The world’s largest sources of freshwater will be severely depleted by 2029, with catastrophic consequences for all of humanity.
[THREAD]
Timebomb:
Regions most sensitive to changes in climate include humid and wet areas, such as the Amazon, Indonesia and parts of central Africa. In some of these areas, it could take *less* than 10 years for climate change to fully impact groundwater flows. carbonbrief.org/climate-change…
Groundwater response times:
The map below:
Yellow shows areas where groundwater is likely to fully respond to stresses in under 10 years. ⚠️
Light green shows where the response time is 10-100 years.
Areas with the shortest groundwater response times include wet, humid regions: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Indonesia, and low-lying regions, such as the Asian mega-deltas and the Florida Everglades.
2 billion living with absolute water scarcity by 2025👇
Most over-stressed is the Arabian Aquifer System, which supplies water to 60 million people in Saudi Arabia & Yemen; the Indus Basin aquifer in northwest India & Pakistan is the second-most threatened; the Murzuk-Djado Basin in northern Africa the third. nationalgeographic.com/news/2016/07/w…
Today:
🔺1.9 billion people live in countries facing extremely high water stress
e.g India, Pakistan, Iran, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE
🔺Another 2.5 billion people face high levels of water stress
The likelihood of conflict:
'most regions of the world face significant hydropolitical vulnerabilities that, in a number of hot-spot basins, may turn into serious water conflict in the decades to come'
12-40% of species extinct is considered catastrophic. So many amphibian species (~50%), plant & bird species (~40-50%), insect & mammal species (~30-40%), and reptile & fish species (~25%) are currently seen as being at risk. 48% of species are in decline. How will humans cope?
1. under a pessimistic global warming scenario (~4°C increase), climate change alone might only cause the extinction of ~20–30% of extant species in the next ~50–100 years [41,42]. Taken together, these losses would be catastrophic, but very far from 75%.' sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
2. 'Current projections of future extinction seem more consistent with ~12–40% species loss, which would be catastrophic but far from the 75% criterion used to argue for a 6th mass extinction.'
Earth's species will suffer 2-2.6°C and rising even in capitalism's most ambitious decarbonization scenario. Scientists anticipate unsurvivable 3-7°C, with geologic periods like the Miocene climatic optimum (MCO) seen as good analogues for our current 21st century climate hell.🧵
1/The race is now on to improve our knowledge of the Earth system in order to understand whether.. moderate levels of pCO2 may.. cause a devastating..increase of up to 7°C in the (near?) future, and if so, take action to prevent it. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/20…x.com/ClimateBen/sta…
2. The temperature regime reconstructed for most of the Miocene, ∼5°C–8°C above modern, is equivalent to projected future warming in about a century under unmitigated carbon emissions scenarios.. an important warm-climate analog.. agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.10… x.com/ClimateBen/sta…
COLLAPSE/EXTINCTION: scientists fear global warming of 3.5°C, which wipes out 33-70% of species (IPCC AR4 2007, IPCC AR6 2022), will likely hit by the 2060s give or take a decade or two 🧵
1. IPCC scenario SSP3-7.0 shows 3.5°C by 2080 or from 2062 (not the worst-case scenario). Even a moderate emissions scenario can lead to 3.5°C this century (new research shows 2060s-80s possible).
2. A new pre-print from highly respected climate scientists implies 3.5°C by 2065-77 at current rates of warming. The authors warn this rate could increase or decrease perhaps suggesting 3.5°C by around 2055-2087 rather like IPCC high emissions scenarios. researchsquare.com/article/rs-607…
BREAKING: scientists say Earth's major systems are undergoing abrupt changes — and soon we'll all feel them 🧵
1. 'prepare for a future of abrupt change.. choices made now will determine whether we face a future of worsening impacts and irreversible change or one of managed resilience to the changes already locked in.' phys.org/news/2025-08-s…
2. Society must now brace for catastrophic impacts.
Destruction of habitats and wildlife has intensified and accelerated to an almost unimaginable degree during the capitalist era. Scientists say the 40-50% of plant species now facing extinction will be obliterated in a handful of decades. It didn't have to be like this. Rethink.
'previous mass extinctions.. took 10,000s, 100,000s, even millions of years to happen. this is happening so fast, now in just two, three decades..' google.com/amp/s/www.cbsn…
2. Current estimates of plant extinctions are, without a doubt, gross underestimates. Extinctions will surpass background rates by 1000s of times over the next 80 years. universityofcalifornia.edu/news/plants-ar…
BREAKING: as tropical forests show increasingly clear signs they are entering a collapse phase scientists warn irreversible mass extinction conditions are on the horizon 🧵
1. rapid warming & collapse
".. warming could continue to accelerate.. even if we reach zero human emissions. We will have fundamentally changed the carbon cycle in a way that can take geological timescales to recover, which has happened in Earth’s past.”scitechdaily.com/mass-extinctio…
2. “There will be a point in the not too distant future when we suddenly see and feel this mass extinction all around us very clearly”
“A key point of extinction crises is that life has always recovered.. However..we most likely won’t be there to see it."