Dr Andrew Glikson (Australian Earth and Paleoclimate scientist) on looming climate catastrophe, climate genocide and “existential calamity for civilization and nature”(2016): “Little mention is made of the existential threats posed by the climate and nuclear issues in the context of the current elections in the US and Australia. According to the world’s climate research institutions and the bulk of the peer reviewed scientific literature, the Earth has now entered a critical stage at which amplifying feedback effects to global warming transcend points of no return. Manifestations of a shift in state of the climate include; current rise in CO2 at 3.3 parts per million per year, the fastest recorded for the last 65 million years; extreme rises in Arctic temperatures; a plethora of extreme weather events such as cyclones, floods and fires; demise of habitats such as the Great Barrier Reef where corals die due to high water temperatures and coral bleaching; and other developments. The extreme rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide since the onset of the industrial age, and the corresponding rise in mean global temperatures as a direct result of the rise in carbon gases, pose an existential risk to the future of nature and civilization. The consequences of further burning of the vast carbon reserves buried in sediments and in permafrost and bogs can only result in a mass extinction of species which rivals that of the five great mass extinctions in Earth history… It follows that, where and when the majority of authoritative scientific institutions (NASA, NOAA, NSIDC, Hadley-Met, Tyndale, Potsdam, CSIRO, World Academy of Science, IPCC and so on), based on the bulk of the evidence, indicate beyond reasonable doubt that open-ended emissions of greenhouse gases inevitably lead to a major shift in the terrestrial climate, and thereby the demise of humans and of species, a toleration and/or condoning of continuing emissions by governments contravenes at the very least the spirit of international laws” (Andrew Glikson, “The climate Titanic and the melting icebergs”, Countercurrents, 30 June 2016: http://www.countercurrents.org/2016/06/30/the-climate-titanic-and-the-melting-icebergs/ ).