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In the ongoing furore over energy and climate policy, the energy productivity opportunity is being ignored as a solution despite its potential for energy cost reductions.

Network of car charging stations is being developed in South Australia to allow Tesla drivers to visit world’s biggest lithium-ion battery being built by Elon Musk in state’s north.

Conservationists push the UK to make its remote South Sandwich Islands a protected sanctuary.

A nuclear blast and runaway climate change could propel us into the Plutocene. mwreck/Shutterstock.com

On January 27, 2017, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the arms of its doomsday clock to 2.5 minutes to midnight – the closest it has been since 1953. Meanwhile, atmospheric carbon dioxide levels now hover above 400 parts per million.

Why are these two facts related? Because they illustrate the two factors that could transport us beyond the Anthropocene – the geological epoch marked by humankind’s fingerprint on the planet – and into yet another new, even more hostile era of our own making.

My new book, titled The Plutocene: Blueprints for a post-Anthropocene Greenhouse Earth, describes the future world we are on course to inhabit, now that it has become clear that we are still busy building nuclear weapons rather than working together to defend our planet.

Read more: An offical welcome to the Anthropocene epoch – but who gets to decide it’s here?.

I have coined the term Plutocene to describe a post-Anthropocene period marked by a plutonium-rich sedimentary layer in the oceans. The Anthropocene is very short, having begun (depending on your definition) either with the Industrial Revolution in about 1750, or with the onset of nuclear weapons and sharply rising greenhouse emissions in the mid-20th century. The future length of the Plutocene would depend on two factors: the half-life of radioactive plutonium-239 of 24,100 years, and how long our CO₂ will stay in the atmosphere – potentially up to 20,000 years.

During the Plutocene, temperatures would be much higher than today. Perhaps they would be similar to those during the Pliocene (2.6 million to 5.3 million years ago), when average temperatures were about 2℃ above those of pre-industrial times, or the Miocene (roughly 5.3 million to 23 million years ago), when average temperatures were another 2℃ warmer than that, and sea levels were 20–40m higher than today.

Under these conditions, population and farming centres in low coastal zones and river valleys would be inundated, and humans would be forced to seek higher latitudes and altitudes to survive – as well as potentially having to contend with the fallout of nuclear conflict. The most extreme scenario is that evolution takes a new turn – one that favours animals best equipped to withstand heat and radiation.

Climates past

While we have a range of tools for studying prehistoric climates, including ice cores and tree rings, these methods do not of course tell us what the future holds.

However, the basic laws of physics, the principles of climate science, and the lessons from past and current climate trends, help us work out the factors that will dictate our future climate.

Broadly speaking, the climate is shaped by three broad factors: trends in solar cycles; the concentration of atmospheric greenhouse gases; and intermittent events such as volcanic eruptions or asteroid impacts.

Solar cycles are readily predicted, and indeed can be seen in the geological record, whereas intermittent events are harder to account for. The factor over which we have the most control is our own greenhouse emissions.

CO₂ levels have previously climbed as high as 2,000 parts per million (ppm), most recently during the early Eocene, roughly 55-45 million years ago. The subsequent decline of CO₂ levels to just a few hundred parts per million then cooled the planet, creating the conditions that allowed Earth’s current inhabitants (much later including humans) to flourish.

But what of the future? Based on these observations, as reported by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), several projections of future climates indicate an extension of the current interglacial period by about 30,000 years, consistent with the longevity of atmospheric CO₂.

If global warming were to reach 4℃, as suggested by Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, chief climate advisor to the German government, the resulting amplification effects on the climate would pose an existential threat both to nature and human civilisation.

Barring effective sequestration of carbon gases, and given amplifying feedback effects from the melting of ice sheets, warming of oceans, and drying out of land surfaces, Earth is bound to reach an average of 4℃ above pre-industrial levels within a time frame to which numerous species, including humans, may hardly be able to adapt. The increase in evaporation from the oceans and thereby water vapour contents of the atmosphere leads to mega-cyclones, mega-floods and super-tropical terrestrial environments. Arid and semi-arid regions would become overheated, severely affecting flora and fauna habitats.

The transition to such conditions is unlikely to be smooth and gradual, but may instead feature sharp transient cool intervals called “stadials”. Increasingly, signs of a possible stadial are being seen south of Greenland.

A close analogy can be drawn between future events and the Eocene-Paleocene Thermal Maximum about 55 million years ago, when release of methane from Earth’s crust resulted in extreme rise in temperature. But as shown below, the current rate of temperature rise is far more rapid – and more akin to the planet-heating effects of an asteroid strike.

Rate of global average temperature rise during (1) the end of the last Ice Age; (2) the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum; (3) the current bout of global warming; and (4) during an asteroid impact. Author provided Mounting our defence

Defending ourselves from global warming and nuclear disaster requires us to do two things: stop fighting destructive wars, and start fighting to save our planet. There is a range of tactics we can use to help achieve the second goal, including large-scale seagrass cultivation, extensive biochar development, and restoring huge swathes of the world’s forests.

Space exploration is wonderful, but we still only know of one planet that supports life (bacteria possibly excepted). This is our home, and there is currently little prospect of realising science fiction’s visions of an escape from a scorched Earth to some other world.

Read more: What is a pre-industrial climate and why does it matter?.

Yet still we waver. Many media outlets operate in apparent denial of the connection between global warming and extreme weather. Meanwhile, despite diplomatic progress on nuclear weapons, the Sword of Damocles continues to hang over our heads, as 14,900 nuclear warheads sit aimed at one another, waiting for accidental or deliberate release.

If the clock does strike nuclear midnight, and if we don’t take urgent action to defend our planet, life as we know it will not be able to continue. Humans will survive in relatively cold high latitudes and altitudes. A new cycle would begin.

Andrew Glikson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

A team of scientists and reef managers say it’s time to consider ‘riskier’ and unconventional ways to save the world’s coral habitats.

As the metaphorical canary in the global warming coalmine goes, the planet’s coral reefs are hard to beat.

Swathes of corals in all tropical basins have been hit by the longest mass bleaching event yet recorded that kicked off in 2014 and ended, at least officially, in June.

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Ripples in the fabric of space-time are sensed again - this time using three different laser systems.

Family rivalry and Brazil’s Catholic church helped miners devastate an indigenous territory that was once a leader in the fight against deforestation. Climate Home reports

The Paiter-Suruí are a tribe of roughly 1,400 people, uncontacted until 1969, who live in the Amazon forest on the border between the Brazilian states of Rondônia and Mato Grosso.

In 2013, they became the first indigenous population in the world to sell carbon credits under the UN’s major anti-deforestation scheme. Then, last year, they discovered the earth beneath their forest was rich with diamonds, and all hell broke loose.

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The BBC is going under the waves with David Attenborough in a second series of Blue Planet, which was first shown in 2001.

Diprotodon, an extinct Ice Age marsupial of Australia, would trek long distances each year for food.

Capital is given emergency warning as polluted air from the continent combines with toxic air at home

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has triggered the capital’s emergency air quality alert as polluted air from the continent combines with toxic air in London to create dangerous levels of pollution.

The alerts will see warnings displayed at bus stops, road signs and on the underground. Khan has also asked TV and radio stations across the capital to warn their viewers and listeners in news bulletins.

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As usual, conservative media outlets distorted a climate science paper to advance the denialist agenda

Last week, Nature Geoscience published a study suggesting that we have a bigger remaining carbon budget than previously thought to keep global warming below the 1.5°C aggressive Paris climate target. Many scientists quickly commented that the paper’s conclusion was based on some questionable assumptions, and this single study shouldn’t be blindly accepted as gospel truth.

Conservative media outlets did even worse than that. They took one part of the paper’s analysis out of context and grossly distorted its conclusions to advance their anti-climate agenda.

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The ex-chief scientist says the government should be made to enshrine a zero-emissions target in law.

Solar projects tendering for Queensland government's 400MW of large-scale renewables contracts will have to add storage to their projects.

Green industrial revolution continues at Whyalla, with Adani Group's 140MW solar farm approved for construction.

The City of Adelaide is now a hub for South Australia’s electric vehicle charging network with eight fast charging stations opening today within a new dedicated EV parking area.

Hackett steps down from twin roles at Redflow as company focuses on new manufacturing facility and cutting costs.

The Parker Solar Probe is going to be the first spacecraft to journey deep into the sun's atmosphere.

Whither coal? India's new electrification scheme will dedicate 80% of $2.5bn budget to rolling out solar and battery banks to rural and remote homes.

The 10 MW Clayhill solar farm and storage facility, developed by Anesco, was officially opened by UK climate change minister Claire Perry.

The price of new-build renewable energy is expected to fall significantly relative to new-build coal energy in coming years.