- cross-posted to:
- earthscience
- cross-posted to:
- earthscience
You must log in or # to comment.
Too little, too late.
Better late than never. I’d prefer people actually try rather than throw up their hands, declare it impossible and guarantee failure.
We are past the tipping point.
We’re not. I believe there’s still enough uncertainty in tipping points that we won’t know until we’re past them. We’re unfortunately on track to zoom by the target limit of climate change in the next couple of years (although I believe even that is defined as a ten year trailing average), and increases the chances that we will also have passed one or more tipping points, but we won’t know.
Even if we have, there are multiple speculated tipping points. Do you what’s even worse than passing a climate tipping point? Passing another. We can and have to whatever we can to make more progress
No seriously, the climate now was supposed to be 10 years from now. They got it wrong. It’s happening faster that they predicted. To stall it longer, it would need to be 100% better RIGHT NOW—and that won’t happen.
Let’s have this conversation in 10 years.
Maybe there’s a terminology issue here.
I completely agree that we haven’t done enough to prevent climate change, and to the contrary, it’s speeding up
However tipping points are where something makes a sudden irreversible change.
- Melting glaciers like we have been can be reversed, if we get climate change under control. Melting the Greenland icecap not only raises sea levels significantly but can’t really be reversed. That’s a tipping point. When will it happen? Lots of uncertainty. Could it already be inevitable? We don’t know
- weakening of AMOC like we have been can be reversed if we get climate change under control. Disrupting or stopping AMOC would have a huge impact on climate, especially Western Europe, and is not reversible, no matter what we do. That is a tipping point. When will it happen? Lots of uncertainty. Could it already be in progress ? We don’t know
Sudden is what we are experiencing. Sudden is relative to millions of years.
Think about it like this: There is a pyramid, and on top of that pyramid is a plate that is perfectly balanced. On top of that plate is a round ball. If that ball moves, the plate begins to tip. As long as the ball remains centered, the plate will be balanced. If the ball begins to move, it takes a large amount of effort to stop it and reverse course. Once the plate starts tipping even just a little, the ball starts moving faster on the decline. The more the plate tips, the more energy is required to move the ball in reverse. Unfortunately, if the earth is that ball, we don’t have the power to move that ball very much at all. It took a hundreds of years to push it off balance, but we don’t have hundreds of years before it falls off. The earth has already reached the point where it is beyond our power to correct. Sure, we can do things to slow it down—and I’m all for that, but we need to start accepting that the ball is only falling faster and faster, and plan for that future now.
We are planning. That’s what this story is about. Planning for the inevitable by trying to make it better. It’s never to late to try, maybe it’ll achieve nothing, maybe it will. You and I won’t know unless we try. I’d prefer to do something, rather than accept defeat.
There is not a single tipping point. There are series of points each more serious than the last
Feel free to explain,
I’m really gonna like this conversation.Oh, you’re being pedantic, not argumentative.
