New climate data and risk modelling suggest global heating is accelerating far faster than expected, with catastrophic consequences unless fossil fuel use is rapidly reduced.
Hothouse Earth, the state of the planet in which civilisation and possibly even humans can no longer survive, is arriving much faster than predicted, according to new satellite data.
Latest measurements, carefully analysed to exclude anomalies such as El Niño, reveal a planet cooking up at a steady 0.48 degrees per decade since 2015, in what is thought to be the most rapid heating event in all its geological history.
The new rate of warming revealed by the satellites is almost three times that previously measured (+0.18 degrees C per decade from 1970–2010) and nearly double that of the most recent decade (+0.27, from 2015–25) scientists warn.
Such an increase could potentially deliver +3 degrees of average global heating by 2050 – a level that will wreck the global food system, smash the economy and kill up to half the Earth’s population.
These latest numbers render obsolete the Paris Climate Accord and its call to keep the Earth’s temperature increase below 1.5 degrees, along with all the actions and promises made by nations worldwide so far. They signal that disaster is arriving much more quickly than originally feared – and will be far worse for those who have to live through it.
However, when El Niños are added to constant global heating, Earth’s temperature could reach +4 by 2050, which is a true Hothouse Earth – a temperature previously not expected to occur before 2100 – and one which many experts fear could wreak havoc on human civilisation. Hothouse Earth was first predicted in 2018 by the late Australian climatologist Will Steffen and colleagues.
The world will experience a foretaste of the climate crisis to come in 2026–27 with the ‘super El Niño’ now building up in the Pacific Ocean.
“The super El Niño now developing in the tropical Pacific has a 90 per cent chance of becoming the strongest in 150 years, breaking global temperature records and unleashing extreme weather,” reports New Scientist. Sea surface temperatures are now expected to reach +3.6 degrees above normal.
More seriously, the latest numbers reinforce the calculations released by climate guru James Hansen and team who warned in 2023 that the planet was heating far faster than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and mainstream climate groups. They warned that the current amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, at equilibrium, is enough to drive the planet up by +10 degrees.
Fig 1. Zeke Hausfather’s climate projection for the current El Niño event could see the planet shoot past +2 degrees Celsius of global warming.
The consequences for humanity will be dire, according to the UK Institute of Actuaries and Exeter University, who say “The risk of planetary insolvency looms unless we act decisively.” Exactly what ‘planetary insolvency’ means is buried deep in the report. According to their table on p32:
The outlook for the world is already rated as catastrophic, with +2 degrees of global warming by 2050. They assess this will eliminate a quarter of the world economy ($25 trillion), kill two billion people (one in four), cause breakdown in Earth system services critical to sustaining life, cause major extinction, and severely impair the world’s oceanic circulation.
For humans this means “severe socio-political fragmentation, low-lying regions lost”. Heat and water stress will drive billions from their homes in an unparalleled mass migration. There will be wholesale deaths from disease, malnutrition, thirst and war.
However, that outlook is what is already on the way – or so we thought until the satellites revealed their latest shock.
The actuaries rate this new outlook for Planet Earth and humanity as “extreme”, meaning half the world economy ($50 trillion) could evaporate, half the human population will die (four billion), Earth’s life support system will break down and extinctions reach record levels for large animals. Governments will fail amid massive loss of capital and social identity. There will be frequent waves of mass deaths.
Record-breaking heatwaves, food failures and mass deaths have already begun with the 2026 Northern Hemisphere summer. Tropical storms have inflicted $82 billion in damage so far and are increasing at twice their former rate. Sea level rises have quadrupled.
Ironically, the intense heat afflicting Europe, Asia and North America has led to a massive increase in demand for electricity to run coolers and air conditioners. As a result, the world fossil fuels sector is banking record profits, while increasing the rate of world overheating. The world’s six largest fossil fuels corporations expect to double their second quarter earnings to $45 billion, and cream $147 billion over the full financial year, says Oxfam.
The stark insanity of Hothouse Earth is that it is now more profitable for a handful of merciless corporates to stoke the furnace, accelerate global heating – and kill more people.
As things stand, the world is racing headlong to disaster, led by its governments and largest corporations. There are no quick fixes, since the residence time of the major greenhouse gases in the atmosphere ranges from tens to thousands of years. The work of restoring a habitable Earth should have begun decades ago, and every year it is postponed increases the scale of the damage and the mass deaths it will unleash.
At present, it must be clearly understood, the fossil fuels industry is knowingly trading human lives for corporate profit. It is a crime against humanity worse even than a war crime.
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)