A Hellish 'Hothouse Earth' Getting Closer, Scientists Say (theguardian.com)
- Reference: 0180771802
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/11/1814253/a-hellish-hothouse-earth-getting-closer-scientists-say
- Source link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of-no-return-hothouse-earth-global-heating-climate-tipping-points
> Continued global heating could trigger climate tipping points, leading to [1]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.
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> 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.
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> 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. It was difficult to predict when climate tipping points would be triggered, making precaution vital, said Dr Christopher Wolf, a scientist at Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates in the US. Wolf is a member of a study team that includes Prof Johan Rockstrom at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany and Prof Hans Joachim Schellnhuber at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria.
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/feb/11/point-of-no-return-hothouse-earth-global-heating-climate-tipping-points
Real question (Score:3)
Is this going to happen before, or after I retire?
Re: (Score:1)
Before you expire.
Re:Real question (Score:5, Insightful)
And this is why we cant have older people dictating policy in our governments.
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Yep, gerontocracy has consequences. Ignoring global warming, a failing economic system, and other problems that should be tolerable to the comfortably retired for a few more decades are among them.
Again (Score:1, Insightful)
So, the ice caps will again disappear like they were supposed to in 2012?
When are people going to stop falling for this. They have been CATASTROPHICALLY wrong every single time.
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They actually found that antarctic ice (as a whole) is increasing due to increased water-vapor in the atmosphere and more snow falling. The boffins didn't see that one coming.
Re:Again (Score:5, Informative)
No they didn't. Sea ice area may be somewhat increased. But overall volume has gone done dramatically - [1]https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/3115... [nasa.gov]
[1] https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/31158/
Re: (Score:1)
> So, the ice caps will again disappear like they were supposed to in 2012? When are people going to stop falling for this. They have been CATASTROPHICALLY wrong every single time.
And hopefully they will continue to be wrong, because if eventually they aren't wrong we are fucked in a way that is 100% fatal for everyone. The biggest problem, that nobody wants to talk about (for good reason), is that there is no way to reverse our collision course with disaster without completely destroying our economy and everyone goes back to riding horses and living in caves.
Re: (Score:2)
That is one of the benefits of a multi planet culture. If Mars, next week were up and running, we could move 20% of the population there, reducing
the stress on this planet. Add in mining the asteroid belt, if cheap enough gets us fresh water and minerals and energy for all.
Re:Again (Score:4, Insightful)
Mars is already a completely unlivable hellscape of a planet. Economically and technologically speaking, it's far easier to just not screw up Earth any worse than it already is than terraform Mars.
Re: Again (Score:2)
This is of course bullshit designed to keep us not making changes so you don't have to be inconvenienced
devil is in the details (Score:4, Interesting)
2012 was the record minimum for Artic sea ice. So someone's model seemed to be onto something.
Now the journalist that wrote the science piece dumbed down so that you could understand it likely did a poor job of explaining it.
But there are so many models and theories that offer up different specifics but similar generalities that it can be frustrating for laypeople to make sense of it all.
Re: Again (Score:2)
Do you have a citation for that prediction?
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so the drastic climate change issues we've seen in the last 5 years are make believe?
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only retarded people were saying that lmfao
what fucking virgins were you listening to a decade and a half ago
"catastrophically wrong" is fox news levels of wrong
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Oh, geez. +3 on this shit. /.'s fallen HARD, damn. fuckin shameful embarrassment
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> like they were supposed to in 2012
No cite of course.
> They have been CATASTROPHICALLY wrong every single time.
Utter bullshit.
Time to address the real problem (Score:3, Insightful)
The only way to establish change is to hit the primary contributors (corporations) to this problem where it hurts most their bottom line. Once they see that profits are declining due to their practices (through taxation, or full out bans of some products) only then will change happen. But since Governments are in bed with these corporations, it is never in their best interest to force change on them.... so it is always framed that "everyday Joe sixpack" needs to do better, never the companies that produce thousands of times the pollutants that of any individual.
Re: (Score:2)
Change so that the ice caps do not melt for a third time in the last 20 years?
The climate doomsayers have been more than wrong every time.
Not a little off. Completely, not even in the ballpark WRONG.
Why push the third world deeper into poverty because of what people that have never been close to right predict?
Re: (Score:2)
> so that the ice caps do not melt for a third time in the last 20 years?
You're still blabbering?
Re:Time to address the real problem (Score:4, Insightful)
You do realize they'll never "eat" those costs, right? They'll pass them on to you the consumer and maintain their profits and bonuses. I dislike being that cynical, but the tariffs have shown us extra costs are passed on.
Re: Time to address the real problem (Score:3)
We (for a value which does not include maggots) already knew that about tariffs and also about everything else.
Re: Time to address the real problem (Score:1)
I do not understand why people see the concept of costs being passed on to consumers as controversial. If a corporation ceases to make a profit, it ceases to exist. If a corporation is taxed into oblivion and cannot meet the payroll, people stop working there and it stops creating goods and services. Their only existential option is to pass new costs onto consumers.Why is this difficult for people to understand?
Another moment of greatness (Score:3)
History is well populated by traces of civilizations brought low by climate change, possibly including the moment when the entire human population was reduced to perhaps 1000 individuals (i.e., we almost didn't make it). So it is interesting thatthere was much rejoicing that almost the entire collection of climate change efforts, such as they were, have been eliminated by the current administration. Strange that -- almost as though MAGA meant 'make america go away'. Now I have never been one to think that a move towards electric cars and houses was going to do much to move the climate change needle into reverse. But over time there was the hope that moving away from hard hit areas and other defensive moves would moderate the impact. But refusing to do anything until the crisis is upon us does nothing but maximize the costs of survival -- sort of what has happened to FEMA. These sorts of weather extremes are already part of reality, even in the US. With the melting of the polar ice, permafrost thawing and signs that the atlantic current that warms Europe is diminishing, unpleasant new realities seem inevitable. Wonder if the species will survive this time?
A good Nuclear Winter is always an option? (Score:2)
Should drop worldwide temperatures by 10-20 degrees. Will also help depopulate and deindustrialize the world a bit. It's a win/win.
Benign? (Score:3)
> The climate would also be very different to the benign conditions of the past 11,000 years...
What planet were they studying? We had an ice age within the last 11,000 years. I would never call that benign.
The oceans have also been 3-5m higher than they are now. I agree we shouldn't make things worse than needed, but let's not forget that the climate changes on its own up and down over time.
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> The oceans have also been 3-5m higher than they are now. I agree we shouldn't make things worse than needed, but let's not forget that the climate changes on its own up and down over time.
Rate of change matters. Just because I can use the brakes in my car to reduce speed slowly doesn't mean stopping by hitting a brick wall at full speed is at all safe.
Ecosystems need time to adjust to new temperatures, so they don't collapse.
Imaginary Problems (Score:1)
You cannot really argue with the geological record - it is literally written in stone. The usual state for the Earth is tropical all over, with no ice at the poles. Ice ages last a few million years, while the normal hot house climate lasts hundreds of millions of years. It will eventually go back to that no matter what we do.
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> The usual state for the Earth is tropical all over, with no ice at the poles.
Show evidence.
Re: Yawn (Score:2)
How exactly did you shit that out? Are those OCR errors?
Re: This is so incredibly much bullshit (Score:3)
Nobody gives a fuck whether the climate before we existed would have supported us. What matters is now and this is an unprecedented situation with previously unseen rates of change.
Re: This is so incredibly much bullshit (Score:2)
Okey dokey coward. Run along and let the adults have a conversation now, I hear your mom calling me.
After the bitter cold of this winter (Score:2)
With negative wind chills caused by near daily high winds, a hothouse sounds nice.
Hell on Earth (Score:1)
Well now we know why certain political figures ignore climate change and say solar, wind turbines, and others are "evil". It's because they are from hell and want hell on earth. How pleasant...
meanwhile iceland is unawares (Score:1)
meanwhile iceland is unawares = [1]https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
[1] https://news.slashdot.org/story/26/02/10/2021208/iceland-is-planning-for-the-possibility-that-its-climate-could-become-uninhabitable
Re: Look, just bottom line this for me (Score:2)
The oil and gas companies you mean? All of it, and all of our lives as well.
Sto[ pushing this FUD (Score:2, Insightful)
No credible research even comes close to suggesting runaway greenhouse effect. The worst case scenario was modeled to increase temperature by 5C over the next century.
Will this cause the ocean level to rise or not? (Score:2)
That's very interesting. And yet, the elites continue to build and buy palatial homes along the coast.
The same scientists that have gotten it wrong (Score:2)
over and over again...
They need to drop the panic. It doesn't work. It's always 10 or 20 years out and will be irreversible or gone forever. In 2002, scientists predicted the ice fields on Kilimanjaro would disappear between 2015 and 2020 “if current climatological conditions” persisted. Yet that didn't happen.
Now if they just said there is a trend of warming. You know, coming out of an ice age it's been warming. The glaciers made by that have been melting. okay.
Until then it's all about
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I'd rather have Musk just move away.
"Scientists thought they understood global warming. Then the past three years happened."
[1]https://www.washingtonpost.com... [washingtonpost.com]
Yes, we are fucked in the ass. The worst case scenarios are likely if not optimistic.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/interactive/2026/climate-change-temperature-rate-accelerating/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f011
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The paywall really puts a damper on the doomsaying, though. Reminds me of one of my favorite quotes from Stargate:
> Dr. Rodney McKay: Why wait? Why does the guy show up a day-and-a-half after this all starts to do his whole "Prepare to meet your doom" thing?
> Major Samantha Carter: I don't know. Maybe he wanted to make sure it was gonna work.
> Dr. Rodney McKay: Yeah, that would be embarrassing, wouldn't it? "Nothing can stop the destruction that I bring upon you!" Then the gate shuts down. "Oops, sorry. Never mind."
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> I'd rather have Musk just move away.
And take the most successful line of EVs with him?
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Not the most successful anymore. China's eating his lunch, and they'd be doing more in the US if it weren't for protectionism.
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Maybe? It's arguable that his support of this admin helped them win power and that has offset much of the good hos EVs have done at this point. Probably not true but it's also not zero, he's burned through a lot of his goodwill and the admin is setting the issue backwards by some amount.
Teslas cratering sales in Europe, the mediocrity of the Cybertruck, the paring down of their product lines, they continue to lose self driving ground to Waymo, Tesla isn't failing but it isn't doing great either and I think
Re: (Score:2)
Formerly most successful.
BYD passed them in 2025.