What does irreversible global warming mean
Due to extensive climate change research findings, gross miscalculations by global warming authorities, the worsening of average global warming temperatures, and the crossing of numerous bellwether tipping points, our organization now acknowledges and actively conveys the sobering fact that global warming has now entered a state of irreversibility. But first, we must put this horrible climate news into an appropriate context to prepare you to respond in a balanced, rational, and hope-filled way.
Although rising global warming has now reached a point of irreversibility and many of its primary and secondary consequences will last for decades to centuries, we still have a significant amount of time left (approximately 5 to 10 years, if we are very lucky, 2025-2035) to prepare, adapt, build resilience, or migrate to save ourselves and much of humanity and civilization.
Additionally, if you are not well prepared locally, in about 5 to 10 years, mass migration shifts driven by accelerating climate change, its escalating economic effects, and/or political destabilization will rapidly intensify across almost all areas of the world.
It is helpful to think about our condition of irreversible global warming, much like a slow-moving, planet-crippling-sized asteroid about 5-10 years away from colliding with Earth. It may be moving slowly, but it’s going to do a lot of damage, and only the foolish will not begin preparing for the inevitable arrival of the asteroid.
But the good news is that if we are smart and move quickly to prepare and adapt, we can still avoid or lessen the worst consequences of the coming years, thereby reducing suffering, financial losses, and deaths. That is a reasonable and rational response. Over the next 5 to 10 years (2025-2035), we can still control a good portion of the quality of our lives, far longer than those who deny, ignore, or are unaware of this disheartening, irreversible current reality of global warming.
Why have we reached our current irreversible global warming?
Unfortunately, we are already in a state of irreversible global warming because of:
a. Phase 1 and 2 of irreversible global warming have occurred because we cannot quickly transition the world from dependence on dirty fossil-fuel energy generation to clean, green energy generation during the next 25 to 50 years, not because green technology doesn’t exist, but because for the last 60 years nations, political systems, and politicians have been compromised by the wealth and multi-billion dollar disinformation and misinformation campaigns of the global fossil fuel cartel.
b. The gross miscalculations by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC).
c. Our governments have continuously failed to act effectively to either slow or reverse global warming. This is despite 60+ years of loud and detailed warnings from credible climate scientists, verified scientific research, and 28 international conferences on how to address the global warming emergency. Politicians across the world who have accepted large amounts of fossil fuel money have been the primary obstacle to beginning rational global reductions in fossil fuel use that would save not just future generations but also their own children and their own later lives from untold suffering.
d. The reality of the minimum time needed to convert all global fossil fuel energy generation systems to green energy generation systems (currently about 35-50 years).
e. We have crossed many known and unknown global warming tipping points over the last 30 + years within relevant climate systems and subsystems. This process invariably condemns us to continue crossing even more dangerous known and unknown global warming tipping points at ever-faster rates, year after year, as we attempt to transition to green energy systems and eliminate almost all fossil fuel use over the next 30-50 years.
Understanding fossil fuel carbon (CO2) pollution of our atmosphere is essential to understanding the irreversible impacts of global warming.
Viewing atmospheric carbon ppm measurements is the single best way to see both current and future global warming trends. Due to the laws of physics, if carbon continues to rise in the atmosphere, heat will increase. Despite what you may hear in the media, we are not making sufficient progress in reducing atmospheric carbon.
It is already terrible, and it is going to get much worse.
There are also minor monthly variations in carbon ppm levels, as well as cyclical weather variations driven by phenomena such as El Niño and La Niña. Despite such variations, the clearly dominant trend over the last 70 years is that carbon ppm is rising at an increasingly rapid rate.
At these current carbon levels, the stability of the bellwether West Antarctic ice sheet has already been breached and is now also irreversible. (The West Antarctic ice sheet is an excellent example of another critical global warming tipping point the world has hurdled past faster than anyone had foreseen.)
At the 450 ppm carbon threshold (which we will hit in about 6-8 years or less), we will continue to cross more of the 11 critical global warming tipping points across the climate’s many systems and subsystems, but at a faster rate!
Once we cross the 500 ppm carbon threshold, all ice and glaciers on Earth will melt completely, and the oceans will eventually rise by 70 meters (230 feet). Crossing the 500 ppm carbon threshold has occurred repeatedly in Earth’s geological history.
When we crossed this carbon ppm threshold, sea level began its rise into the 70-meter (230-foot) range. At our current annual carbon-emission rates, we will reach the catastrophic 500 ppm carbon threshold in about two dozen years or less.
The initial temperature range associated with triggering irreversible global warming is an increase in the average global temperature of about 1.5° Celsius, which, unfortunately, is already beyond where we are now, given all other “already baked in” and unchangeable global warming factors.
There is no way to fix our situation–only ways to survive it
To better understand why we are already committed to irreversible global warming, it is essential to examine the concept of committed global warming in more detail. It means there is already a “baked-in” average global temperature increase of about 1.5° to 2.7° Celsius, which the Earth has or will soon hit, and that it will not change for centuries, no matter what we do.
This is due in significant part to:
a. the existing momentum of past carbon ppm already in the atmosphere,
b. the new carbon ppm per year that we will inevitably and invariably keep adding over the following 3-5 decades,
c. the already existing ocean warming,
d. the unknown crossed or soon-to-be-crossed new global warming tipping points, climate change feedback loops and,
e. the necessity of compensating mathematically for the grossly unrealistic calculations by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change based on their projections for a new “miracle technology” appearing in the second half of the 21st century for the mass removal of carbon or other greenhouse gases like methane or nitrous oxide from the atmosphere. This new “miracle technology” that will save us at the last minute is a false hope and delusional groupthink distortion of the worst kind. It steals the urgency that is required to actually face and fix the climate change emergency with effective strategies.
False promises for a nonexistent “miracle technology” that can’t save us in time
Unfortunately for us, it is this currently non-existent, earnestly wished-for “miracle technology” that the IPPC’s 2015 Paris Agreement calculations relied most heavily on to keep our future average global temperature increases below their now unattainable 2 °C target. The mathematical, scientific, and mechanical feasibility (to adequately scale up the non-existent miracle technology), as well as the unknown negative side effects of this non-existent “miracle technology,” have already been debunked by respected climate scientists like Kevin Anderson. This nonexistent new technology will not reverse our current irreversible global warming emergency, no matter how many times famous billionaire techno-optimists like Bill Gates suggest we must believe and trust that it is coming. Click here for the whole story on the bogus carbon capture schemes of Silicon Valley.
The dangers of delusional groupthink on our survival
Most unfortunately of all, instead of telling the people of the world the difficult and necessary truth that we must immediately and radically cut back on fossil fuel usage to save both ourselves and future generations, the 2015 IPCC Paris agreement instead signaled:
“Don’t worry, humanity, you don’t have to give up any of your current comforts or even make any immediate, difficult, or costly changes in your existing fossil fuel-dependent lifestyles and business practices. A nonexistent new ‘miracle technology’ will magically appear sometime after 2050, which will allow us to suck all of those bad greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and miraculously save us long after we have already gone way past any safe levels for fossil fuel emissions.”
This type of delusional groupthink and reliance upon a magical and non-existent miraculous new technology is only appropriate in children’s fairy tales—— never for vital scientific projections, particularly when those projections are the very projections which humanity and our civilization are relying upon for planning our future survival. Click here for the whole story about how climate change forecasts have been grossly underestimated using multiple methods.
Keep this bad news in perspective
Due to the onset of irreversible global warming, the processes leading to our extinction have accelerated. Despite this bad news, remember that if we can honestly face this new level of threat and act now, we still have time to prepare, adapt, and save most of humanity and its achievements. Moreover, we can also continue to live meaningful and enjoyable lives! See this page now if this blog post has upset you!
Would you like to see the dangerous rise of human-caused carbon ppm in our atmosphere from a longer historical perspective?
The following graph illustrates the potential future problems associated with our currently rising carbon dioxide and carbon ppm levels in the atmosphere, over hundreds of thousands of years. As you can see in the last part of the graph, which is broken out in the smaller yellow box to better illustrate our last 1,000 years, we have clearly entered a whole new range of increased atmospheric carbon risk and threat exposure. We have transitioned from the long-term cyclical carbon ppm highs of the Ice Age — approximately 275 ppm — to over 425 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, throughout the various Ice Age cycles, we have consistently remained below the safe level for human civilization, approximately 275 parts per million by volume (ppmv) of carbon. However, since the beginning of our use of fossil fuels, starting with the Industrial Revolution, average global temperatures have risen to levels unseen for millions of years (approximately 1.5° to 2.7° Celsius), and atmospheric carbon levels have increased to 409 ppm today.
This is very detrimental to our futures and civilization, as mentioned above, because in 8-10 years or less, the atmospheric carbon ppm is expected to reach 450 ppm. This is roughly double the previous civilization’s safe highest cyclical average during the last 400,000 years, about 275 ppm carbon.
See this page for 30+ more good reasons why runaway global heating is irreversible and already out of our control.
What can you do about this not-so-good, irreversible global warming and climate change news?
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