Climate tipping points are a looming specter of our future. This is the threshold at which Earth systems transition to a new state, often suddenly and irreversibly.
Soil that has been frozen for a long time under the Arctic is rapidly thawing, releasing enormous amounts of carbon dioxide and methane It gets stored there and further heats the atmosphere in a feedback loop. Fresh water rapidly melting from ice in Greenland (one tipping point) could disrupt circulation patterns in the Atlantic Ocean (another tipping point). Weather chaos around the world: Temperatures in Northern Europe could plummet, the tropics could overheat, wet and dry seasons in the Amazon would switch, and parts of the U.S. East Coast could be submerged by rising sea levels.
no way new paper The journal Nature Climate Change argues that all these alarming events should be called something other than “tipping points.” The frame is intended to focus attention on the radical changes that global warming could bring. But a group of scientists across Canada, the UK, Switzerland and the US argue that this concept is scientifically incorrect and, worse, could be counterproductive.
Bob Kopp, a co-author of the paper who studies climate change and sea level rise at Rutgers University, said talking about tipping points, as scary as it is, may not inspire people to do something about climate change. Because fear is an unreliable motivator. This can be key to generating interest online, but too often it can leave people feeling defeated and disengaged. “A tipping point is a way of looking at the world that is not inherent to the world,” Kopp said. “It’s a choice to use that frame.”
This metaphor soared in popularity after popular science author Malcolm Gladwell published a book about it. tipping point In 2000, it was inspired by an idea from epidemiology about the moment when a virus begins to spread explosively. “When I first heard that phrase, I remember thinking, ‘Wow, what if there was a turning point in everything?’” Gladwell Retrospective in 2009. “Wouldn’t it be cool to try to find a turning point in business, social policy, advertising, or other non-medical fields?”
The concept was quickly embraced by scientists seeking to sound the alarm about global warming. “We stand on the precipice of a climate system tipping point from which there is no salvation,” said climatologist James Hansen. American Geophysical Union lecture Three years later, climate scientist Tim Lenton co-authored a highly cited paper. How close can the world get to various turning points? — For example, when the lush Amazon rainforest turns into dry savannah, or when warm water eats away at the underside of the West Antarctic ice sheet and collapses into the ocean. (Climate researchers have also applied this idea to cultural trends that help reduce emissions, called “social tipping points,” such as accelerating the adoption of electric vehicles or plant-based diets.)
Kopp said that 20 years ago, when the consequences of climate change were not so clear, it would have made sense to highlight climate tipping points as a call to action. But in 2024, the hottest year on record, the impact will be evident, with floods, fires and heat waves significantly worse than before. “All you have to do is open a newspaper to see the dangerous impacts of climate change,” Kopp said.
Such disasters can trigger a kind of collective awareness. that can lead to policy changelike new york city After Hurricane Sandy, resources were poured into climate adaptation. Tipping points don’t produce this kind of response, Kopp said. “We will never stand up and say, ‘Today is the day the West Antarctic ice sheet collapses.’ I think it would be a good idea to do something about this.’”
Lenton, whose work has influenced the way people think about climate tipping points, said Kopp’s paper misrepresents the efforts he and his colleagues have made to clarify what tipping points mean. “The most important thing is that tipping points are real and well-established in both climate and social systems,” said Lenton, who currently studies climate change and Earth systems at university. “Readers of this paper will not be left with the mistaken impression that tipping points do not exist. “You can get it,” he said. From an email from Exeter, England.
Lenton’s personal experience suggests that the framework of “tipping points” can help people understand the risks of climate change. “What saddens me about this paper is that, as is too often the case, some members of the climate community choose to argue with each other rather than work together constructively in a common quest for the common good in the face of well-organized opposition. said Renton.
Lenton’s 2008 paper justified a review of how the climate system could be affected by “the growing political demand to define and justify binding temperature targets.” However, the extent to which global warming will actually trigger a tipping point is not yet known. Consider, for example, the possibility that the conveyor belt of ocean currents in the Atlantic Ocean, which regulates temperature and distributes heat from the equator to the poles, could be significantly slowed. According to a 2022 study, the threshold for collapse is: Warming of 1.4~8℃.
Nonetheless, the tipping point has merged with the international goal of keeping global temperatures below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit). Kopp and his colleagues found many references to a “1.5 degrees Celsius tipping point” through news and scientific studies. However, the temperature threshold that will lead to catastrophe is highly uncertain. What is certain is that with each small increase in global warming, the risk continues to grow.
“If people think that the scientific community has said 1.5 degrees Celsius is the tipping point, but nothing happens once we get above 1.5 degrees Celsius, that could actually threaten scientific credibility at a time when we are facing so many climate-related risks. Change,” Kopp said.
He is not suggesting that people should remain silent about the turning points facing the world. He simply wants a different term. Perhaps a phrase like “potential surprise.” But given the widespread appeal of “tipping points,” which have now appeared in more than 2,200 scientific papers, switching to a new phrase will be a huge challenge.
