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It’s time to pursue hospice by Guy McPherson A Hearing was held by the New York City Council Committee on Environmental Protection on June 24, 2019, on the Resolution  “ Declaring a climate emergency and calling for an immediate emergency mobilization to restore a safe climate ” . Below is Guy McPherson's testimony. Thank you for the opportunity to address the Council’s Committee on the topic of Resolution 864. The topic under discussion is the most important in the history of our species. We face a stunningly severe existential risk that is routinely ignored or downplayed by governments, the corporate media, and paid climate scientists. I am Guy McPherson, professor emeritus of conservation biology at the University of Arizona. I began my tenure at that University in 1989. I was granted tenure and promoted to associate professor, and then full professor, earlier than is customary. I am one of the relatively few people in history to achieve the status of full professor before turni...

Beyond climate tipping points Greenhouse gas levels exceed the stability limit of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets by Andrew Glikson Abstract The pace of global warming has been grossly underestimated. As the world keeps increasing its carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions, rising in 2018 to a record 33.1 billion ton  of CO₂ per year, the atmospheric greenhouse gas level has now exceeded 560 ppm (parts per million) CO ₂ -e quivalent , namely when methane and nitrous oxide are included. This level surpasses the stability threshold of the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets. The term “climate change”   is thus  no longer appropriate, since what is happening in the atmosphere-ocean system, accelerating over the last 70 years or so, is an abrupt calamity on a geological dimension, threatening nature and human civilization. Ignoring what the science says, the powers-that-be are presiding over the sixth mass extinction of species, including humanity. As conveyed by leading...

Melt extent over Greenland was well over 40% on June 12, 2019. The surface melt map that day (on the right) shows many coastal areas for which data are missing, as indicated by the grey color. As the June 13, 2019, NASA Worldview satellite image (underneath, right) shows, snow and ice in many coastal areas has melted away. Four nullschool images are added below. The first one shows air temperatures over Greenland as high as 22.7°C or 72.9°F on June 13, 2019, at 1000 mb. Also note the high temperatures visible over East Siberia and the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS). A second nullschool image shows that a temperature of 0.9°C or 33.5°F was recorded at the North Pole on June 15, 2019. Temperatures above the melting point of ice have been recorded at the North Pole for some time now. The third nullschool image shows that temperatures as high as 30.5°C or 86.8°F are forecast for June 19, 2019, near Tiksi, which is on the coast of Siberia where the Lena River flows into the Laptev Sea an...

A rise of more than 5°C could happen within a decade, possibly by 2026. Humans will likely go extinct with a 3°C rise and most life on Earth will disappear with a 5°C rise. In the light of this, we should act with integrity. When will we die? The outlook for people living now is that they will die before the end of the century. After all, even in more developed regions, people statistically die at an age below 75 years, as the image on the right illustrates. The image calls up questions regarding possible shortening of life expectancy due to global heating. A 2018 study by Strona & Bradshaw indicates that most life on Earth will disappear with a 5°C rise (see box on the right). The first question therefore is whether and how fast such a rise could eventuate. Furthermore, global heating projections for the year 2100 may seem rather irrelevant to many people, as they do not expect to be alive by the year 2100. A second question therefore is what makes most sense, focusing on the yea...