he New York Times (NYT) recently published a special Sunday feature titled, “How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?”
The article, which is heavy on infographics and short on actual references or facts tackles several topics about Earth’s features that may be “in danger of collapse.” The entire article is nothing more than speculation with pretty graphics and doesn’t offer any evidence whatsoever that Earth is close to these so-called “tipping points.” The article heavily hedges its bets with weasel-words such as, could, may, might, and possibly but doesn’t make a single solid prediction.
Here’s a summary of the NYT article claims, plus the prediction of “When it might happen,” which follows each topic.
For the past two decades, scientists have been raising alarms about great systems in the natural world that warming, caused by carbon emissions, might be pushing toward collapse. These systems are so vast that they can stay somewhat in balance even as temperatures rise. But only to a point.
Once we warm the planet beyond certain levels, this balance might be lost, scientists say. The effects would be sweeping and hard to reverse. Not like the turning of a dial, but the flipping of a switch. One that wouldn’t be easily flipped back.
Mass Death of Coral Reefs
In time, the reefs can bounce back. As the world gets warmer, though, occasional bleaching is becoming regular bleaching. Mild bleaching is becoming severe bleaching. When it might happen: It could already be underway.
Collapse of Greenland Ice and Breakup of West Antarctic Ice
The collapse of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets could become more likely at 1.5°C. When it might happen: The timing will vary place to place. The effects on global warming could accumulate over a century or more. Irreversible melting could begin this century and unfold over hundreds, even thousands, of years.
Abrupt Thawing of Permafrost
The localized thaw of permafrost could become more likely at 1.5°C. When it might happen: The timing will vary place to place. The effects on global warming could accumulate over a century or more.
Sudden Shift in the West African Monsoon
Monsoons may be disrupted. When it might happen: Hard to predict.
Loss of Amazon Rainforest
By 2050, as much as half of today’s Amazon forest could be at risk. When it might happen: Will depend on how rapidly people clear, or protect, the remaining forest.
Shutdown of Atlantic Currents
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC may slow down, changing the weather. When it might happen: Very hard to predict.
As you can see for yourself, the NYT didn’t have a single definitive answer for “When it might happen.” This is not at all surprising as every one of these predictions about tipping points is based on computerized climate models which we know to be faulty and have a tendency to be running overly hot with no scientific justification other than built-in bias.
Here is what we know based on actual data and measurements.
- Coral Reefs are doing very well. Despite over hyped media claims, such as the poster child for this issue, the Great Barrier Reef in Australia it is actually doing quite well and has reached its largest range of expansion in 2024 ever recorded. It has been steadily improving.
- The Abrupt Thawing of Permafrost is a summer phenomenon. While there is a few instances of this happening in winter, this is due to changes in weather patterns, not climate. Permafrost records are so short in duration, we don’t have any idea if this has also happened in the past. Arctic regions have high natural temperature variability. For example, in some regions of Siberia, average January temperatures are lower than -40 °C (-40 °F). In the summer, the long days of sunshine thaw the top layer of frozen ground and bring average temperatures above 10 °C (50 °F). At some weather stations in the interior, summer temperatures can reach 30 °C (86 °F) or more.
- Greenland Ice is melting, but the melt is miniscule compared to the entire ice mass. It also refreezes every winter.
- The breakup of West Antarctic Ice due to melting has been theorized for decades but hasn’t happened. Again, like Greenland Ice, the melt is minuscule compared to the total ice in Antarctica.
- No shift in the West African Monsoon has been observed. Science shows us that the West African Summer Monsoon rainfall exhibits large variability at interannual and decadal timescales, causing droughts and floods in many years.
- The loss of Amazon Rainforest is mostly about clearing of lands for agriculture and mining, not climate change. The NYT article even mentions this even though they still insist climate change will have a role.
- There’s been no evidence of shutdown of Atlantic Currents like the AMOC. Science shows it not slowing at all. In fact climate science can’t actually decide from year to year whether it is speeding up or slowing down. The last sentence of the NYT section on Atlantic currents says, “When it might happen: Very hard to predict.” Is accurate, yet they still list it as a concern.
In summary, this NYT article is nothing but fear-mongering with a razor-thin veneer of science to back it up. Every one of the “predictions” is so open-ended that they have the same probability of a coin-toss. However, based on the physical evidence and data we have so far, which suggest none of these tipping points will occur, even 50-50 odds are unlikely to be representative of the future. The NYT did their readers a huge disservice with this article.
Anthony Watts is a senior fellow for environment and climate at The Heartland Institute. Watts has been in the weather business both in front of, and behind the camera as an on-air television meteorologist since 1978, and currently does daily radio forecasts. He has created weather graphics presentation systems for television, specialized weather instrumentation, as well as co-authored peer-reviewed papers on climate issues. He operates the most viewed website in the world on climate, the award-winning website wattsupwiththat.com.
Originally posted at ClimateREALISM
Those who have made predictions with a stated time frame, like James Hansen or Paul Ehrlich, have been proven wrong. What they shared was a fundamental misunderstanding of reality.
Good reason to never give a time frame- leave it open, like the 2nd coming of Jesus.
Well, if Kamalala gets in, I predict a rapid tipping point for the US of A.
Rapidly downhill !!
It’s Commie Harris now–no lala involved.
And lo in the year 2000 whole nations were, as predicted by the UN, wiped off the face of the earth.
Amen.
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The real question should be:
“How Close is United States to a 1929 style economic crash?”
Or most of the western world for that matter.
Same type of answer applies!
How much time does AOC say we have left?
I researched tipping points at the time for several essays in ebook Blowing Smoke—including one titled “Tipping Points”.
The only ‘documented’ one concerned WAIS during the Eemian supposedly causing a sudden sea level rise along Australia’s west coast. The paper was O’Leary 2013 in Nature Geoscience. The only problem was it comprised clear academic misconduct, provable by carefully analyzing the SI. The sudden sea level rise was caused by an earthquake along Quobba Ridge. Details in essay ‘One if by Land’.
“The article heavily hedges its bets with weasel-words such as, could, may, might, and possibly but doesn’t make a single solid prediction.”
An intelligent audience would notice- but apparently, the NYT audience ain’t that bright. 🙂
Implication- the “systems” are sort of “in balance” but not greatly so. But, hundreds of millions of years of things happening countless orders of magnitude more significant that a rise in CO2, such as continents colliding, astronomical complications, massive comets crashing to Earth, etc… prove that “the systems” are extraordinarily stable. They adjust – but no tipping points.
There’s also the issue of “prejections” in “climate science”.
No Medieval Warm Period? No Roman? No Minoan?
Not even that much. A coin toss yields a definitive, and testable result. When you can change the definitions of the words, or stretch an observation to fit the prediction, you are engaged in fortune-telling: just another confidence game.
If we were to suppose that a complex adaptive system could have tipping points for a given behavior, we’d have to be able to explain the mechanism in detail. This description won’t appear in a newspaper.
Obviously, they don’t understand the scope of their employment.
Scientists use the scientific method to investigate hypothesis. That’s it.
It’s only politicians who raise alarms.
One reason that ‘tipping point’ arguments like in NYT keep recurring despite repeated factual refutation (as here) is that in theory they are possible.
Climate is a nonlinear dynamic system. By nonlinear is simply meant there are feedbacks. By dynamic is simply meant those feedbacks are not instantaneous. Mathematically, all nonlinear dynamic systems are chaotic. So they all have unpredictable tipping points from one strange attractor (in N-1 Poincare space) to another. Known since Conrad Lorenz, aka the butterfly effect.
“Mathematically, all nonlinear dynamic systems are chaotic.”
No, that’s not true. There are three types of systems: linear, non-linear, and non-linear chaotic. All chaotic systems are non-linear, but not all non-linear systems are chaotic.
The only real tipping point happens at 32F (0 C) when phase change has water turn to snow/ice. That is how glacial advances start when Milankovitch Cycles are ripe for snow to stay on the ground year round at the higher elevations which takes thousands of years to develop although it may start because of some forcing like vulcanism as a trigger for temporary cooling.
Or how winter starts each year when that first snow fall sticks and changes the local albedo and presto, the days are getting shorter, it is soon Christmas and it is winter and cold for several months. This is what one would think a tipping point is, is when something reaches some critical threshold and there is an instantaneous profound change to the natural order of things. But we don’t see this evidence in the climate record in a warming world. Only in a colder world which brings ice and loss of life. Which is now the norm the last 2.58 million years, with warmer interglacials for 10%-15% of the time.
The oceans are not boiling at the other end of the spectrum, contrary to propaganda.There are no tipping points on the warm side where things get slightly warmer over time. In general, warmer global temps lead to an explosion of life, as has been recorded throughout geological time since life got started. This is why we now have 8 billion people because of a warming world since the Little Ice Age, along with the miracle of hydrocarbons.
There isn’t any evidence of some tipping point when things get warmer and then bang, something completely changes because of reaching some critical heat threshold. The AMOC isn’t going to shut down as the Sun is still beating down on the equatorial and tropical regions, and all that warm water has to shed its heat poleward and take all that warm air along with it.
Are they saying that at 1.5 C above the pre-industrial global average temperature (which we have no clue about what that might actually be) all the ice at the poles will have warmed to 0 C and suddenly turn to water?
The only climate tipping point that has a serious probability of happening is the switch from the warm interglacial we are in to the cold glacial that is coming. We may be able to break the cycle or moderate the glacial expansion by adding some CO2 to the air.
As a youth I must admit I really enjoyed reading Mad magazine. Now I wonder when it morphed into one of America’s “leading daily Journals” the NYT, and why did they nix the clever page that folded into an insightful image of satire. Alfred E Neumann must be rolling over in his grave.
The New York Times is bad news.