As I drafted the first part of the Deep Adaptation paper in 2018, I sought to summarise what I had concluded was the most salient climate science that established “the premise that it is time we consider the implications of it being too late to avert a global environmental catastrophe in the lifetimes of people alive today.” In the months and years after the paper went viral with a million downloads, there was a backlash from top climatologists and environmental professionals. One of the main arguments from experts dismissing the paper was the lack of peer review. But years later, it’s been reviewed by reality, in the form of observational data about our current climate. There were a dozen claims in Deep Adaptation which were disputed by mainstream climatology but are now considered decided by science, or demonstrable by observational data. In 8 years, these dozen claims went from contentious to near consensus.
In this essay, I will summarise the claims made in the paper, compared to what the position was of ‘establishment climatology’ (as represented by IPCC and top climatologists), and what is near-consensus in 2026. My purpose here is not to update the record, defend past contributions, or complain about mistakes by individuals. Instead, I aim to contribute to a discussion of how organised science and the environmental professions can avoid making new mistakes based on the same dynamics that led to past ones. Those mistakes included not confirming and communicating the twelve claims I will explain in this essay. They also included dismissing, suppressing, and sometimes demonising such claims and the people making them. Unless such mistakes are recognised, even privately, then they can be repeated in new ways, with significant consequences for what is an existential issue.
Although some top climatologists may wish to claim they warned us about what is happening to our world, the truth is they didn’t predict the extent or speed of current changes and publicly claimed that they were avoidable with the right policies. This departure of lived reality from established views, and potentially some underlying theories, means that earnest forms of integrative research analysis can be more welcome in future. For instance, when critics claimed I was cherry-picking the science, they were ignoring the important process of salience-picking from a mass of information for identification of real-world implications and applications of knowledge. Research analysts with the necessary skills and a focus on identifying what describes reality, not what is an interesting area for further investigation, can sometimes be better at salience identification than scientists within an established academic discipline. Consequently, there remains a role for such integrative analysis, just as there remains a role for climate scientists working within various institutions that combine to produce what becomes establishment climatology.
After interrogating the claims in this essay, I believe you will agree that the recent data and research confirm that the alarmists on climate were mostly right, and our critics were wrong, so we could all learn from that to guide a better response today, without further mistakes due to the dynamics which produced previous ones. That presents us with a fresh challenge. Without boasting and blaming, nor pride and prejudice, professionals in climate science and communications must now find a deeper level of courage, to explore what has been overlooked or marginalised in the past, to then call people to action on a wider agenda, including emergency adaptation, environmental restoration, and economic transformation, alongside the remaining challenge of carbon cuts and drawdown.
The dozen climate-related claims in Deep Adaptation (Bendell, 2018)
Claim 1: Sea-level rise is accelerating worldwide. I made this claim based on global satellite data that was available at the time.[1][Numbered references are at the end of the document]. Therefore, it was already an observed reality, but it hadn’t been confirmed as scientific fact, nor discussed as a centrally-important indicator, in establishment climatology at that time. The IPCC AR5 in 2014 was cautious, noting that the rate of rise detected during the satellite era (from 1993 onward) was higher than the 20th-century average, without making that a headline finding. In 2021, in their AR6 publication, the IPCC recognised acceleration in sea level rise as an established observation rather than a tentative finding. A study in 2026 confirmed a doubling of the rate of the global rise.[2]
Claim 2: Climate change is probably accelerating. I argued that the acceleration of sea-level rise is a good indicator of what is happening in the global climate system, as the most contributory causes are thermal expansion of water and ice melt from on-land sources. The only theoretical caution on that view is if part of the rise is a delayed response from thermal expansion of water at deeper depths due to past warmer surface waters mixing with them. However, top climatologist Professor Stefan Rahmstorf had already noted in 2007 that, all things considered, sea level is one of the most robust indicators of long-term warming because it integrates climate changes over time rather than reflecting short-term atmospheric fluctuations. Adding evidence of accelerating sea level rise to the science on heat-amplifying feedbacks, I concluded that we were probably at the start of greater acceleration in climate change. At the time, the scientific establishment did not agree (e.g. IPCC AR5). In 2021, in the AR6, the IPCC reported the acceleration in warming, reaching 0.2°C per decade in the period 2001–2020. However, it did not make that a key finding, and many of the most famous climatologists continued to claim there was no acceleration. Despite them, it is now widely agreed that the rate of climate change has already accelerated, with disagreements on how fast and why. Key texts on this came out in scientific journals in 2024[3] and 2026.[4] I continued my own research analysis on the topic, going to COP27 in Egypt in 2022 to warn about aerosol reductions leading to heat acceleration.[5] Then I went further last year, summarising the evidence and theory for declines in natural cloud seeding from large forests and healthy oceans.[6]
Claim 3: Natural carbon sinks, including forests and oceans, will probably decline and some turn into sources of carbon, so natural emissions will increase. I cited the science available on this issue at the time. I also pointed to the science on how the carbon fertilization effect on plants was probably reaching its limit, thereby removing this past buffer. However, the consensus at the IPCC since 2014 had been that the carbon fertilization effect would mean that during this century there would be an expanding uptake of CO2, before a future decline in high warming scenarios. Today the evidence is extensive that the global carbon cycle has already been altered to reduce the effectiveness of both land and ocean sinks. One integrative study in 2025 found that this already accounts for around 8%, of the observed increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentration.[7] A study the previous year reported on the certain end of the carbon fertilization effect on land due to the extent of recent warming.[8] Another paper reported that in 2023 the global non-polar oceans probably absorbed about 10% less CO₂ than expected due to heating up.[9] The long term prospects could also be more bleak than previously assessed, as one study in 2026 found that microbes break down far more carbon into CO2 after decades of being in a significantly warmer environment.[10]
Claim 4: Self-amplifying feedback threatens further acceleration of heating despite potential emissions cuts. In the paper I wrote: “Non-linear changes are of central importance to understanding climate change, as they suggest both that impacts will be far more rapid and severe than predictions based on linear projections and that the changes no longer correlate with the rate of anthropogenic carbon emissions. In other words – ‘runaway climate change.’” I did not use the term ‘runaway’ warming to claim exponential or eternal warming, despite subsequent negative misrepresentations of the paper. At the time, some scientists were working on the concept of ‘tipping points’ where there would be irreversible forward lurches in warming, but establishment climatology was not foregrounding this issue. For instance, in AR5, the IPCC mentioned such dangers in the context of “long term climate change: projections” with low confidence in predicting their likelihood during this century.[11] Today, there is more serious analysis and discussion of such tipping points. Some analysis concludes that certain tipping points are probably already passed, in the range of 1.5C global warming above pre-industrial levels.[12] That average heat has already occurred for a whole year, and less than that average is unlikely to be witnessed again by our generation (although in 2026 mainstream climatologists continue to frame it as a potentially temporary overshoot).[13] Analysis of the Earth’s net incoming energy-flux imbalance has helped to clarify this situation. Some experts in that field concluded that the data “implies a climate sensitivity much larger than is generally accepted, and under some interpretations even runaway warming.”[14] Some scientists have concluded that whatever humans do with emissions cuts, sea ice in the Arctic will disappear in the years ahead. [15] Because of the probable return of Arctic sea ice in the winter after a summer without it, some scientists prefer not to regard such a change as a tipping point, despite how the additional heat captured in the oceans from ice-free summers then makes the ice-free winters inevitable, further amplifying warming, massively.
Claim 5: The rise of atmospheric methane concentrations is accelerating, and we cannot be sure if one source of increase is from the oceans, which points towards potential existential risk. At the time of publishing Deep Adaptation, the consensus science, as represented by AR5 of the IPCC was that rising methane concentrations were not certainly accelerating and that a largescale release of methane from the sea floor was very unlikely, so not something for near-term concern. Since then, observational data has continued to show unanticipated non-linear increases in methane concentrations in the atmosphere, confirming my claim in 2018.[16] That has been difficult to explain with existing methane sources, and it is also difficult to use isotopes to differentiate methane hydrates on the seabed from some other sources, such as wetlands. The view of establishment climatology remains that a massive release of methane from the seabed is not a significant risk this century.[17] New studies confirm my view that subsea sources are something to remain curious about, observe carefully, and include in our scenarios. In 2026, a study reported that ancient methane is demonstrably escaping from Arctic subsea permafrost systems.[18] There is also evidence that methane hydrates on the sea floor can migrate around 40 km, so can be released into shallower depths where they can reach the atmosphere.[19] Obviously, I am intensely relieved that I could find nothing more significant to report on this topic, other than the worrying data just summarised.
Claim 6: Do not rely entirely on climate computer modelling to assess future risks. The Deep Adaptation paper set aside establishment climatology’s reliance on computer modelling of future climate scenarios as the centrepiece of discussions on global warming. Instead, I focused on what, as an outside research analyst, I considered the most salient research findings (including the paleo record) and current indicators (such as sea level rise acceleration). Since then, some model simulations were misrepresented for a narrative to run for a few years that warming would stop after emissions hypothetically ceased, which was strongly debunked by 2024.[20] In addition, some experts and journalists scraped some good news stories together from hypotheticals involving tweaks to model simulations.[21] Previously in 2019, the latest and most sophisticated models projected far hotter temperatures,[22] which were closer to my 2018 conclusions, only for them to be deprioritised by establishment climatologists in a rather arbitrary way.[23] By 2026 that deprioritising was found to be untenable, after incorporating recent measurements on the Earth’s energy imbalance.[24] Over the last 8 years, some of the world’s leading modellers, such as Dr Wolfgang Knorr, have criticised the rather worshipful deference to modelling. However, models remain the centrepiece of mainstream climatology, with top scientists arguing that any failings of models should mean more funding for better modelling. Also in 2026, measurements of changes in the world’s climate revealed that many of the models being relied on were likely underestimating future heating.[25] That adds weight to the view we shouldn’t be relying entirely on models for risk assessments. Perhaps 2026 will come to be seen as the year that models lost their primacy in climate policy advisory.
Claim 7: Global average heating above pre-industrial of 2C is not a smart ceiling to avoid, as many heat amplifiers would already be triggered before then. In the paper I did not focus on what I considered to be the mythical story that avoiding a 2C ceiling of heating might be safe and enable humanity to bring down temperatures. I regarded such discussions as much about giving space for professionals and policy makers to discuss incremental change. A few months after my paper, with the IPCC report on 1.5C, there was far wider support for the idea that 1.5C might be a lower ceiling for ‘safe’ climate change, by avoiding self-amplification. That began a global communications effort about staying below 1.5C, despite it being obvious to independent scholars, and to climatologists when speaking in private, that accelerating climate change already meant limiting it to below 1.5C was impossible. By 2022, some climatologists were already pointing to evidence that 1.5C would not be safe either.[26] There is already observational data on this matter, with one study analysing current impacts to conclude that past assessments of climate risk to ecosystems underestimated the biological consequences of warming.[27] That backs up early studies which explained how models underestimated the weather extremes and volatility that are relevant to damage to ecosystems (and agriculture).[28]
Claim 8: Emissions won’t come down so we won’t likely stay below 2C. My paper explained that modern societies, including transport and agriculture, are highly dependent on fossil fuels, so emissions were steadily increasing and scenarios for reductions were unrealistic. Despite my wishes for the salvation of society, humanity and biodiversity, as evidenced by my decades of prior work, I did not entertain magical thinking about a sudden achievement of (net) zero emissions globally. Eight years later, annual global fossil CO2 emissions are around 4% higher than in 2018. [29] Moreover, the rate at which CO2 is accumulating in the atmosphere increased, reaching a record 3.76 ppm per year in 2024, compared with 2.39 ppm in 2018.[30] Meanwhile, official assessments of government policies conclude that countries remain off track to meet their emissions targets.[31] Worse, a major study in 2025 found that emissions have been about 15% higher than that reported by countries.[32] Then we could review the political trends in various countries, and the various conflicts, with implications for climate action – which would be a whole other essay.
Claim 9: Impacts on agriculture are key and make this matter one of societal relevance, including peace and security. The most quoted part of the Deep Adaptation paper was when I departed from academic writing style and addressed the reader directly about how societal collapse can be frightening to experience. I explained that the impacts of climate change on agriculture could be severe and have knock on effects on crime, conflict and migration. At the time, the impacts on agriculture were not at the forefront of discussions on climate change, especially not in the society, where it was largely considered an issue for ecosystems and non-human animals. The AR5 report of the IPCC did give it some attention but assessed that crop yield losses exceeding 5% become more likely than not beyond 2050, and that risks to global food security would only become large at around 4°C of warming. Since then, the impacts on agriculture are more widely analysed and forecast to impact humanity hard by mid-century. One massive study estimated that each additional 1C of global warming reduces the global availability of calories from the crops they studied by approximately 120 calories per person per day. That is about 4.4% of average daily consumption per degree of warming, with the actual impacts being grossly unequally experienced.[33] That is a significant contributor to an assessment by a UK professional group of actuaries that there might be 4 billion fatalities if the world passes 3.0C by 2050. [34] My own further study on the topic in March 2023 explained the contribution of climate change to wider mechanics of food system breakdown.[35]
Claim 10: Countries will turn to carbon capture technologies that won’t make a significant impact and waste huge resources. In the paper I explained that capitalism would problematically shape future responses to climate change, just as it had shaped the problem, the diminishment of it, and the ineffective responses until that point. This approach was enshrined in global climate policy when the IPCC illogically included direct air capture and storage (DACCS) in its modelling of future scenarios in 2023 in AR6 – a magical techno wand to maintain the charade of a managed transition. A comprehensive review, synthesising more than 800 publications on the topic, concludes that DACCS remain constrained by high costs, substantial energy requirements, with any scaling dependent on long-term government subsidy and their impact being tiny compared to something climate-significant.[36] Clearly, PR and lobbying firms did their job, so Western governments have allocated huge subsidies to DACCS over the last few years, in what is another example of the existentially-treacherous role of corporations and their puppets in government.
Claim 11: Societal collapse is a reasonable expectation of the impacts from climate change, when interacting with other factors. When trying to tie everything together for understanding the situation, in the Deep Adaptation paper I wrote: “We do not know for certain how disruptive the impacts of climate change will be or where will be most affected, especially as economic and social systems will respond in complex ways. But the evidence is mounting that the impacts will be catastrophic to our livelihoods and the societies that we live within. Our norms of behaviour, that we call our “civilisation,” may also degrade.” I called for greater attention to adaptation to the changes, including going far deeper than the ideas for how to adapt at that time. I argued that it is irresponsible to regard that agenda as a theoretical defeat for the climate aware, as it concerns a reality we will live through. Years later, the need for urgent adaptation is now more widely discussed. Over 600 scholars from around the world joined me to sign a public “Scholars’ Warning on Societal Disruption and Collapse”.[37] There is now a diverse field of ‘collapsology’[38] and updates to past predictions of the collapse of our civilisation.[39] Over a hundred academic papers, across disciplines discuss aspects of Deep Adaptation as an impetus, ethos and/or framework.[40] However, the topic of societal collapse is not being discussed as an inevitability by establishment scientists and mainstream media. Instead, some climatologists and professional bodies are warning of the likelihood of mass death (as mentioned above) which would constitute collapse in some parts of the world. My own view on this has evolved, as I put the stressors from climate in the context of wider fractures in the foundations of modern industrial consumer societies.[41]
Claim 12: Near-term human extinction risk is something to take seriously as we assess priorities for action. In the paper I wrote: “Nothing is certain. But it is sobering that humanity has arrived at a situation of our own making where we now debate the strength of analyses of our near-term extinction.” I did not predict near-term extinction, regarding it as a possibility if nothing significant changed. At the time, this topic was either never mentioned, or actively dismissed, by establishment climatologists. Some even actively worked inside the environmental action group Extinction Rebellion so it would not talk about human extinction risk; nor about societal collapse. In recent years, some climatologists have moved on from that view and call for some of the worst-case scenarios to be analysed by science and incorporated into policy assessments.[42] A scientific assessment published in 2026 from some of the world’s most experienced climatologists reported that the world is warming so fast that we may be close to cascading feedback loops that eventually make it uninhabitable.[43]
Learning from past mistakes to improve scientific understanding and action on climate and environment
The concern that some people expressed when the Deep Adaptation paper became well known was my personal conclusion that the processes of climate change will lead us to societal collapse, inevitably, whatever the human response might be. As I’ve written elsewhere, a weakness in the paper was that I did not explain the mechanisms by which collapse would unfold. Therefore, I conducted a 2-year multi-disciplinary research project which concluded with the book Breaking Together. In that text I set out the evidence that can be interpreted as widespread societal collapse being an unfolding process rather than an inevitable future event.
In the Deep Adaptation paper, I had argued that we must try to reduce the speed and harm of that collapse, save lives and more of the biosphere, and increase the chances of future forms of society. Those arguments were disregarded by people who assumed that inevitable collapse would mean we would not try to reduce or drawdown emissions. I regard that as their projection, related to an understandable aversion to societal collapse, which then drove processes of denial that I had even mapped out in the second half of the paper. This reaction may be one reason why some scientists offered broad unspecific dismissals and major distortions of the paper’s claims on climatology. Claims which were correct at the time, and more demonstrably so today.
Fortunately, not everyone was distracted by the criticism. There was a huge response around the world, not just to the Deep Adaptation paper, but to more alarming interpretations of the situation with the world’s climate. People were radicalised, changed careers, and new groups started up to help advance an agenda of social change ahead of further disruption and collapse. That has included people quitting various jobs to go full time in Extinction Rebellion, boards deciding to reorient multimillion dollar foundations towards understanding collapse risk and readiness, an academic quitting and setting up MEER (Mirrors for Earth’s Energy Rebalancing), and launching international or national adaptation groups. We have not all agreed on the ideal responses, but we have all learned a lot over the past 8 years. With feedback, the Deep Adaptation framework for inquiring into how to respond has evolved to six guiding questions (the 6Rs). It is now complemented by a framework for our personal capabilities or orientations to cultivate in the face of collapse (the ‘reckon’ framework). More recently, a menu for how to begin to prepare for disruption and collapse in a light-hearted, collaborative and creative way is being used (‘rainbow prepping’).
Although my life is busy from working on such matters, I returned to reading climatology this year because there could be great benefit from the leaders and institutions in the sector recognising their mistakes in order not to make new ones on what is a matter of existential threat. Conducting scientific research on climate and the environment is essential, and I am grateful for the people who continue to do the science, especially as it can trigger such difficult emotions. I know how it can generate a general sense of dread and sadness, not confined to one’s working hours, as I have experienced that again over the last two months, while researching for this essay. For such effort and resources to be worth it, we need to discuss how to better gain insight from that scientific endeavour.
Why did the mainstream miss a dozen key insights on climate change at the time, yet someone analysing their research from the outside identified them? And why did many mainstream scientists feel confident enough about their incorrect readings of the situation to join the criticism of Deep Adaptation? Why did climate and environment journalists not report more critically on what was being concluded, or the implications for the public? These questions need more serious exploration. So before concluding this essay, I will offer a few thoughts on them.
It’s neither corruption and conspiracy, nor laziness and stupidity, that led to deficient understandings of the climate crisis by mainstream climatology and the environmental climate policy community. Nor is it merely the dynamics of denial that I described in the second half of the Deep Adaptation paper. Rather, it is a widely understood and documented phenomenon throughout the history of science, and fields of knowledge more broadly. Deficient understandings arise from the psychological and institutional dynamics that occur within any established field of scholarship. I discussed them in my book Breaking Together, and will briefly mention them here. There is a lot of scholarship on each area, so if you are interested, I recommend using DeepSeek to get started (10 times less energy and water usage than the AIs from Big Tech firms). Yes, I am not going to reference everything like I did earlier (normal life and less depressing activity are beckoning me back).
First, there is a siloed approach to scientific endeavour which can leave a lack of skill and support for scientists towards lateral thinking and salience identification. It is essential that scientific research asks “what we don’t know yet” within their specialist expertise. But that is not enough to assess what is most important to know now for assessments of risk and action. When engaged in research professionally then the aim, implicit or explicit, is always to do more research. However, as I mentioned at the start of this essay, if we analyse scientific research from outside a specific discipline, then our aim can be to assess what’s relevant for life on the basis of existing information. That’s been explored elsewhere as ‘post-normal science’.[44] The issue becomes whether one has the necessary time and right skills for such analysis. In my book, I explain the components of ‘critical wisdom’ which help one to do such analysis. Another way of describing it is to allow more possibility for integrative and context-aware cognitive processing, associated with the right hemisphere of the brain.[45]
A second area of psychological and institutional dynamics affecting knowledge production and dissemination are the habits associated with occupational closure, occupational expansion, and peer esteem. These are well discussed by sociological research on professions, the history of science, and disruptive innovation. Every field of work that professionalises must uphold agreed standards in ways that then lead to suspicion and negation of potential contributions from outside the profession. That standardising brings benefits but can also compound systemic biases and blind spots within a profession. In addition, any profession has a natural interest in its expansion, to generate more employment and career opportunities. That interest can lead management of institutions in such professions to focus on topics, approaches and narratives, that more easily generate funding, such as computer modelling and the associated idea of managing risk with technical adjustments to societies. On top of that, a normal desire for peer esteem, and to avoid peer disdain, acts as a form of self-policing, which isn’t conducive for open inquiry. I know how powerful these effects are, as I had to make the decision to deny the utility of much of my past work, my sub-discipline of academia, and be prepared to lose my job or resign.
A third factor influencing the field of climatology has been our culture of modernism, combined with an understandable concern about the effects of communicating alarming news to the public. We see that when nothing in the data of a scientist’s new study is positive, but they still include statements about it being not too late to avoid some unspecified outcome, if there is a magical change of everything. Giving homage to the secular God of positivity and progress is widely assumed to be the ‘permission slip’ for being respected. In private, the story is often different. Nine out of ten climatologists anonymously told a newspaper they did not believe humanity would manage to stay below 2C global warming. That was 17 years ago.[46] Despite working on sustainability, I did not hear about that for nearly a decade. In that time, like so many people, I worked incredibly hard (making personal sacrifices) on what some scientists were privately regarding as a redundant agenda. They were the experts paid to determine what is happening in our world but felt the need to self-censor their intuitive processing of the situation when communicating publicly.
A fourth factor has been the scientific deference and time-constraints of mainstream journalists, and the ideological blinkers of their editors. Even now that some famous climatologists are proven to have been incorrect by current observational data, they are still quoted for the truth on the climate situation. Journalists are grateful for obtaining a response and having some validation for their writing by including a famous name. When some journalists make the time to go deeper into a subject, they then need to get past the editors, who act as ideological police. One example is how one of NPR’s best journalists had her documentary on my work cancelled just the week before broadcast as “we can’t put that out”. There are many other examples, but to recap on either the attacks or suppression would be depressing.
Recognising that science always gains and loses something from institutionalisation doesn’t mean we just shrug our shoulders and move on. What is key, is that once observational data clearly disproves some established understandings and challenges the focus of scholarship, and the related policies, is that professionals seriously admit their mistakes. To seriously, not superficially, admit mistakes, involves: first, recognising the materiality of those mistakes to society; second, to be open to the possible causes of those mistakes; third, to make efforts to not make new mistakes in future that would derive from those causes. Therefore, simply correcting past mistakes is not enough, as it means the person might be making new ones due to the same dynamics. In the field of climatology, that means if a scientist says they predict a far greater amount of heating and damage by 2050, that is not good enough. To do so, without introspection and openness, on how to not make new mistakes, would display an unseriousness. That would not matter as much if we weren’t talking about something so existential for humanity. To encourage urgent learning, we must ask:
- What might be the blind spots in climatology today, due to the various factors that shape and limit any institutionalised field of inquiry?
- What topics are journalists not taking the time to explore and challenge, to bring focus on what’s important?
As you might have guessed, I have some ideas. The obvious one is that we need a focus on emergency adaptation. However, I have another idea, related to the causes of climate heating itself. I want to see climatologists and environmentalists look at whether carbon might only be half the story for explaining the most recent climate changes from human impacts. The only potential good news about the recent awful spikes in global temperatures is that they might not only be due to background warming from carbon gases. The clue is the rapid drop in the reflectivity of the planet, due to the loss of cloud cover, which is especially important over oceans, where the sunlight is mostly absorbed.[47] That points us towards what processes have been reducing cloud cover. It is why I have been advocating more attention to biohydrological cycles, as part of a more panecological approach to climate. In simple terms, we need to look at how to restore natural cloud seeding processes by large forests and healthy oceans, to increase the chances of the survival of societies in a scenario of climate chaos. When you next have some time to read my work, please read this essay on what I am talking about.[48]
Some people with an audience on climate and environment are beginning to change their public explanations. One of my past critics, from the research nonprofit Berkeley Earth, told Propublica that meeting goals to limit global warming has become “functionally impossible.”[49] A few famous environmentalists now state publicly that it is too late for stopping catastrophic change, despite telling those of us who said that before to “shut up”.[50] If more leading voices explore the dynamics that generated past mistakes, then new mistakes arising from the same dynamics could be avoided. Know someone who might be ready to move? To commit to learn more about what could be improved in climate science and its communication? Please send them this essay.
To be continued…
—
The Deep Adaptation paper is available here, including translations. I made minor corrections in 2020 which did not change any of the 12 claims listed above, nor remove other claims. Like so much on this matter, the content or implications of the update was misrepresented e.g. even now on Wikipedia.
[1] Climate-change–driven accelerated sea-level rise detected in the altimeter era | PNAS
[2] ‘Severe’ stress on oceans as rate of sea level rise doubles in 10 years, UN warns | Oceans | The Guardian
[3] Global Warming Has Accelerated: Are the United Nations and the Public Well-Informed?
[4] Global Warming Has Accelerated Significantly – 2026 – Geophysical Research Letters
[5] Climate Honesty – Ending Climate Brightsiding – YouTube
[6] The Dangers of Climate Dogma – and what we can do about it – Prof Jem Bendell
[7] Emerging climate impact on carbon sinks in a consolidated carbon budget | Nature
[8] Weakening of global terrestrial carbon sequestration capacity under increasing intensity of warm extremes | Nature Ecology & Evolution
[9] Unexpected decline in the ocean carbon sink under record-high sea surface temperatures in 2023 | Nature Climate Change
[10] Three decades of continuous warming in temperate forests destabilizes persistent forms of soil organic matter – ScienceDirect
[11] https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter12_FINAL.pdf
[12] Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points. – University of Exeter – Figshare
[13] Implications of overshoot for climate mitigation strategies | Nature Climate Change
[14] Earth’s net incoming energy-flux imbalance (and its implications for understanding climate change) | View | MPG.PuRe
[15] Observationally-constrained projections of an ice-free Arctic even under a low emission scenario | Nature Communications
[16] Global methane emissions rebounded in 2024 despite a deceleration in atmospheric growth | Nature Communications
[17] IPCC AR6 Working Group 1: Technical Summary | Climate Change 2021: The Physical Science Basis
[18] Triple-isotopic analyses pinpoint microbial methane release from subsea permafrost in the inner Laptev Sea | Communications Earth & Environment
[19] Long-distance migration and venting of methane from the base of the hydrate stability zone | Nature Geoscience.
[20] ESD – Exploring climate stabilisation at different global warming levels in ACCESS-ESM-1.5
[21] Climate Honesty – are we ‘beyond catastrophe’? – Prof Jem Bendell
[22] New climate models predict a warming surge | Science | AAAS
[23] Climate simulations: recognize the ‘hot model’ problem | Nature
[24] Recent Temperature and Energy Imbalance Trends Point to Higher Estimates of Future Warming – Gyuleva – 2026 – Earth’s Future – Wiley Online Library
[25] ESD – Climate models with moderate climate sensitivity best simulate the magnitude of Earth’s energy imbalance
[26] Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points | Science
[27] Reassessment of the risks of climate change for terrestrial ecosystems | Nature Ecology & Evolution
[28] State-of-the-art global models underestimate impacts from climate extremes | Nature Communications
[29] ESSD – Global Carbon Budget 2025
[30] Trends in CO2 – NOAA Global Monitoring Laboratory
[31] Emissions Gap Report 2025 | UNEP – UN Environment Programme
[32] Worldwide inference of national methane emissions by inversion of satellite observations with UNFCCC prior estimates | Nature Communications
[33] Impacts of climate change on global agriculture accounting for adaptation | Nature
[34] Planetary Solvency – finding our balance with nature
[35] Beyond fed up: six hard trends that lead to food system breakdown – University of Cumbria Research Portal
[36] An ecosystem of carbon dioxide removal reviews – part 1: direct air CO2 capture and storage | Energy & Environmental Science | The Royal Society of Chemistry
[37] Initiative for Leadership and Sustainability: International Scholars Warning on Societal Disruption and Collapse
[38] Societal collapse: A literature review – ScienceDirect
[39] Update to limits to growth: Comparing the World3 model with empirical data – Herrington – 2021 – Journal of Industrial Ecology – Wiley Online Library
[40] +”Deep Adaptation” +climate – Google Scholar
[41] Breaking Together – The Schumacher Institute
[42] Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios
[43] The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory: One Earth
[44] Deep Adaptation: Navigating the Realities of Climate Chaos | Wiley
[45] The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World by Iain McGilchrist | Goodreads
[46] World will not meet 2C warming target, climate change experts agree | Climate crisis | The Guardian
[47] Recent global temperature surge intensified by record-low planetary albedo | Science
[48] The Dangers of Climate Dogma – and what we can do about it – Prof Jem Bendell
[49] https://www.propublica.org/article/wedges-climate-research-bp-fossil-fuel-princeton
[50] ‘It’s too late’: David Suzuki says the fight against climate change is lost
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