When we're talking about social justice, a tipping point is a beautiful thing - such as a court case that shifts public opinion. However, there isn't just one tipping point when it comes to climate change - there are way too many, and scientists are pulling attention towards the increasingly disturbing points by pulling them all into view.
A group of researchers writing in the journal Nature earlier this week underscored that Earth is heading closer to tipping nine climate demons than previously believed and that the planet is already starting to see some associated effects.
"[We claim] that the intervention [period] left to [stop the] tipping [might] already have shrunk towards zero, [where] the reaction time to achieve net-zero emissions is 30 years at best," the researchers write. "Hence, we might already have [failed to control] of whether tipping happens," the experts added.
Human beings can still, however, do something to lessen the impact of the tipping points. The best everyone has to make is more evident than ever; but sadly, time is running out.
What are the pieces of evidence manifested in the tipping points?
The pieces of evidence that the tipping point is now happening are divided into three main categories.
Land
Deforestation in Amazon leads to a terrifying cascade of ecological consequences. Desertification of Amazon forests dries out along their exposed edges, giving sufficient fuel for wildfires intentionally set by ranchers clearing land. The planet simultaneously loses the Amazon as a sequester of carbon, and the atmosphere takes on more carbon from the smoke.
Tipping points for runaway effects come only once when between 20 and 40 percent of the forest cover is lost, the researchers say, as the ecosystem switches from wet to dry, just like a savanna.
Boreal forests are also dying, potentially tipping from a net carbon sink into a net carbon source. Peatlands, which store massive amounts of carbon in the ground, are drying out and burning, releasing still more carbon dioxide. Thawing permafrost is doing the same - only with methane, a far more potent greenhouse gas. More emissions mean more warming, as tipping sets in around the world.
Sea
Climate change is stressing coral reefs to their limits. The corals release the symbiotic algae that help them produce their energy when temperatures climb, thus bleaching themselves. An increase of two degrees Celsius in the global average temperature, combined with ocean acidification and pollution, could mean the loss of 99 percent of tropical corals.
According to Inside Climate News, sea circulation in the Atlantic Ocean has slowed by 15 percent since the middle of the last century. Ice sheet melting in Greenland could be hindering the flow, heading to the destabilization of the West African monsoon, which could trigger droughts in return.
The situation could also further dry the Amazon and lead to the buildup of warm water in the Southern Ocean, which could further melt ice in Antarctica.
Ice
The accelerating melting of Greenland's ice sheet exhibits a perfect example of a climatic tipping point. Such tipping is already underway in both East and West Antarctica, according to the experts.
Researchers said Greenland is already facing a "death sentence" as chunky ice sheets have melted by a record amount this year. The experts added that the grounding lines - where ocean and bedrock meet - are collapsing and may destabilize the rest of the West Antarctic ice sheet like toppling dominoes. The ice melt is expected to cause about 3 meters of sea-level rise on a timescale of centuries to millennia.
Takeaway
These tipping points don't exist in isolation; many of them interact and reinforce one another. Given their interconnected nature, modelling them requires making assumptions since there's just no way to capture systems this monumentally complex ideally.
Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Governance Initiative, who wasn't involved in the research, said the pieces of evidence that the tipping points might be happening might be real.
"[The pieces of evidence] are just another huge reason why [everybody] needs to get [their] act together and do everything that [they] could do to fix the problem," Pasztor added.
He said the recent study pulls together many good reasons why there is a real, urgent climate emergency that needs to be solved.
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