Irreversible global warming may be the single most important definition to know regarding your climate change future. You have likely seen news about more severe, frequent, and larger-scale weather driven by climate change 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 more bad news about climate change. But sometimes it’s necessary to manage the situation and get to the good news. You are about to receive some concerning news about the current state of global warming and its level of irreversibility. However, the good news is that there is still hope our governments will do the work to protect your well-being and humanity’s future.
What exactly is the state of irreversible global warming, and how long will it last?
Irreversible global warming is a state and condition of global warming created by and strengthened by:
a. rising greenhouse gases (carbon, methane, nitrous oxide) in the atmosphere,
b. rising temperatures,
c. the crossing of additional climate change and global warming tipping points, and
d. triggering 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).
The state of irreversible global warming creates both of the following humanity-endangering consequences:
1. It will cause the Earth’s average global temperature to 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. Additionally,
2. Many of the worst global warming and climate change primary and secondary consequences will also persist for decades to potentially centuries.
The really bad news is that the realistic time frame for sequestering (removing) the many gigatons of carbon (a dominant greenhouse gas that we have already added to our atmosphere since the industrial revolution) is now centuries to thousands of years. This, unfortunately, means that long after we stop polluting our atmosphere with burning fossil fuels, future generations will live in a “Hell on Earth” and curse our selfishness and stupidity.
The three phases of the state of irreversible global warming
Think of irreversible global warming in three distinct phases. Each stage has additional, more severe consequences that will last longer, causing greater global damage. With each phase, the unconscionable grows closer.
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 dioxide concentration was approximately 270 parts per million (ppm).
Phase 2: Once humanity crossed the threshold of carbon dioxide from approximately 425 to 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, as this is the third and final phase of irreversible global warming, the average global temperature could rise significantly, with some newer forecasts predicting an increase of up to 12°C by 2100.
With each increasing phase of irreversible global warming, the bad news is that climate change also becomes increasingly irreversible for centuries to thousands of years. If you want to dive much deeper into the science, the phased timetables, and the many life-or-death consequences of irreversible global warming, please click here.
What does the current state of irreversible global warming mean to your future?
Due to extensive new climate change research findings, the gross miscalculations by the IPCC and other global warming authorities, the increase in 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 transitional 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 phase 2 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 if appropriate to save ourselves and much of humanity and civilization as is possible. 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 will cause a lot of damage; many unprepared people will perish, and only the foolish will not begin preparing for the inevitable arrival of the asteroid.
However, the good news is that if we are smart and move quickly to prepare and adapt, we can still mitigate or minimize 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 significantly protect the quality of our lives, far longer than those who deny, ignore, or are unaware of this disheartening and irreversible current reality of global warming.
What do we have to do to end the current state of irreversible global warming?
Our current state of irreversible global warming does not have to be a permanent state, but it will be very difficult and painful to make the immediate and necessary changes to get us out of it. To do so, we must make VERY radical, immediate reductions in global fossil fuel use. There is no other solution that will work in time.
The many other solutions being proposed, without an immediate and radical reduction in global fossil fuel use, are too little, too late, with highly probable catastrophic global results. Our governments have failed to do this for 60 years, despite being aware of the long-term consequences of climate change. While we can hope that our governments will suddenly change course, it is unlikely, but there is some good news here.
Even though it’s unlikely that our governments will act in time to save us from many of the worst consequences of climate change, the radical and painful actions of Mother Nature will most probably save us from ourselves and from total extinction. It is truly disheartening when we cannot rely on our elected politicians to protect us from the ultimate threat of mass to near-total extinction. We must now depend upon the natural processes of Mother Nature to save us and restore the climate balance that has nurtured us and he development of humanity for 10,000 years. Click here to read how the evolutionary actions of Mother Nature will save us from the obscene incompetence or inaction of our politicians and governments.
Why have we reached our current, irreversible Phase 2 state of global warming?
Phases 1 and 2 of irreversible global warming have occurred because:
1. 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.
2. The gross miscalculations by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (the IPCC).
3. Our governments have also 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 worldwide who have accepted large amounts of fossil fuel money have been the primary obstacle to initiating rational global reductions in fossil fuel use, which would save not just future generations but also their own children and later lives from untold suffering.
4. 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). This is not because adequate green technology doesn’t exist!
5 We have crossed many known and unknown global warming tipping points over the last 30 + years within relevant climate systems and subsystems. This process inevitably condemns us to continue crossing even more perilous 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 nearly all fossil fuel use over the next 30-50 years.
Understanding fossil fuel carbon (CO2) pollution of our atmosphere is essential to understanding our current state of irreversible 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 reach in approximately 6-8 years or less), we will continue to cross more of the 11 critical global warming tipping points across the climate’s various systems and subsystems, but at an even 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 reach, and that it will not change for centuries, regardless of our actions. Worse yet, when we cross the 2°C range, it will be nearly impossible to prevent us from crossing the 3°C range, the 4°C range, and the 5°C range. At the 3°C range of increase in average global temperature only the strongest of current governments will remain stable. That’s how bad the consequences will be that our current state of irreversible global warming creates.
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 undermines the urgency required to address and mitigate the climate change emergency effectively.
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.
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 well out of our control.
Please 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!
What can you do to wisely manage this not-so-good, irreversible global warming and climate change news?
1. Begin our comprehensive and practical Plan B for surviving and thriving through the climate change emergency by clicking here.
2. See the positive and hopeful “big picture” of climate change in global warming the way we do by clicking here and viewing the most viewed page on our website with over 2 1/2 million views.
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