Ben See Profile picture
Apr 24, 2021 11 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Remember:

1. Global crop failures by 2°C.
2. Most humans dead by 4°C.
3. Earth uninhabitable by 6°C.
4. We risk 2°C by 2035.
5. We risk 4°C by 2065.
6. We risk 6°C by 2095.

One tweet is worth a million newspaper front pages.
1. It will never be too late to try to limit the damage/suffering of the expanding ecological-climate catastrophe by challenging media silence, destructlive growth & short-term profit maximization.

We need economic system change action now to avoid 3-4C by 2050-2100.

Sources:👇
2. 'Risks of simultaneous crop failure.. increase disproportionately between 1.5 and 2°C'

Over 1.5°C represents 'a threat to global food security'
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

'Agriculture is already at moderate risk, which becomes high risk around 2 degrees' vox.com/platform/amp/s… Image
3. Meta-analysis: 70% of studies show declines in crop yields by the 2030s (half indicate 10–50% declines):
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

We are in the danger zone.

2°C will hit as early as 2034-2038 without stunning emissions cuts towards zero in the 2020s.
carbonbrief.org/analysis-when-…
4. Scientists still hope to stay below 2.5C but it would take a 'herculean effort' to avoid 4C, at which point 'mass death' would be likely:

From 2011
:smh.com.au/business/on-co…

And from 2009: 4C by the 2060s if emissions don't peak & plummet by the 2030s:
dumptheguardian.com/environment/20…
5. This recent study confirms 3-4°C looks increasingly likely by 2050-2100 as emissions continue to rise, and that >5C by the end of the century is beyond catastrophic for humanity, and entirely possible.

We must change everything to protect everybody.
6. This is tough information to take in. I feel better when I try to take action to support the Climate Justice Movement which has known for decades that capitalism must be transformed and replaced for decent survival. Individual-collective action is possible. Keep going.
7. Just to add, here's a thread full of key info on parts per million of CO2 (ppm) in the atmosphere and 'CO2-e' which includes all greenhouse gases and forcings. The thread has two more sources on 5-6°C being enough to make the planet uninhabitable.
8. Because the statements in the tweet are so extraordinary, I have to concentrate on extensive explanatory details which back them up as convincingly as possible in the thread.

It's also important to suggest actions, so here is a thread of ideas:

10. Some interesting quotations from high-profile scientists here, and see conversations under the tweet for further debate/discussion.

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More from @ClimateBen

Sep 10
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.🧵 The multimethod, multitaxon pCO2 reconstruction presented here indicates that pCO2 was moderately elevated at ~450–550 ppm during the MCO. These results are somewhat higher than most previously published pCO2 records, which generally report pCO2 < 450 ppm (see Foster et al., 2017), but still considerably lower pCO2 than climate modeling requires to reproduce MCO temperatures (Goldner et al., 2014). This indicates that climate sensitivity must have been elevated during the MCO, leading to highly elevated temperatures at moderately elevated pCO2. With 415 ppm measured for the first time in sp...
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…
Read 7 tweets
Aug 27
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).


Species extinct IPCC:
3.5C 40-70% 2007
3C 29%, 4C 39% 2022esd.copernicus.org/articles/12/25…
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…
Read 5 tweets
Aug 25
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.

Thread:
Read 7 tweets
Aug 9
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. Plants are going extinct up to 350 times faster than the historical norm
1. Capitalism: a 'meteorite'

'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…

Recovery: "we most likely won’t be there to see it"..
discovermagazine.com/earth-is-on-th…
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…
Read 8 tweets
Aug 7
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."
Read 5 tweets
Jul 23
icymi: our coastal cities will be smashed by multi-metre sea level rise within decades Peak global mean temperature, atmospheric CO2, maximum global mean sea level (GMSL), and source(s) of meltwater.  Light blue shading indicates uncertainty of GMSL maximum. Red pie charts over Greenland and Antarctica denote fraction (not location) of ice retreat.
The Greenland ice sheet is now losing around 9 billion litres of ice an hour [Geological Survey of Denmark &Greenland]

With the ice sheet at “a tipping point of irreversible melting”, scientists currently expect an unavoidable sea level rise of 1-2 metres.weforum.org/stories/2025/0…
4 to 10 m sea level rise committed in the coming 2000 years, with the majoroty of that in the coming decades/centuries it would appear.
science.org/doi/10.1126/sc…

x.com/climate_ice/st…
Read 4 tweets

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