The dominant influence on Earth’s climate & environment is human activity fuelled by the world energy system. This has been identified as a new geological age named the Anthropocene, which amounts to a biosphere emergency1 2 3 4.
This news feed shows articles and studies about the Anthropocene, with particularly worrying content listed below.
Further information can be found by clicking on the tags shown at the end of each, or by using the search in the top right.
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Earth ‘well outside safe operating space for humanity’
Earth’s life support systems have been so damaged that the planet is “well outside the safe operating space for humanity”, scientists have warned. Their assessment found that six out of nine “planetary boundaries” had been broken because of human-caused pollution and destruction of the natural world. The planetary boundaries are the limits of key global…
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Critics of ‘degrowth’ economics say it’s unworkable—but from an ecologist’s perspective, it’s inevitable
You may not have noticed, but earlier this month we passed Earth overshoot day, when humanity’s demands for ecological resources and services exceeded what our planet can regenerate annually. Many economists criticizing the developing degrowth movement fail to appreciate this critical point of Earth’s biophysical limits. Ecologists on the other hand see the human economy…
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Signs of the human era, from nuclear fallout to microplastics
Soaring greenhouse gases, ubiquitous microplastics, pervasive “forever chemicals”, the global upheaval of animals, even old mobile phones and chicken bones—all have been put forward as evidence that the world entered the Anthropocene, or era of humans, in the mid-20th century. Another major calling card of the Anthropocene will likely come as little surprise: the rapid…
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Evidence in Canada lake indicates start of new Anthropocene epoch
Scientists say human activity has so fundamentally altered the geology, atmosphere and biology of the earth that it has entered a new geologic epoch known as the Anthropocene. On Tuesday, members of the Anthropocene Working Group (AWG) presented evidence of that shift from a lake in Ontario, Canada — evidence they believe can help pinpoint…
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Football pitch of tropical forest lost every 5 seconds
Earth lost an area of carbon-absorbing rainforest larger than Switzerland or the Netherlands in 2022, most of it destroyed to make way for cattle and commodity crops. That is nearly a football pitch of mature tropical trees felled or burned every five seconds, night and day, and 10 percent more than the year before, according…
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Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by 2030s, with global, damaging and dangerous consequences
The Arctic Ocean could be ice-free in summer by the 2030s, even if we do a good job of reducing emissions between now and then. That’s the worrying conclusion of a new study in Nature Communications. Predictions of an ice-free Arctic Ocean have a long and complicated history, and the 2030s is sooner than most…
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Will fossil fuel phase-out make it onto the UN’s climate agenda?
United Nations climate chief says while the rapid end of burning coal, oil, and natural gas is urgently needed, the topic may not even reach crucial COP28 negotiations. ←Return to the news feed
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Too late now to save Arctic summer ice, climate scientists find
It is now too late to save summer Arctic sea ice. The study also shows that if emissions decline slowly or continue to rise, the first ice-free summer could be in the 2030s, a decade earlier than previous projections. ←Return to the news feed
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Amount of warming triggering carbon dioxide in air hits new peak, growing at near-record fast rate
“CO2 now is higher than any time in the last 4 to 4.5 million years when the atmosphere was about 7 degrees Fahrenheit (3.9 degrees Celsius) warmer and sea levels were 5 to 25 meters (16 to 82 feet) higher,” Carbon dioxide levels in the air are now the highest they’ve been in more than…
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Antarctic alarm bells: Observations reveal deep ocean currents are slowing earlier than predicted
We found melting of Antarctic ice is disrupting the formation of Antarctic bottom water. The meltwater makes Antarctic surface waters fresher, less dense, and therefore less likely to sink. This puts the brakes on the overturning circulation. The findings are striking. Over three decades, between 1992 and 2017, the overturning circulation of this region slowed…
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Saving humanity: Here’s a radical approach to building a sustainable and just society
The dangerous and destructive myths of conventional economics include the claims that: Since planetary boundaries have already been exceeded and low-income countries must develop, social justice demands that the rich countries undergo planned degrowth. On the pathway to a sustainable civilization, environmental protection and social justice must be addressed together. Because the rich are responsible…
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As Ocean Oxygen Levels Dip, Fish Face an Uncertain Future
Researchers complain that the oxygen problem doesn’t get the attention it deserves, with ocean acidification and warming grabbing the bulk of both news headlines and academic research. Just this April, for example, headlines screamed that global surface waters were hotter than they have ever been — a shockingly balmy average of 70 degrees F. That’s…
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Researchers discover a cause of rapid ice melting in Greenland
“These ice-ocean interactions make the glaciers more sensitive to ocean warming,” said senior co-author Eric Rignot, UCI professor of Earth system science and NASA JPL research scientist. “These dynamics are not included in models, and if we were to include them, it would increase projections of sea level rise by up to 200 percent—not just…
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Humanity’s tipping point? How the Queen’s death stole a climate warning’s thunder
On September 8, 2022, at 6.30pm in Britain, Buckingham Palace announced the death of Queen Elizabeth II. The news broke just 30 minutes before the press embargo lifted on a major review of climate change tipping points in the journal Science. The paper in Science was truly earth-shattering, as it heralded changes that could threaten…
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New Research Sparks Concerns That Ocean Circulation Will Collapse
The groundbreaking modeling study published by Australian and American researchers at the end of March for the first time includes a detailed assessment of the likely impact of melting ice, revealing the importance of this past failure. It predicts a 42 percent decline in deep-water formation in the Southern Ocean by 2050. This is more…
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Look up, listen, and be very concerned. Birds are vanishing – and their crisis is our crisis
The UK has lost 40m birds since 1970 and Europe as a whole has lost 600m birds since 1980. The British figures, especially for farmland species such as skylark and lapwing, have long been the worst of any country in the region. The North American continent, meanwhile, but especially the US, has seen avian populations…
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Greenhouse gas emissions rose at ‘alarming’ rate last year, US data shows
Carbon dioxide levels rose by more than two parts per million (ppm) for the 11th consecutive year: the highest sustained rate of CO₂ increases since monitoring began 65 years ago. Before 2013, scientists had never recorded three consecutive years of such high CO₂ growth. ←Return to the news feed
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“Buckle up. More extreme events are expected,” says head of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The United States is Earth’s punching bag for nasty weather. Blame geography for the U.S. getting hit by stronger, costlier, more varied and frequent extreme weather than anywhere on the planet, several experts said. Two oceans, the Gulf of Mexico, the Rocky Mountains, jutting peninsulas like Florida, clashing storm fronts and the jet stream combine…
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Carbon dioxide emissions reached a record high in 2022
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Faster, higher, hotter: What we learned about the climate system in 2022: Part 3
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Faster, higher, hotter: What we learned about the climate system in 2022: Part 2
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Faster, higher, hotter: What we learned about the climate system in 2022: Part 1
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Climate, ice sheets & sea level: the news is not good
Parts of Earth’s ice sheets that could lift global oceans by meters will likely crumble with another half degree Celsius of warming, and are fragile in ways not previously understood, according to new research. ←Return to the news feed
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Worst impacts of sea level rise will hit earlier than expected, says modeling study
Using the new measurements of land elevation, Vernimmen and co-author Aljosja Hooijer found coastal areas lie much lower than older radar data had suggested. Analyses of the new lidar-based elevation model revealed 2 meters of sea-level rise would cover up to 2.4 times the land area as observed by radar-based elevation models. ←Return to the…
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Summary of latest data
Published on this site a summary of the latest energy and climate data. ←Return to the news feed
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Exxon and Chevron share $100bn in profit after surge in oil prices
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Humanity devouring itself and the planet
“At the moment,” writes Warren Hern, “we are the most misnamed species on the planet: Homo sapiens sapiens—’wise, wise man.’ Not.” Hern, 84, physician and adjunct professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado Boulder, thinks the name he coined for his new book provides a much more accurate description of humanity in the 21st…
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Almost 70% of animal populations wiped out since 1970, report reveals
Earth’s wildlife populations have plunged by an average of 69% in just under 50 years, according to a leading scientific assessment, as humans continue to clear forests, consume beyond the limits of the planet and pollute on an industrial scale. From the open ocean to tropical rainforests, the abundance of birds, fish, amphibians and reptiles…
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Phantom Forests: Why Ambitious Tree Planting Projects Are Failing
Everybody likes trees. There is no anti-tree lobby. A global push to go beyond conservation of existing forests and start creating new ones goes back to 2011, when many of the world’s governments, including the United States, signed up to the Bonn Challenge, which set a goal of restoring some 860 million acres of forest…
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World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points
The climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study. It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date. These include the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, eventually producing a huge…
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Major sea-level rise is ‘now inevitable’
Major sea-level rise from the melting of the Greenland ice cap is now inevitable, scientists have found, even if the fossil fuel burning that is driving the climate crisis were to end overnight. The research shows the global heating to date will cause an absolute minimum sea-level rise of 27cm (10.6in) from Greenland alone as…
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90% of marine species at risk of extinction by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not curbed
An international team of researchers looked specifically at 25,000 species, including fish, bacteria, plants and protozoans living in the top 100 meters of the world’s oceans. They found that under the scenario in which emissions lead to global atmospheric temperature increases of 3 to 5˚C, approximately 90% of all marine life will disappear. They also…
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Corinne Le Quéré: ‘Could we just adapt to climate change? The answer is no’
In the 2000s, Le Quéré was a lead author of the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which won a Nobel Peace Prize. Today she bridges science and policy, sitting on the UK’s government advisory group, the Climate Change Committee, and chairing France’s equivalent, the High Council on Climate. Boris Johnson, who as…
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Even temporarily overshooting 2°C would cause permanent damage to Earth’s species
Unless urgent action is taken, emissions are expected to cause the planet to continue heating rapidly over the next few decades, prompting the global average temperature to overshoot the Paris agreement’s target, which aimed to limit warming to between 1.5°C and 2°C. A period of higher temperatures will occur in the middle of this century…
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Boom and Bust Coal 2022
The world has more than 2,400 coal-fired power plants, for a total capacity of nearly 2,100 gigawatts (GW). An additional 176GW of coal capacity is under construction at more than 189 plants. A further additional 280GW is planned at 296 plants, equivalent to the current operating fleets of the United States and Japan combined. In…
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The great climate backslide: How governments are regressing worldwide
From the U.S. to China, in Europe, India and Japan, fossil fuels are staging a comeback, clean energy stocks are taking a hammering, and the prospects for speeding the transition to renewable sources of power are looking grim. That’s even as renewable energy costs have fallen rapidly and investment in clean technologies is soaring. Oil…
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UK government: 4°C warming by 2100: “can’t be ruled out”
As required by the UK Climate Change Act 2008, the government has today submitted the Third Climate Change Risk Assessment (CCRA3) to Parliament. Professor Richard Betts MBE, who led this team, says that “One of the key conclusions from the University of Exeter’s work was that current worldwide policies could result in up to 4°C…
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The Extinction Crisis
Earth now faces a global extinction crisis never witnessed by humankind. Scientists predict that more than 1 million species are on track for extinction in the coming decades. Every taxon is in trouble – Amphibians: More than 33% of the known 6,300 species are at risk of extinction. Birds: 12% of known 9,865 species are…
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Covid recovery to drive all-time emissions high: IEA
Carbon emissions are set to hit an all-time high by 2023 as just two percent of pandemic recovery finance is being spent on clean energy. “Not only is clean energy investment still far from what’s needed to put the world on a path to reaching net-zero emissions by mid-century, it’s not even enough to prevent global emissions from…
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Climate change: how bad could the future be if we do nothing?
The nightmare scenario: Year 2100, global waming exceeds 4˚C:→ Massive frequent wildfires→ Dead coral reefs→ Frequent prolonged droughts→ Increased air pollution→ Ice-free Arctic summers→ Rapid sea level rise→ Abandoned small island nations→ Billions of people suffering water stress→ Stronger cyclones→ More frequent mega-cyclones causing devastation→ More intense & unpredictable monsoons affecting 3 billion people→ Half of the…
Footnotes
- Crutzen PJ, Stoermer EF. The ‘Anthropocene’. IGBP Newsletter. 2000 May; 41:17-18, http://www.igbp.net/download/18.316f18321323470177580001401/1376383088452/NL41.pdf.(↩)
- Zalasiewicz, J., Williams, M., Haywood, A., & Ellis, M. (2011). The Anthropocene: a new epoch of geological time?. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences, 369(1938), 835-841, https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsta.2010.0339.(↩)
- Gaffney, O., & Steffen, W. (2017). The anthropocene equation. The Anthropocene Review, 4(1), 53-61, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2053019616688022(↩)
- Steffen, W., Rockström, J., Richardson, K., Lenton, T.M., Folke, C., Liverman, D., Summerhayes, C.P., Barnosky, A.D., Cornell, S.E., Crucifix, M. and Donges, J.F., 2018. Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(33), pp.8252-8259, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/160477113.pdf(↩)