Tuesday, April 01, 2025

Research: Top scientists issue urgent warning on fossil fuels

Fossil fuels drive interlinked crises that harm health, wildlife, planet

Center for Biological Diversity

WASHINGTON— In a review published today in the peer-reviewed journal Oxford Open Climate Change, top scientists issued an urgent warning that fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry are driving interlinked crises that threaten people, wildlife, and a livable future.

Today’s review synthesizes the extensive scientific evidence showing that fossil fuels and the fossil fuel industry are fueling not only the climate crisis but also public health harms, environmental injustice, biodiversity loss, and the plastics and agrochemical pollution crises.

The review focuses on the United States as the world’s largest oil and gas producer and dominant contributor to these fossil fuel crises. It presents the solutions already available to phase out fossil fuel extraction and use and transition rapidly and fairly to affordable clean, renewable energy and materials across the economy.

“The science can’t be any clearer that fossil fuels are killing us,” said Shaye Wolf, Ph.D., climate science director at the Center for Biological Diversity and lead author of the report. “Oil, gas and coal will continue to condemn us to more deaths, wildlife extinctions and extreme weather disasters unless we make dirty fossil fuels a thing of the past. Clean, renewable energy is here, it’s affordable, and it will save millions of lives and trillions of dollars once we make it the centerpiece of our economy.”

The review highlights that fossil fuels account for about 90% of human-caused carbon dioxide emissions, heating the climate, acidifying oceans, and fueling unprecedented climate disasters. Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion is responsible for millions of premature deaths worldwide and hundreds of thousands of premature deaths in the United States every year. The climate crisis causes additional deaths and physical and mental health harms from escalating climate disasters, disease transmission, food insecurity, and displacement of people.

Based on their findings and decades of research, the authors urge governments to immediately stop fossil fuel expansion and phase out existing fossil fuel development to limit the damages from the climate crisis.

“Fossil fuel pollution impacts health at every stage of life, with elevated risks for conditions ranging from premature births to childhood leukemia and severe depression,” said co-author David J.X. González, Ph.D., an assistant professor of environmental health sciences at the UC Berkeley School of Public Health. “We’ve got to work fast to end fossil fuel operations near our homes, schools and hospitals and trade fossil fuel infrastructure for healthy, clean energy.”

While fossil fuels harm everyone, the review details disproportionate harms of fossil fuel extraction, processing and use on communities of color and low-income communities.

“Decades of discriminatory policies, such as redlining, have concentrated fossil fuel development in Black, Brown, Indigenous and poor white communities, resulting in devastating consequences,” said Robin Saha, Ph.D., an associate professor at the University of Montana. “For far too long, these fenceline communities have been treated as sacrifice zones by greedy, callous industries. The most polluted communities should be prioritized for clean energy investments and removal and cleanup of dirty fossil fuel infrastructure.”

Fossil-fuel-induced climate change and pollution are also accelerating extinction risk. Up to one-third of animals and plants could be lost forever in the next 50 years if fossil fuels go unchecked. To protect biodiversity, the review highlights the importance of siting renewable energy infrastructure in the built environment and increasing protections for ecosystems that provide vital carbon storage, among numerous other benefits.

The review further shows that the fossil fuel industry is increasing the production of plastics, creating pervasive pollution that contaminates the air, water, soil, food systems, wildlife and human bodies.

The review recommends ambitious targets to reduce primary plastics production and plastic chemicals of concern while incentivizing safe and sustainable plastics alternatives and nonplastic substitutes, as well as sustainable agricultural practices to limit fossil-fueled petrochemical pollution from pesticides and fertilizers.

The review also discusses a key barrier to transitioning from fossil fuels to clean energy: The fossil fuel industry’s decades-long, multibillion-dollar disinformation campaign to conceal the dangers of its products and block policies to phase out fossil fuels.

“The fossil fuel industry has spent decades misleading us about the harms of their products and working to prevent meaningful climate action,” said Naomi Oreskes, professor of the history of science at Harvard University. “Perversely, our governments continue to give out hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies to this damaging industry. It is past time that stops.”

The 11 coauthors are Shaye Wolf, Ph.D. (Center for Biological Diversity), Robert Bullard, Ph.D. (Texas Southern University), Jonathan J. Buonocore, Ph.D. (Boston University), Nathan Donley, Ph.D. (Center for Biological Diversity),Trisia Farrelly, Ph.D. (Cawthron Institute), John Fleming, Ph.D. (Center for Biological Diversity), David J.X. González, Ph.D. (University of California Berkeley), Naomi Oreskes, Ph.D. (Harvard University), William Ripple, Ph.D. (Oregon State University), Robin Saha, Ph.D. (University of Montana, Missoula), and Mary D. Willis, Ph.D. (Boston University).

Journal

Oxford Open Climate Change

DOI

10.1093/oxfclm/kgaf011

Method of Research

Commentary/editorial

Subject of Research

Not applicable

Article Title

Scientists’ Warning on Fossil Fuels

Article Publication Date

31-Mar-2025

Thinner Arctic sea ice may affect the AMOC

AMOC, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation

University of Gothenburg

Beaufort sea — image:
Thinner sea ice in the Arctic could eventually have an impact on AMOC, more research is needed to better understand the link between less Arctic sea ice and the AMOC.
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Credit: Photo: Alfred Wegener Institute / Stefan Hendricks

One of the ocean currents in the Arctic Ocean is at risk of disappearing this century because of climate change, according to a new joint study from the University of Gothenburg and the German Alfred Wegener Institute. As a result, the North Atlantic could be flooded with freshwater which would weaken the global ocean circulation.

The weakening of the AMOC, Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, is a hot topic among the world's climate scientists. However, it is unclear what the consequences will be when the ocean currents change and when a tipping point is reached. Researcher Céline Heuzé from the University of Gothenburg, together with colleagues Marylou Athanase and Raphael Köhler from Germany, has studied the future of one of the major ocean currents in the Beaufort Sea, located in the Arctic Ocean, north of the Alaskan and Canadian coasts.

This current is the Beaufort Gyre and it is an important feature of the Arctic Ocean. By storing or releasing freshwater, it influences the oceanic properties both within the Arctic and as far away as the North Atlantic.

Due to warmer temperatures in the Arctic, the Beaufort Gyre is currently losing large amounts of sea ice. The ice helps keeping the ocean cool, acting as a lid. Thinner sea ice allows more heat from the atmosphere to pass through, raising sea temperatures further and causing even more sea ice to disappear. Previous research shows that the freshwater content of the Beaufort Sea has increased by 40 percent over the last two decades.

Concerns about sea ice 'tipping point'
“The results of this study make us concerned that the reduction of sea ice in the area could lead to a tipping point where the AMOC collapses,” says Céline Heuzé, Senior Lecturer in Climatology at the University of Gothenburg and an expert on deep ocean and sea ice.

In the study, the researchers made projections using only the global climate models that can accurately represent the Beaufort Gyre. A climate model is a computer simulation of the Earth's climate system – atmosphere, ocean, land and ice. Climate models are used to reconstruct the past climate or predict the future climate.

“If greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced urgently, this projection suggests that the Beaufort Gyre will weaken and release the freshwater that it currently holds. This freshwater could then reach the North Atlantic and possibly negatively impact the AMOC,” says Marylou Athanase, researcher at Alfred Wegener Institute, Germany, and first author of the study.

The AMOC, of which the Gulf Stream is a part, is of great importance for the climate in Scandinavia as it transports warm water to high latitudes in the northern hemisphere. How the link between reduced Arctic sea ice and a weakening of the AMOC may develop in the future is something the researchers now want to study more closely.

Fact box: The Gulf Stream and the AMOC

The ocean circulation in the Atlantic that many climate scientists focus on is called the AMOC – Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. It is a large system of ocean currents in the Atlantic, of which the Gulf Stream is a part. The AMOC system is driven by differences in density between different water masses so that warm water from more southerly latitudes moves north along the ocean surface where it cools, sinks and moves south again into the deep ocean. (Wikipedia)

Fact box: Tipping points

In climate science, a tipping point is a critical threshold that, when crossed, leads to large, accelerating and often irreversible changes in the climate system. (Wikipedia)

The Beaufort Gyre in the Arctic Ocean holds today large amounts of fresh water. If the gyre weakens due to climate change, it will release freshwater that could flood the North Atlantic and have an impact on the AMOC.

Credit

Illustration: Alfred Wegener Institute/Marylou Athanase