by Andrew Glikson “We are simply talking about the very life support system of this planet.” Hans Joachim Schellnhuber , Germany’s former chief climate scientist (2009) “Burning all fossil fuels would create a very different planet than the one that humanity knows. The palaeoclimate record and ongoing climate change make it clear that the climate system would be pushed beyond tipping points, setting in motion irreversible changes, including ice sheet disintegration with a continually adjusting shoreline, extermination of a substantial fraction of species on the planet, and increasingly devastating regional climate extremes” and “this equates 400,000 Hiroshima atomic bombs per day 365 days per year” . James Hansen et al. 2012 and James Hansen 2012 . Figure 1. The change in state of the planetary climate since the onset of the industrial age in the 18ᵗʰ century. During its last 600 million years-long history planet Earth suffered at least five major mass extinctions, defining the ends o...