Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to The Guardian, tipping points leading to irreversible climate harm and an existential threat to our civilisation may have already been crossed, though there is still time to try to undo some of the damage.
Climate emergency: world ‘may have crossed tipping points’
Warning of ‘existential threat to civilisation’ as impacts lead to cascade of unstoppable events
Damian Carrington Environment editor @dpcarrington
Thu 28 Nov 2019 05.00 AEDTThe world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, according to a stark warning from scientists. This risk is “an existential threat to civilisation”, they say, meaning “we are in a state of planetary emergency”.
…
The planet has already heated by 1C and the temperature is certain to rise further, due to past emissions and because greenhouse gas levels are still rising. The scientists further warn that one tipping point, such as the release of methane from thawing permafrost, may fuel others, leading to a cascade.
The researchers, writing in a commentary article in the journal Nature, acknowledge that the complex science of tipping points means great uncertainty remains. But they say the potential damage from the tipping points is so big and the time to act so short, that “to err on the side of danger is not a responsible option”. They call for urgent international action.
“A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping could still be under our control to some extent,” they write. “The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action – not just words – must reflect this.”
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/nov/27/climate-emergency-world-may-have-crossed-tipping-points
The quoted Nature article is like the Guardian article, except not as well written – basically a flat demand we do what we are told.
Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against
The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions.
Timothy M. Lenton, Owen Gaffney, Stefan Rahmstorf, Katherine Richardson, Will Steffen & Hans Joachim Schellnhuber
…
Here we summarize evidence on the threat of exceeding tipping points, identify knowledge gaps and suggest how these should be plugged. We explore the effects of such large-scale changes, how quickly they might unfold and whether we still have any control over them.
In our view, the consideration of tipping points helps to define that we are in a climate emergency and strengthens this year’s chorus of calls for urgent climate action — from schoolchildren to scientists, cities and countries.
…
Act now
In our view, the evidence from tipping points alone suggests that we are in a state of planetary emergency: both the risk and urgency of the situation are acute (see ‘Emergency: do the maths’).
EMERGENCY: DO THE MATHS
We define emergency (E) as the product of risk and urgency. Risk (R) is defined by insurers as probability (p) multiplied by damage (D). Urgency (U) is defined in emergency situations as reaction time to an alert (τ) divided by the intervention time left to avoid a bad outcome (T). Thus:
E = R × U = p × D × τ / T
The situation is an emergency if both risk and urgency are high. If reaction time is longer than the intervention time left (τ / T > 1), we have lost control.
We argue that the intervention time left to prevent tipping could already have shrunk towards zero, whereas the reaction time to achieve net zero emissions is 30 years at best. Hence we might already have lost control of whether tipping happens. A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping — and hence the risk posed — could still be under our control to some extent.
The stability and resilience of our planet is in peril. International action — not just words — must reflect this.
Read more: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0
Their unphysical climate models contain hidden errors at least an order of magnitude greater than the alleged CO2 signal, they can’t actually tell you how much influence CO2 has on global temperature, none of the disasters they claim are imminent have actually happened, yet they claim they can put meaningful values into the terms of their insurance risk equation.
Enough already. If it is that bad, then the Grauniad needs to take on China and India and stop them emitting CO2 immediately. Good luck with that. If it is not such an emergency that the develooping nations get free passes, then it isnt an emergency other than as a wealth transfer from Western democracies to crazy UN fanatics that think they can continue to live the good life while the peasants starve. They are too stupid to realise/remember that it is only the Western democracies that pay for the UN. The rest largely free load off the USA in particular. And they are definitely too stupid at the Grauniad to realise that if we stupid western democracies destroy our economies, then there wont be any money to pay for their lifestyle. Time to move the UN from New York to Antarctica.
“we might already have lost control of whether tipping happens. A saving grace is that the rate at which damage accumulates from tipping — and hence the risk posed — could still be under our control to some extent.”
Don’t give up hope completely just yet people as we sciencey folks on top of all this with equations and compootery stuff may still be able to save you from the fires of Mt Doom if you listen up carefully and do exactly as we say.
In the immortal words of Stan Cross-
http://www3.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-65/fig-latrobe-65-053a.html
What the Hell is a tipping point, or tipping points?
The only definition I saw was methane was a tipping point, and maybe 1 degree of warming, but they don’t say over what period of time that they are talking about. And what quantity of methane…
No real definitions of tipping points as far as I could see
JPP
Proper scientists would not be talking about tipping points, they would be asking themselves serious questions about their flawed assumptions. Most of the alleged AGW is based on warming in the seventies and eighties. But why did we have very similar warming in the thirties before emissions rose sharply?
Why do they slavishly believe in models that fail to be validated (predict observation)? Why do the consequences of GHG theory never materialise, e.g. the hot spot, increasing tropospheric RH? Apart from natural oscillations why have we had a temperature pause since 1998?
Why don’t they point out that the the official records show no evidence of all the extreme weather we hear about? What are they doing about quantifying cloud coverage which seems to be variable enough to swamp any changes in carbon dioxide?
It seems that scientists have their eyes shut and their fingers in their ears while they shout tipping point over and over again.
“What are they doing about quantifying cloud coverage which seems to be variable enough to swamp any changes in carbon dioxide?”
Yes, I think a fellow named Moler did a study about that and his conclusion was that a two percent increase in clouds would reflect enough incoming radiation to compensate for a doubling of CO2 in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Probability of continued ramping up the fear = 100%. Scared people are easier to manipulate.
“tipping points leading to irreversible climate harm and an existential threat to our civilisation may have already been crossed, though there is still time”
If there is still time it wasn’t a tipping point.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/02/03/hidden-hand/
Same people, same hymn sheet. In 2009, “3 tipping points” had been reached, https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol14/iss2/art32/
Lenton, Rockstrom, Richardson, Schellnhuber, Steffen, were all authors for the original, with additional help then from James Hansen and other familiar names.
“Anthropogenic pressures on the Earth System have reached a scale where abrupt global environmental change can no longer be excluded. We propose a new approach to global sustainability in which we define planetary boundaries within which we expect that humanity can operate safely.
Transgressing one or more planetary boundaries may be deleterious or even catastrophic due to the risk of crossing thresholds that will trigger non-linear, abrupt environmental change within continental- to planetary-scale systems.
We have identified nine planetary boundaries and, drawing upon current scientific understanding, we propose quantifications for seven of them.
These seven are:
climate change (CO2 concentration in the atmosphere <350 ppm and/or a maximum change of +1 W m-2 in radiative forcing);
ocean acidification (mean surface seawater saturation state with respect to aragonite ≥ 80% of pre-industrial levels);
stratospheric ozone (<5% reduction in O3 concentration from pre-industrial level of 290 Dobson Units); biogeochemical nitrogen (N) cycle (limit industrial and agricultural fixation of N2 to 35 Tg N yr-1) and phosphorus (P) cycle (annual P inflow to oceans not to exceed 10 times the natural background weathering of P);
global freshwater use (<4000 km3 yr-1 of consumptive use of runoff resources);
land system change (<15% of the ice-free land surface under cropland);
the rate at which biological diversity is lost (annual rate of <10 extinctions per million species).
The two additional planetary boundaries for which we have not yet been able to determine a boundary level are chemical pollution and atmospheric aerosol loading. "
The new tipping points are totally different from a decade ago: "More than half of the climate tipping points identified a decade ago are now "active," a group of leading scientists have warned. The only trouble is, they did not identify these a decade ago. They should have re-read their 2009 paper.
Nine [NEW] active tipping points:
Arctic sea ice
Greenland ice sheet
Boreal forests
Permafrost
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
Amazon rainforest
Warm-water corals
West Antarctic Ice Sheet
Parts of East Antarctica
Strangely enough, these same authors, Lenton, Rockstrom, Richardson, Schellnhuber, Steffen and several others, were all authors for the "Hothouse Earth" PNAS paper in 2018, which preceded IPCC's SR15, but they didn't claim last year that any tipping points, (thresholds) had been reached, regardless of the claim that 9 years before they claimed three. Now they claim nine.
https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252
"We explore the risk that self-reinforcing feedbacks could push the Earth System toward a planetary threshold that, if crossed, could prevent stabilization of the climate at intermediate temperature rises and cause continued warming on a “Hothouse Earth” pathway even as human emissions are reduced.
Crossing the threshold would lead to a much higher global average temperature than any interglacial in the past 1.2 million years and to sea levels significantly higher than at any time in the Holocene. We examine the evidence that such a threshold might exist and where it might be. If the threshold is crossed, the resulting trajectory would likely cause serious disruptions to ecosystems, society, and economies.
Collective human action is required to steer the Earth System away from a potential threshold and stabilize it in a habitable interglacial-like state. Such action entails stewardship of the entire Earth System—biosphere, climate, and societies—and could include decarbonization of the global economy, enhancement of biosphere carbon sinks, behavioral changes, technological innovations, new governance arrangements, and transformed social values."
Same people, same pretend science, same social transformation agenda.
It may be worth re-watching this event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FO9DKk07SCY&feature=youtu.be
Heads up — it’s five hours.
However, it explains how the Guardian and others are planning their propaganda efforts regarding climate change. They’ve all but conceded they are abandoning journalistic integrity on the weak argument that saving the world is more important. I have no doubt they would disagree with my conclusion but watch the conference and see if you agree.
I don’t think it’s worth taking anything seriously from the Guardian on climate change.
Either they don’t know what a “tipping point” is or I don’t.
“It’s a gradual tipping point. More of a gradient, really.”
I heard Lenton on the Bolshevik Broadcasting Corporation this lunchtime. The Greenland Ice Sheet is unstable, its melting will affect the Gulf Stream, the West Antarctic Ice Shelf will go, 10 metre sea level rise in 2070, etc., etc. All uncritically received by the interviewer, of course, while we were shouting at the radio: The vikings farmed Greenland, that’s why it was called Greenland, and there was no tipping point then……
That Schellnhuber and Ramstorf can publish an equation with so many undefined variables simply confirms my belief that they are totally insane. An error analysis might be helpful.
This seems to be a direct copy/paste from what we were told back in the 1990s. Didn’t work then, but maybe this time people will fall for it.
Well I am repeating myself here but makes me feel better-
Some tipping point-
Agriculture yields are up- https://ourworldindata.org/yields-and-land-use-in-agriculture#yields-since-1960.
Poverty has decreased- https://ourworldindata.org/a-history-of-global-living-conditions-in-5-charts.
Life expectancy has increased- https://ourworldindata.org/life-expectancy.
Deaths from weather related disasters have declined- https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/natural-disaster-death-rates?time=1900..2018.
oh and the planet and deserts are greening from the increase in CO2- https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth/
From the article: “The planet has already heated by 1C and the temperature is certain to rise further, due to past emissions and because greenhouse gas levels are still rising. The scientists further warn that one tipping point, such as the release of methane from thawing permafrost, may fuel others, leading to a cascade.”
The year 2016, according to NASA Climate, was the “hottest year evah!”. It was one-tenth of a degree warmer than 1998, the second warmest year in the satellite record The warmest part of the year 2016 (Feb.) is said to have been 1.1C above the global average temperature for the period from 1850 to the present.
The claim by alarmists is that a temperature of 1.5C above the global average will be catastrophic and they make claims like they do above that this increased temperature will cause methane gas to be released which will exacerbate the warming.
Well, we have a good example to look at: According to former NASA Climate Tsar, James Hansen, 1934 was 0.5C warmer than 1998, in the US, which would make 1934, 0.4C warmer than 2016, and 1934 would be 1.5C warmer than the global average.
So we reached the alarmist’s tipping point of 1.5C above the average way back in 1934, and no excess methane was produced and no tipping point was found and the Earth’s weather moderated from that time to now. No runaway catastrophe.
Of course, Hansen’s 1934 temperature mark applied only to the U.S., but all other unmodified charts from around the world show the same temperature profile as the US chart, so the US chart actually represents the global temperature profile. The benign global temperature profile.
We’ve already hit the 1.5C tipping point and nothing tipped over. Current temperatures are about 0.8C cooler than 1934, and 0.4C cooler than 2016.
The UAH satellite chart:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/wp-content/uploads/UAH_LT_1979_thru_October_2019_v6.jpg
The US surface temperature chart (Hansen 1999):
2015 through 2018 were the hottest years on record for the last 145 years. Four in a row. The probability of that happening without some external influence (CO2) is (n * (n-1) * (n-2) * (n-3)). 424 million to one. Worse than any single ticket lottery odds you will ever face.
“The probability of that happening without some external influence (CO2) ….”
Oh, very scientific. Maybe it was caused by all those black swans?
“2015 through 2018 were the hottest years on record for the last 145 years. Four in a row.”
NASA Climate has you fooled! Don’t you know better than to put any trust in temperature figures put out by NASA Climate? They have an agenda.
Look at the UAH satellite chart in the link I provided, and see if it shows the last four years to be the hottest on record.
You have been fooled by a fraudulent NASA Climate temperature lie.
Here’s the lie illustrated. NASA Climate took the US surface temperature chart and changed it into a fraudulent “hotter and hotter” Hockey Stick chart for the express purpose of fooling people like you.
The unmodified US surface temperature chart:
And the same chart after it was bastardized by NASA Climate:
Ask NASA Climate why they would take actual temperature readings and then completely change them by running them through their computer programs. NASA Climate won’t give you an answer as to why they completely changed the temperture profile of the US chart, but I will: They did it to fool people like you into believing the lie they are pushing.
The unmodified chart shows the 1930’s to be as warm as today. Which means CO2 is not a major factor determining the Earth’s temperature. The modified chart shows the “hotter and hotter” profile the Data Manipulators want to push on the world, so they can pretend we have a CO2 catastrophe on our hands..
Open your eyes, my friend. NASA Climate is in the “Flim-Flam” business. The Truth is not in them. If you believe them, you will be led astray.
In the STEM fields thermodynamics is a simple subject. If you do not understand thermodynamics you should not be posting on this subject. 15 years ago my uncle, a nuclear engineer who designed reactors, and I were were discussing the “black swan events” that could occur as the world warmed. On top of both our lists were melting permafrost and the warming of methane hydrate bubbles in extremely cold waters. Either of those two would be, over three decades, disastrous. One is currently happening. So we have reached one tipping point.
[??? .mod]
15 years ago my uncle, a nuclear engineer who designed reactors, and I were were discussing the “black swan events” that could occur as the world warmed. On top of both our lists were melting permafrost and the warming of methane hydrate bubbles in extremely cold waters. Either of those two would be, over three decades, disastrous. One is currently happening. So we have reached one tipping point.
That’s what john says above. You two should get together. Btw, do you have the same uncle?
Has there ever been a climate tipping point?
Do you understand what a climate tipping point is?
Not if there has never been one?
The last time that Earth had a 408 ppm CO2 concentration in the atmosphere was 3.2 million years ago when the temperature was 9 degrees F warmer and the oceans were 20 – 30 meters higher than they are today. Identical physical inputs into the np-hard world climate analysis yields identical results.
john or NorEstern, or whatever, says:
“Identical physical inputs into the np-hard world climate analysis yields identical results.”
Perhaps English is not your first language, but this sentence makes no sense without further clarification. What exactly is “the np-hard world climate analysis”?
And can you defend your claim of 9 degrees F warmer and sea levels 20-30 meters higher? For how long?
And how, pray tell, can you know that the “inputs” are” identical”? Were you there 3.2 Mya? The proxies we have just aren’t that precise.
All these points… and we haven’t found the point were the world is doomed for good and we can as well enjoy the end of the world?
Here is a more scientific formula: BS= Hy x Lc x E(-) / 1
BS is self explanatory
Hy= the level of hysteria
Lc =the lack of candor
E = the lack of real evidence
The formula states that the probability of a theory being true decreases when the level of hysteria is very high, the ones proposing it lack the ability to tell the truth and there is no evidence to support it.