Climate ‘Tipping Points’ May Arrive Without Warning, Says Top Forecaster
From a UC Davis press release
A new University of California, Davis, study by a top ecological forecaster says it is harder than experts thought to predict when sudden shifts in Earth’s natural systems will occur — a worrisome finding for scientists trying to identify the tipping points that could push climate change into an irreparable global disaster.
“Many scientists are looking for the warning signs that herald sudden changes in natural systems, in hopes of forestalling those changes, or improving our preparations for them,” said UC Davis theoretical ecologist Alan Hastings. “Our new study found, unfortunately, that regime shifts with potentially large consequences can happen without warning — systems can ‘tip’ precipitously.
“This means that some effects of global climate change on ecosystems can be seen only once the effects are dramatic. By that point returning the system to a desirable state will be difficult, if not impossible.”
The current study focuses on models from ecology, but its findings may be applicable to other complex systems, especially ones involving human dynamics such as harvesting of fish stocks or financial markets.
Hastings, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy, is one of the world’s top experts in using mathematical models (sets of equations) to understand natural systems. His current studies range from researching the dynamics of salmon and cod populations to modeling plant and animal species’ response to global climate change.
In 2006, Hastings received the Robert H. MacArthur Award, the highest honor given by the Ecological Society of America.
Hastings’ collaborator and co-author on the new study, Derin Wysham, was previously a postdoctoral scholar at UC Davis and is now a research scientist in the Department of Computational and Systems Biology at the John Innes Center in Norwich, England.
Scientists widely agree that global climate change is already causing major environmental effects, such as changes in the frequency and intensity of precipitation, droughts, heat waves and wildfires; rising sea level; water shortages in arid regions; new and larger pest outbreaks afflicting crops and forests; and expanding ranges for tropical pathogens that cause human illness.
And they fear that worse is in store. As U.S. presidential science adviser John Holdren (not an author of the new UC Davis study) recently told a congressional committee: “Climate scientists worry about ‘tipping points’ … thresholds beyond which a small additional increase in average temperature or some associated climate variable results in major changes to the affected system.”
Among the tipping points Holdren listed were: the complete disappearance of Arctic sea ice in summer, leading to drastic changes in ocean circulation and climate patterns across the whole Northern Hemisphere; acceleration of ice loss from the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, driving rates of sea-level increase to 6 feet or more per century; and ocean acidification from carbon dioxide absorption, causing massive disruption in ocean food webs.
The new UC Davis study, “Regime shifts in ecological systems can occur with no warning,” was supported by the Advancing Theory in Biology program at the U.S. National Science Foundation and was published online today by the journal Ecology Letters, in its Early View feature: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123276879/abstract.
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FYI The image is by Anthony, and of course, it’s a spoof.
The only remotely interesting aspect of this “study” is that it is not laden with the adjectival phrase, “worse than previously believed”
oops, I meant “…of the affects of climate change on regional ecology…”
or maybe I meant “…ecological affects of climate change…”
Hell, I don’t know. Just trying to seriously add to the “tipping point” thread.
Tipping point? Isn’t that where you dump your garbage at the landfill?
Deep Ecology!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! She said with a full throated roar.
“Scientists widely agree that global climate change is already causing major environmental effects, such as changes in the frequency and intensity of precipitation, droughts, heat waves and wildfires; rising sea level; water shortages in arid regions; new and larger pest outbreaks afflicting crops and forests; and expanding ranges for tropical pathogens that cause human illness”
What scientists widely agree? I know. They are the ones who wrote the IPCC report with eight or nine major gates that opened into a quagmire of pseudoscience and misinformation. They should consider publishing in Hiking Today or one of the many other IPCC “refereed” publications. There is considerable evidence that whoever wrote the PR blurb the is not familiar with the critical reasoning; “ global climate change is causing major” climate change. Wow this logic is impeccable. Does that mean that global warming means that it is getting warmer?
E.M.Smith (01:17:42) :
I know you can multiply numbers but didn’t know they could do it on their own… I think I’ll go ask my spouse if she would like me to whisper sweet infinities in her ear or if we can try integrating our derivatives…
To which she will reply “Yes dear”.
Our new study found, unfortunately, that regime shifts with potentially large consequences can happen without warning — systems can ‘tip’ precipitously.
Considering the 19th November 2009 Climategate Remembering Day, one has to agree.
Michael-Ghandi was not as great as all thinkhe was.He wanted to side with the Japanese-Nehru talked him out of it-as the Japanese woudl’ve simply lined up the members of the Indian independence movement and shot them. This was from a paper i read years ago, so I can’t get the attribution right…
All that lying down does is exposes one;s neck to be cut. There are plenty of
Bad men who will gladly kill US in the effort to destroy the modern world.
I can think of several wamists who would do just that-and that includes Osama
Bin lauden-who seems to have read Algore..
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. ”
George Orwell
I have known a lot of those ‘rough men’ over the years.I can breathe free becuse of their efforts to stand against the Bad Men of this world.Including my late
father-in-law-who was in on the liberation of Dachau….
Brace for the tipping point,
Flexi-fuel drivers left high and dry after Government subsidy U-turn.
Drivers who took the Government’s advice and chose a low-emission car could be left with a white elephant after a U-turn by ministers.
Britain’s biggest supplier of biofuels will announce today that it is closing its pumps because the Government is ending financial support from April.
It is the second time in five years that the Government has changed its mind and cancelled subsidies after encouraging motorists to invest in a particular type of green car.
Is it windmills next.
“I don’t know.” => You have to do what I say.
….and now for my Thesis on the behavioral probabilities of wild cat herds on the plains….. with foreword on ecologic impacts of overgrazing of sagebrush and cactus…..
Sorry forgot link,
Flexi-fuel drivers left high and dry after Government subsidy U-turn
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article7021180.ece
They produce incomplete and highly simplified models, on computer of course, the consequences of which they publicize as real and not oversimplified.
Oh, and robust.
“Hastings, a professor in the UC Davis Department of Environmental Science and Policy, is one of the world’s top experts in using mathematical models (sets of equations) to understand natural systems. His current studies range from researching the dynamics of salmon and cod populations to modeling plant and animal species’ response to global climate change.”
We see how well the “top experts” did in forecasting salmon and cod populations in the last 20 years – esp. last year, with the massive and unpredicted decline in Pacific salmon. This branch of science is a fiasco: the main power it has is in explaining what happened after the fact. As historian of fisheries science, my experience of the lack of success (read abject failure) of population modelers in forecasting fish led to my initial skepticism of climate alarmism, seeing that both rely on exactly the same mathematical tools.
So if they don’t understand “tipping points”, they clearly can’t understand how the climate works and all of their predictions and pontifications are nothing more than unprovable theory or idealogical nonsense.
I would say the “tipping point” is the threshold at Hooters.
Here’s where we are at:
A mathematician, an accountant and a climate scientist apply for the same job at the UN.
The interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks “What do two plus two equal?” The mathematician replies “Four.” The interviewer asks “Four, exactly?” The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says “Yes, four, exactly.”
Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The accountant says “On average, four – give or take ten percent, but on average, four.”
Then the interviewer calls in the scientist and poses the same question “What do two plus two equal?” The scientist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer and says, “What do you want it to equal”?
Jordan (05:05:41) :
My son is convinced there are crocodiles under his bed.
Although we have no evidence for them (and I can promise you, we do continue to keep an eye out for them), the harsh reality is that nobody can rule out crocodiles under his bed as a real physical possibility.
If he puts his foot out of the bed through the night and gets bitten by a crocodlle, it’s gonna be painful.
Ask him what color the crocodiles are. If he says green, then they are imaginary crocodiles, cartoon ones like found in Disney animated movies, thus may frighten him but won’t do any real harm. Real crocodiles are grey (Examples: one, two, three). It may be hard to tell sometimes (example), so have some grey color swatches handy, you’ll see they are far more grey than they are “Disney” green. The touches of green to me look like algae scum buildup. I doubt these crocodiles get a good bath time scrubbing.
It surprised me to find out crocodiles are really grey, only had it brought to my attention some months ago. Crocodiles being green, well everyone says that, everyone accepts it since everyone says it, thus everyone knows it’s an accepted fact. You can go a lifetime without taking a good honest look at it yourself, and finding out what you’ve been told as absolute truth really isn’t true. The consensus has lied.
Speaking of AGW…
Steve Goddard (06:19:22) :
Reading between the lines, the author is saying that he can’t see any solid evidence of global warming.
Just when I’d been thinking he was totally bonkers.
Is paranoid schizophrenic on the job description!
They better prepare for the tipping point of no government funding soon enough.
Newposter:
Assume for a moment that there are tipping points when some kind of strong positive feedback kicks in and sends the climate spiralling off into much higher temperatures.
My question is this: If that were so, wouldn’t it have likely happened already in recorded or recent geological history, just because of normal random variations?
Why hasn’t water vapor alone or with CO2 done it’s full “forcing” thing over and over, or has it always “failed”, so to speak?
Here it is, the real “Tipping point” AGAINST Al Baby’s GLOBAL WARMING (Not changing to any ” climate change” allowed!!)
http://www.weatheraction.com/docs/WANews10No9.pdf
I remember reading a story just like this… about a boy who cried “Wolf” repeatedly. A tipping point in public opinion is indeed coming.
Speaking of tipping points, someone in the IPCC just admitted the IPCC doesn’t do science:
http://strata-sphere.com/blog/index.php/archives/12721
Unbelievable.