Climate Crisis - Haggard Earth

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 9

‘Collapse of Civilisation is the Most Likely Outcome’: Top Climate Scientist Asher Moses, originally published by Voice of Action Australia’s top climate scientist says “we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse” of civilisation, which may now be inevitable because 9 of the 15 known global climate tipping points that regulate the state of the planet have been activated. Australian National University emeritus professor Will Steffen (pictured) told Voice of Action that there was already a chance we have triggered a “global tipping cascade” that would take us to a less habitable “Hothouse Earth” climate, regardless of whether we reduced emissions.

Steffen says it would take 30 years at best (more likely 40-60 years) to transition to net zero emissions, but when it comes to tipping points such as Arctic sea ice we could have already run out of time. Evidence shows we will also lose control of the tipping points for the Amazon rainforest, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and the Greenland ice sheet in much less time than it’s going to take us to get to net zero emissions, Steffen says. “Given the momentum in both the Earth and human systems, and the growing difference between the ‘reaction time’ needed to steer humanity towards a more sustainable future, and the ‘intervention time’ left to avert a range of catastrophes in both the physical climate system (e.g., melting of Arctic sea ice) and the biosphere (e.g., loss of the Great Barrier Reef), we are already deep into the trajectory towards collapse,” said Steffen. “That is, the intervention time we have left has, in many cases, shrunk to levels that are shorter than the time it would take to transition to a more sustainable system.

“The fact that many of the features of the Earth System that are being damaged or lost constitute ‘tipping points’ that could well link to form a ‘tipping cascade’ raises the ultimate question: Have we already lost control of the system? Is collapse now inevitable?” This is not a unique view – leading Stanford University biologists, who were first to reveal that we are already experiencing the sixth mass extinction on Earth, released new research this week showing species extinctions are accelerating in an unprecedented manner, which may be a tipping point for the collapse of human civilisation. Also in the past week research emerged showing the world’s major food baskets will experience more extreme droughts than previously forecast, with southern Australia among the worst hit globally. Steffen used the metaphor of the Titanic in one of his recent talks to describe how we may cross tipping points faster than the time it would take us to react to get our impact on the climate under control. “If the Titanic realises that it’s in trouble and it has about 5km that it needs to slow and steer the ship, but it’s only 3km away from the iceberg, it’s already doomed,” he said.

‘This is an existential threat to civilization’.......Steffen, along with some of the world’s most eminent climate scientists, laid out our predicament in the starkest possible terms in a piece for the journal Nature at the end of last year.They found that 9 of the 15 known Earth tipping elements that regulate the state of the planet had been activated, and there was now scientific support for declaring a state of planetary emergency. These tipping points can trigger abrupt carbon release back into the atmosphere, such as the release of carbon dioxide and methane caused by the irreversible thawing of the Arctic permafrost.

9 of 15 known Earth tipping points have been activated....“If damaging tipping cascades can occur and a global tipping point cannot be ruled out, then this is an existential threat to civilization,” they wrote. “No amount of economic cost–benefit analysis is going to help us. We need to change our approach to the climate problem. “The evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute.” Steffen is also the lead author of the heavily cited 2018 paper, Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene, where he found that “even if the Paris Accord target of a 1.5°C to 2°C rise in temperature is met, we cannot exclude the risk that a cascade of feedbacks could push the Earth System irreversibly onto a ‘Hothouse Earth’ pathway.” Steffen is a global authority on the subject of tipping points, which are prone to sudden shifts if they get pushed hard enough by a changing climate, and could take the trajectory of the system out of human control. Further warming would become self-sustaining due to system feedbacks and their mutual interaction. Steffen describes it like a row of dominos and his concern is that we are already at the point of no return, knocking over the first couple of dominos which could lead to a cascade knocking over the whole row......(ed. This was published five years ago and the situation now is even more dire!).....read on https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-06-08/collapse-of-civilisation-is-the-most-likely-outcome-top-climate-scientists/

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 31

The story of the world’s tropical forests in 2025 was not one of dramatic reversal, but one shaped by accumulated pressure. In several regions, deforestation slowed. In others, loss continued in less visible forms, shaped by fire, degradation, and political choices not limited to large-scale clearing alone. Governments continued to speak the language of protection, even as infrastructure, extraction, and energy projects advanced into forest landscapes. Progress was real, though uneven, and the distance between policy commitments and conditions on the ground remained substantial...........

What distinguished the year was the growing influence of indirect forces, rather than a single driver of loss. Heat, drought, and past damage increasingly shaped forest outcomes, even where new clearing slowed. Commodity markets rewarded persistence more than short-lived price spikes. Finance shifted away from individual projects toward broader fiscal tools. Enforcement mattered, alongside institutional credibility and the ability to operate consistently over time. Taken together, 2025 underscored that tropical forests are now shaped more by interacting systems rather than single policies. Finance, science, enforcement, conflict, and climate stress increasingly operate together, often reinforcing one another. This review traces where those systems functioned, where they faltered, and what that means for the forests caught within them.

Previous year-in-reviews:

2024 | 2023 | 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | The 2010s | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011 | 2009

AND.......At the global level, climate diplomacy continued, with limited appetite for binding decisions. COP30 avoided collapse and deferred the hardest choices. Forests remained prominent in rhetoric while enforceable outcomes remained limited. Market-based tools—carbon credits, trade regulation, and conservation finance—advanced unevenly, shaped as much by political confidence and capacity as by technical design........

HOWEVER.....The first amphibian to halt a hydroelectric dam now takes on the climate crisis Mongabay News Dec 28, 2025

Known in Brazil as the admirable little red-bellied toad, the rare Melanophryniscus admirabilis is endemic to a stretch of the Forqueta River in Rio Grande do Sul state. It made history in 2014 when it halted the construction of a hydroelectric dam that would have destroyed its only habitat.
After the 2024 floods, researchers returned to the area to assess the impacts of the state’s biggest climate catastrophe on its environment.
With just over a thousand individuals in the wild, the species is listed as “critically endangered”; in addition to climate change, the little toad suffers from the advance of monocultures and the threat of wildlife trafficking.

ARVOREZINHA, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil — The admirable little red-bellied toad is the size of a thumb, but it has achieved giant feats: In 2014, it prevented the construction of a small hydroelectric dam that threatened to alter its only habitat forever. Endemic to a small stretch of the Forqueta River, in the municipality of Arvorezinha, Rio Grande do Sul, Melanophryniscus admirabilis is one of the rarest and most threatened species on the planet. Recently, after the floods that devastated the state in 2024, researchers returned to this refuge to assess whether the little toad that once halted the construction of a dam has survived the force of the waters.In October 2025, almost a year and a half after the biggest climate disaster in Rio Grande do Sul, I joined a team of researchers that would document what remained of the small habitat where just over a thousand little red-bellied toads used to live. The destination was Perau de Janeiro, a hidden fold of rocks and humid forest. Seen from above, the place, which is surrounded by tobacco plantations and pastures, looks like a common forest scene. But as we go down a steep trail, the atmosphere changes immediately. The smell of moss, the shining wet outcrop, the sound of the powerful flow of the river that ends in a waterfall: It was there that the little toad halted progress. And it was there where we wanted to find out if it still vocalized.

Described by science in 2006, the little toad belongs to the Bufonidae family, and, despite being able to jump, it prefers to walk slowly as if measuring the ground before taking each step. Its green back and its little colorful legs and belly form an unlikely contrast for someone who prefers not to be seen but insists on being remembered. These warning colors serve as an alert to visually oriented predators that the animal is toxic, dangerous or unpalatable — a defense mechanism known as aposematism.The eyes that observe them quickly jump to the light green dots that form patterns on the bottom of their abdominal area. “I say that when we observe these little spots, they are like constellations. So we can see some patterns, as if we were looking at the stars,” says Michelle Abadie, a biologist and the leader of the research team, comparing the toad’s macroglands to dots in the sky. The glands release toxins as a defense mechanism but also serve as individual identification similar to a human fingerprint.Abadie has been working with the species for 15 years, and since the beginning of her research, she has faced challenges when it comes to keeping the toad population stable.......read on https://mongabay1.substack.com/p/the-first-amphibian-to-halt-a-hydroelectric?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=5165423&post_id=182554890&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=mwxsy&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 19

Species at Risk 60,000 African penguins starved to death after sardine numbers collapsed – study. Guardian Phoebe Weston 5 Dec 2025 Climate crisis and overfishing contributed to loss of 95% of penguins in two breeding colonies in South Africa, research finds. More than 60,000 penguins in colonies off the coast of South Africa have starved to death as a result of disappearing sardines, a new paper has found. More than 95% of the African penguins in two of the most important breeding colonies, on Dassen Island and Robben Island, died between 2004 and 2012. The breeding penguins probably starved to death during the moulting period, according to the paper, which said the climate crisis and overfishing were driving declines.

The losses that researchers recorded in those colonies were not isolated, said the paper, which was published in Ostrich: Journal of African Ornithology. “These declines are mirrored elsewhere,” said Dr Richard Sherley, from the Centre for Ecology and Conservation at the University of Exeter. The African penguin species has undergone a population decline of nearly 80% in 30 years. African penguins shed and replace their worn-out feathers every year to protect their insulation and waterproofing. However, during the moulting period, which takes about 21 days, they have to stay on land. To survive this fasting period, they need to fatten up beforehand. “If food is too hard to find before they moult or immediately afterwards, they will have insufficient reserves to survive the fast,” said Sherley. “We don’t find large rafts of carcasses – our sense is that they probably die at sea,” he said. For every year except three since 2004, the biomass of the sardine species Sardinops sagax had fallen to 25% of its maximum abundance off the coast of western South Africa, the study found. The fish are a key food for African penguins. Changes in the temperature and salinity off the west coast of Africa have made the fishes’ spawning less successful. Levels of fishing, however, have remained high in the region. In 2024, African penguins were classified as critically endangered, with fewer than 10,000 breeding pairs left.....read on

More sustainable fisheries management could improve the penguins’ chances of survival. Conservationists are taking action on the ground, by building artificial nests to shelter chicks, managing predators and hand-rearing adults and chicks who need rescuing. Commercial purse-seine fishing, which involves encircling a school of fish with a large net and then trapping them by closing the bottom, has been banned around the six largest penguin-breeding colonies in South Africa. It is hoped this will “increase access to prey for penguins at critical parts of their life cycle”, said the study co-author Dr Azwianewi Makhado, from the Department of Forestry, Fisheries and the Environment in South Africa. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/dec/05/african-penguins-starve-to-death-south-africa-sardine-population-aoe

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 23

Carbon Offsets Are Failing. Can a New Plan Save the Rainforests?Yale Environment 360 Fred Pearce • Oct 29, 2025 Brazil is set to unveil an ambitious international plan that would provide up to $4 billion a year to countries that protect their tropical forests. Proponents see it as a potential game-changer for forest conservation, but some ecologists and economists are raising concerns. It could be the last and best chance to save the world’s tropical forests. As international aid budgets for conservation crash and carbon offset schemes for protecting forests are widely discredited, Brazil is about to unveil an ambitious plan that would triple current finance for saving forests worldwide by channeling profits from international trade in government bonds. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) is set to be announced by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as a centerpiece of the U.N. climate conference in the Amazon city of Belém next month. It would create a $125 billion investment fund intended to provide up to $4 billion a year to potentially 74 tropical and subtropical nations as a reward for protecting their forests. The viability of the proposed scheme is being questioned by some ecologists and economists. And rich-world governments and philanthropic organizations have so far been slow to follow Brazil in pledging the seed funding thought necessary to attract private investors.

But late last month the World Bank agreed to become the facility’s trustee and interim host, raising hopes ahead of the TFFF’s launch. Under the initiative, countries would be paid according to satellite measurements of the extent of their standing tropical forests. The TFFF’s backers see the fund as a potential jewel in the crown of green capitalism, with bond markets coming to the rescue of the rainforests. Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva told a London Climate Week audience in June: “It will mobilize large-scale capital with sustained financial flows to conserve our biodiversity.” For Zac Goldsmith, British senior fellow at the Bezos Earth Fund, a potential funder, “the TFFF is the only game in town for forest finance… We will not have this opportunity again.” The World Bank will now become the administrative headquarters of the facility, as well as eventually overseeing transference of its anticipated profits to tropical countries. “With this foundation in place, the TFFF is now ready for countries to follow Brazil’s lead by making their own pledges,” said Brazil’s finance minister Fernando Haddad.

But there are concerns. Forest ecologists warn that the plan’s rulebook is so loose that it could allow payouts for forests even as they are being logged. Rights activists warn that Indigenous peoples could lose control of their forests. Meanwhile, some economists argue that the project’s proposed financial architecture is both risky and inherently unfair. Much of the money for forest protection would come from the high interest rates charged on volatile loans to the very countries whose forests it promises to benefit. Without those hefty payments, says Max Alexander Matthey of the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany, “there is no money for the forests.” Under the TFFF, countries would be paid initially according to satellite measurements of the extent of their standing tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests, at an annual rate of $1.60 per acre. In subsequent years, every acre deforested would result in a reduction in payments equivalent to at least 100 acres. Countries with an annual deforestation rate above 0.5 percent — which currently includes major forested nations such as Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo — would be barred from receiving any funds.

It could potentially be a “game-changer” for forest conservation, says Robert Nasi, director general of the Indonesia-based Center for International Forestry Research. If successful, it “could become a blueprint for other… critical ecosystems like peatlands and mangroves,” he says. Nobody doubts the need for new impetus to save tropical forests from continued invasions by farmers, loggers, and miners and the spread of wildfires. Last month, a new assessment found an upsurge in deforestation rates in the tropics, reaching a record 16.5 million acres last year and leaving the world far off track to meet the promise of governments to end deforestation this decade. (The only good news was from the Brazilian Amazon where a sharp decline achieved the lowest rate of forest loss since 2015.) As drafted, the fund “would allow payments even where industrial logging is occurring in primary forests,” says one critic.

Meanwhile, foreign aid budgets that have funded much forest conservation in recent years are in freefall, both in the United States and Europe. And market-based systems of forest protection and restoration based on trading in carbon offsets are floundering. A global analysis published in October found that less than a fifth of such projects met their emissions targets. So, for governments and forests alike, the investment-led TFFF — with just a fifth of the fund intended to come from governments and philanthropic sponsors, and the remainder from private investors — seems like a lifeline. It has strong backing from major environmental groups such as the WWF and Conservation International. But there are concerns among forest ecologists that the small print defining what counts as standing forest worthy of rewarding could create perverse incentives for further destruction. Most intact moist tropical forests have canopy cover greater than 80 percent. Much less usually indicates they are badly degraded, for instance by loggers, says environmental scientist Brendan Mackey of Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Yet the TFFF’s criteria for full payment currently require only 20 percent cover. “This is not scientifically credible” he says.....read on https://e360.yale.edu/features/tropical-forest-forever-facility-cop30

Details: Written by: Glenn and Rick; Category: Climate Crisis; Hits: 62

Mountains are among the planet’s most beautiful places. They’re also becoming the deadliest. CNN Laura Paddison Jun 7, 2025 Jan Beutel was half-watching a live stream of Kleines Nesthorn, a mountain peak in the Swiss Alps, when he realized its cacophony of creaks and rumbles was getting louder. He dropped his work, turned up the sound and found himself unable to look away. “The whole screen exploded,” he said. Beutel, a computer engineer specializing in mountain monitoring, had just witnessed a glacier collapse. On May 28, an avalanche of millions of tons of ice and rock barreled down the slope, burying Blatten, a centuries-old village nestled in the valley below. Local authorities had already evacuated the village after parts of the mountain had crumbled onto the glacier; a 64-year old man believed to have stayed remains missing. But no one expected an event of this magnitude. Successive rock avalanches onto the glacier increased the pressure on the ice, causing it to melt faster and the glacier to accelerate, eventually destabilizing it and pushing it from its bed. The collapse was sudden, violent and catastrophic. “This one just left no moment to catch a breath,” Beutel said. The underlying causes will take time to unravel. A collapse of this magnitude would have been set in motion by geological factors going back decades at least, said Matthias Huss, a glaciologist at the Swiss university ETH Zürich. But it’s “likely climate change is involved,” he said, as warming temperatures melt the ice that holds mountains together. It’s a problem affecting mountains across the planet.People have long been fascinated with mountains for their dramatic beauty.

Some make their homes beneath them — around 1 billion live in mountain communities — others are drawn by adventure, the challenge of conquering peaks. These majestic landscapes have always been dangerous, but as the world warms, they are becoming much more unpredictable and much deadlier. “We do not fully understand the hazard at the moment, nor how the dangers are changing with climate change,” said David Petley, an Earth scientist at the University of Hull in England. Snowy and icy mountains are inherently sensitive to climate change. Very high mountains are etched with fractures filled with ice — called permafrost — which glues them together. As the permafrost thaws, mountains can become destabilized. “We are seeing more large rock slope collapses in many mountains as a result,” Petley told CNN. Glaciers are also melting at a terrifyingly rapid rate, especially in regions such as the Alps and the Andes, which face the possibility of a glacier-free future. As these rivers of ancient ice disappear, they expose mountain faces, causing more rocks to fall. There have been several big collapses in the Alps in recent years as ice melts and permafrost thaws. In July 2022, about 64,000 tons of water, rock and ice broke off from the Marmolada Glacier in northern Italy after unusually hot weather caused massive melting. The subsequent ice avalanche killed 11 people hiking a popular trail. In 2023, the peak of Fluchthorn, a mountain on the border between Switzerland and Austria, collapsed as permafrost thawed, sending more than 100,000 cubic meters of rock into the valley below.

“This really seems to be something new. There seems to be a trend in such big events in high mountain areas,” Huss said. Mountains are the “most convincing” hotspots of climate change, he told CNN. When he’s focused on the science, he keeps his emotions at arm’s length. But as a father, and a mountaineer, it hits him. “I see just how critical the situation is. And even then, we’re only at the very beginning.”......read on, there's more! https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/07/climate/swiss-glacier-mountains-melting-unstable

‘Collapse of Civilisation is the Most Likely Outcome’: saysTop Climate Scientist Asher Moses,

Tropical forests in 2025 shaped by Accumulated Pressures.... Deforestation Slowed, Loss Continued Shaped by Fire, Degradation, and Politics.....and the Amazing Little Toad

Previous year-in-reviews:

Contents:

60,000 African Penguins Starved to Death after Sardine Numbers Collapsed

Carbon Offsets Are Failing. Can a New Plan Save the Rainforests?

Mountains are among the Planet’s Most Beamutiful Places. They’re also Becoming the Deadliest

More Articles …

User Menu