National Public Radio (NPR) recently posted an article titled, “3 massive changes you’ll see as the climate careens toward tipping points,” by Rebecca Hersher and Lauren Sommer, which claims that coral reefs, the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and Arctic permafrost are approaching dangerous, near-irreversible climate “tipping points.” NPR’s claims are false. There is no evidence that coral reefs, the ice sheets in Greenland and West Antarctica, or Arctic permafrost are caught in a loop of inevitable decline due to human-caused greenhouse gas emissions. Data show that other factors are at play, and that the so-called tipping points are far from certain.
Let’s start with Greenland. As Climate at a Glance: Greenland Ice Melt discusses, Greenland contains roughly three million gigatons of ice – a value so large it is nearly impossible to comprehend. Even during the highly publicized melt years of the past decade, annual losses represent less than 0.01 percent of the total ice sheet. (See the figure, below). Further, as documented by NASA’s GRACE satellite gravity analysis, the observed mass losses from all sources contribute well under a millimeter per year to global sea level. The minimal recorded loss of ice mass is in large part due to the fact that ice that has melted refroze before ever reaching the sea.
NPR omits this important context entirely and also ignores major research showing that a substantial portion of recent Greenland surface melt is driven by darkened, low-albedo “dirty ice,” caused by soot, dust, and microbial darkening, not simply by rising air temperature.
Ironically, the NPR article itself provides a photo of “dirty ice” with apparently oblivious scientific researchers trekking across it, seen below.
The article’s coral-reef tipping-point narrative is similarly false. Climate at a Glance’s “Coral Reefs” and “The Great Barrier Reef” show that corals have repeatedly demonstrated resilience over millions of years, surviving periods significantly warmer than today. Bleaching is a stress response, not a death sentence, and long-term monitoring by the Australian Institute of Marine Science has shown record-high coral cover following recent bleaching episodes. Multiple Climate Realism analyses highlight misreported coral-collapse claims, documenting how media narratives routinely ignore recovery. In addition, where coral has struggled in recent years, NPR ignores the role of local stressors, such as, pollution, sediment runoff, destructive fishing, and coastal development, which have contributed to true coral death on occasion, far outweighing small changes in ocean temperature as a factor.
NPR’s third “tipping point,” permafrost, relies on speculative model projections rather than observations. Although permafrost thaw is happening in some regions, methane trends do not match the runaway-loop scenario described. Peer-reviewed research summarized by Climate Realism in “Purdue Study Destroys the ‘Permafrost Methane Bomb’ Myth,” shows that thawed permafrost releases significantly less methane than early models predicted, with microbial oxidation, hydrology, and soil conditions limiting net emissions. Additional critique of runaway-feedback claims appears in Climate Realism’s review of flawed permafrost-collapse modeling, where even climate-alarmism proponents describe such models as unrealistic. NPR mentions none of this literature.
NPR’s “tipping point” claims are not new in either tenor or specifics; rather, they repeat a predictable pattern: dramatic scenarios derived from models are presented as near-term certainties, while actual measurements that undercut those scenarios are downplayed or omitted entirely. For Greenland, NPR omits that annual melt is microscopic relative to the ice sheet’s mass or that surface darkening, not temperature alone, drives melting. For corals, NPR ignores the empirical record of rapid recovery and the documented role of local human impacts. For permafrost, the article conflates regional thaw and infrastructure damage with large-scale climate feedbacks that measurements simply do not support.
NPR also avoids critical scientific context: natural variability, multi-decadal oscillations, and regional environmental factors. The tipping-point narrative also sidesteps the fact that short-term excursions above the much feared global temperature threshold of 1.5°C in recent years did not produce the predicted avalanche of catastrophic extremes. In point of fact, science has revealed no known tipping points. They remain theoretical speculations based on flawed climate model assumptions about unverified feedback loops within the global ecosystem.
NPR listeners and readers deserve the truth, which can only be discovered when the full context of each alarmist claim is presented. Instead, shamefully, Hersher and Sommer betray the ideal of journalistic pursuit of the truth, and instead embrace advocacy, providing a simplified and scientifically unjustified trilogy of “tipping points,” tailored to motivate or justify policy actions at the COP30 conference. Equally shamefully, NPR’s editors and fact checkers let their reporters get away with this flagrant activism cloaked as objective reporting. That is not science communication, it’s climate doom theater.
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
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Hersher, Sommer and NPR have become part of the entertainment industry and left the practice of responsible journalism far behind. Their goal is not to inform.
Sounds like NPR, and these two reporters, have all swallowed the Socialist (Blue) pill. Perhaps the network should change it’s moniker…NSR…National Socialist Radio.
Glad my tax dollars will not be going there anymore. Folks that want to support them are free to do so, and judging by the bleating in their fund drives, it is a tough sell.
They have never been “journalists”, always leftist propagandists and nothing more.
Hersher&Sommer predicting harsher sommer.
When I used to keep horses, I would listen to NPR each morning as I cleaned stalls…It just seemed so appropriate.
First chuckle of my day (-:
For current horsekeepers, the evening broadcasts of PBS NewsHour are appropriate. On random occasions since 2020, they’ve been dutifully regurgitating a variant of the scary Antarctic ‘glaciers tipping point’:
“A risky expedition to study the ‘doomsday glacier’” Feb 19, 2020
Well, I guess there’s not much to engage readers with if all you can honestly write about a subject is –
“we don’t know sh1t”
When will they do a story of all the tipping points we’ve already passed, and the dire results of them?
Apparently, the careening of the climate never ceases.
How comfortable is everyone with the nation’s leading science groups promoting a false reality?
The climate does not respond to tipping points in the way climate scientists of today say it does.
In 2022 I showed empirically that a threshold level of solar activity creates earthly tipping points, and I predicted the 1.5°C thing would likely be exceeded in SC#25 by solar forcing. It happened.
The current climate tipping points narrative is disconnected from reality as it leaves out the sun, the actual driver of weather and climate. It is currently just a very poor discussion of effects as causes.
Here are the latest two examples of HadSST4 responding to the level of solar activity ≥95 SN, my sun-climate decadal warming threshold, ie ‘tipping point’ (95 SN = 1361.25 W/m^2 CERES TSI):
There are dozens more climate indices that also predictably respond to solar activity near 95 SN and it’s earthly affect on the ocean. The following plot shows the range of these climate thresholds as a function of sunspot number, in the gray band. As shown below, the TSI-SN curve for this solar cycle was strongly above the warming threshold over the past three years, driving climate extremes.
Solar forcing is undervalued by climate scientists as they overlook the real sun-cloud connection.
If you recall a month ago in the NASEM report rebuttal response to the DOE report, it was declared empathically that absorbed solar radiation did not cause the ocean warming, but CO2 emissions did!
Well, Bob, in the discussion of climate “tipping points”, I recommend you go back furthur—much further—in the paleoclimatology of Earth. IMHO, there must have been some currently-undefined “tipping points” that caused Earth to enter and then exit at least four previous Ice Ages, each lasting tens to hundreds of millions of years, as well as to cause Earth to enter and then exit dozens of glacial /interglacial cycles during the current Quaternary Ice Age, each with periodicities between 40,000 and 100,000 years.
No human involvement with any of those implicit “tipping points”. And if not somehow established by variations in solar power flux arriving at Earth’s TOA (reference Milankovitch-defined Sun-Earth ephemeris cycles), then what else might be the cause of such?
I agree with you there was an earthly mechanism, most likely increased snow reflectivity as the high-latitude ocean(s) warmed over long time periods, that changes the amount of land ASR, in response to changing high-latitude insolation, connected to Milankovitch cycles.
Rick Will has worked on that area.
We don’t have any data for solar activity from 10K to 100Kya, therefore in establishing operating principles I limit my discussions to the time when we have sufficient solar data.
Strong solar activity with long duration can accelerate these mechanisms, so there’s more to it than just Milankovitch forcing. All we can do is try to model it. More work to do…
Bob, thank for your well-reasoned response and clarification on why you limited your discussion to such a short time interval. I agree completely with your bottom line: more work to do . . . much, much more work.
Hang on there just a second, pilgrim!
Are you trying to say that the “science” isn’t settled?
The cloud reduction during the modern warm period amplified the solar forcing far more than the higher output of cycle 25. At least three papers have concluded that all of modern warming can be explained by the cloud reduction.
Which then begs the question: what causes long-term reductions in global cloud coverage?
NPR allows/endorses authors Rebecca Hersher and Lauren Sommer claiming that climate is “careening” toward tipping points . . . all without objective, scientific definition of:
— “climate” and its specific metrics
— “careening” (would that be global temperatures rising at the rate of 1.6°C per century?)
— “tipping points”.
There once was a time that I had high respect for NPR’s use of the English language and its objectivity, and thus fully supported its
publictaxpayer funding. That time has passed.NB: The nearly 1/2 century record of UAH atmospheric observations currently yields a warming rate of 0.16 C/decade. I assume (?) that is the source of your 1.6 C/century.
Since UAH measurements began at the end of the cold period of a cyclical cold/warm cycle (60-70 years?), we have been in the warming period the entire time of the UAH-available data. Draw your own conclusions as to the real trajectory of Earthly temperatures.
OK, but how about this: paleoclimate proxies and geological evidence pretty conclusively prove that Earth exited and subsequently warmed up from its last glacial period, starting about 12,000 years ago . . . you know, that period when a part of the Laurentide ice sheet covered the area now known as New York city with about 2,000 feet depth of ice (reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laurentide_ice_sheet ).
We warmed from that glacial exit up to the time of the Holocene Climate Optimum (HCO) that occurred about 6,000 years ago. Today’s best scientific evidence is that “average” global temperature peak then was similar to, perhaps only slightly warmer by a few tenths-of-a-degree C, than today’s “average” global temperature.
Many people, include scientists, acknowledge that the most recent period of “sustained” global warming began around the end of the Little Ice Age around 1850. That would be, ummm, yeah, about 143 years before UAH began tracking of global temperatures using satellites starting in 1993.
Nonsense. The Earth doesn’t “warm”, That’s about as silly as the implication from the likes of Carl Sagan, James Hansen, and the rest of the fantasists known as “climate scientists”, that the Earth was created cold (presumably at absolute zero), and has been warmed by the Sun to the point where it is “hotter than it should be”!
Believe away – being ignorant and gullible will help you to reject reality! At least you accept that adding CO2 to air doesn’t make thermometers hotter.
NPR was the station my radio was locked onto for many years, KUT morning programing was the best. Been 20 years since I permanently turned the radio (and TV) off, and am sorry to hear that NPR has fallen so far. What amazes me is that the geological history of the planet is relatively well known, corals are one of the oldest life forms that have survived many climate changes much harsher that the little temperature rise we are supposed to be in such fear of. Long periods of “hot house” earth with no polar ice have not managed to destroy life on the planet, ditto for those few times ice covered much of the surface. Seems to me that too little knowledge causes hysterics amongst the publishing peons.
It is also interesting that the corals started to suffer from warming at the same time as everything else, despite the fact that Oceans need way more time to heat up than the atmosphere.
And that a barely measurable 0.5 degree of warming is already trashing
a species that has been around for 500 mio years is also some very impressive purple hair science.
I also remember watching documentaries about Coral Reefs right below the surface.
Don’t remember if those reefs were still ” alive, but if they were than waves would cause a permanent fluctuation in temperatures, which would be quite strange for something that can not tolerate half a degree of warming.
Gotta love “purple hair science.”
“…the climate CAREENS toward tipping points…” I love the word careens, really adds to the paranoia. I used to listen to NPR, it sounded so thoughtful, so balanced. Then NPR told me that C02 causes both drought and floods, and heat and cold, and all things opposite, and I stopped believing NPR about anything.
Doom theater is a close cousin to murder p*rn, the endless stream of murder shows on the boob tube. A simple check reveals that more than half the programs on major streaming services involve murder in some form or other, even the “comedies”. People love to binge watch murder, evidently. Doomcasting is also very popular, especially among college educated women, whom I suspect are also the principal murder p*rn aficionados.
The whole point of propaganda is to obscure an agenda in a quasi-factual emotional appeal. It is unrealistic to hope that any amount of factual presentation can sway those dedicated to that agenda.
If soot levels are causing the ice loss, why wasn’t it there from the higher levels in the 1860’s.
“C”ing Arctic Climate with Black Ice Richard B. Alley
They obtained highly accurate, well-dated chemical histories—including black carbon concentrations—from 1788 to 2002, with a time resolution of less than a year. For the first 60 years of the record, black carbon concentrations remained relatively stable, but the period from 1850 to 1951 showed highly elevated soot concentrations, especially during winter, when peak values were 10 times higher than the baseline. Lower values (although still higher than before 1850) mark the last 50 years of the record. Comparison to selected sections of a second core, collected 350 km to the south, shows close agreement, demonstrating the regional coherence of the signal.
also – http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6939633.stm
Okay, I see now, why measure something when you can computer model and get the answer your paid for.
By the way, soot levels in the ice cores are measured in pica grams per ml with values like 612 pgmL−1. Not a lot there.
http://www.clim-past.net/10/1905/2014/cp-10-1905-2014.pdf
I don’t know. Perhaps since the most highly elevated levels of soot were during the winter when solar exposure was least, it was not a significant factor. Indeed during that period, ice melt was not measured with the current precision, so that the small amounts of melt involved were not detected.
NPR, BBC, CBC. Whatever they say assume the opposite is correct. That will prove out to be correct most of the time.
Relating to the photo of UK folks on the dirty ice:
I’ve walked (~1970) on the “toe” of the Athabasca Glacier; 6,600 feet. A difference is that valley glaciers get a lot of rocky debris from the sidewalls. Regardless, walking up the slope it was more like asphalt than ice. Why? Because as the meltwater runs off, the dirt, rocks, and soot remain. The Columbia Ice Field, at about 9,500 ft, is bright white.
When first seen by a European explorer, the valley glacier extended across the Icefields Pkwy – to the north.
“Careens” is ridiculous.
Isn’t that what nautical folk did in the olden days to enable the weed to be cleared from the underside of their wooden ships when they were on the far side of the world – the ships were “careened”, a bloody tricky process requiring serious skill and competence and application . . . from both officers and men?!!
So, the use of the word in this context is . . . laughable. No: utterly laughable.
From the NPR article:
For coral reefs, the tipping point may have already begun.
Widespread coral die-offs have been seen around the globe
as ocean temperatures heat up, making it the first domino to
fall, according to a new report.
“…as ocean temperatures heat up…”
Have the people who make these disappearing coral reefs due to warmer water ever look to see where corals around the globe are found?
Just as with Corals most of our species ‘ can be found around the equator.
Yet warm temperatures are supposed to be a problem for life on earth..
Another thing – Corals can be found 200m deep(and way below) which means they cover a spectrum of 25 degrees +.
Highly unlikely that they get a problem with a degree or two of warming.
Yes, and the Bikini Atoll coral reefs all recovered in just ~ 60 years from being totally obliterated by atom bombs testing in the 1950s.
Tell me again how “fragile” coral reefs are.
“For coral reefs, the tipping point may have already begun.”
Reflects author does not know what a tipping point is.
I’d _definiteley_ see all three things… Every time I go to Greenland, Australia an Antarctica.
What else can be expected from NPR since it plays in the same alarmist league as PBS, the BBC, the CBC, The Guardian and all the rest of the crew that is either operated by or heavily funded by governments and/or organizations that specialize in promoting the climate scare. Fortunately the general population has learned to downplay or totally ignore their doom & gloom narratives which would inevitably cost them money.
And Guam has reached its “tipping point” …
(Or so said an expert …)
Didn’t Guam tip and sink? I seem to recall a prediction… 🙂
No surprise here, activist unaccountable journalists parading around behind the shield of a free press. Freedom of the press is not a free pass for lying.
You’re joking! They can’t handle the truth! [doing Jack Nicholson impersonation]
Qui vult decipi, decipiatur.
Well, since the only time these “people” go outside is to walk to the Metro station how could they possibly know anything about the climate or environment? They are totally disconnected from reality, and the only thing they know about weather is if it is raining or cold while they walk that 81 yards from building to metro station. Totally. Disconnected. From. Reality.
The sea level was near 400 ft lower during the last interglacial. I wonder how many coral reefs would die off if that happened today?
Plus billions of trees were crushed under ice.
NPR listeners don’t want the truth. They gave up reason for ideological conformity which is why reason doesn’t work on them.
I find this statement self-contradictory.
When someone is listening to or reading that kind of sermons, it’s a reasonable assumption that the subject either seeks something other than truth to begin with, or is sufficiently “out of it” that there is simply not going to be significant practical difference. As good old Count Saltykov put it, even if a drunk man hears a sober word, he understands it in a drunken way.
I learn something new every day. Many things actually. Anyway, there was a self-styled Count Saltykov, lover of Catherine the Great, but also a Russian satirist Mikhail Saltykov-Shchedrin, who, as well as being no Count, was probably considered as being of no account by others. He supposedly said much the same thing.
I know my opinion doesn’t count, but the saying you quoted is appropriate in many areas, in my view, no matter the originator.
Keep ’em coming!
He was widely known. But the confusion is the joke.
There was no “Saltykov-Shchedrin”. The writer’s real name was Mikhail Evgrafovich Saltykov, and he published under pseudonym “Nicolai Schedrin” (who had his own purely imaginary “career”, adding position titles not linked to that of the actual author, to tangle things some more). “Saltykov-Shchedrin” is just a convenient reference coined for publishers and biographers, before 1917 it was written more clearly as “Saltykov (Shchedrin)”, but then corrupted into non-existent composite last name.