Yes, the Earth can cool down, but significant cooling from today's warming requires stopping greenhouse gas emissions and could take decades to centuries to become noticeable, with oceans taking much longer; while natural cycles (Milankovitch cycles) would eventually bring ice ages, human CO2 levels are postponing these for tens of thousands of years, but cooling could still trigger a future ice age on much longer geological timescales.
Global temperature is projected to warm by about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7° degrees Fahrenheit) by 2050 and 2-4 degrees Celsius (3.6-7.2 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100.
Four billion years from now, the increase in Earth's surface temperature will cause a runaway greenhouse effect, creating conditions more extreme than present-day Venus and heating Earth's surface enough to melt it. By that point, all life on Earth will be extinct.
Points of no return
Current warming, likely to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times by around 2030, has already pushed coral reefs past their limit. Unless things change, warming is likely to reach about 3 degrees Celsius within decades.
While climate change cannot be stopped, it can be slowed. To avoid the worst consequences of climate change, we'll need to reach “net zero” carbon emissions by 2050 or sooner. Net zero means that, on balance, no more carbon is dumped into the atmosphere than is taken out.
“The highest wet bulb temperature that humans can survive is 35C for about six hours. The places people predict are most vulnerable for being that hot, and thus becoming unliveable are South Asia, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea by around 2050, and Eastern China, parts of Southeast Asia, and Brazil by 2070.”
On September 11, 2025, Warp News estimated a 20% chance of global catastrophe and a 6% chance of human extinction by 2100. They also estimated a 100% chance of global catastrophe and a 30% chance of human extinction by 2500.
But how long can humans last? Eventually humans will go extinct. According to the most wildly optimistic estimate, our species will last perhaps another billion years but end when the expanding envelope of the sun swells outward and heats the planet to a Venus-like state. But a billion years is a long time.
Australia and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development
The 2030 Agenda is both a domestic and international agenda. It is well-aligned with Australia's foreign, security, development and trade interests - especially in promoting regional stability, security and economic prosperity.
The Science Is Clear
It will never be too late to take meaningful action to protect people and the planet. However, decades of increasing carbon emissions from oil, gas and coal are harming the natural and social systems upon which all humanity depends, threatening devastation.
# 1: Coronal Mass Ejections
Yes, this can happen to humanity on Earth… it has happened before! The very source of life for humanity is, indeed, our greatest threat.
Humans Could Live For 1,000 Years by 2050—Ushering in the Dawn of 'Practical Immortality,' Futurists Say. Some experts warn that this radical change may remain out of reach for many, due to societal and economic challenges. Technology futurists foresee advances that will enable humans to live up to 1,000 years.
The Doomsday Clock is a symbol that represents the estimated likelihood of a human-made global catastrophe, in the opinion of the nonprofit organization Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Doomsday Clock. The Doomsday Clock pictured at its setting of "89 seconds to midnight", last changed in January 2025.
Extreme temperatures are likely to rise across the country, with the greatest increases over Northern Australia, the Great Dividing Range in the south-east and in desert regions. Several heatwave events are projected to double if global warming reaches 2C, and more than quadruple under 3C in warming.
OpenAI's Sam Altman claims AI will deliver an "Intelligence Age," but tech breakthroughs alone can't solve global warming.
🏜️ Australia's desert interior Our continent is mostly dry land that heats up fast and stays hot. That heat radiates outward and amplifies temperatures across the country. 🌬️ Few major mountain ranges With minimal topography to block or redirect air masses, hot air just flows freely across the continent.
Finance experts believe that Australia is well on its way to being cashless, and that the change could come as soon as 2030.
According to a report by PwC, China is expected to become the largest economy in the world by 2030, with a projected GDP exceeding $26 trillion.
However, life expectancy at birth will be almost 90 by then. Australia will be bigger, older, denser and even more multicultural in 20 years time! Some 'Aussie Dreams' will have disappeared such as the 'quarter acre block' and along with it the Hills Hoist garden shed and enough space for a game of backyard cricket.
The Triassic Period (252-201 million years ago) began after Earth's worst-ever extinction event devastated life. The Permian-Triassic extinction event, also known as the Great Dying, took place roughly 252 million years ago and was one of the most significant events in the history of our planet.
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking warned that humans must become a multi-planet species to avoid extinction on Earth within 100 Years. In my novel, “100 Years to Extinction,” I imagine the realistic science behind traveling to Alpha Centauri, our nearest star. or starting a settlement on Mars in 2032.
It also allows us to determine the age of human remains with a fair degree of precision. The record for the maximum verified lifespan in the modern world is 1221⁄2 years for women (Jeanne Calment) and 116 years for men (Jiroemon Kimura).
Other global catastrophic risks include climate change, environmental degradation, extinction of species, famine as a result of non-equitable resource distribution, human overpopulation or underpopulation, crop failures, and non-sustainable agriculture.
The late renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking made numerous predictions about the future of our planet, with one of his most famous foreseeing a grim scenario by the year 2600.
While there is some uncertainty around the future size of the world's population, the estimated likelihood that it will peak within the current century is 80 per cent, with the peak likely to occur sometime between the mid-2060s and 2100.