I keep telling people that everyone is dead before the end of this century. Nobody believes me. Most get pretty emotional and defensive about it. Angry or aggressive towards me. It’s unfortunately obvious at this point. This planet has been destabilized in a way that has it square in the process of rendering it unable to support complex life for a long time.
Large systems can withstand a lot of fluctuations. But they’re not invincible. Enough of a percentage of the whole system changes and it becomes a new system.
Any human walking around in the 22nd century will be one of few if any, and that existence is gonna be grueling if so.
I have written of the "genetic bottleneck" that we went through about 75kya. Humanity shrank down to a population of 10,000-20,000 people and we nearly went extinct. That was BAD. Humans have a surprisingly low level of genetic diversity as a result of that event.
This bottleneck is also going to be BAD unless we get our act together soon. If we don't start managing our retreat it will turn into an uncontrolled rout.
However, the human population is much larger now than it was 75kya. I would expect that even in a +12°C world there would be people living around the Arctic Ocean, on Antarctica, on the Tibetan Plateau, on Iceland, etc. Civilization will be gone but communities of people could survive.
I don't see the end of humanity as bad. Species come and species go. I don't think we need to be precious about our own, especially as we brought it on ourselves and have treated each other and every other species, apart from our pets, with callous disregard. A bright future doens't have to include humans.
The science of the climate catastrophe must be supported by the sciences of sociology and anthropology. Humans are an ultrasocial predator species locked-in to the corporate fossil fuel supersystem. There is no acting or managing possible.
the dinos all died. 96% of life vanished. THEY didnt have nuclear power plants waiting to melt down. what is the halflife of uranium-235 again? oh yeah, 700,000,000 years. this is the end my freinds. we, the fire apes, have killed a planet.
"The decline in the planetary albedo has increased the ENERGY going into the Climate System to +1.7W/m2 according to James Hansen.
That has the same effect as adding +138ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere SINCE 2014."
I love your work btw. I am very apprehensive however about adding PPM CO2 estimates from albedo changes. Unless we have data for albedo over the whole period then we might assume that the CO2 increase from the previous period, and associated heat, may have had similar effects on the worlds albedo at that time. I am wondering if you have considered this, and that just by adding these together may be overestimating the heating effects of CO2 without accounting for historical changes in earth's albedo (which I don't think we have for millions of years ago)
The number of species has already greatly diminished due to human activity, changes in land use for animal ag etc and fishing out the contents of the oceans. At least 600 plant species at least 680 vertebrates have been made extinct. The percentage this represents is unknown as many species are still undiscovered. Most of the biomass (ie numbers of particular species) is now humans and the crops and animals that we exploit for food and other use.
Insect and bacteria species already exist in such extremes (and have a much shorter life-cycle) that I think they're going to survive. Plants will very soon recolonise the deserts and flood zones. The issue is that humans will be among the species made extinct.
What's also fascinating is that about 2.4 billion years ago the evolution of cyanobacteria caused the great oxidation event which caused a mass die off to occur to species; because oxygen was toxic to most of them! So species that breathed oxygen evolved.
The article below appeared in today's Guardian. Do you think increased volcanic activity due to glacier melting will have an impact similar to that referred to in your article?
Thanks for all the work you put into this, Richard!
I think I noticed one little typo. Toward the end you mention methane, but in the following paragraph you say “The increase in CO2 since 1850 has the same effect as adding +100ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere.” I think you must have meant the increase in CH4, yeah?
In the last mass extinctions there were no species documenting their own demise (as far as we know). Maybe the next time around, after we're long gone, a species will not only notice if they're responsible for the warming, or whatever, but also stop doing whatever it is that they're doing that's causing it!
Nothing significant for me to add to the discussion. You pretty much covered all the relevant findings. What's left out that I think warrants study is the possibility of micro-extinction events: significant die-offs that were brief in duration and did not leave good fossil footprints in the stratigraphy, but would be enormously disruptive to a global civilization such as ours. They would not necessarily even be climatically induced. Virological pan-species high lethality outbreaks would be an example. As the tundra melts we might see the release of bacteria there is no longer mammalian immune resistance to, etc.
I keep telling people that everyone is dead before the end of this century. Nobody believes me. Most get pretty emotional and defensive about it. Angry or aggressive towards me. It’s unfortunately obvious at this point. This planet has been destabilized in a way that has it square in the process of rendering it unable to support complex life for a long time.
Large systems can withstand a lot of fluctuations. But they’re not invincible. Enough of a percentage of the whole system changes and it becomes a new system.
Any human walking around in the 22nd century will be one of few if any, and that existence is gonna be grueling if so.
I have written of the "genetic bottleneck" that we went through about 75kya. Humanity shrank down to a population of 10,000-20,000 people and we nearly went extinct. That was BAD. Humans have a surprisingly low level of genetic diversity as a result of that event.
This bottleneck is also going to be BAD unless we get our act together soon. If we don't start managing our retreat it will turn into an uncontrolled rout.
However, the human population is much larger now than it was 75kya. I would expect that even in a +12°C world there would be people living around the Arctic Ocean, on Antarctica, on the Tibetan Plateau, on Iceland, etc. Civilization will be gone but communities of people could survive.
I'm an OPTIMIST.
I don't see the end of humanity as bad. Species come and species go. I don't think we need to be precious about our own, especially as we brought it on ourselves and have treated each other and every other species, apart from our pets, with callous disregard. A bright future doens't have to include humans.
I hope Ravens survive the mass extinction and become the next highly intelligent species. They won't need fossil fuels for transportation!
The science of the climate catastrophe must be supported by the sciences of sociology and anthropology. Humans are an ultrasocial predator species locked-in to the corporate fossil fuel supersystem. There is no acting or managing possible.
Excellent post, I appreciate information of this depth on Substack. 👏
the dinos all died. 96% of life vanished. THEY didnt have nuclear power plants waiting to melt down. what is the halflife of uranium-235 again? oh yeah, 700,000,000 years. this is the end my freinds. we, the fire apes, have killed a planet.
"The decline in the planetary albedo has increased the ENERGY going into the Climate System to +1.7W/m2 according to James Hansen.
That has the same effect as adding +138ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere SINCE 2014."
I love your work btw. I am very apprehensive however about adding PPM CO2 estimates from albedo changes. Unless we have data for albedo over the whole period then we might assume that the CO2 increase from the previous period, and associated heat, may have had similar effects on the worlds albedo at that time. I am wondering if you have considered this, and that just by adding these together may be overestimating the heating effects of CO2 without accounting for historical changes in earth's albedo (which I don't think we have for millions of years ago)
The number of species has already greatly diminished due to human activity, changes in land use for animal ag etc and fishing out the contents of the oceans. At least 600 plant species at least 680 vertebrates have been made extinct. The percentage this represents is unknown as many species are still undiscovered. Most of the biomass (ie numbers of particular species) is now humans and the crops and animals that we exploit for food and other use.
Insect and bacteria species already exist in such extremes (and have a much shorter life-cycle) that I think they're going to survive. Plants will very soon recolonise the deserts and flood zones. The issue is that humans will be among the species made extinct.
What's also fascinating is that about 2.4 billion years ago the evolution of cyanobacteria caused the great oxidation event which caused a mass die off to occur to species; because oxygen was toxic to most of them! So species that breathed oxygen evolved.
The article below appeared in today's Guardian. Do you think increased volcanic activity due to glacier melting will have an impact similar to that referred to in your article?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/jul/08/climate-crisis-melting-glaciers-ice-caps-volcanic-eruptions-chile-antartica-volcanoes
Thanks for all the work you put into this, Richard!
I think I noticed one little typo. Toward the end you mention methane, but in the following paragraph you say “The increase in CO2 since 1850 has the same effect as adding +100ppm of CO2 to the atmosphere.” I think you must have meant the increase in CH4, yeah?
In the last mass extinctions there were no species documenting their own demise (as far as we know). Maybe the next time around, after we're long gone, a species will not only notice if they're responsible for the warming, or whatever, but also stop doing whatever it is that they're doing that's causing it!
Nothing significant for me to add to the discussion. You pretty much covered all the relevant findings. What's left out that I think warrants study is the possibility of micro-extinction events: significant die-offs that were brief in duration and did not leave good fossil footprints in the stratigraphy, but would be enormously disruptive to a global civilization such as ours. They would not necessarily even be climatically induced. Virological pan-species high lethality outbreaks would be an example. As the tundra melts we might see the release of bacteria there is no longer mammalian immune resistance to, etc.