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Earth Science

Earth on Verge of Five Catastrophic Climate Tipping Points, Scientists Warn (theguardian.com) 234

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Many of the gravest threats to humanity are drawing closer, as carbon pollution heats the planet to ever more dangerous levels, scientists have warned. From a report: Five important natural thresholds already risk being crossed, according to the Global Tipping Points report, and three more may be reached in the 2030s if the world heats 1.5C (2.7F) above pre-industrial temperatures. Triggering these planetary shifts will not cause temperatures to spiral out of control in the coming centuries but will unleash dangerous and sweeping damage to people and nature that cannot be undone.

"Tipping points in the Earth system pose threats of a magnitude never faced by humanity," said Tim Lenton, from the University of Exeter's Global Systems Institute. "They can trigger devastating domino effects, including the loss of whole ecosystems and capacity to grow staple crops, with societal impacts including mass displacement, political instability and financial collapse." The tipping points at risk include the collapse of big ice sheets in Greenland and the West Antarctic, the widespread thawing of permafrost, the death of coral reefs in warm waters, and the collapse of one atmospheric current in the North Atlantic.
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Earth on Verge of Five Catastrophic Climate Tipping Points, Scientists Warn More

Earth on Verge of Five Catastrophic Climate Tipping Points, Scientists Warn

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  • We were warned in 1912 (Score:5, Insightful)

    by smooth wombat ( 796938 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @01:33PM (#64060577) Journal
    A blurb appeared in an Australian newspaper in 1912 [businessinsider.com] which linked the burning of 2 billion tons of coal (at that time) to the dumping of 7 billion tons of CO2 (at that time) into the atmosphere. It said:

    This tends to make the air a more effective blanket for the earth and to raise its temperature. The effect may be considerable in a few centuries.

    This comment was traced to a 1911 article from Popular Mechanics [snopes.com] which used the same wording.

    On top of which, Exxon knew at least as far back as 1977 [scientificamerican.com] the burning of fossil fuels would lead to climate change.

    Not sure why we're surprised these predictions have come true.

    • For one thing, hindsight, as they say, is 20/20. I am sure you can find any number of people saying any number of things that turn out to be true. The trick is to know which one to listen to at the time....

      Secondly, I don't think anyone is surprised to hear about global warming or climate change at this point in the game.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sims 2 ( 994794 )

        I don't think anyone is surprised to hear about global warming or climate change at this point in the game.

        Lucky you, I'm still regularly hearing from customers that can't stop themselves from telling us about how it's a chinese hoax to control us.

        • To be fair, have you tried breathing the air in Shanghai, Beijing or any other major Chinese city? And China doesnâ(TM)t seem to much care. So, Chinese plot?
          • One thing I didn't know until just now is that China's per capita emissions have recently overtaken OECD's:

            https://rhg.com/research/china... [rhg.com]

            (Not sure how much of that is China's heavy industries making exports though, i.e. exported pollution from here and elsewhere).

            • No, you read your article too quickly: China's overall emùissions have recently overtaken OECD's. From the article:
              "To date, China’s size has meant that its per capita emissions have remained considerably lower than those in the developed world."

              Which means:
              - a chinese human still emits a lot less than a human from the OECD (2-3x times less than the average american for instance)
              - and half of this chinese human emissions are actually exported emissions when they make something for us

              But it sure d

              • No no, keep reading further down in the above link. The first graph is "total net," and the second graph (Figure 3) is Per Capita:

                Here is a direct link
                https://rhg.com/wp-content/upl... [rhg.com]

                • Oopsie, sorry for my previous comment. And thanks for fixing my mistake.

                  I do join you on your last sentence though: not sure how much of that is China's heavy industries making exports though, i.e. exported pollution from here and elsewhere.

                  In all fairness, and coming from someone who highly dislike China political regime, I do feel like they are the ones actually serious about trying to change: they are actually deploying more renewables than the rest of the world combined (in 2022) and are also deploying

                  • And their population has just entered decline [weforum.org], so if they stop building new coal plants but keep increasing renewables...?

                    developped countries should lead the way in decarbonizing their economy (and not just by outsourcing it to China), and we can only hope that other countries will follow.

                    I think our R&D on solar panels, and then China mass-producing them, is a good example of this. (Despite resulting in economic friction and import tariffs)

      • One of the reasons it was disregarded was active campaigning by fossil fuel interests worried their profits would be affected.

        Much like tobacco companies, they're run by sociopaths.

        • They're not necessarily run by sociopaths.. but ALL public companies are run like that now. While the CEO has the power to shape the operations or the direction of the company, they're beholden to the Board of Directors who have for mission to maximize shareholder value, which is essentially profit at all cost. I'm sure CEOs of large companies feel like they must increase profits or dividends at the cost of societal value, and so do the BoD. That's a systemic problem. Only privately owned companies, or comp

          • A human being, not an abstraction, ordered a disinformation campaign so they could hurt people for profits.

            A good person would refuse. The CEO, the board, the PR firms they hired - while I do not believe in supernatural things, the label of 'evil' applies to all of them.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by thomst ( 1640045 )

            AnOnyxMouseCoward misstated:

            While the CEO has the power to shape the operations or the direction of the company, they're beholden to the Board of Directors who have for mission to maximize shareholder value, which is essentially profit at all cost.

            That is simply not the case.

            Milton Friedman and his wife Rose proposed that principle in their book Free to Choose: A Personal Statement [wikipedia.org], published in 1980. Their book, and the 10-part PBS documentary based on it, were enormously influential in the corporate management sector. Enough so, in fact, that it became the bible of the so-called Chicago School of economics (Friedman was an economics professor at the University of Chicago at the time), and its ideas have so permeated the

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by jd ( 1658 )

        The theory was pretty solid by 1820. The measurements, proving the science correct, was solid by 1968.

      • For one thing, hindsight, as they say, is 20/20.

        Well, so hindsight started in 2020....and we're about at the end of 2023.

        Sounds about right, it takes awhile for all that hindsight to "sink in" globally.

        ;)

      • Growing up on the family farm we had this new thing called "satellite television" where there were 1000 channels running re-runs of popular TV shows from prior decades. I don't remember the channel it was on but my brothers and I would watch a lot of shows like In Search of... to kill time over summer between our time to do chores.
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

        There was one episode that stuck out in my mind because it sounded so horrible if it happened, and it wasn't the usual fare of extraterrestrials,

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by rossdee ( 243626 )

      Not an Australian newspaper, but The Rodney and Otamatea Times and Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette.
      Thats around Auckland - 'across the ditch' from Oz

    • A third of the world takes it seriously, a third doesn’t believe it’s true, and a third of the world is too ignorant, apathetic, or poor to do anything about it or even care.

      Meanwhile, the emissions numbers keep rising. Progressives and scientists are talking about the massive reductions we need, but we haven’t even stopped the increases. It’s like a social worker urging an addict to stop using but they’re using more and more fentanyl each week.

      Face it- in terms of addre

      • So, we deal with it. I live pretty far north, and close to the largest body of freshwater on the planet. I’ll be fine.

        Near Lake Baikal, eh? :) Not Tanganyika?

        Ohhhh. You mean by *area*.

        • For evaporation leading to rain, surface area matters a lot. Though it probably matters more for people downwind that receive it back as precipitation. There's always irrigation as an option.

    • Not sure why we're surprised these predictions have come true.

      The Disease of Greed has plagued mankind for literally thousands of years. And there is nothing surprising about how ignorant humans are about that disease. Nothing.

      We deserve to become another layer of inexplicable artifacts buried in the sands of time. As our ancestors likely did.

  • Really? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zkiwi34 ( 974563 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @02:02PM (#64060745)
    I thought the consensus was that the planet had already gone past the tipping point (all of them) and is already irretrievably buggered.

    • I think the idea is that some of these inevitable tipping points haven't been reached within their respective systems. A melting ice sheet as a closed system would ignore the global air temperatures, but its own tipping point would be related to ground temperature warming due to sunlight not being reflected away. So even if all global warming was solved tomorrow, that melting ice sheet would not reverse course once its past its own tipping point.

  • Does MsMash read anything other than The Guardian? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by magzteel ( 5013587 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @02:07PM (#64060775)

    It feels like we get msmash posts from The Guardian constantly, and it's always the same "The world is ending" garbage.

  • Does slashdot offer a subscription where I never have to read another sky-is-falling dupe sourced from the Guardian? I would definitely hit that. Forget about paying to block ads, what I really want is the ability to block idiots who only know how to beat one drum.

  • until Global Warming overtook that.

  • What makes us think that homo sapiens have a monopoly on the top spot in this planet's evolutionary hierarchy? Sixty five million years ago, an asteroid bumped most of the dinosaurs from that spot. Or we'd still be small rodents dodging T. Rex in the jungle. Now it's our turn to go and make room for the cockroaches.

    It's nature's way. We should stop interfering with nature.

  • 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 5... no news here. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @02:54PM (#64061077)

    None of this is new. Putting it all in one article won't change a single mind, nor will it alter behaviour or policy.

    Much to my chagrin, I have become hopelessly fatalistic. The world's climate will do what it will do, and we'll have to sort out how to deal with it... or not.

    It's possible - even likely - that if the catastrophes do materialize, humanity's answer will be to accept the losses. Look at history. We watch ecological disasters unfold in passive horror. Sometimes aid groups get involved... sometimes they don't. I watched the floods in Pakistan last year and didn't lift a finger.

    If the worst reasonable predictions come true, mankind may take a population and lifestyle haircut - maybe one that happens at the neck.

    My question? I'm 53 and well off, in an area unlikely to experience the worst of the effects. Can I run out the clock?

    • I'm 62, well off, and in an area not likely to be affected (whatever that means).

      If there is going to be a global climate collapse in the next 30 years, then that is already inevitable. That is a wink of an eye and there is nothing that can be done to avoid it.

  • Soylent Green will be People, it seems.

  • Nobody wants to talk about how we're dangerously close to environmental CO2 levels so low that we see massive plant die offs...

    • Have you suffered a head injury recently?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by XXongo ( 3986865 )

      Nobody wants to talk about how we're dangerously close to environmental CO2 levels so low that we see massive plant die offs...

      That's because we are not, in fact, dangerously close to environmental CO2 levels so low that we see massive plant die offs, and we are moving farther away every year.

  • Does that mean FIVE skies are falling, or still only just one?

    Heavens, that's terrible.

  • I get it's a problem... (Score:3)

    by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Wednesday December 06, 2023 @08:01PM (#64062183)

    But fuck I'm so tired of hearing about it every. single.day. I already drive a hybrid (can't afford an EV, no where to charge it either), have pretty low energy use for an American household (around 5-6kwh a day), eat mostly chicken instead of pork or beef and don't sit around spending money on consumer stuff much.

    Furthermore, when I look at all my elected leaders and business folks, they all live lavish lifestyles with huge carbon foot prints while riding around in their private jets so they can meet up and talk about climate change (when they could do that shit over zoom!).

    Nothing about our society is sustainable and no one that makes decisions is doing much of anything to put us in that direction, short of trying to move to green energy (with zero emphasis on reducing our usage or otherwise working in more overall sustainable living practices).

    So excuse me if I just don't care anymore. I do what I do to save money which also coincides with reducing my overall carbon footprint. Being sustainable tends to be a more frugal lifestyle, which is the exact opposite of what our business leaders want. They want more consumption since that makes them more money.

    We're doomed and no one in any position to do anything real about it actually truly cares. They just pay it lip service.

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