Have we reached the Climate Change Tipping Point?

tinman · Jun 10, 2022

tinman · Oct 7, 2022

rocketsjudoka said: ↑

Was reading this article this morning and I've been convinced for the last couple of years that we've already passed the Climate Change tipping point. I think from here on out it's not just a matter of trying to slow down climate change but dealing with the effects of it. Those effects are now very visible from the increasing amount of flooding in the Houston area to the shorter winters here in MN and a much much longer fire season out West.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/climat...MOdgUjzMRJ0KOviADWaTH08e6Pti5xq2KdRNxnHiVtXoA

Climate tipping points may have been reached already, experts say

Through decades of research, and now lived experience, it has become clear that the impacts of climate change will have drastic and far-reaching consequences on our planet. And while some of those consequences are predictable — like more extreme weather, sea-level rise and loss of biodiversity — the pace at which these unfold and their eventual severity hinge on what happens with key linchpins in the climate system, called tipping points.

A tipping point is a threshold or point of no return in the climate system that once passed can no longer be reversed. Passing a tipping point does not necessarily mean immediate, drastic consequences, but it does mean those consequences become unavoidable, and over time the impacts may be dramatic.

In a 2019 paper, Professor Timothy Lenton, a global leader on the subject, identified nine climate tipping points, from melting permafrost in the Arctic to the loss of tropical coral reefs. Here we will focus on what he deems the three most critical tipping points: the Amazon rainforest, the West Antarctic ice sheet and the Gulf Stream system.

Lenton highlights these three because the West Antarctic ice sheet may have already passed a tipping point; the Amazon because it is a crucial crucible of biodiversity and for its warehouse of carbon; and the Gulf Stream system because of its potential for profound changes with connected ramifications all around the planet.

Much more at link.
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Damn no more Salmon rolls?

Invisible Fan · Oct 27, 2022

www.nytimes.com /2022/10/26/climate/un-climate-pledges-warming.html
Climate Pledges Are Falling Short, and a Chaotic Future Looks More Like Reality

With an annual summit next month, the United Nations assessed progress on countries’ past emissions commitments. Severe disruption would be hard to avoid on the current trajectory.
Countries around the world are failing to live up to their commitments to fight climate change, pointing Earth toward a future marked by more intense flooding, wildfires, drought, heat waves and species extinction, according to a report issued Wednesday by the United Nations.

Just 26 of 193 countries that agreed last year to step up their climate actions have followed through with more ambitious plans. The world’s top two polluters, China and the United States, have taken some action but have not pledged more this year, and climate negotiations between the two have been frozen for months.

Without drastic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, the report said, the planet is on track to warm by an average of 2.1 to 2.9 degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels, by 2100.

That’s far higher than the goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) set by the landmark Paris agreement in 2015, and it crosses the threshold beyond which scientists say the likelihood of catastrophic climate impacts significantly increases.

With each fraction of a degree of warming, tens of millions more people worldwide would be exposed to life-threatening heat waves, food and water scarcity, and coastal flooding while millions more mammals, insects, birds and plants would disappear.

Wednesday’s report comes less than two weeks before nations are set to gather at U.N. climate talks in Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, to discuss unfulfilled promises and take stock of the fight to stave off environmental catastrophe.

But war in Europe, an international energy crisis, global inflation and political turmoil in countries like Britain and Brazil have distracted leaders and complicated cooperative efforts to tackle climate change.

On Monday, the European Union said it would increase its emissions reductions pledges “as soon as possible” but could not do so until its member states agreed on a number of upcoming climate laws.

That delay is “hugely disappointing” said Niklas Höhne, founder of the NewClimate Institute in Cologne, Germany. “This year we’ve seen little of the climate action governments promised at the end of Glasgow, amid a deluge of new science telling us that we have to move faster, and that limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is still entirely possible. We need governments to set strong targets that drive emissions down, and decarbonize their economies.”

At last year’s global climate summit in Glasgow, countries pledged to redouble their efforts to cut the emissions from burning oil, gas and coal that are dangerously heating the planet. They also agreed to increase funding for technologies to help developing economies transition away from fossil fuels to wind, solar and other renewable energy sources.

The United Nations report analyzed the commitments made by countries to cut their emissions, known as nationally determined contributions, or N.D.C.s. Countries that signed the 2015 Paris agreement promised to update and strengthen their commitments every five years. The 2020 meeting was postponed a year because of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, acknowledging the urgency of the climate crisis, nations agreed not to wait another five years and instead pledged to make new commitments before the climate talks that begin Nov. 7 in Egypt.

Taryn Fransen, a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, a research organization, called the current trajectory of global temperature increase “dangerously high.”

China, currently the world’s biggest emitter of greenhouse gases, is one of the major holdouts on new commitments, though it did submit a new pledge before last year’s summit in Scotland. China has said its carbon dioxide emissions will continue to grow until they peak by 2030, but it has not set targets for reducing other greenhouse gases, such as methane, which it emits in amounts large enough to equal the total emissions of smaller nations.

Join the head of the World Trade Organization and other global leaders for a livestream of The New York Times Climate Forward event Nov. 8 to 10 during the COP27 conference in Egypt.

Last year, China said it would stop building coal-burning power plants overseas. As of August, 26 out of 104 such projects had been shelved, preventing 85 million tons of carbon dioxide from being added each year into the atmosphere, according to the Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air.

An analysis by the World Resource Institute found that current promises by nations would reduce global greenhouse gas emissions by around 7 percent from 2019 levels, even though six times that, a reduction of 43 percent, would be necessary to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

“Of the major economies, we have seen a few countries update this year. India formalized its commitments; Australia updated theirs when they got a new government in place; Indonesia followed through,” said Ms. Fransen of the World Resources Institute. “But each of those countries had failed to update their N.D.C.s until now, so they are making up for lost time.”

The United States, in passing the Inflation Reduction Act, which contains hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies for cleaner technologies, has jumped forward in its ability to make good on its promise to cut emissions by between 50 and 52 percent below 2005 levels by the end of this decade.

But the new law will still only get the United States about 80 percent of the way to its current pledge to cut emissions, Ms. Fransen said. Mr. Höhne said the United States’ new law was the strongest move made by a major emitter in 2022, but was “30 years overdue.”

The war in Ukraine, which upended global energy markets, as well as an unrelenting spate of climatic calamities such as ruinous flooding in Pakistan and Nigeria and record droughts in the Horn of Africa and China, will loom over this year’s climate summit, known as the Conference of Parties, or COP27.

The gathering in Egypt is expected to focus on whether wealthy nations that have emitted most of the carbon dioxide that is driving climate change should compensate poor countries that have not contributed significantly to the problem and are the least prepared for its impacts. Though an agreement on compensation is unlikely to be reached, the topic is expected to make it onto the conference’s formal agenda for the first time.

Lesser-developed and low-lying island nations will press for compensation to be formalized through the creation of an international fund where they could submit claims of climate-change related loss and damage. The United States, Europe and other wealthy countries have opposed the creation of such a fund, in part because they fear being held legally liable for skyrocketing disaster costs.

The release of the U.N. report provoked grumbling from those in the developing world who were quick to point out that, of the few countries that strengthened their pledges this year, most are not heavy polluters.
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Most of the advanced economies are broke. The thought of reparations or unprofitable mitigation strategies are laughable.

Looks like we're gonna do the tried and true "Do Nothing" and pray to Zeus, Allah, Vishnu, Yehova, etc for science to save the rest of us.

Can't wait for the paranoid "climate skeptics" to belly ache and moan about the good ol days when clean Water/Air wasn't privatized and hoarded and how "things were more free" until fascist governments stepped in with their nagging. Some of these changes won't be voluntary.

Let the highest bidder win.

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Have we reached the Climate Change Tipping Point?

Have we passed the Climate Change Tipping Point

Yes, Climate Change is already happening to the point it will be difficult to reverse

No, we still have time to make changes to avert a Climate Change disaster

I don't believe Climate Change is happening.

I believe Climate Change is happening but it's not a big deal and humans have nothing to do with it.

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Have we reached the Climate Change Tipping Point?

Have we passed the Climate Change Tipping Point

Yes, Climate Change is already happening to the point it will be difficult to reverse

No, we still have time to make changes to avert a Climate Change disaster

I don't believe Climate Change is happening.

I believe Climate Change is happening but it's not a big deal and humans have nothing to do with it.

tinman Contributing Member Supporting Member

tinman Contributing Member Supporting Member

Invisible Fan Contributing Member

Share This Page

tinman Contributing Member
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tinman Contributing Member
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