We know that the world has experienced devastating disasters which have changed the Earth.

The Chicxulub meteorite 66 million years ago did for the dinosaurs. The shrinking of ice 11,000 years ago did for the people of Doggerland and created what is now the North Sea while communities in the Mediterranean experienced a Great Drowning.

Remnants on the Dogger Bank, in the Mediterranean, and a proliferation of dinosaur bones testify to what disasters such events can cause. Lizzie Wade, in her book Apocalypse, recounts climate impacts on Harrappa in 1900 BCE forcing mass migration and describes the 2000 BCE collapse of the Egyptian Kingdom.

Yet throughout the world today teams of climate denialists scoff at the possibility of something similar happening.

To a certain extent the scoffing is about identity – proclaiming a specific world view. For others they have been sucked in by the many campaigns conducted since the 1950s by oil and gas companies using tactics pioneered by the tobacco industry – campaigns which have been deconstructed time and time again.

Others deny the reality because it is politically useful and guarantees generous support from companies and the think tanks they fund. You are unlikely to get a free flight on a Gina Rinehart plane by talking about the threat of climate change.

Once entrenched in this world view cognitive dissonance which prevents the believers from seeing the reality also plays a role.

You can trace threads of all of these denials of reality in leaders of right wing groups around the world. The US Republicans and the Australian Liberal Party are both examples of this worldwide phenomenon.

Yet the consequences are clear as documented by the 2026 World Meteorological Organisation report on climate change. The report is an annual event which provides “authoritative information on the state of the climate system by updating key observed climate indictors and presenting selected high-impact weather and climate events.”

The report covers indicators including global temperature, greenhouse gases, ocean heat, sea level, ocean pH, sea ice extent, glacier mass balance and Earth’s energy imbalance. It also looks at high impact weather and climate impacts such as heat and cold extremes, floods droughts and tropical cyclones.

This year it also provides a case study on climate and heat impacts on health.

A key finding is that by 2024 the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide reached its highest levels in the past two million years while levels of methane and nitrous oxide reached the highest level in 800,000 years.

The report said: “The increase in the annual carbon dioxide concentration in 2024 was the largest annual increase since 1957.”

It described the risk associated with this as enhanced greenhouse effects, ocean acidification and variations in crop productivity and found average global temperatures were higher than the 1850-1900m average.

Increased global mean temperatures also caused biodiversity losses, water scarcity, displacement of populations, degradation of built infrastructure, more greenhouse gases, species decline, food in insecurity, conflict and, poverty

Global mean temperatures in the years 2015 to 2025 were the eleven warmest years on record. In terms of ocean heat content each of the past nine years have set new records of heat content and the rate of ocean warming in 2005-2025 was more than twice that observed in 1960-2005.

2025 near surface temperatures were above the 1991-2020 averages across most land areas from Greenland and northern Canada to southern Australia.

The report said human health was also being shaped by climate change. “Rising temperatures, shifting rainfall patterns and changes in extremes are affecting where and when health risks emerge.”

It also highlights the influence of rising temperatures on infectious diseases, particularly dengue fever, where WHO reports that the number of cases worldwide are currently the highest yet reported.

Meanwhile Bob Berwyn in Inside Climate News (11/2) reported on an Oregon University paper whose lead author, Distinguished Professor William Ripple, said the world’s hothouse trajectory was creating a “global tipping point.”

Reinhard Steurer also spoke to Inside Climate News saying that it was not clear if scientific warnings are making a difference “in a post-truth era in which too many people prefer pleasant lies to over unpleasant truths”.

Johan Rockstrom, co-director of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, said there may not be a parallel to what’s happening now, at least not during the past three million years.

He also said: “Earth is getting darker due to multiple factors” including melting ice, tree lines moving closer to the poles in the Northern and Southern hemispheres and changing cloud patterns due to increased evaporation and moisture in the atmosphere.”

James Hansen – a former NASA researcher who has accurately projected the planet’s global warming trajectory for several years – said “Don’t be too pessimistic as the evidence for high climate sensitivity grow. Realistic understanding of the climate situation and public recognition is the essential first step toward addressing climate change.”

Meanwhile rorts such as carbon offsetting and carbon capture are increasingly seen as more about corporate positioning than solving problems.

In a paper in Nature Communications Niklas Stolz and Benedict S Probst (10/9/2025) said, after an in-depth analysis of 89 multinational companies found that carbon offsetting played a negligible role in corporate climate change strategies.

Half of the Forbes Global 2000 companies have adopted net zero targets even though there have been no globally accepted standard for setting net zero targets.

Back in Australia Chevron’s $3 billion carbon capture and storage (CCS) strategy has a problem according to Adam Morton (The Guardian 14/12/2025) -it’s not working as promised and the results are getting worse.

In 2016 – backed by $60 million in federal government funding the project was designed to cut direct greenhouse gas emissions from the development by 40%. Nearly 10 years on this is yet to happen.

Dr Martin Jagger a CCS supporter says so far the technology is “nowhere near climate-relevant scale yet” and said most have not secured financial support, cancellation rates have accelerated and operating systems routinely don’t capture as much CO2 as promised.

Matt Kean, Climate Change Authority Chair, told a Senate estimates hearing that “people were very bullish” about CCS role but the evidence didn’t support them.

Meanwhile a Nature Communications Earth and Environment report found that the Black Death in Medieval Europe was largely caused by Venice, Genoa and Pisa following a post volcanic climate downturn in the Mediterranean grain import industry. They went further afield for grain – and got it – but accompanying it was the bacterium Yersinia pestis.

Given our experience with COVID it could just happen again.