Essay by Eric Worrall
Please, please, lets cross one of these imaginary tipping points.
Point of no return: a hellish ‘hothouse Earth’ getting closer, scientists say
Continued global heating could set irreversible course by triggering climate tipping points, but most people unaware
Damian Carrington
Environment editor Thu 12 Feb 2026 03.00 AEDT
The world is closer than thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said.
Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to a cascade of further tipping points and feedback loops, they said. This would lock the world into a new and hellish “hothouse Earth” climate far worse than the 2-3C temperature rise the world is on track to reach. The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years, during which the whole of human civilisation developed.
At just 1.3C of global heating in recent years, extreme weather is already taking lives and destroying livelihoods across the globe. At 3-4C, “the economy and society will cease to function as we know it”, scientists said last week, but a hothouse Earth would be even more fiery.
The public and politicians were largely unaware of the risk of passing the point of no return, the researchers said. The group said they were issuing their warning because while rapid and immediate cuts to fossil fuel burning were challenging, reversing course was likely to be impossible once on the path to a hothouse Earth, even if emissions were eventually slashed.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of-no-return-hothouse-earth-global-heating-climate-tipping-points
This is nonsense. We already know with absolute certainty from paleo evidence that 3-4C global warming does not represent the end of economic activity.
That evidence is the PETM. CO2 levels during the PETM may have been as high as 2520ppm – 6x higher than today. There is no evidence life suffered during the PETM, quite the opposite. The Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, was the age of monkeys. Our mostly fruit eating monkey ancestors thrived on the abundance of the hothouse PETM, and colonised much of the world, only retreating when the cold returned.
If a bunch of monkey ancestors with brains the size of match boxes prospered in such conditions, then we could definitely cope.
Fish also did well during the PETM;
With abundance on the land, and a sea teaming with fish, and proof that our monkey ancestors did really well during previous periods of extreme warmth, how could a few degrees of warming possibly mean “the economy and society will cease to function as we know it“?
The answer is it can’t. Even if such extreme warming were to occur, our society and economy would do just fine.
And there is no possibility anthropogenic CO2 emissions could cause anything like PETM levels of global warming. The world today is very different from the world of the PETM, powerful geological forcings which appeared after the PETM have kept our world locked in the Late Cenzoic Ice Age for the last 34 million years.
The truth is, our world is not too hot, our world is dangerously cold. During the last glacial maximum, CO2 levels dropped so low it was almost an extinction event.
We are currently in one of the coldest periods of the Late Cenzoic Ice Age. We are also in the cooling phase of the Holocene, our current interglacial, which is a serious concern. Sea level today is around 3ft lower than 6000 years ago, during the warm phase, the Holocene Optimum.
The truth is we need all the warming and CO2 emissions we can produce, to try to hold back the next 100,000 year ice age. Because when the next glacial maximum strikes, next time ice age conditions cause CO2 levels plummet, our species might not get so lucky as we were last time glacial maximum conditions brought our species to the brink of extinction.
Stuti is on duti-
Scientists warn of risk of Earth becoming irreversible ‘hothouse’
Stuti Mishra | The Independent
Speaking of duti note from the above link-
Stuti was awarded the Climate Justice Fellowship by Climate Tracker in 2021 and became a member of the Oxford Climate Journalism Network the same year.
Presumably this mob here breeding like rabbits-
The Team | Climate Action Tracker
If you do a search of how many climate change institutions are there globally poor old AI struggles but here’s a list of the top 13 and pay attention to Numero Uno-
Top 13 International Climate Change Organizations. – Environment Go!
Inevitably it is some unknowable future, perhaps one when we are enveloped by our sun or demolished by a meteor. When the science fails we are propelled into astrology. Odd medieval mind syndrome.
So they are now admitting that the so called 1.5C warming point that they have been screeching about for the last 20 years, wasn’t an actual tipping point?
What is it now, 4, 5, 6? tipping points that have come and gone without any actual tipping?
Why should we believe them that the next “official” tipping point is going to be any more real?
“The economy and society will cease to function as we know it”, if the liberal fools succeed in gaining back control of the American government; as their plans are reinstated during the next seven years, starting in November.
The whole point of this collectivist alarm-ism is to assert that governments need to enact more measures to control the weather.
If governments can control the weather, what is the worry?
Canada has had carbon taxes to control the weather for decades now.
Maybe the government is deliberately warming the climate.
Environmentalists’ argument goes like this: “Yes, but today warming is happening very fast and is pushing ecosystems to their limits!”
To which I reply: “Get in your time machine and go plant weather stations across the ages, my friend — then we’ll talk about it.”
The real value of the Guardian piece is almost lost due to the lack of a catastrophic deadline.
“The world is closer than thought to a “point of no return” after which runaway global heating cannot be stopped, scientists have said.”
Without a prophetic timeline, this apocalypse does not fit the “FAILED PREDICTIONS” model. Hard to believe, but maybe the doomsayers finally have learned that actually putting a date on our climactic destiny (pun intended) leads to simple falsification just by waiting. Without a date, the horror of their prediction can be ignored by most folks, and loses most of its “impact” even for the hoaxsters.
Finally, I’ve been looking for the antithesis of Cassandra, the prophetess that accurately foretold future disaster but was cursed to be never believed. Does anyone know of a mythical figure whose prophecies always were wrong, but everybody still believed them? We got a lot of those kind of folks publishing climate forecasts, but I’d really like to avoid contemporary idiots.
Concluding sentence in the above article:
“Because when the next glacial maximum strikes, next time ice age conditions cause CO2 levels plummet, our species might not get so lucky as we were last time glacial maximum conditions brought our species to the brink of extinction.”
Well, it wasn’t just “our species’ that was on the brink of extinction . . . with CO2 levels then in the range of 180-200 ppmv, all C3 plants were in danger of extinction from CO2 starvation which has been scientifically demonstrated to begin when ambient CO2 levels are below about 150 ppm.
From Google’s AI bot (my bold emphasis added):
“The CO₂ starvation level for C3 plants, where growth is severely limited or ceases, is typically below 150–180 ppm, with severe stress occurring at 180 ppm (the level during ice ages). The compensation point, where respiration equals photosynthesis, is around 50 ppm. Photosynthesis is significantly hindered below ~200 ppm.
. . .
Key Details on C3 CO₂ Starvation:
Threshold: Below 150 ppm, C3 plants cannot produce seeds or reproduce.
Historical Context: During the last ice age, CO₂ dropped to 180 ppm, bringing many C3 plants to the edge of extinction.
Performance at Low Levels: At 180 ppm, growth can be as low as 8% of the rate seen at current CO₂ levels.“
As go C3 plants, so goes most other higher forms of life on the planet.
Fortunately the much more efficient C4 plants evolved!
Unfortunately, only 3–5% of all known land plant species are C4 plants, while approximately 95% are C3 plants.
Then too, C4 plants are not found at all latitudes on Earth, as they are primarily restricted to warm, tropical, and subtropical regions (0–40°) and are conspicuously absent or rare in extremely cold, high-latitude climates . . . rare species can be found at higher latitudes (up to 63°N).
I repeat: “As go C3 plants, so goes most other higher forms of life on the planet.”