The average person is incredulous when I say that Industrial Civilisation can and probably will collapse in the next two or if we’re ‘lucky’ three years. Sixteen ocean passages on small yachts, two years living in war zones and six decades of risk taking, have taught me the value of the “Precautionary Principle” and how your luck can evaporate, in a flash. “The precautionary principle has been adopted universally in different environmental instruments. It states that if there is risk of severe damage to humans and the environment, absence of incontrovertible, conclusive, or definite scientific proof is not a reason for inaction.”
I will be surprised if this set of living arrangements survives more than two more melt seasons in the Arctic.
I’ve been collaborating with Professor Guy McPherson for over a decade now and clearly his overall hypothesis heavily influences my personal views and synopsis. I was a spectacularly reluctant adherent to Guy’s scholarly work. For the first year or two I responded to Guy’s work with every one of Elizabeth Kubler Ross’s “Stages of Grief”: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally Acceptance.
Acceptance is key to navigating this, the perfect storm. It does not equate to “Giving Up”. No one would accuse a terminal cancer patient of “Giving Up” and like it or not the diagnosis for the ecosystem is terminal. How we manage Planetary Hospice is up to us. If you’re on Facadebook you can see me ‘Giving Up” at the not-for-profit rewilding project at the Rakino Island Nursery where I volunteer, I’m the “Water Boy”.
Every single analogue is racing away, threatening a Seneca Cliff scenario.
Nonlinearity manifesting in all the graphs we are looking at? Check
The rerise of fascism and CO2 intensive warmongering? Check
The Bare Minimum attempts to reduce emissions. Check
Sea Surface temperatures threatening Canfield Oceans? Check
Sociopathic or psychopathic nuclear armed world leaders? Check
Starvation killing people over much of Africa and now Palestine. Check
A global Ponzi scheme masquerading as a global economy? Check
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation Stalling? Check
Extinction Cascades? Check
A Minimum of Six Dozen Feedback Loops Triggered? Check
Losing a city/region to extreme Wet Bulb Temps? Standby
Let’s start by having a look at it from the perspective of losing the Cryosphere, our planetary thermostat:
“Losing the remaining Arctic Sea Ice and its ability to reflect incoming solar energy back to space would be equivalent to adding one trillion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, on top of the 2.4 trillion tons emitted since the Industrial Age, according to current and former researchers from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego.”
“At current rates, this roughly equates to 25 years of global CO2 emissions.”
Cascading Consequences of the Loss of Arctic Sea Ice.
We are on the cusp of triggering a Blue Ocean Event (BOE) in the Arctic, there are a multitude of consequences that will accelerate our predicament from that event, not the least of them being the destabilising of the methane clathrates, especially vulnerable are those under the shallow East Siberian Arctic Shelf as documented by Dr Natalia Shakhova and her research partner Igor Semiletov and others. “Significant quantities of methane are escaping the East Siberian Shelf as a result of the degradation of submarine permafrost,” says Natalia Shakhova of the University of Alaska in Fairbanks. She and her team collected data – at a great cost – to show that vast areas are releasing plumes of methane gas, which is escaping into the atmosphere.” “Arctic storms speed up release of methane plumes” The above hyperlinked article is 11 years old; the destabilisation is accelerating.
“Over 10 years ago Dr Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov warned of a 50 billion tonne discharge of Methane from the East Siberian Arctic Shelf at “Any time”.
It’s been leaking at various levels ever since, but the dreaded “Clathrate Gun” has yet to manifest.
In a subsequent video Dr Peter Wadhams said he thought there were 100’s of billions of tonnes of CH4 under the shallow shelf and surrounding region. Possibly as much as four times more than that hypothesised above.
When it does destabilise, the warming will be near instantaneous and will devastate crop growth in the Northern Hemisphere. Ice-sheet-driven methane storage and release in the Arctic
“The heat in December 2023 was felt most strongly in the Arctic, as illustrated by the NASA image below, showing anomalies above 1951-1980 as high as 9.9°C. “
Seafloor methane tipping point crossed in 2024?
“On 18 March, 2022, scientists at the Concordia research station on the east Antarctic plateau documented a remarkable event. They recorded the largest jump in temperature ever measured at a meteorological centre on Earth. According to their instruments, the region that day experienced a rise of 38.5C above its seasonal average: a world record.” ‘Simply mind-boggling’: world record temperature jump in Antarctic raises fears of catastrophe.
“President Niinistö pointed out that, although the impacts are currently visible in the Arctic, they will ultimately affect each and every inhabitant of our planet. “There will be enormous consequences worldwide. As the ice melts, sea levels will rise. As the ice melts, solar radiation will not be reflected back – instead its energy will further warm the water and accelerate global warming.” President Niinistö in Arkhangelsk: If we lose the Arctic, we lose the whole world
Clearly, we have lost the Arctic!
Let’s have a look at it from a fire perspective.
“The Smokehouse Creek fire has so far scorched more than 1m acres – 1,600 sq miles – across the Texas Panhandle, as well as tens of thousands of acres in Oklahoma. It stretches over an area larger than Rhode Island, making it the largest ever wildfire in Texas, and the second-largest in US history, according to modern fire records.” A visual guide to the Texas wildfire
Why aren’t more scientists aligned with Guy and my timeline?
1) In our 2019 interview on Nature Bat Last, Dr Andrew Glikson titled: Tipping Points in the Earth Climate System. Dr Glikson said, “No one wants to be Cassandra”. Don’t I know it!
2) There is a long-held disdain for people talking about “The End Times’, most of which stem from pseudo religious mumbo jumbo, our position is rooted in Science.
3)The excellent author and journalist Chris Hedges wrote of the corruption of science: On Contact: The corporatization of science.
4) I’ve previously called out the corporate medias “Go to Mann” Michael E Mann for blatantly lying: Scientific Mal-Practice from the Mann Himself
5) Research grants are generally forerunners to develop marketable data or products.
Arctic researcher Dr Jason Box tweeted: “If even a small fraction of Arctic sea floor carbon is released to the atmosphere, we’re f’d.”
He copped enormous pushback and has never been so radical since!
Scientific reticence and the monetary system sunk our ship!
6) Climate sensitivity has been grossly underestimated and very few of us are prepared to admit our failure.
In 2017 I published an article titled: Full Earth System Sensitivity to CO2 has been Grossly Underestimated
The analysis was based on the work of David Wasdell from the Apollo Gaia Project.
“In this one-hour long presentation by Professor David Wasdell of the Apollo Gaia Project he explains that we have no available carbon budget and that we are on a trajectory of well over 10 degrees C.”
I woke up one morning to find this observation from Professor Peter Wadhams who has spent more time under and on the Arctic Sea Ice that any other scientist to my knowledge: “The analysis of climate sensitivity by David Wasdell is very important. I have been through it with him several times and am convinced of its validity. I mentioned it in “A Farewell to Ice”. The point is that here is a big difference between the short term sensitivity, which is used to calculate warming over a few years, and the long term sensitivity which represents how much warming the earth is going to be subjected to if you don’t add more CO2 but let the effects of the present levels work their way fully through the climate system. Short term sensitivity is 2-4.5 C, but long term is more like 10C. The crime of IPCC and other modelling outfits is that they are aware of this difference between short and long term, but still use the short term value even when they are doing hand-waving studies of what is going to happen over the next century or two. In fact it;’s not just the case that the magic 1.5C or 2C warming is already “baked in” to the global system – in fact the baked in figure is more like 4-5 C. Hence the vital need for carbon drawdown. Best wishes Peter Wadhams”.
How and why does the collapse of Industrial Civilisation equate to an extinction level event for most if not all complex life on the planet?
When industrial civilisation collapses, we will have over 450 unattended nuclear power stations melt down and approximately 1200 spent fuel pool fires erupting into a radioactive inferno the like of which has never happened before on this planet. Spent Nuclear Fuel Management Poses a Major Threat to the United States. American exceptionalism writ large, radiation respects no borders. Most chemical plants and oil wells will leak and burn once unattended.
When Industrial Civilisation collapses, we lose the “Aerosol Masking Effect”, what Dr James E Hanson labelled “Our Faustian Bargain”, there has been at least 1C of masking, perhaps a1.5C and Hansen said the aerosols will fall out of the atmosphere in as short a time as a week. No flora can adapt to those sorts of global perturbations. The Aerosol Masking Effect, a Deep Dive into Our “Faustian Bargain”
I accept and expect this post will be incredibly triggering for readers.
Here’s the deal. Leave a comment below, contact me any time after January 1 in 2026 and I’ll send you a bottle of quality New Zealand wine so that we can all celebrate us being wrong!
I'm an anti-imperialist, environmental activist and blue ocean sailor, who is passionate about the earth and all it's inhabitants without favour. Brace for imminent impact as we bare witness to the non-linear unraveling of the biosphere and habitability disappearing for most if not all complex life on the only habitable planet we know of. To quote President Niinistö in North Russia: ‘If We Lose the Arctic, We Lose the World’. Folks we have lost the Arctic.
Kevin Hester 
I don’t drink. Celebrate now for tomorrow is not set.
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Thanks, Kevin.
Much appreciated.
~ Nicola
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Oh, how I’d wish to drink that wine, sign me in for hope, but who knows where we’ll be in two (crazy) years time!
AURELIOWe’re drinking our depleted aquifers and this summer looks pretty from grim already, so… fingers crossed for a golden swan, miracle or the like.
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Thanks for a remarkable, comprehensive article. In this one you’ve covered every single vector of catastrophe that I have been concerned with for many years. It was watching a video by Dr Natalia Shakhova that made me aware of methane hydrates. And the recent US east coast earthquake reminds us that there are 15 nuclear plants in the US located in the New Madrid Seismic Zone. So we have that to look forward to. Splendid article.
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Dear Kevin,
One of the most comprehensive global overviews of the existential situation looming before humanity. Among the many failures that bring humankind to this ‘cliff’ is the inability to acknowledge the necessity for adherence to the principle with which you opened your presentation. A brief comment on that underappreciated principle follows. https://europepmc.org/article/PMC/1280359
Many thanks for your abiding efforts to warn the human community of clear, imminent, human-driven ecological and climate change dangers that loom ominously before all of us now here,
Steve Salmony
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I had an epiphany recently in which I realized that a wholly unrealistic best case scenario still meant doom for the climate system. Imagine that we could magically stabilize the anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2 immediately. It wouldn’t matter. A Blue Ocean Event still occurs sometime around 2030. Following this, due to melting permafrost and melting methane clathrates, non-anthropogenic CO2 and methane begin entering the atmosphere at accelerating rates. A snowball effect occurs where this added CO2 induces greater warming, which induces more melting of permafrost and clathrates, which induces even greater warming. Rince and repeat endlessly. And remember, in this scenario there is NO anthropogenic contribution to atmospheric CO2. We are doomed. There is no way out.
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“Northern Permafrost Region Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Captures”
“Permafrost underlies a quarter of the Northern Hemisphere. A comprehensive analysis shows that the area may have shifted from a sink to a source of greenhouse gases, bringing a longtime prediction to fruition.”
Northern Permafrost Region Emits More Greenhouse Gases Than It Captures – Eos
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Massive Marine Ecosystem Crash Along Galicia’s Coast Due To Prolonged Atlantic Heatwave #climate (youtube.com)
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How I hope you’re wrong, how little I expect that bottle.
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How Changing Ocean Temperatures Could Upend Life on Earth
The Daily
https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-daily/id1200361736?i=1000654789630
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Dyer: Unprecedented warming could be ocean feedback | London Free Press (lfpress.com)
Dyer: Unprecedented warming could be ocean feedback | London Free Press (lfpress.com)
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