Australia’s Wildlife in Peril: Climate Change Hits Hard - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points Extreme heatwaves are killing thousands of native animals Habitats are shrinking or shifting due to rising temperatures Fires and droughts are destroying ecosystems at scale Marine life, birds, frogs, and mammals are all under threat

Climate change is rapidly transforming life for animals across Australia.

Heatwaves, droughts, bushfires and rising seas are pushing wildlife beyond their limits.

From rainforests to reefs, the damage is profound and accelerating.

Without urgent action, Australia faces a future of ecological loss on an unimaginable scale.

Heatwaves Kill Without Warning

Extreme temperatures are already proving deadly.

In 2018, a single Queensland heatwave killed more than 23,000 flying foxes¹.

Birds, koalas and reptiles have been found dead beneath trees or collapsed from dehydration.

Climate-driven heat extremes are now occurring more frequently and lasting longer.

Habitats on the Move

As the climate warms, animals must move to stay within liveable temperature zones.

But in fragmented landscapes, that movement can be impossible.

In the Australian Alps, the endangered mountain pygmy-possum is running out of elevation. There’s literally nowhere colder left to go.

Rainforests are also shrinking from the edges, exposing species like tree-kangaroos to drier, more hostile conditions.

Fires and Droughts Devastate Wildlife

Climate change is making bushfires hotter, larger and more frequent.

The 2019–20 Black Summer fires affected an estimated 3 billion animals².

Koalas, gliders, wallabies and birds perished in the flames or starved afterward due to loss of food and shelter.

Recovery will take decades, if it happens at all.

Meanwhile, longer droughts are drying rivers and wetlands, threatening frogs, fish and birds that depend on reliable water sources.

Oceans in Crisis

Warming oceans are bleaching the Great Barrier Reef and displacing marine species.

Coral bleaching has now occurred in seven of the past eleven years³.

Fish are migrating southwards, disrupting entire marine food chains.

Even sea turtles are affected, with warmer sands producing mostly female hatchlings, skewing reproductive balance.

Food Chains Falling Apart

As flowering times shift, animals and insects that rely on nectar and pollen are being left behind.

Insects, the foundation of many food webs, are declining due to heat stress and drought.

This spells trouble for birds, reptiles, frogs and mammals alike.

Endangered Species on the Brink

Climate change adds new stress to already endangered species.

Frogs like the northern corroboree frog, birds like the western ground parrot, and mammals like the Leadbeater’s possum are running out of time and habitat.

Many live in niche environments that can't adapt quickly, or at all, to rising temperatures and shifting seasons.

Isolation and Inbreeding

As species become trapped in shrinking pockets of suitable habitat, genetic isolation increases.

Small, inbred populations are less resilient and less able to adapt to a changing climate.

What follows is a spiral toward extinction.

The Verdict

Australia is a global biodiversity hotspot.

But climate change is now the biggest driver of biodiversity loss.

Without dramatic cuts to emissions and large-scale habitat protection, Australia faces an extinction crisis that will define its ecological legacy.

Footnotes

1. The Guardian – Heatwaves Killed Thousands of Flying Foxes
2. WWF – 3 Billion Animals Affected by Bushfires
3. ABC News – Great Barrier Reef Suffers Mass Bleaching

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Climate Change Is Silently Tearing Apart the Web That Holds Forests Together - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

              Key Points

• Mycorrhizal fungi form vast underground networks connecting plant roots.
• These fungal networks help trees share nutrients and stress signals.
• Climate change is disrupting soil moisture and fungal health.
• Loss of fungi weakens forests and carbon storage capacity.
• Fungal biodiversity is rapidly declining under global warming.
• Underground ecosystems remain underrepresented in climate policy.

Climate change is quietly unravelling one of Earth’s most vital and hidden ecosystems.

Far beneath our feet, a web of microscopic fungal threads connects trees, grasses, and shrubs in an ancient underground network of life.

This system, known as the “Wood Wide Web”, facilitates communication, nutrient sharing, and survival across entire plant communities.

But as heatwaves intensify and soil dries out, climate change is beginning to sever these fungal lifelines.

And few people are aware it’s even happening.

What Is the Wood Wide Web?

Mycorrhizal fungi form symbiotic partnerships with over 90% of plant species by attaching to their roots and extending threadlike filaments called hyphae into the soil.

In exchange for sugars from the plant, the fungi provide water, phosphorus, nitrogen, and essential micronutrients.

These filaments also connect neighbouring plants, enabling trees to transfer nutrients to seedlings, warn each other of insect attacks, and stabilize the forest community through cooperation rather than competition¹.

This interconnected web has sustained ecosystems for hundreds of millions of years.

Climate Stress Underground

Recent studies show that fungal networks are increasingly vulnerable to shifts in temperature and rainfall.

As soil warms and dries, many mycorrhizal species decline in abundance or disappear entirely².

Droughts disrupt fungal life cycles, reduce biomass, and impair the fungi’s ability to colonise plant roots.

This weakens the flow of nutrients and communication between plants, diminishing ecosystem resilience.

Carbon Loss and Ecological Breakdown

These underground fungi also play a key role in stabilising the climate by storing carbon in the soil.

When fungal networks collapse, less carbon is sequestered, and more is released into the atmosphere³.

This feedback loop accelerates warming and further harms the networks that once protected us.

Forests without healthy fungal partners are less able to withstand disease, pests, or climate stress.

Extinction Below the Surface

A 2022 study in Nature predicted that up to 27% of mycorrhizal species could face local extinction by 2070 due to climate change⁴.

The tropics, boreal forests, and alpine zones are among the most vulnerable.

Loss of fungal biodiversity undermines forest regeneration, reduces crop productivity, and may contribute to ecosystem collapse in poorly studied regions.

New Efforts to Protect the Invisible

While climate policy has long focused on forests and oceans, underground ecosystems have been largely ignored.

That is beginning to change.

The Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN) is now mapping global fungal biodiversity and identifying conservation hotspots⁵.

Soil-sensitive agriculture, reforestation with native species, and protecting intact wilderness areas can all help preserve fungal systems.

But time is short, and public awareness remains low.

“We’re on the edge of losing something we barely understand,” said Dr. Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life.

“The forest doesn’t end at the ground — and neither should our imagination.”

Footnotes

1. Simard, S. et al. (2021). Trees communicate and share resources via mycorrhizal networks. Nature. Link
2. Treseder, K. et al. (2016). Drought reduces fungal abundance and function. Ecology Letters. Link
3. Averill, C. et al. (2014). Mycorrhizae drive soil carbon storage. Nature Communications. Link
4. Steidinger, B. et al. (2022). Climate change threatens fungal biodiversity. Nature. Link
5. Society for the Protection of Underground Networks (SPUN). (2023). Global fungal biodiversity mapping project. Link

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Chaos in the Skies: How Climate Change Is Unravelling the World’s Weather - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points Global weather systems are entering a state of instability driven by rising greenhouse gas emissions. Record heat, flooding, and wildfires are hitting multiple continents simultaneously. Australia, the USA, and Europe are facing unprecedented extremes in temperature and rainfall. Scientific attribution confirms climate change is a key driver of worsening weather events.

The weather no longer obeys its old rules.

Where there were once seasons, there is now chaos.

All across the world — from Sydney to Sicily to Seattle — the climate has turned hostile.

Behind the turmoil lies a single unifying force: a planet heating at speed.

Global Warming Unleashed

The first half of 2025 has been a showcase of weather gone mad.

Floodwaters engulfed cities in China, Germany, and Brazil, with rainfall totals exceeding historical norms by multiples.^[1]

In Australia, winter bushfires broke containment lines in Queensland while rivers in the Murray-Darling Basin dried to dust then flooded weeks later.^[2]

The United States endured tornado clusters and atmospheric rivers, while Europe staggered under a record-smashing heat dome that melted roads in Spain and sent thousands to hospitals.^[3]

Each event, once rare, now recurs with devastating frequency.

The Fingerprints of Climate Change

Scientists can now trace extreme weather to climate change with startling clarity.

Attribution studies show that many of the most catastrophic events in 2023 and 2024 would have been virtually impossible without human-induced warming.^[4]

Carbon dioxide and methane continue to trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, driving up ocean temperatures and loading the dice toward more violent storms, droughts, and floods.

Warmer oceans inject more moisture into the atmosphere, intensifying rainfall events, while melting Arctic ice disrupts jet streams that once kept weather predictable.^[5]

Australia on the Brink

Nowhere is the turmoil more visceral than in Australia.

June 2025 brought simultaneous extremes: heatwaves in the north, frost in Tasmania, and a deluge along the east coast that triggered landslides and cut off entire towns.^[6]

These are not “natural” disasters in the old sense — they are engineered by decades of fossil fuel emissions and policy inaction.

What’s coming is worse: Australia’s climate models predict a hotter, drier, stormier future unless emissions fall sharply within this decade.

A New Era of Disruption

From food systems to public health to insurance markets, no sector remains untouched.

In the US, insurers are pulling out of high-risk states like Florida and California as billion-dollar disaster payouts become unviable.^[7]

In Europe, governments are scrambling to build climate adaptation infrastructure as farmers battle both flood and drought in the same growing season.

And in the Global South, the poorest nations are being hammered hardest — despite contributing the least to the crisis.

Even global air travel is impacted as turbulence intensifies on warming flight routes.^[8]

The Path Forward

Stabilising the weather means stabilising the climate.

This requires radical emissions cuts, a just transition to renewable energy, and rapid investment in adaptation systems from flood barriers to heat-resilient housing.

It also demands honesty — that what we are seeing is not normal, not temporary, and not random.

The rules of weather have changed because we changed them.

And until that stops, the chaos will only deepen.

Footnotes

1. BBC: Record Flooding in China
2. ABC: Australia’s Weather Chaos
3. The Guardian: Europe’s Killer Heat Dome
4. World Weather Attribution Studies
5. NASA: Arctic Warming and the Jet Stream
6. SMH: Australia’s June Weather Breaks All the Rules
7. NYT: Climate Costs Collapse Insurance Markets
8. Nature: Climate Change and Flight Turbulence

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Australia’s Pacific Engagement Visa Offers Lifeline to Climate-Stricken Tuvalu - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points Australia launches Pacific Engagement Visa for climate-exposed nations Tuvalu prioritized due to severe sea-level rise threats Visa allows permanent residency for 3,000 Pacific citizens per year Focus on dignity, community, and regional responsibility

Australia’s new visa program addresses the human cost of climate change.

As seas rise and shorelines erode across the Pacific, Australia is opening its doors to some of the world’s most climate-exposed communities, beginning with Tuvalu.

In an unprecedented policy move, the Australian government has officially launched the Pacific Engagement Visa, a new migration pathway that offers permanent residency to up to 3,000 citizens annually from Pacific Island countries and Timor-Leste¹.

The initiative, announced earlier this year, is framed as a regional engagement tool, but for the people of Tuvalu, it may represent something more urgent: a plan for survival.

Tuvalu at the Forefront

Tuvalu, a low-lying nation of just nine coral atolls scattered in the Pacific Ocean, has long served as the poster child for climate vulnerability.

With most of its land less than two meters above sea level, scientists predict parts of the country could become uninhabitable within a few decades due to sea level rise, saltwater intrusion, and more intense storm surges².

“It’s no longer theoretical,” said Dr. Ineka Simeona, a climate geographer and adviser to Tuvalu’s government.

“People are seeing graves washed away.

Breadfruit trees are dying.

Families are relocating from one side of an island to another.”

The Falepili Agreement

Under the new visa scheme, Australia is prioritising Tuvalu as an initial beneficiary, a decision rooted in both geographic proximity and the Falepili Union, a 2023 treaty in which Australia pledged to support Tuvalu’s citizens if climate impacts rendered their homeland unlivable³.

The treaty guarantees access to permanent settlement in Australia, and the visa will serve as a key mechanism to fulfill that promise.

“Tuvaluans will be able to migrate with dignity, not desperation,” said Australia’s Minister for International Development and the Pacific, Pat Conroy.

“We’re creating an orderly, community-based migration model that reflects the strength of our Pacific partnerships.”

How the Visa Works

Unlike Australia’s existing seasonal worker programs, the Pacific Engagement Visa is designed to foster long-term settlement.

It uses a random ballot system to select applicants, with final eligibility depending on job offers or family ties within Australia.

The government says this helps ensure that migration remains fair and community-supported.

Global Implications

Critics, however, have questioned whether the scheme is large or fast enough to meet the growing pressures of climate displacement.

Some migration experts have noted that 3,000 places per year may fall short if climate change accelerates faster than current models predict.

“It’s a good start, but it can’t be the endgame,” said Professor George Kareiva, a climate mobility expert at the University of Auckland.

“We’re talking about entire populations at risk.”

Still, international observers have applauded the program as a rare example of proactive migration policy in a world where most governments are still debating whether climate-displaced people even qualify as refugees⁴.

Migration Before Crisis

Australia’s visa may offer a new model.

Instead of waiting for disaster, it offers families a managed path forward, often before displacement becomes a crisis.

That preemptive approach, officials argue, is not just more humane, it’s also more cost-effective.

Community at the Centre

At the heart of the new program is a commitment to community cohesion.

By requiring social or employment ties for visa applicants, the government aims to avoid the isolation experienced by many temporary workers under previous systems.

It’s a lesson learned from decades of Pacific labour migration.

Not Just Policy: A Promise

For Tuvaluans like Mele Amasone, whose family has lived for generations in the village of Funafuti, the policy offers bittersweet hope.

“We never wanted to leave,” she said in a phone interview from Suva, Fiji, where she is studying nursing.

“But now we are thinking about where our children can live safely.

Maybe Australia can be a second home.”

Australian officials stress that the visa is not intended to depopulate island nations but to offer options.

Many Pacific leaders remain cautious, fearing that mass migration could erode cultural identity and weaken sovereignty.

“We must never accept relocation as surrender,” Tuvalu’s Foreign Minister said during recent regional talks.

“Our fight is to stay, but we welcome Australia’s recognition that we may also need a future elsewhere.”

Looking Ahead

As the world grapples with the realities of climate displacement, Australia’s Pacific Engagement Visa may mark the beginning of a new geopolitical era, one where climate adaptation includes not just building seawalls, but opening borders.

Footnotes

1. Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade – Pacific Engagement Visa
2. Nature Climate Change – Climate risk in Tuvalu
3. Australian Prime Minister’s Office – Falepili Union Agreement
4. UNHCR – Climate change and legal protection gaps

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Left in the Dust: Australia In the New Energy Revolution

Lyrebird Dreaming - Gregory Andrews

This week’s New York Times blew the lid off any doubts on who’s winning the global clean energy race. And spoiler alert, it's not Australia. 

The stunning analysis, complete with satellite data and infrastructure maps, revealed China has already dived in head first and is way ahead of the pack. 

It’s building wind turbines, solar farms, batteries, EVs, electric bullet trains, and transmission lines at a pace the rest of the world can barely comprehend. 

It’s not just a climate strategy. It’s a major economic play. A technology play. A future-proofing and leadership play.

Meanwhile, Australia's still addicted to fossil fuels and we're deluding ourselves that we can have it both ways. We're being left in the dust.

Australia is the second-largest exporter of CO2 emissions in the world. Only Russia ships out more climate pollution than we do. Yet the Albanese Government tries to tell us we’re climate leaders because we’ve been putting up lots of solar panels and have a hydrogen strategy — in draft. 

Approval of Woodside’s North West Shelf gas extension to 2070 makes a mockery of our climate commitments. That single decision greenlights 4.3 billion tonnes of future carbon emissions — locking in climate harm until today’s toddlers will be retirees. 

Australia’s economy is still built on yesterday’s fuels, not tomorrow’s solutions.

Even worse, we’re not just dragging our feet — we’re dressing it up in spin. Earlier this year, EnergyAustralia was forced to apologise to over 400,000 customers after admitting its “Go Neutral” program misled Aussies about the benefits of carbon offsets. 

“Offsetting” doesn’t erase emissions. It doesn’t undo the harm. And it certainly doesn’t replace the hard work of transitioning to clean energy. Then there’s Australian Gas Networks, taken to court in June by the ACCC for claiming gas will soon be “renewable.” That’s not science. That’s fantasy — and the regulator knows it.

These are part of a wider pattern where industry — and too often, government — is painting a green face on a brown economy.

Let’s be honest: Australia is falling behind. Way behind.

The Australia Institute recently found we’re among the worst OECD performers in the global energy transition. Our fossil fuel use has actually increased since 2005! The world is sprinting towards decarbonisation, and we can't even get into the starting blocks. We're too busy arguing if wind turbines kill birds or batteries catch fire.

China is building 800 gigawatts and India 500 gigawatts of renewables by 2030. The EU is decoupling its gas reliance and electrifying everything. And Australia's still debating whether gas is a “transition fuel.”

This Isn’t Just About Emissions. It’s About Our Wealth And Prosperity

Let’s be clear: the clean energy race isn’t just a climate contest. It’s a power shift. Whoever owns the wind, the sun, the storage, and the smart grid will own the future economy. And if we keep kidding ourselves, Australia will be left exporting raw minerals while other nations grow wealthy through value-added technology, know-how, and influence.

Here’s what we must do:

• Stop the Spin: Ban greenwashing and enforce truth in political advertising.
• Cut the Cord: Set real and rapid timelines for phasing out fossil fuel subsidies and new coal and gas projects.
• Build the Backbone: Stop arguing and fast-track grid upgrades and support large-scale battery, wind, and solar projects, particularly in regions already impacted by the energy transition.
• Invest in Justice: Ensure low-income Australians and fossil fuel-dependent communities are empowered to lead and benefit from the transition.
• Play the Long Game: Support Australian manufacturing of clean energy components — solar panels, electrolysers, batteries, cables — not just mining the ingredients.

We can be a clean energy superpower. We have the sun, the wind, the smarts, the critical minerals. But right now, we’re choosing a lazy path. 

While China isn’t perfect, it’s building a clean energy future with ambition and scale. 

Australia risks being left in the dust. 

Links

• There’s a Race to Power the Future. China Is Pulling Away.
• New analysis: Australia’s energy transition among worst in OECD
• China Solar and Wind Installations Break More World Records
• China breaks more records with surge in solar and wind power
• Fossil fuels are being 'eaten alive' by the solar rush
• China building two-thirds of world’s wind and solar projects
• How China came to dominate the world in renewable energy
• China Building Twice as Much Wind and Solar as Rest of World Combined

Climate Chaos: The Fingerprints of Global Warming on the World's Wild Weather - Lethal Heating Editor BDA

Key Points

• 2024–25 has seen record-breaking heatwaves and flooding globally
• Climate change is amplifying existing weather extremes
• Australia’s East Coast faces more frequent floods and fires
• Europe and Turkey are gripped by killer heatwaves
• North America’s storms and fires are intensifying
• Scientific consensus attributes these events to global warming
• Failure to act risks irreversible climate tipping points
• Urgent emissions cuts are now essential

Something strange and dangerous is happening to the world's weather.

In recent months, from Sydney to Sicily, and from Texas to Turkey, the atmosphere has turned violent.

Extreme heat, biblical floods, freak storms and firestorms are smashing records and devastating lives.

Increasingly, the question is no longer 'if' climate change is playing a role, but 'how much'.

Australia’s East Coast: From Deluge to Inferno

In New South Wales, rain that once came in months now arrives in hours.

February 2025 brought torrential downpours to Sydney and the Central Coast, triggering flash floods and landslides that forced thousands to evacuate ¹.

Just weeks later, the same region was under a fire ban, as an unseasonal heatwave sent temperatures soaring past 43°C ².

“It’s like the weather is flipping a coin—flood or fire,” said one SES responder in the Hunter Valley.

Scientists say warming oceans and air temperatures are supercharging Australia’s natural climate cycles ³.

Europe in the Furnace

Europe is enduring what some are calling its new normal: deadly, prolonged heatwaves.

In June 2025, Turkey’s capital, Ankara, hit a staggering 47.3°C, the highest June temperature ever recorded there ⁴.

In Spain, wildfires tore through Catalonia, while Greek islands were again evacuated due to firestorms fueled by parched vegetation and searing heat ⁵.

Heat-related deaths have spiked, and hospitals report surges in cardiovascular and respiratory admissions during high-heat periods ⁶.

These events are being made far more likely, and more deadly, by anthropogenic climate change, according to the European Environment Agency.

North America: When Storms Collide with Fire

In the United States, record temperatures have been matched by record destruction.

Arizona, Nevada, and California have endured a punishing heat dome in 2025, with Phoenix posting 32 consecutive days above 43°C ⁷.

Meanwhile, freak storms across the Midwest and Southeast spawned tornados outside their normal seasonal window, battering homes and infrastructure ⁸.

Canadian wildfires, fuelled by abnormally dry conditions and lightning strikes, have once again blanketed American cities in smoke, disrupting flights and forcing millions indoors.

These interlocking crises are consistent with projections long made by climate scientists.

The Science is Now Unambiguous

Attribution studies—those that examine the influence of human-induced climate change on specific events—are increasingly confident in their conclusions.

One recent study by World Weather Attribution found that the extreme heat in the Mediterranean would have been “virtually impossible” without global warming ⁹.

Likewise, studies into Australian floods and American heat domes show a direct and increasing fingerprint of global warming.

Rising greenhouse gases have elevated the baseline temperature of the planet by approximately 1.2°C since pre-industrial times ¹⁰.

This seemingly small number dramatically increases the probability and intensity of extreme weather events.

From Forecast to Future

In 2024, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued its most alarming warning yet: we are dangerously close to tipping points that could cause irreversible damage to ecosystems and societies ¹¹.

These include the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Amazon rainforest dieback, and the thawing of Arctic permafrost—each capable of releasing enormous quantities of additional carbon.

In effect, the planet could enter a feedback loop of self-reinforcing climate chaos.

The Costs of Inaction

What was once a distant forecast has arrived at our doorstep, with devastating consequences.

Insurers globally are scaling back coverage in high-risk regions; crops are failing under new climatic stress; and economies are bleeding billions to disaster recovery efforts ¹².

The World Bank warns that without drastic emissions reductions, 216 million people could be displaced by climate impacts by 2050 ¹³.

Turning the Tide

The causes of climate change are known—and so are the solutions.

Rapid decarbonisation, clean energy transitions, global cooperation, and nature-based solutions can reduce the risk of catastrophe.

But time is running out.

Unless emissions peak before 2030 and drop sharply thereafter, the world will exceed the 1.5°C threshold, ushering in even more chaos.

As the world watches its skies darken and its rivers rise, the urgency to act could not be clearer.

Footnotes

1. ABC News: Sydney floods trigger mass evacuations (Feb 2025)
2. BoM: February 2025 NSW climate summary
3. Climate Council: Weather Gone Wild (2025)
4. Reuters: Ankara sets all-time June temperature record
5. The Guardian: Greek islands evacuated as wildfires rage
6. WHO Europe: Heatwaves and health impacts (2025)
7. NYT: Phoenix swelters under record heat
8. NBC News: Tornadoes strike Midwest and South amid extreme storms
9. WWA: Human influence on Mediterranean heatwave (2025)
10. NOAA: Global Temperature Rise
11. IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2025)
12. The Economist: Climate insurance costs soar
13. World Bank: Groundswell Report on Climate Migration

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A distracted world marches steadily towards catastrophe

Pearls and Irritations - Julian Cribb

AUTHOR

Julian Cribb AM is an Australian science writer and author of six books on the human existential emergency. His latest book is “How to Fix a Broken Planet” (Cambridge University Press, 2023)

As the nations bicker, squabble and fight among themselves, their ultimate disintegration becomes more certain and more imminent with each passing day.

Enthralled by the spectacle of leaders of paralysing stupidity disgorging lies, bombs and bombast ad lib, many people seem to have forgotten or chosen to overlook the real monster that is creeping up behind them, sharpening its claws to bring down the entire civilisation.

In a new paper “Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024”, 50 of the world’s leading climate scientists warn that human climate emissions are achieving records, dumping 56 billion tonnes (+/-5bt) of greenhouse gases (CO2 equivalent) into the atmosphere in 2024.

Here are a few of their key points:

• Fossil fuels and industry contributed 38bt of greenhouse emissions in 2024;
• Land use changes (eg deforestation) caused 4bt in emissions (+/- 3bt) in 2024;
• Methane release contributed 9bt (+/-3bt) in 2023, much of it attributed to forest fires, drying wetlands and melting tundra;
• NO2 contributed 3bt;
• Fluorinated gases contributed 2bt;
• There are 52 different gases known to cause global heating which are now mixing into the atmosphere; and
• Collectively these man-made sources now add 2.97 watts of heat energy to every square metre of the Earth’s surface. This creates an Earth Energy Imbalance of about 1 watt per square metre, which is what drives global heating and climate perturbation.

In 2023, the scientists say, average global temperatures hit a record 1.44 degrees above their pre-industrial (1850) level. Last year they set a record of 1.52 degrees. These high temperatures were a result of human-caused warming combined with natural events such as El Nino.

While warming overall continues to set records each year, the encouraging news is that the rate of warming appears to be easing, the researchers add.

However, the grim news is that the Earth’s remaining carbon budget, to keep average temperatures at or below +1.5 degrees Celsius — the Paris target — is only 130 billion tonnes. At our present rates of emissions, that could be gobbled up by 2028. 

Even allowing for natural fluctuations in the planet’s climate, the target will be dead and gone by 2030, the scientists warn. More seriously, land temperatures — always hotter than global temperatures — will be close to +2 degrees.

Since 2019, global sea levels have risen by 26mm — about an inch — due to land ice melting and thermal expansion. The rate is accelerating. It may not sound much, but, by the end of the century, the seas would have risen by between 0.5 and 1.9 metres, displacing anything from 200 million to half a billion people and inundating 136 major cities.

Searing heat, hurricanes, droughts and flooding coastlines will create havoc with a world food supply already on a knife-edge due to acute water scarcity, devastating loss of topsoil, ecosystem decline and the spread of toxic chemicals. 

In a climate-menaced world, simultaneous crop failures in several of the Earth’s main breadbaskets are now seen as unavoidable. Because the food chain is global, this means every person on Earth now faces food scarcity and/or soaring prices when the crisis hits. History shows that one of the first things people do en masse when starving is tear down their governments.

Underlying this ruin is the selfishness of nations, each focused on its own perceived wants and needs at the expense of all, led by psychopathically-damaged, male-dominated regimes. Leaders such as Trump, Putin, Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Salman, Khamenei are committed — whether they grasp it or not — to the ultimate destruction of their own people by ruining the Earth’s ability to support them.

Regardless of what people choose to believe, nations are only a temporary phase in human affairs, a temporary form of self-organisation that is past its use-by date. Emerging only since the Napoleonic wars nations are a form of ultra-tribalism that pits ever-larger groups of humans against another without regard to the universal consequences. 

Nationalism, patriotism and their tawdry symbols are the justification for slaughter on a global scale in wars that have, since the 1850s, claimed more than 200 million lives. Nations are entities that, as a rule, place their own immediate wishes above the good of humanity, to the detriment of all.

The pathological character of modern political leadership — its lust for conquest, self-aggrandisement and dominion at the expense of human life — has side-tracked the world’s attention from the issues which genuinely affect our common future and which require global solutions. It has diverted us from our own survival, as a civilisation – and maybe as a species. 

The media, the commentariat, the political machinery, the technology explosion and global corporate greed feed this lust for distraction daily, contributing to a humanity, as Darwin might have described it, “less fit to survive”.

Many great thinkers have recognised that, unless we agree to work together globally, humans will not last. Innumerable organisations have been founded to try to achieve a common human purpose. All have so far failed – in the face of the overwhelming urge for diversion to the petty spites and ambitions of the nations.

Only when humans decide to act together, as a single species on one planet, will our chances of survival begin to improve. The Earth System Treaty offers one pathway to this. The Earth Charter is another and the Sustainable Development Goals a third. The Planetary Boundaries explain just how close to self-destruction we truly are – and how rapidly we are approaching it.

There are solutions aplenty to our plight. But they are not on the agenda of the ruling elites of most nations or corporations, who care only for themselves and the short term. These are the true foes of humanity. The ones who will sacrifice all our children, theirs included, to gratify their own immediate lust for power.

The Earth’s surface area is about 510 trillion square metres. That indicates how much surplus heat the planet is now trapping.

Links

• Indicators of Global Climate Change 2024 
• Global sea level very likely to rise between 0.5 and 1.9 meters by 2100 under high-emissions scenario 
• Risks of synchronized low yields are underestimated in climate and crop model projections 
• Food or War 
• The nation state is on the skids... 
• Earth System Treaty 
• Earth Charter  
• Sustainable Development Goals 
• Planetary boundaries