5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Climate
Earth Hurtling Toward 'Hothouse Trajectory,' Scientists Warn in Tipping Points Analysis
"Existing climate mitigation approaches, including scaling up renewable energy and protecting carbon-storing ecosystems, are critical to limit the increase in global temperatures," said the lead author.
Feb 12, 2026
In the lead-up to the Trump administration effectively destroying the US Environmental Protection Agency's ability to combat the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency, an international team of scientists warned Wednesday that "Earth's climate is now departing from the stable conditions that supported human civilization for millennia."
Various institutions, including in the United States, have confirmed that 2025 was among the hottest years on record, and January continued that trend. Meanwhile, governments and polluting industries have repeatedly refused to impose policies that adequately heed experts' calls for action.
"In an effort to mitigate dangerous levels of warming, the Paris Agreement formalized the aim of limiting warming to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, yet global temperatures have recently breached this limit for 12 consecutive months, coinciding with record-breaking heat, wildfires, floods, and other extremes," the scientists noted Wednesday in the journal One Earth.
They wrote that "crossing critical temperature thresholds may trigger self-reinforcing feedbacks and tipping dynamics that amplify warming and destabilize distant Earth system components. Uncertain tipping thresholds make precaution essential, as crossing them could commit the planet to a hothouse trajectory with long-lasting and potentially irreversible consequences."
A "hothouse trajectory," they wrote, is "a pathway in which self-reinforcing feedbacks push the climate system past a point of no return, committing the planet to substantially higher long-term temperatures, even if emissions are later reduced."
"Sixteen major tipping elements have been identified, 10 of which could add to global temperature if triggered," the experts detailed. "Tipping may already be underway or could occur soon for the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, boreal permafrost, mountain glaciers, and parts of the Amazon rainforest."
As an example, they pointed to ice melt in the Arctic, explaining that the resulting water "could perturb the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which is already showing signs of weakening. A weakened AMOC could alter global atmospheric circulation, shifting tropical rain belts and drying parts of the Amazon. This cascade of events could trigger large-scale Amazon forest dieback, with major consequences for the region's carbon storage and biodiversity."
Concerned about the Point of No Return? Today we published a paper on the risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory. You can read it here: authors.elsevier.com/c/1mbW49C~Iu...
[image or embed]
— Prof William Ripple (@williamripple.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 2:43 PM
The team of eight was led by William Ripple, who has previously emphasized alongside other experts that "we are on the brink of an irreversible climate disaster" and "fossil fuels—and the fossil fuel industry and its enablers—are driving a multitude of interlinked crises that jeopardize the breadth and stability of life on Earth."
Ripple, distinguished professor of ecology at Oregon State University (OSU), said in a Wednesday statement that "after a million years of oscillating between ice ages separated by warmer periods, the Earth's climate stabilized more than 11,000 years ago, enabling agriculture and complex societies."
"We're now moving away from that stability and could be entering a period of unprecedented climate change," he stressed. "Existing climate mitigation approaches, including scaling up renewable energy and protecting carbon-storing ecosystems, are critical to limit the increase in global temperatures."
Study co-author Christopher Wolf, a former OSU postdoctoral researcher who is now a scientist with Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Associates (TERA), noted that already, "climate model simulations suggest the recent 12-month breach indicates the long-term average temperature increase is at or near 1.5°C."
"It's likely that global temperatures are as warm as, or warmer than, at any point in the last 125,000 years and that climate change is advancing faster than many scientists predicted," he said.
"Policymakers and the public remain largely unaware of the risks posed by what would effectively be a point-of-no-return transition," Wolf added. "And while averting the hothouse trajectory won't be easy, it's much more achievable than trying to backtrack once we're on it."
🆕 Several Earth system components may be closer to destabilisation than previously thought. Crossing key temperature thresholds could trigger feedback loops, pushing the planet toward a “Hothouse Earth” trajectory. Study by @oregonstate.edu, @iiasa.ac.at & PIK: www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
[image or embed]
— PIK_climate (@pik-potsdam.bsky.social) February 11, 2026 at 11:52 AM
The team's warnings came in the wake of Big Oil-backed President Donald Trump claiming in a United Nations speech last year that climate change is "the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world," and ditching dozens of relevant organizations and treaties, including the Paris Agreement.
On Thursday, the Trump administration continued its war on the climate, revoking the "endangerment finding" that allowed the EPA to pass regulations fighting the global emergency—which was forcefully condemned by scientists and activists.
"In case there was any remaining doubt, the truth is very clear: Trump cares nothing for the health and well-being of our communities or our climate," said Erin Doran, senior staff attorney at the advocacy group Food & Water Watch. "He is concerned only with making more money for the billionaire fossil fuel polluters that help to fund his dangerous political agenda."
"The notion that the EPA shouldn't regulate climate emissions is inconsistent with the law, the science, and the realities of the climate crisis," Doran added. "EPA is charged with protecting human health and the environment, yet this rule does neither, benefiting only the fossil fuel industry at our expense. It's absurd, and we'll be fighting back."
Keep Reading
Show Less
In Gift to Big Oil Donors, Trump Stops EPA From Combating 'Most Terrible Environmental Threat in Human History'
Repealing the EPA's endangerment finding "isn’t about saving taxpayers’ money, it’s about saving an industry that has already been exposed as a permanent danger to American families," said the head of 350.org.
Feb 12, 2026
In what the Sierra Club described as an act to "formalize climate denialism as official government policy," the Trump administration announced Thursday that it has revoked the long-standing "endangerment finding" that allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to pass regulations fighting the climate crisis.
The 2009 endangerment finding determined that the emissions of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases posed a hazard to public health and welfare by causing the planet to warm dramatically, citing overwhelming scientific evidence, which has only grown more indisputable in the nearly two decades since.
With the US Supreme Court having ruled in 2007 that the EPA could make regulations on climate change if it were deemed a health risk, this finding served as the basis for virtually every climate-related EPA regulation under the 1970 Clean Air Act, including those limiting emissions from motor vehicles, power plants, oil and gas facilities, and other sources of pollution.
The finding has been a target of the fossil fuel industry since it was reached. Under President Donald Trump, who has boasted openly of serving the fossil fuel industry in exchange for hundreds of millions of dollars of financial support during his last election, they have found their hero.
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, who has enthusiastically backed Trump's initiatives to expand oil drilling and coal mining, called the repeal of the finding "the largest deregulatory action in the history of America."
Indeed, it is expected to immediately eviscerate fuel-efficiency standards and electric vehicle requirements for cars and trucks, which are already the largest single source of carbon dioxide emissions in the US, contributing about 1.8 billion metric tons in 2022.
While the White House has said the reduced efficiency standards will “save the American people $1.3 trillion in crushing regulations,” this is a drop in the ocean compared to the $87 trillion in economic disruption that a study by researchers at the University of Chicago and the University of Pennsylvania estimated will come over the next 25 years as a result of increased natural disasters and sea-level rise caused by American corporations' fossil fuel outputs.
In the United States, weather disasters—exacerbated by global warming—caused $115 billion in total damages last year, the third most since tracking began in 1980, behind only 2023 and 2024. Last year had more billion-dollar disasters than any other year on record.
Anne Jellema, the executive director of the environmental group 350.org, said repealing the endangerment finding "isn’t about saving taxpayers’ money, it’s about saving an industry that has already been exposed as a permanent danger to American families."
"While the Trump administration can manipulate scientific agencies, it can never suppress the truth that ordinary people in the US and around the world are paying the real price for Big Oil’s profits: Lives are being lost, homes are being destroyed, and costs are soaring," she said.
The Trump administration does not have the last word on the endangerment finding. Climate groups, including Earthjustice, have already stated their intention to challenge the legality of the decision.
"The courts have repeatedly affirmed EPA’s obligation to clean up climate pollution," said Earthjustice president Abigail Dillen. "There is no way to reconcile EPA’s decision with the law, the science, and the reality of disasters that are hitting us harder every year."
Dillen said, "Earthjustice and our partners will see the Trump administration in court.” But it may face an uphill battle.
Though the Supreme Court laid the groundwork for the finding's creation, the current right-wing majority has rolled back its authority in recent years, most notably in 2022, when the justices limited the EPA's authority to impose emissions standards on power plants.
David Arkush, the director of Public Citizen’s climate program, said that "if left to stand," the rollback of the endangerment finding "will hamstring the government’s ability to combat the most terrible environmental threat in human history, harming Americans and the world for decades to come."
“Abundant scientific evidence supports the EPA’s prior conclusion that greenhouse gases threaten public health and welfare," he added. "Americans feel the effects of climate change constantly, as we experience more dangerous hurricanes, furnace-like heat domes, walls of water slamming into our children’s summer camps, raging wildfires, and other extreme weather driven by greenhouse gases.”
Keep Reading
Show Less
GOP Lawmaker Says Bill Being Crafted to Shield Big Oil From Climate Liability Lawsuits
"Let’s be clear: You don’t need immunity unless you are in fact responsible for the damages claimed in these lawsuits," said one climate organizer.
Feb 12, 2026
Weeks after the largest oil and gas trade organization in the US unveiled its 2026 policy agenda featuring the goal of shielding companies from "abusive state climate lawsuits," a Republican congresswoman acknowledged at a hearing Wednesday that GOP lawmakers are actively working to stop legal complaints and legislation that aim to hold the industry accountable for mounting climate harms.
At the House Judiciary Committee hearing in which the panel conducted oversight of Attorney General Pam Bondi's Department of Justice, Rep. Harriet Hageman (R-Wy.) informed Bondi that she is currently "working with [her] colleagues in both the House and Senate to craft legislation tackling" superfund laws like ones passed in Vermont and New York, which require fossil fuel giants to contribute to paying for climate damage wrought by their oil and gas extraction.
The legislation Hageman is working on would also aim to kill state and local climate lawsuits like one filed last month by Michigan alleging antitrust violations by fossil fuel companies and another filed by Boulder, Colorado against ExxonMobil and Suncor Energy subsidiaries. The parties in the latter case are awaiting a US Supreme Court review.
At the hearing, Bondi agreed with Hageman's assertion that such lawsuits and state laws "require a federal response" and said the Department of Justice would consider taking action to "protect federal supremacy over interstate emissions and energy policy."
“Multiple climate lawsuits are now advancing toward trial,” Hageman said. “Clearly this is an area in which Congress has a role to play."
Recent reporting suggests that Hageman's efforts are a response to the fossil fuel industry's lobbying to avoid accountability for climate disasters that have increasingly been linked to planetary heating, which international scientists agree is being caused by fossil fuel extraction—despite the congresswoman's dismissal of "speculative future climate change harms."
The American Petroleum Institute (API) said last month in its policy agenda that it aims to "stop extreme climate liability policy" and end the "expansion of climate 'superfund' policies."
Last year, 16 GOP state attorneys general proposed the creation of a "liability shield" for fossil fuel giants, while state legislators in Oklahoma and Utah have introduced bills to bar most civil lawsuits against companies over the emissions or their role in the climate emergency.
Hageman and other opponents of scientists' and experts' demand for a transition away from fossil fuels have suggested such lawsuits are unserious attempts to increase "mismanaged state budgets by imposing fees on consumers and businesses," as the congresswoman claimed.
API president Mike Sommers said last month that the mounting legal challenges are “denying facts, delaying progress, and ignoring the realities of rising demand"—despite the fact that an analysis by climate think tank Ember last year found a growing expansion of renewable energy worldwide while the Trump administration insists on reviving coal production and killing solar and wind power projects.
"Congress should not close the courthouse doors to communities seeking redress. Big Oil is not entitled to special immunity from the consequences of its conduct.“
Vermont Law School professor Pat Parenteau told ExxonKnews in December that the efforts to shield companies from climate liability suggest that fossil fuel giants and proponents like Hageman know that lawsuits like Michigan's and Boulder's would likely stand up in court.
"If these cases are as frivolous as the oil companies’ briefs pretend, then why in the world are you busting your butt to get a declaration of immunity from Congress?” said Parenteau.
Cassidy DiPaola, communications director for the Make Polluters Pay campaign, emphasized that "a federal liability shield for fossil fuel companies would not lower energy prices or ease the cost of living. It would simply shift more of the financial burden onto working families and local governments while insulating one of the most profitable industries in history from accountability."
"Congress should not close the courthouse doors to communities seeking redress," said DiPaola. "Big Oil is not entitled to special immunity from the consequences of its conduct.“
Climate lawsuits have been filed against companies by 11 states including Maine, California, and Rhode Island, and in addition to the Boulder case, lawsuits filed in Honolulu and Washington, DC are advancing toward trial after courts denied the defendant's motions to dismiss them.
Hageman announced her effort to stop climate liability lawsuits and laws the same day that new research led by Oregon State University ecology professor William Ripple was published in the journal One Earth, showing that multiple critical Earth systems are closer to becoming unstable than previously thought, due to the climate emergency.
That pattern is putting the planet on a "hothouse" path, the scientists warn, with feedback loops amplifying the effects of planetary heating like extreme heatwaves and weather disasters.
“As communities across the US move closer to putting Big Oil companies on trial to make them pay for the damage their climate lies have caused, the fossil fuel industry is panicking and pleading with Congress for a get-out-of-jail-free card," said Richard Wiles, president of the Center for Climate Integrity.
“Let’s be clear: You don’t need immunity unless you are in fact responsible for the damages claimed in these lawsuits," he said. "A liability shield for Big Oil would bar the courthouse doors for communities across the country and stick US taxpayers with the massive and growing bill for climate damages, while bailing out corporate polluters from having to pay for the mess they made."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Trump Orders Pentagon to Purchase Coal Energy in Latest Move Propping Up Climate-Wrecking, Costly Plants
“Reality doesn’t lie: Coal is a rapidly dwindling relic of the past, not a solution for the future," said one climate action advocate.
Feb 12, 2026
“The 19th century called, and it wants its fuel source back," said the president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council on Wednesday as President Donald Trump announced his latest attempt to prop up the pollution-causing, expensive coal industry with taxpayer funds—this time by ordering the Pentagon to purchase electricity directly from coal-fired power plants.
"While Americans are demanding clean, affordable energy, the Trump administration is using our tax dollars to prop up the nation’s dirtiest, least efficient power plants," said Manish Bapna of the NRDC.
At an event at the White House, Trump directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to sign long-term, taxpayer-funded contracts with coal plants that would likely have otherwise been retired in the coming years, to purchase energy to power military installations.
"Hard to think of a dumber 21st Century energy and security policy than Trump's insistence that the Pentagon buy more coal power," said the Military Emissions Gap, a UK-based project that monitors military emissions data.
Trump also announced $175 million from the Energy Department to upgrade six coal plants in Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, and West Virginia, and was presented with a trophy naming him the “Undisputed Champion of Beautiful Clean Coal" by the Washington Coal Club.
The Trump administration's persistent efforts to cancel the planned closures of large coal plants have been challenged not only by more than a dozen state governments, but by the owners of at least one of the facilities and two utilities in Colorado.
The utilities, Tri-State Generation and Transmission Association and Platte River Power Authority, accused the administration of violating the Takings Clause of the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment, which states that “private property [shall not] be taken for public use, without just compensation.”
They argued in a regulatory filing last month that “the costs of compliance fall directly on their members and customers, who must now pay."
Ari Peskoe, director of the Electricity Law Initiative at the Harvard Law School Environmental and Energy Law Program, told the Washington Post that the administration's decision to compel coal plants to continue operating has raised household "energy bills while providing negligible benefits to consumers.”
“Each of the five plants were slated to retire because they are expensive to operate and there are cheaper sources of power available to meet consumers’ needs,” Peskoe told the Post. “Plant owners aren’t just flipping a switch to turn the plants back on—they are spending millions on maintenance, renewing expired coal contracts and rehiring workers.”
“It’s no wonder fossil fuel lobbyists are handing Trump an award today. Trump asked them for campaign cash and promised to return the favor—and now he is."
Bapna said Trump's latest actions on coal were the result of the president's campaign promise to fossil fuel executives, whom he asked for $1 billion in campaign donations and pledged to gut climate regulations in return.
“It’s no wonder fossil fuel lobbyists are handing Trump an award today. Trump asked them for campaign cash and promised to return the favor—and now he is," said Bapna. "The rest of us are left to pay the price: more heart disease and asthma attacks, higher utility bills, and more frequent unnatural disasters. This is a raw deal for our wallets, our health, and our future.”
Julie McNamara, associate policy director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists, pointed out that Americans will face higher electricity bills and be forced to pay for the new Department of Defense contracts at a time when "people and businesses across the country are struggling with rapidly escalating electricity costs" while other countries around the world expand their use of far cheaper renewable energy sources.
"The country has real solutions at hand—yet instead of pushing ahead with investments in the fastest, cheapest, cleanest resources available, the Trump administration is actively doing everything it can to stop the deployment of new solar and wind projects, to stop investments in energy efficiency, and to stop the buildout of modern grid infrastructure," said McNamara.
“Reality doesn’t lie: Coal is a rapidly dwindling relic of the past, not a solution for the future," she added. "The Trump administration’s flailings come with real consequences. Forcing the use of increasingly unreliable and relentlessly uneconomic coal plants will risk outages and send high electricity costs higher. Recklessly slashing health, safety, and environmental standards will harm people’s health and the environment. And opting for hollow statements and short-term bailouts fails to meaningfully deliver for the coal-dependent communities requiring actual, durable transition solutions."
Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, suggested that Trump's latest handouts to coal firms "ignores basic economics" while also proving that "coal can't compete without a taxpayer-funded bailout."
"Our military is one of the largest consumers of energy in the world," said Alt. "Instead of improving the efficiency of our military and the quality of life for those serving our country, this order saddles taxpayers with inflated energy costs while exposing millions of Americans to more toxic pollution from old, inefficient plants."
Keep Reading
Show Less
Most Popular