3–4°C Becomes the Gateway to a Post-Civilization Dark Age – Hansen

The only hope is a Reset from below, a horizontal revolution to destroy collapsing Capitalism and States in favour of federations of workers Cooperatives

Posted by xraymike79 on 22nd March 2025 via thefreeonline at https://wp.me/pIJl9-GqM Telegram t.me/thefreeonline/2691

James Hansen’s recent analysis paints a dire picture: 3°C by 2050 is not just plausible but probable due to underestimated feedbacks and political inertia. Crossing 2°C unleashes irreversible feedback loops that render 3°C unavoidable, even with rapid emissions cuts.

The only hope is a Reset from below, a horizontal revolution to destroy collapsing Capitalism and States in favour of federations of workers Coops, to decarbonize, restore albedo, and prepare for a destabilized climate.

Without this, Earth’s systems will push civilization beyond adaptation limits by mid-century.

Under current policies (SSP2-4.5), CO₂ likely reaches 500–550 ppm by 2050, but Hansen’s effective forcing (including feedbacks) pushes Earth’s energy imbalance closer to 600 ppm-equivalent—enough to trigger 3°C warming even before mid-century.

Current Emissions Trajectory

- CO₂ Levels (2024): ~425 ppm (pre-industrial: 280 ppm).
- Effective CO₂: ~557 ppm when factoring in albedo loss (+138 ppm equivalence).
- Annual Emissions: ~40 billion tons of CO₂/year, with no decline in fossil fuel use (oil/gas demand still rising).

Feedbacks Locking in 3°C

A. Ice Sheet Melt and Albedo Loss

- Greenland/Ice Sheets: Already losing 1.2 trillion tons/year, contributing to sea-level rise and reducing Earth’s reflectivity.
- By 2050: Ice-free Arctic summers darken oceans, adding +0.3–0.5 W/m² of absorbed solar energy (equal to ~50 ppm CO₂).
- Antarctica: Thwaites Glacier collapse accelerates, injecting freshwater into oceans, disrupting the AMOC (Atlantic circulation) by 2040–2050.

B. Permafrost Thaw

- Carbon Release: Arctic permafrost holds 1,400 gigatons of CO₂ and methane (twice atmospheric CO₂). At 2°C, thawing emits 50–100 gigatons by 2050, adding ~0.2–0.3°C to warming.
- Methane Bursts: Subsea permafrost in the East Siberian Arctic Shelf leaks methane—a greenhouse gas 84x more potent than CO₂ over 20 years.

C. Cloud Feedbacks

- Stratocumulus Clouds: Over tropical oceans, these reflective clouds thin or dissipate at ~1,200 ppm CO₂, adding +0.8°C globally.
- Earlier Impact: Hansen suggests this threshold could be crossed sooner due to combined CO₂ and albedo forcing.

Why 2°C Triggers “No Return”

At 2°C (likely 2030–2035 per Hansen):

- Greenland Tipping Point: Melt becomes unstoppable, committing to 7m sea-level rise over centuries.
- Amazon Dieback: 40–60% of rainforest transitions to savannah, releasing 90 billion tons of CO₂.
- Permafrost Carbon Bomb: Thawing becomes self-sustaining, emitting 10+ gigatons CO₂/year by 2050.

These feedbacks add ~0.5–1.0°C to warming by 2050, even if emissions stop.

Likelihood of 3°C by 2050

Factor	IPCC AR6 (2023)	Hansen et al. (2025)
Climate Sensitivity	3°C per CO₂ doubling	4.8°C per CO₂ doubling
Aerosol Cooling Loss	Partially modeled	Underestimated by ~1.0°C
2°C Threshold	~2040–2050	2030–2035
3°C by 2050	Low probability	High probability

Hansen’s Conclusion:

Current policies (SSP2-4.5) lead to 3°C by 2050 due to:

- Higher sensitivity (4.8°C vs. 3°C).
- Albedo loss equivalent to +138 ppm CO₂.
- Fast feedbacks (permafrost, ice melt) accelerating warming.

Regional Impacts at 3°C

- Heatwaves: 60+ days/year above 40°C (104°F) in Chicago, Paris, and Beijing.
- Food Collapse: 50–70% crop failures in breadbaskets like the U.S. Midwest and India.
- Water Wars: Colorado River and Nile Basin nations clash over dwindling resources.
- Mass Migration: 1–2 billion refugees from tropics and coasts.

Can We Avoid 3°C?

- Immediate Action Required:
- Phase out fossil fuels by 2040, not 2050.
- Scale carbon removal to 10+ gigatons/year (current capacity: 0.01 gigatons).
- Solar Geoengineering: Temporarily offset albedo loss via stratospheric aerosols (risky but possibly necessary).
- Current Reality: Policies remain aligned with 2.5–3.5°C by 2100, making 3°C by 2050 likely.

Conclusion

Hansen’s analysis paints a dire picture: 3°C by 2050 is not just plausible but probable due to underestimated feedbacks and political inertia.

Crossing 2°C unleashes irreversible feedback loops that render 3°C unavoidable, even with rapid emissions cuts. The only hope is a wartime-scale mobilization to decarbonize, restore albedo, and prepare for catastrophic climate destabilization.

Without this, Earth’s systems will push civilization beyond adaptation limits by mid-century.

At 3–4°C, Earth becomes a hostile planet where civilization persists only in fragmented, militarized enclaves. The transition would involve unimaginable suffering for billions, with the Global South bearing the brunt. However, humans are resilient—our species would survive, but the social, economic, and technological achievements of the past millennium would unravel.

Coastal megacities like Miami, Shanghai, and Mumbai lie half-submerged, abandoned to rising seas as governments prioritize inland fortress-cities. The tropics, once teeming with life, become uninhabitable dead zones where wet-bulb temperatures exceed 35°C for months on end, rendering outdoor labor fatal and driving billions northward.

In regions like South Asia and the Sahel, collapsed monsoon cycles and dried-up rivers ignite water wars, while failed states fracture into warlord territories battling over dwindling aquifers and arable land.

Agriculture, the bedrock of civilization, buckles under heatwaves and soil depletion. Once-fertile breadbaskets—the U.S. Midwest, India’s Gangetic Plain, China’s North Plain—yield only dust and stunted crops, triggering famines that ripple across supply chains. Global food production plummets by half, leaving 2 billion people chronically malnourished. Oceans, acidified and starved of oxygen, lose their fisheries, collapsing protein sources for 3 billion coastal inhabitants. The global economy, stripped of stability, fractures into hyper-localized survival networks: underground hydroponic farms in abandoned warehouses, black-market water traders, and solar-powered enclaves guarded by drones.

Human society splinters along stark lines of privilege and desperation. Wealthy nations like Canada and Scandinavia fortify their borders with AI-patrolled walls, preserving pockets of climate-controlled normalcy for elites. Meanwhile, equatorial regions descend into chaos, where resource scarcity fuels epidemics, child mortality soars, and ancient cultural traditions vanish.

Mass migrations—1 to 2 billion people fleeing heat, hunger, and conflict—overwhelm borders, sparking xenophobic violence and authoritarian crackdowns. Cities like Chicago and Berlin, struggling under heatwaves and infrastructure decay, ration electricity to a few hours a day, while their wealthy residents retreat into sealed, air-filtered high-rises.

Yet even in this unraveling world, glimmers of adaptation emerge. Polar regions and high-altitude zones—Siberia, Patagonia, the Tibetan Plateau—become lifeboats for humanity. Their cooler climates host starving refugee megacities. Until industrial collapse is completetechnologies like stratospheric aerosol injection and many try chaotically to stem the c9ollapse, only making things worse, contingent on global cooperation that rarely materializes.

Civilization, in any recognizable form, survives only in fractured dystopian remnants. Governance shrinks to city-states and corporate fiefdoms, while democracy vanishes under emergency decrees. Knowledge economies collapse, replaced by subsistence trades and barter systems.

The arts and sciences collapse, their progress halted by the daily scramble for survival. Humanity may survive, but as a desperate diminished species— haunted by the loss of biodiversity, cultural heritage, and the stable climate that once nurtured its rise.

This future is not yet inevitable, but it looms as the trajectory of complacency. Hansen’s work warns that every delay in slashing emissions tightens the grip of feedback loops, sealing a fate where 3–4°C becomes the gateway to a post-civilizational dark age.

The difference between survival and collapse hinges on this decade’s choices: rapid decarbonization, global equity, and a moral awakening to defend the fragile systems that sustain life. As Hansen warns: “Delay is denial.”

Posted by xraymike79 in Climate Change, Collapse of Industrial Civilization, Ecological Overshoot, Environmental Degradation

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TAGS 6th Mass Extinction, Albedo Loss, Amazon Die-Off, Antarctic Ice Melt, Anthropogenic Climate Disruption (ACD), Climate Change, Coral Die-Off, Dystopic Future, Insurance Industry Collapse, James Hansen, Megadrought, MegaFires, Sea Level Rise

Humans and our livestock and Pets are now 97% of land mammals

check it here: /mass_of_humans_vs_wild_animals_is_xkcd_correct/

Today wildlife accounts for only 3 percent of earth’s land mammals

…..”Our destruction is so familiar—so synonymous with civilization—in fact, that we tend to overlook how strange the world that we’ve made has become. For instance, it stands to reason that, until very recently, all vertebrate life on the planet was wildlife.

But astoundingly, today wildlife accounts for only 3 percent of earth’s land animals; human beings, our livestock, and our pets take up the remaining 97 percent of the biomass.

This Frankenstein biosphere is due both to the explosion of industrial agriculture and to a hollowing out of wildlife itself, which has decreased in abundance by as much as 50 percent since 1970. This cull is from both direct hunting and global-scale habitat destruction: almost half of the earth’s land has been converted to farmland.

The oceans have endured a similar transformation in only the past few decades as the industrial might developed during World War II has been trained on the seas. Each year fishing trawlers plow an area of seafloor twice the size of the continental United States, obliterating the benthos.

Gardens of corals and sponges hosting colorful sea life are reduced to furrowed, lifeless plains. What these trawlers have to show for all this destruction is the removal of up to 90 percent of all large ocean predators since 1950, including familiar staples of the dinner plate like cod, halibut, grouper, tuna, swordfish, marlin, and sharks.

Continue reading “Humans and our livestock and Pets are now 97% of land mammals”

Kew Report: Extinction of Quarter of the World’s Plants

Study reveals plant extinctions and new discoveries

New report marking first-ever assessment of global flora calls for radical action to protect world’s plants. by Nick Clark

From the threatened extinction of nearly a quarter of the world’s plants, to the Facebook discovery of an unknown giant carnivorous specimen, the first-ever evaluation of the world’s flora is complete.

It’s staggering and somehow gratifying to find that every year around 2,000 new species of plants are discovered. But it’s troublesome and deeply worrying to learn that more than 10 percent of the world’s landcover type has changed in just 10 years, mostly from forest to farmland.

The State of the World’s Plants report took 80 scientists from the prestigious laboratories and archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in west London a year to complete.

It was unveiled by Kew’s director of science, Professor Kathy Willis.

“We’ve had no end of the state of the world reports on everything from sea turtles to antibiotics,” Willis said. “But never plants.

“And I find this remarkable because plants are fundamental to the lives we lead. They underpin almost everything we know – from food, to clothing, to regulating the climate. They make living possible.”

And when you factor in how climate change appears to be turning the natural world upside down, threatening crop production and fuelling fears of food insecurity, never has the time been more apposite for such an assessment.

“Someone had to take the lead and shove plants to the top of the agenda,” Willis said.

Throughout years of domestication, traits have been bred into crops to create, say, the perfect banana or coffee plant. But these traits will not necessarily protect them from the ravages of climate change.

So the Kew scientists say we need to go back to the wild relatives of the crops and tap that pool of genetic variation.

These relatives have evolved over thousands of years and have huge climate resilience, which could then be bred back into our crops.

The problem is many of those wild populations are under considerable threat, due to deforestation and change of land use.

“We need to become global landscape planners to really understand which of the most important areas to preserve because of the plant diversity they contain,” Willis said.

Kew has a botanical pedigree second to none. It was established in 1759 and now boasts more than eight million specimens, many dating back to Victorian times.

‘Doomsday’ seed vault comes to Syria’s rescue

Among the stars are cuttings taken by Charles Darwin during his voyage on the Beagle as he gathered evidence for his seminal work On the Origin of the Species.

I examined a sheet on which was pinned the fern-like Henslovianum, browned with age but surprisingly intact, its date and place of collection painstakingly recorded – September 3, 1835, Galapagos.

Adiantum Henslovianum, part of Charles Darwin’s collection from Galapagos in 1835, is displayed in the herbarium [Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP]

Alongside lay a specimen collected by David Livingstone, another famous Victorian Briton, while on expedition in South Africa. The old, greying paper is stained, you imagine with the sweat of the man himself.

Dr Timothy Utteridge is Kew’s head of plant identification and says that such detailed records are an invaluable resource.

“We can look at a specimen taken from say, Malaysia in the 1830s and know precisely where, when and by whom it was taken,” Uttteridge said.

“We can then refer to Google Earth and see what’s there today. We might find no original trees at all – maybe a palm oil plantation instead. But it’s a good baseline to assess where we’re at today.”

Just like in Victorian times Kew still sends out botanists to far-flung corners of the Earth in search of new discoveries. And they frequently come home flush with success.

But there was that one that came from the unexpected direction of social media.

Apparently Brazilian amateur botanist Reginaldo Vasconcelos posted a photo on Facebook of a large carnivorous sundew plant in 2013, while exploring the mountains near his home.

A year later it was spotted by a plant expert, who checked it out and yes, there it was, Drosera Magnifica, a new discovery.

The wonders of the plant kingdom it seems, still have the ability to surprise, but deep within this most important element of the planet’s biodiversity, there lies a warning to humankind, which we ignore at our peril.

Underwater plants like these are among the most imperilled due to ocean acidification, pollution and climate change..

13 activists may be Britain’s 1st Climate Prisoners

These 13 People Could Become Britain’s First Climate Prisoners’

from Oil Change International en español abajo

Later this month, a judge in the UK is set to jail13 non-violent protestors who occupied one of the runways at London Heathrow in July last year.

The protest, the first ever on a Heathrow runway, lasted six hours and caused the delay or cancellation of some 25 flights.

It was carried out by activists from Plane Stupid, who are opposed to airport expansion. Continue reading “13 activists may be Britain’s 1st Climate Prisoners”

CO2-FREE FUEL REVOLUTION .. by Alex Lightman.. Ted-Talk

After 21 Conferences to ‘Fix The Climate’ we still see CO2 emissions rising and new fossil fuel prospection surging ahead. With the whole biosphere now teetering on the edge of collapse we need every tool possible to postpone disaster

Alex Lightman has challenged the oil giants, with:

his brilliant Ted-talk ‘How To Rid The US of Fossil Fuels by 2030′ see below. ,
slideshow (see below)
his presentation at the NH3 Fuel Conference : NH3, Food Security, and The Transition to Fossil Fuel Free
and his coming book “The Infinite Feast: Food Security via Clean Energy”
WATCH HERE:
NH3 part starts at minute 13.00

At last a major US ‘tech guru’ is in favour of green-NH3, the non-fossil and CO2-free fuel that has always existed, suppressed by the fossil fuel industry. We’ve been saying it for years with zero impact. all combustion motors can be run on green NH3, cutting climate destroying gases by 30% and minimizing air pollution, and saving millions of us from an agonizing death.

Continue reading “CO2-FREE FUEL REVOLUTION .. by Alex Lightman.. Ted-Talk”