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(Climate Progress) Must-Read: Scientists Uncover Evidence Of Impending Tipping Point For Earth
Must-Read: Scientists Uncover Evidence Of Impending Tipping Point For Earth
By Climate Guest Blogger on Jun 10, 2012 at 2:42 pm
JR: If we stay anywhere near our current greenhouse gas emissions path, we will cross many climate tipping points this century. There’s the nearby tipping point for an ice-free arctic, with all that means for making our weather much more extreme and for triggering another tipping point, the rapid loss of carbon from the permafrost. There’s the tipping point for the “self-amplifying” disintegration of Greenland and, after that, an ice free planet (though we’d cross the point of no return long before the full melting ever happened). Other lines are blurrier: Dust-Bowlification looks to be a continuous process. But the key point is that the changes that occur are largely irreversible over an extended timeframe (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).
We’re near 400 parts per million atmospheric concentration of C02, rising 2+ ppm a year (a rate that is projected to rise as emissions increase and carbon sinks saturate). While no one knows the exact line of demarcation for the various tipping points, the latest science suggests that if we go substantially above, say, 450 ppm we risk starting the chain of events, while going substantially above 500 ppm seems downright suicidal (see links below). We are, sadly, on track for 800 to 1000 ppm this century, which would be the end of modern civilization as we know it today, according to the most recent science. Long before then, however, we’ll cross all the big tipping points. Indeed, as Dr. Tim Lenton explains in Scientific American, ”The worse case would be that kind of scenario in which you tip one thing and that encourages the tipping of another. You get these cascading effects.”
A major new study has been released on tipping points in Nature, “Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere” (subs. req’d). The news release is reposted below.
UC Berkeley professor Tony Barnosky explains how an increasing human population, coupled with climate change, could irreversibly alter Earth’s ecosystem. (Video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian)
by Robert Sanders, via UC Berkeley News Center
A prestigious group of scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation.
“It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” warns Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of ...
By Climate Guest Blogger on Jun 10, 2012 at 2:42 pm
JR: If we stay anywhere near our current greenhouse gas emissions path, we will cross many climate tipping points this century. There’s the nearby tipping point for an ice-free arctic, with all that means for making our weather much more extreme and for triggering another tipping point, the rapid loss of carbon from the permafrost. There’s the tipping point for the “self-amplifying” disintegration of Greenland and, after that, an ice free planet (though we’d cross the point of no return long before the full melting ever happened). Other lines are blurrier: Dust-Bowlification looks to be a continuous process. But the key point is that the changes that occur are largely irreversible over an extended timeframe (see NOAA stunner: Climate change “largely irreversible for 1000 years,” with permanent Dust Bowls in Southwest and around the globe).
We’re near 400 parts per million atmospheric concentration of C02, rising 2+ ppm a year (a rate that is projected to rise as emissions increase and carbon sinks saturate). While no one knows the exact line of demarcation for the various tipping points, the latest science suggests that if we go substantially above, say, 450 ppm we risk starting the chain of events, while going substantially above 500 ppm seems downright suicidal (see links below). We are, sadly, on track for 800 to 1000 ppm this century, which would be the end of modern civilization as we know it today, according to the most recent science. Long before then, however, we’ll cross all the big tipping points. Indeed, as Dr. Tim Lenton explains in Scientific American, ”The worse case would be that kind of scenario in which you tip one thing and that encourages the tipping of another. You get these cascading effects.”
A major new study has been released on tipping points in Nature, “Approaching a state shift in Earth’s biosphere” (subs. req’d). The news release is reposted below.
UC Berkeley professor Tony Barnosky explains how an increasing human population, coupled with climate change, could irreversibly alter Earth’s ecosystem. (Video produced by Roxanne Makasdjian)
by Robert Sanders, via UC Berkeley News Center
A prestigious group of scientists from around the world is warning that population growth, widespread destruction of natural ecosystems, and climate change may be driving Earth toward an irreversible change in the biosphere, a planet-wide tipping point that would have destructive consequences absent adequate preparation and mitigation.
“It really will be a new world, biologically, at that point,” warns Anthony Barnosky, professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and lead author of ...
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/06/10/496039/must-read-scientists-uncover-evidence-of-impending-tipping-point-for-earth/
16 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
= new reply since forum marked as read
I mis-interpreted your post. My apologies 
> Using the bacteria analogy, they're saying that the human experiment is
> one single doubling away from completely filling our petri dish.
Considering the previously posted graphs about the population growth over
the last half-century, that is pretty scary ... for those with eyes to see, etc..
