English references

The Kenyan marine ecologist David Obura is chair of a panel of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), the world’s leading natural scientists. For many decades, his speciality has been corals, but he has warned that the next generation may not see their glory because so many reefs are now “flickering out across the world”.

A subreddit tracking apocalyptic news in a calm, logical way comforts users who believe the end The threat of nuclear war, genocide in Gaza, ChatGPT reducing human cognitive ability, another summer of record heat. Every day brings a torrent of unimaginable horror. It used to be weeks between disasters, now we’re lucky to get hours.

What are the most significant groups in this complex network of our emergent ‘collapse culture’? These groups don’t cohere into a single unified culture that understands itself as singular. Instead, the are thinly connected inside the complex of contemporary culture, a set of linked clusters. Between them, ideas do circulate, but the links between them, as I will return to, are more often established through intermixing in the heads of their proponents, however chaotically this takes place.....

Ten kinds of possible collapses examined.

Recent simulations using the Community Earth System Model (CESM) indicate that a tipping event of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) would cause Europe to cool by several degrees. This AMOC tipping event was found under constant pre-industrial greenhouse gas forcing, while global warming likely limits this AMOC-induced cooling response. Here, we quantify the European temperature responses under different AMOC regimes and climate change scenarios. A strongly reduced AMOC state and intermediate global warming (C, Representative Concentration Pathway 4.5) has a profound cooling effect on Northwestern Europe with more intense cold extremes. The largest temperature responses are found during the winter months and these responses are strongly influenced by the North Atlantic sea-ice extent. Enhanced North Atlantic storm track activity under an AMOC collapse results in substantially larger day-to-day temperature fluctuations. We conclude that the (far) future European temperatures are dependent o

A new point in history has been reached, entomologists say, as climate-led species’ collapse moves up the food chain even in supposedly protected regions free of pesticides

Now that the collapse of our political, economic, social and ecological systems is accelerating, the signs of this collapse, including scapegoating, corruption, and social disorder are becoming more obvious. This is the seventh of a series of articles on some of these signposts.

It is said that George W. Bush Jr. decided to invade Iraq in 2003 because he had read some papers on oil depletion by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO). Of course, it may be just a legend, but I don’t see it as impossible, and perhaps not even improbable. Politicians make decisions on the basis of vague ideas, often on the spur of the moment, and in many cases making terrible mistakes. But they normally understand some of the critical elements that keep alive the system. For the US, the critical resource was, and still is, crude oil. So, it is possible that Bush thought that it was necessary to compensate for the decline of the US oil production by seizing the Iraqi resources. That didn’t necessarily imply to start a war, just like filling the tank of your car doesn’t imply shooting dead the service station operator. But that’s the way some people’s minds work.

For years, climate scientists have warned us of rising temperatures, extreme weather, and ecological breakdown. Now, the very people who calculate financial risk—actuaries—are sounding the alarm. Their latest report projects a 50% collapse in global GDP within decades. That’s not a recession. That’s economic devastation on a scale we’ve never seen.

Even if there were no climate change, civilization would still collapse in the next few decades. Here's why.

Climate Change is rapidly accelerating and will lead to the collapse of civilization in the lifetimes of most people alive today. Here's why.

Elon Musk has achieved astonishing power in Trump’s administration – and spent the weekend wielding it

Thoughts on the Collapse of Civilization

The CIO of Goldman Sachs has said that in the next year, companies at the forefront will begin to use AI agents as if they were employees — as team members with tasks to do.

The collapse of civilization is becoming very obvious, yet most people still don't know. Here are three reasons why.

Now that humans have overshot the carrying capacity of the planet, collapse is inevitable no matter what we do.

Knowing that the world is ending can be incredibly lonely. Here's what it's like to be collapse aware among those who are oblivious.

The abrupt loss of many species from a system is generally attributed to a breakdown in ecological functioning. As species are sequentially knocked out, the whole community becomes unstable, and it all comes crashing down. Another mechanism that may be at play. My colleagues and I argue that despite the fact life on Earth displays such great variety, many species that live together appear to share remarkably similar thermal limits. That is to say, individuals of different species can tolerate temperatures up to similar points.

As human fragility is stretched towards breaking point, should we be preparing for societal collapse? This is the existential question behind ‘deep adaptation’, a theory that is rapidly gaining adherents. Richard Swift assesses how far, if anywhere, it will take us and what better paths we could go down.

When it comes to writing about climate change … or energy transition … or resource depletion … the new “it” word seems to be COLLAPSE. Collapse is everywhere. But collapse is an inherently fuzzy…