Essay by Eric Worrall
Is anyone else fed up with us approaching but never actually crossing all those dangerous tipping points?
World on brink of five ‘disastrous’ climate tipping points, study finds
Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change
Damian CarringtonEnvironment editor
@dpcarringtonFri 9 Sep 2022 04.00 AESTThe climate crisis has driven the world to the brink of multiple “disastrous” tipping points, according to a major study.
It shows five dangerous tipping points may already have been passed due to the 1.1C of global heating caused by humanity to date.
These include the collapse of Greenland’s ice cap, eventually producing a huge sea level rise, the collapse of a key current in the north Atlantic, disrupting rain upon which billions of people depend for food, and an abrupt melting of carbon-rich permafrost.
At 1.5C of heating, the minimum rise now expected, four of the five tipping points move from being possible to likely, the analysis said. Also at 1.5C, an additional five tipping points become possible, including changes to vast northern forests and the loss of almost all mountain glaciers.
In total, the researchers found evidence for 16 tipping points, with the final six requiring global heating of at least 2C to be triggered, according to the scientists’ estimations. The tipping points would take effect on timescales varying from a few years to centuries.
…
Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/sep/08/world-on-brink-five-climate-tipping-points-study-finds
The abstract of the study;
Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points
David I. Armstrong McKay* https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0020-7461 d.mckay@exeter.ac.uk
Arie Staal https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5409-1436
Jesse F. Abrams https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0411-8519
Ricarda Winkelmann https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1248-3217
Boris Sakschewski https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7230-9723
Sina Loriani https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6660-960X
Ingo Fetzer https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7335-5679
Sarah E. Cornell https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4367-1296
Johan Rockström
Timothy M. Lenton* https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6725-7498 d.mckay@exeter.ac.uk9 Sep 2022
Vol 377, Issue 6611
Climate tipping points occur when change in a part of the climate system becomes self-perpetuating beyond a warming threshold, leading to substantial Earth system impacts. Synthesizing paleoclimate, observational, and model-based studies, we provide a revised shortlist of global “core” tipping elements and regional “impact” tipping elements and their temperature thresholds. Current global warming of ~1.1°C above preindustrial temperatures already lies within the lower end of some tipping point uncertainty ranges. Several tipping points may be triggered in the Paris Agreement range of 1.5 to <2°C global warming, with many more likely at the 2 to 3°C of warming expected on current policy trajectories. This strengthens the evidence base for urgent action to mitigate climate change and to develop improved tipping point risk assessment, early warning capability, and adaptation strategies.
Read more (paywalled): https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950
Unfortunately the study is paywalled, so I can’t tell you the timeframe of these alleged tipping points. Not that the predicted dates matter that much – in my experience, tipping point predictions are usually quietly ignored or deleted when the deadline expires.
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Seeing as I am still alive and we are supposed to have passed a number of “Tipping Points” I take all this with a pinch of salt and put it in the small circular filing cabinet by my feet.
I still suffer the onset of anxiety when realization that a tipping point is at hand, let alone 5 –
Mr., it depends on how much you value what your waitress shakes at you.
Tipping point #5 then 😳
I’ve been so motivated in the past. I choose to believe that was not the sole motivation of a few of the waitresses to ask me to wait until they got off work. I used to be young, fit and good-looking. And a 48″ chest and 32″ waist didn’t hurt with the women.
In this case…
No tips, please: the whole wallet!
By your feet?
Mine’s across the landing with the seat up.
Considering paleoclimate and paleo estimates of CO2 levels, I conclude the “CO2 is the thermostat” claim is terminally weak.
How can the Greenland Glacier collapse when it is inside of a bowl and that for large areas of the interior it is well below freezing.
The Eemian interglacial melted it more without any catastrophic effects shown.
Not just that, but even people like Mann admit there was at least a North Atlantic medieval warm period — they cannot deny the historical, let alone paleoclimatological, evidence — that was warmer than that area is now and no “tipping point” was passed. The evidence also suggests that the Holocene maximum was warmer than the Medieval warm period in that area of the world and still tipping point was passed.
New Study Shows How Tortoises, Alligators Thrived in High Arctic
A new study of the High Arctic climate roughly 50 million years ago led by the University of Colorado at Boulder helps to explain how ancient alligators and giant tortoises were able to thrive…
https://bit.ly/3gjafOp
https://www.colorado.edu/today/2010/08/24/new-study-shows-how-tortoises-alligators-thrived-high-arctic-some-50-million-years-ago
How did Earth survive? Sarc/
How can the Greenland Glacier collapse when it is inside of a bowl…
__________________________________
Oh! That’s easy, during the summer water flowing into those moulins lubricates the glaciers so that that they slide uphill out of the bowl.
I heard that the definition of a road engineer is
“The result of a very expensive education in running water uphill”.
More money in a career migration to “climate science”?
Kreskin is about to perform his magic and float the Greenland ice mass to the tropics.
The centrifugal action from the earths rotation.
I was thinking about adding that “Twist” (-:
How can the Greenland Glacier collapse when it is inside of a bowl?
Quantum tunnelling, Natch.
Probability? We Dont Do Sums here. Just Self expression and imaginative constructs.
They’re climate change scientists they don’t know any thing about geography or geology-the world is just flat like in the Atlas.
Summers were up to 6 degrees C hotter in north central Siberia during the Holocene Climatic Optimum than now, without the permafrost melting to release dangerous levels of methane.
I doubt it. The permafrost probably thawed out, and then re-froze when it got colder. Just as in Greenland, where Viking-era graves are just now being revealed as the permafrost thaws. Those graves surely weren’t dug in permafrost.
Perhaps permafrost shouldn’t be called “permafrost” as it’s not really permanent over long timescales. The implied permanence allows activists to cast it as a victim of human-caused climate change. Just like polar bears, and all the other ongoing climate disasters that 99.9 percent of the population can’t see for themselves because they all happen far away from where most folk live.
“Transient frost” sounds too anti-LGBTQI2+ ?
If Siberian permafrost melted 5-9 Ka, we wouldn’t find frozen mammoth carcasses in it.
Coastal SW Greenland’s climate is different. Northern Siberia lies well above the Arctic Circle, c. 70 N. Norse settlements were around 60 N.
How about the woolys found off shore in South Cackalack? official fossil of SC?
The frozen mammoths found were not just under the surface. They were deep where the permafrost are still frozen.
Plus, the mammoths were exposed by flowing water, streams/river.
The ‘cave/tunnel’ they moved the baby mammoth to keep it frozen is dug below where the permafrost is still frozen.
Remember, as glaciers melt due to modern climate change, it reveals all those bodies and artifacts of ancient people who for some reason not known to modern science, crawled under them.
..to say nothing of the trees and other plants which managed to grow under ice sheets.
Haven’t you heard? According to the Atlantic Magazine we entered the Anthropocene Era. Never mind that it is only 150 years old. Geologically speaking, it’s less than 1 second old. My ex tried to convince me of this having an impressive urban studies degree…hence the ex part.
“…dangerous levels of methane.”
__________________________
For God’s sake please stop buying into the bullshit. Atmospheric methane isn’t going to reach dangerous levels anywhere ever. The Global Warming Potential numbers that say it’s 86 times more powerful than CO2 is a very clever work of misdirection. By 2100 methane is on track to produce less than 0.05°C of warming. In other words, nothing.
I notice that all the cited authors publish at the same .org, so I suspect this is just a magnification of one man’s personal opinion. Nothing to worry about, although my lady friend always seems to pick up on such nonsense, and tries to inform me of the impending doom.
The lead author is from Exeter University, one of the UK’s most fervent proponents of CAGW but it doesn’t follow that the other signatories are necessarily from the same Uni, since ORCID is not a place but a system:-
“an ORCID is a widely accepted unique identifier for researchers/authors. It is a simple numerical identifier (e.g. 0000-0001-6479-5330). Each researcher/author should have only one ORCID, which will stay the same over their lifetime.”
https://support.jmir.org/hc/en-us/articles/115001351808-What-is-an-ORCID-why-is-it-mandatory-to-have-one-and-how-can-I-get-one-
So an ORCID is how you ID an orc.
I thought it was another, albeit obscure, word for testicle?
That’s an orchid, dear.
Oh bother, ‘ave I been dropping me aitches again!
Orc, goblin, cave troll… but they rarely have their IDs on them.
Yes. James Dyke another member of the Exeter team recently published a book entitled ‘Fire,Storm and Flood : the violence of climate change’.
He also often has a column in the UK i newspaper which is always full of doom and gloom.
Same as Boris’s lady friend, no doubt!
Huh, she’s no lady, she’s his wife!….
They didn’t mention the 6th tipping point that took place years ago……….the planet is being greened to death by massive, CO2 fed plants/crops(-:
https://www.marketforum.com/forum/topic/69258/
Oh but they did. Here’s the map from their paper – “Sahel/West African Monsoon Greening”
Oh the horror! Irreversible growth of green plants – what will those poor Africans do when the Sahara disappears? Where will the camels go?
Things are so bad a lot of them have already migrated to Australia 🙂
The Simpsons Desert by Matt Groening?
what we need is an article explaining how we have already passed the five stupidity tipping points.
I guess they’re kinda right. If we destroy our modern society, we will be unable to deal with any kind of emergency. Perhaps we can give up all of our modern evil ways, and go live in caves again.
mort
“Perhaps we can give up all of our modern evil ways, and go live in caves again.”
Perhaps we can give up all of our modern evil ways, and about one percent of us can go live in caves again.
FIFY.
The rest will be dead.
Can our green fertile planet support more than perhaps 50-100 million people with Mesolithic technology?
Auto
I already have my cave picked out. I have sprayed it heavily with Cave Bear-B-Gone™.
There are lots of bats, so I’ll have no lack of bat soup to eat. But I must admit, there’s some sort of hush-hush research facility and a wet market nearby that are making me a little nervous.
Bring a pick-a-nik basket full of choc-o-lit cake just in case or you might wind up with a little BooBoo
Easy enough … we passed the 5 stupidity tripping points with the onset of Climate Science. Populated by college graduates who, through edjumacation, determination and will, have proven it is possible to double down on stupid. And apparently redouble down too.
I don’t know how these people can look at themselves in the mirror every morning. Once the scam is fully exposed, what will they do for a living???
They don’t see themselves in the mirror. They just see their facade that they show to the outside world without introspection. They might as well be vampires.
Go back to writing articles about the impending ice-age?
Move on to their next made up crisis.
https://www.washingtonpolicy.org/publications/detail/today-its-global-warming-in-the-70s-it-was-the-coming-ice-age
Yeah, well, I think that’s the problem: they do look in the Mirror every morning (or the Guardian if they have pretensions)!
The Ship of State changes direction very slowly (dare I say glacially?). By the time the scam has run its course, these profiteers will be long gone.
When they look in the mirror, they see nothing because they are vampires.
The day after the climate change scam is exposed, unemployment figures will increase – these a-holes are unemployable hence the need for grants to keep them in the manner to which they have become accustomed.
Future ‘likely’ tipping points is about all they have left, since their past predictions concerning same proved wrong:
But trust them now—it’s likely gonna happen if we don’t turn to ruinables.
This time it’s different.
Why didn’t all the tipping points invented by climate alarmists occur during the Holocene Climate Optimum?
Cuz only heat trapped by CO2 can cause tippers. Other kinds of heat are the wrong kind.
They included all of the already failed tipping points in their latest 6 tipping points.
Every tipping point cited is utterly dependent upon the word “could”. I’m sure that “could” does not mean ‘definitely’ or even ‘probably’.
They’re just more grifters seeking the riches that come from pandering alarmisms.
Pro-tip : Always check out the “Supplementary Material / Information” buttons before typing something like that !
In this case the Excel spreadsheet you are looking for is in the “Data S1” (.zip) file …
Why!?
The first fifty alleged climate scientists predicting tipping points were as daft as they claimed they were serious.
Why chase the Johnnys-come-lately alarmists?
Especially when they bring nothing new.
Instead, these latest alarmists predicting “tipping points” trot out the same tired excuses and claims.
Because if left unchallenged both the “regular lurkers” and the “Internet surfers who happen to arrive at WUWT for the first time by landing on this article” could get the impression that “Nobody is questioning ‘the experts’ … therefore they must be right …”.
The author (Eric Worrall) wrote that he was unable to find the “timescales” about the BALD ASSERTIONS that were being made (without having to “buy” the scientific paper).
I merely pointed him to where he, and everyone else, could find some (not “all” !) of that information.
– – – – –
To my mind (which is only human, and therefore all too fallible …) the best way of countering claims about any “consensus” on these purported “tipping points” is to quote the IPCC.
AR6, WG-I report (final version, May 2022), section 1.6.1.4, “The likelihood of reference scenarios, scenario uncertainty and storylines”, on page 239 :
NB : All plots of both “CO2 / GHG emissions” and “future GMST projections” show the “new” (CMIP6 for AR6, 2021/2) SSP3-7.0 and SSP5-8.5 pathways neatly bracket the “old” (CMIP5 for AR5, 2013) RCP8.5 pathway.
See the graph at the end of this post for an example all the way to the year 2500.
Compare the trajectories of either “RCP4.5 vs. RCP8.5” or “SSP2-4.5 vs. SSP5-8.5”.
Then explain to me, and everyone else, with a straight face why it is that EVERY SINGLE ONE of those “tipping point” scientific papers is based on the RCP8.5 “counterfactual” pathway.
“Is anyone else fed up with us approaching but never actually crossing all those dangerous tipping points?”
No …
I always look forward to a new & exciting tipping point every week … it’s amazing what original ideas the gang-green minds can produce !!
Guam climate tipping point
Good ol’ Hank.
His legacy will live on in ridicule forever 🙂
Yep. If there was a Nobel-like prize for Stupid, Hank would definitely be a top contender.
Don Limon of CNN would be in that category. Don speculated that the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had been swallowed up by a black hole.
My guess is that those that jumped on the AGW bandwagon for profit or virtue signaling are too embarrassed to admit they are wrong and are grabbing at straws to justify their decision.
From their other actions, I believe they are egocentric narcissists and emotionally unable to admit error.
A major reason why they hate debates with a passion.
The fact that leftists crucify those alarmist scientists who admit error or even just changed their opinions doesn’t encourage alarmist alleged scientists to stray.
Once they sign up to feeding off the climate change alarmist cash cow, it takes serious determination and willpower to return to honest science.
My guess is that those that jumped on the AGW bandwagon for profit or virtue signalling, don’t have any shame and just want to wring the last dollar out of it before they find a new way to part fools from their money.
They will just go very quiet…Like the KremlinTrolls have gone very quiet since Ukraine took more territory back in 6 days than the Russians have in 6 months.
I wonder, once Putin and chums are a footnote in history, how much Liberal Left BS will simply vanish without trace?
At this point, I just hope it’s Putin et al who are a footnote in history and not Biden, the USA and the Western world.
Me, too.
I would like a greeny to explain to me how polar ice caps, including Greenland, actually work.
OK, so ocean temperatures rise enough to melt all the sea ice in the world. So I guess a degree or two might manage that?
Now we are left with no sea ice, but no sea level rise – the old ice in a glass example.
The continent of Antarctica, for example, is a stranded rock covered in ice at summer temperatures of -40C. Scott was believed to have died in the Antarctic summer in temperatures of around -44C.
So how does the landbound ice melt?
If atmospheric temperatures rise sufficiently to melt that ice we are probably facing an entirely different planet anyway. -40C is a big number to overcome and I don’t imagine any ice will be melting soon with 1.5C of atmospheric temperature rise as the sea can’t reach the ice on the continent because it can’t rise, and atmospheric temperatures can’t melt the ice either.
So where does all this anticipated sea level rise come from?
Ice shelves breaking off after being undercut by warm(er) water? Just guessing.
Once it is an ice shelf, it is sea ice, does not cause sea level rise.
The average max T at the South Pole is -15 F in Jan and Dec. Much of the EAIS is far colder. It’s not going to melt. Its retreat ended 3000 years ago.
Colder than that, per this.
Antarctica climate: average weather, temperature …

https://www.climatestotravel.com › climate › antarctica
At the South Pole, 2,800 meters (9,200 feet) above sea level, the average annual temperature is -49 °C (-56 °F), ranging from about -28 °C (-18 °F) in January to about -59.5 °C (-74.5 °F) in July. The lowest recorded temperature is -83 °C (-117 °F), while the highest is -12 °C (10 °F).
From these, perhaps, which the CAGW folks never, ever mention?
Multiple NASA Studies Confirm Bedrock Heat Flow Behind Melting Polar Ice, Not Global Warming
AUG 7, 2018
http://bit.ly/2xLx32g
91 volcanoes discovered under the west(?) Antarctic ice sheet in 2018.
“Tipping points” and “Canarys in coal mines”. They are like broken records. No original thoughts or labels.
“The ‘Tipping Point’ you are about to hear is the same. The year has been changed to protect the activist.”
For fifty years the “experts” supposedly doing climate research have made predictions that were wrong.
If you had a finacial advisor that was consistantly wrong for fifty years, would you still hire them?
I know these scumbags keep moving the goalposts to try to stay relevant but enough is enough. More people need to made aware of their failure to even get one prediction correct.
More people need to be made aware that all these alarmist “climate scientists” are basing their predictions on computer simulations that they determine the parameters for. They don’t know all the parameters – no one does.
The leftist alarmists depend on FUD. The majority of the population is not scientifically inclined so we have to be able to make emotional appeals to why the alarmists should not be listened to.
It will be easier when there are masses of people broke, cold, and hungry this winter. Be prepared to educate the masses while covering your six.
I did a quick Internet search dive on these authors funding sources. Here’s what I learned. Three writers funded by the UK based Leverhulme Trust. This appears to be wealthy source with a broad spectrum of do-Goodes activities from human trafficking to incremental basic science research to improving volcanic eruption modeling. In short, this appears pretty optimal.
One other author heralds frm the Alan Turing Institute. So, improved climate change related modeling?
But most, a majority of the authors sport sponsorship by European Research Council funding. This outfit was founded by the European Commission, ie, the EUs authoritarian paymasters.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Research_Council
This effort appears to parallel the National Research Council in the US.
So, establishmentarian to the Max!
That’s about it. And therefore most in the present work are likely enamoured and guided by faux models? Not even the seriously real flesh-and-blood and sexy and human ones? Sure. Stupid is as stupid does.
Establishmentarian to the Marx!
The have been articles claiming that Hansen, Ehrlich, and other such loons have been “eerily correct” and “amazing prescient” in their predications, that all have come true as delivered. That is the information the faithful receive, thus that is what they know.
The claims have been proven false and people will be more willing to accept that they have been lied to when they are broke, cold, and hungry.
Mother Nature is a cruel mistress. Reality will bite them in the ass – hard.
I am waiting patiently for a tipping point to get triggered for the CAGW narrative…..for its collapse.
The tipping point for the CAGW house of cards built on the AGW foundation. which is mild harmless global warming for the past 47 years, some of which wa caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Every warning of climate doom — from CAGW to the Nut Zero panic response to CAGW — is piled on that foundation and it is collapsing as the global average temperature has barely changed in the past seven years. Any effect from CO2 has to get weaker as saturation is approached. And the effect was already mild, looking at downwelling radiation in the past 20 years.
The problem is, that there do appear to have been climate ‘tipping points’ in the past – where the earth just suddenly froze over for a million years, for example.
No one seems to really know why. They mutter about CO2, but even they dont sound convinced.
I have a solution to climate change. All governments should cut off all research grants to academia that are for climate research. The “climate” will become remarkably quiet.
They keep telling us that “the Science is settled”, so why do they still need funding?
Keep the mud slinging on the wall — more scaremongering every year — to see what sticks. Propaganda can’t stop — it has to accelerate to keep people in fear. Next month, expect scientists to claim climate change will kill your dog! Or cause warts.
Bill Gates, or one of his NWO/WEF cohorts has already said we need to kill our dogs and other pets because they eat too much. They don’t want to wait for climate change to do it.
But the political leaders need a crisis! How else can they justify increasing their control?
I suggest all governments use only solar and wind power and leave all the fossil fuels for the rest of us
“Giant ice sheets, ocean currents and permafrost regions may already have passed point of irreversible change”
May implies may not.
And, as I frequently remind these worriers, they are always talking about future threats and developments (like superior improved EV batteries) which have NEVER eventuated. Superb and unlimited optimism is a requirement for these folk!
Tipping into what, exactly? The planet has been far warmer at various times in the past and nothing tipped over. We are the product of constant climate change ever since the earth acquired an atmosphere and oceans, across billions of years.
Well unfortunately – because I am 100% ‘climate denier’ these days – it appears that it may have tipped over in the past. Snowball earth and hot house earth seem to be well supported as long term stable periods of climate, radically different from today.
But since we havent a clue really why these periods happened, any claim that human activity may push us in that direction is relatively meaningless.
This from the University of Exeter I believe. I think it’s disgusting that universities have descended into this.
It’s what happens when left wing government starts sending everyone to university and giving degrees away like candy.
Peak stupidity has already peaked
Tim, you are underestimating stupidity.
Einstein would have disagreed
I fear it’s just beginning, Tim, and progressing at a truly phenomenal rate.
What tipping points were reached in the Eemian Interglacial? You know, the interglacial that was much warmer for longer periods than our Holocene Interglacial.
Ummm… well, the Earth did tip into another glacial period. So there are tipping points, Dave.
Two different things, H.R.
I’m taking the long view, Dave. Where were the doomsayers at the end of the Eemian? Who foresaw the Holocene coming?
Those were tipping points. Just not the ones that the doomsayers want to talk about. The tipping points the doomsayers are flogging have never happened and are unlikely ever to happen until our sun becomes a red giant. Then look out! It’s on my calendar to call in sick that day.
Synthesized and model based studies sure get a lot of attention in the press.
I have model based study of all my relatives life spans. It comes from genealogically observing their death certificates. It says they all die anyway no matter what they do to try and prevent it. It turns out that there was a tipping point reached in the early 20th century where they all started living longer. I wonder why that was.
Bad news gets attention
Just like predictions of a coming ice age in the mid-1970s.
Chocolate. Massive corelation in longevity versus availability of chocolate. Can I have a massive research grant, please?
Tipping Points are not unlike the admonishment of children by their parents that if they don’t behave the Bogey Man will get them. Also, about as realistic.
CO2 is the boogeyman.
The children have been brainwashed.
So have most adults
It’s painful to see such stupidity
Like wearing masks to prevent spreading a virus.