Essay by Eric Worrall

But we can save the world by reducing meat consumption.

Scientists Are Mapping the End of the World. And Maybe, Just Maybe, a Way Out.

Positive climate action can have cascading effects.

BY DARREN ORF PUBLISHED: AUG 08, 2025 9:30 AM EDT

Here’s what you’ll learn when you read this story:

• Scientists are aware of planetary boundaries—a series of climate change thresholds that, once crossed, could cause a cascade of negative environmental effects.
• Now, scientists are developing a methodology to discover “positive tipping points”— a series of actionable green energy goals that could similarly compound in benefit once crossed. 
• While we’re already well on the way to reaching some of these tipping points—i.e. lowering the cost of wind and solar energy—there’s still lots of work to be done to stay within the two degrees Celsius range stipulate by the 2015 Paris Climate Accords.

To live in an era of anthropogenic climate change is to be constantly reminded of the warming threat to our planet. One way scientists illustrate this threat is by using climate tipping points, also known as planetary boundaries, which showcase around nine critical ecological thresholds that could have devastating effects for life on Earth once crossed. These include things like biosphere integrity, ozone depletion, ocean acidification, and a relative newcomer known as “aquatic deoxygenation.”

Although these thresholds are discussed with deadly seriousness, scientists wonder if the reverse of these doom-and-gloom thresholds—positive tipping points, if you will—could help encourage people, communities, and countries to adopt more aggressive green policies. In a new study, published in the journal Sustainability Science, experts from the University of Exeter in the U.K. explain these positive tipping points would be moments in society’s adoption of green technologies or behaviors that could perpetuate a cascade of positive outcomes.

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“Other transformations—such as a major shift away from meat consumption—might also be more likely than they appear,” Steve Smith from the University of Exeter said in a press statement. “In other sectors there is little sign of approaching tipping points and in a few, such as nuclear power and concrete production, we should not expect there to be tipping points at all.”

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Read more: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/green-tech/a65616655/positive-tipping-points/

No mention of the 1.5C target. I guess it’s a bit embarrassing to talk about 1.5C these days, given we hit 1.5C and nothing bad happened.

As for the rest of the claims, there is zero risk global warming will have a major negative impact on oceans, even if several degrees of global warming were to occur, because last time the world experienced 5-8c of global warming, the biosphere and the oceans were fine.

Monkeys also did well during the PETM – which implies humans would also prosper in such conditions.

Stories like this make me seriously question the sanity of the people who write them. I mean, 5 minutes research could have turned up the fact that fish thrived during distant past extreme warm periods, that the entire biosphere thrived. Visiting hot climates to catch big fish is a major tourist industry in places like Florida and Australia’s far North.

Temperatures drop substantially as you move further from the equator. Any species which felt uncomfortable in a warmer climate would just relocate. All species are continuously adjusting their range, seeking out the best possible habitat, probing the edges of their habitable range.

So why write such nonsense? Why would anyone believe such outlandish claims? I wish I knew.

Press release from University of Göttingen: T-Rex Dinosaur teeth give glimpse of early Earth’s climate

The study shows that the late Jurassic atmosphere carried about 1,200 ppm of CO₂, about four times the pre industrial 1850 benchmark of 280 ppm. By the late Cretaceous, CO₂ it had dipped to near 750 ppm.

A previously untapped source of data sheds new light on the climate of the early Earth: fossilized dinosaur teeth show that the atmosphere during the Mesozoic era, between 252 and 66 million years ago, contained far more carbon dioxide than it does today. An international research team at the Universities of Göttingen, Mainz and Bochum made this discovery by analysing oxygen isotopes in tooth enamel. They used a newly developed method that opens up opportunities for research into the Earth’s climate history. In addition, the researchers found that total photosynthesis from plants around the world was twice as high as it is today. This probably contributed to the dynamic climate during the time of the dinosaurs. The results were published in the journal PNAS.

The research team analyzed the enamel of dinosaur teeth found in North America, Africa and Europe dating from the late Jurassic and late Cretaceous periods. Enamel is one of the most stable biological materials. It records different isotopes of oxygen that the dinosaurs inhaled with every breath that they took. The ratio of isotopes in oxygen is affected by changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide and photosynthesis by plants. This correlation allows researchers to draw conclusions about the climate and vegetation during the age of the dinosaurs.

In the late Jurassic period, around 150 million years ago, the air contained around four times as much carbon dioxide as it did before industrialization – that is, before humans started emitting large quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And in the late Cretaceous period, around 73 to 66 million years ago, the level was three times as high as today. Individual teeth from two dinosaurs – Tyrannosaurus rex and another known as Kaatedocus siberi which is related to Diplodocus – contained a strikingly unusual composition of oxygen isotopes. This points to CO₂ spikes that could be linked to major events such as volcanic eruptions – for example, the massive eruptions of the Deccan Traps in what is now India, which happened at the end of the Cretaceous period. The fact that plants on land and in water around the world were carrying out more photosynthesis at that time was probably associated with CO₂ levels and higher average annual temperatures.

This study marks a milestone for paleoclimatology: until now, carbonates in the soil and “marine proxies” were the main tools used to reconstruct the climate of the past. Marine proxies are indicators, such as fossils or chemical signatures in sediments, that help scientists understand environmental conditions in the sea in the past. However, these methods are subject to uncertainty. By analysing oxygen isotopes in tooth fossils, the researchers have now developed the first method that focuses on vertebrates on land. “Our method gives us a completely new view of the Earth’s past,” explains lead author Dr Dingsu Feng at the University of Göttingen’s Department of Geochemistry. “It opens up the possibility of using fossilized tooth enamel to investigate the composition of the early Earth’s atmosphere and the productivity of plants at that time. This is crucial for understanding long-term climate dynamics.” Dinosaurs could be the new climate scientists, according to Feng: “Long ago their teeth recorded the climate for a period of over 150 million years – finally we are getting the message.”

The study was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and by the VeWA consortium as part of the LOEWE programme of the Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung, Kunst und Kultur.

Original publication: Dingsu Feng, Thomas Tütken, Eva Maria Griebeler, Daniel Herwartz & Andreas Pack. Mesozoic atmospheric CO₂ concentrations reconstructed from dinosaur tooth enamel. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) (2025). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2504324122