Climate "Tipping Points" Loom To Make World Dangerous, Depress You. Sorry.

A study released this month suggests irreversible climate
change "tipping points' are looming even if the world
warms just a little bit more. 

 The news most of this year, especially over the summer, would naturally make us even more nervous about the ongoing climate crisis. 

Heat wave after heat wave were punctuated by repeated unprecedented floods from Kentucky to Italy to Pakistan. 

 Earlier this month, scientists piled on with a new study on climate tipping points. 

A tipping point is when a threshold is reached in which something big will happen. Once you get to the tipping point, a substantial change is inevitable. Carbonbrief.org, I think, explains tipping points with this little relatable example:

"Imagine a child pushing themselves from the top of a playground slide. There is a point beyond which it is too late for the child to stop themselves from sliding down. Pass the threshold and the child continues inevitably towards a different state - at the bottom of the slide rather than the top."

So, the scientists in the new study tell us we're very close to five tipping points that would make the march of climate change much worse. 

Climate tipping points create changes that do happen much slower than the kid on the playground slide. But they're fast enough go have big implications for us, or your children or grandchildren. 

As Science.org explains, in the dry language that scientists use that still scare the bejeezus out of us.:

"Climate tipping points are conditions beyond which changes in part of the climate system become self-perpetuating. These changes may lead to abrupt, irreversible and dangerous impacts with serious implications for humanity."

According to the Paris climate agreement, we need to limit the world to a 1.5 degree Celsius or less of global warming. We're already close, as temperatures since the Industrial Age began have gone up by 1.1 degrees. 

As this new scientific report suggests, going past that 1.5 degrees would bring us to those nasty tipping points. 

Looking at this report, let's start with the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Climate change is already causing a lot of melt from those ice sheets. The melt water flows into the oceans, which makes sea levels rise and increasing coastal flooding across the globe. 

You'd think if we rein in global warming, we can reduce the amount of melt from these ice sheets and things would be relatively copacetic.

But, as the study suggests, if we go past a certain point. around 1.5  to 2 degrees Celsius of warming, we'd reach a point where nothing can stop the ice sheet from melting, even if we entirely shut off global carbon emissions. 

That could lead to the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets entirely melting. The bad news is that would raise sea levels worldwide by 30 feet. The relatively good news is it would take 500 years or so for that to fully happen. But even a foot of sea level rise in a more short term interim is a big issue.

Many of the world's most populated areas are within a foot of sea level. Or just a few feet above sea level, meaning they're prone to flooding during storms if sea level rises.  

There's other weird things that can happen if we reach tipping points. A key ocean current in the North Atlantic would stop.  The currents have pretty much always kept Europe fairly warm in the winter, given that much of the region is so far north. 

For instance, Paris is just below 49 latitude north. For comparison's sake, the Vermont/Quebec border is at 45 degrees latitude. So Paris is north of Vermont. 

But those ocean currents keep Paris' normal January high temperatures in the mid-40s, compared to the upper 20s in Vermont.  If those warming ocean currents or slow down significantly, Europe could become much colder in the winter despite the overall global warming trend. I think summers would continue to warm in Europe, so the end result would be a much more extreme climate.

Which would put Europe's climate somewhat closer to that of Siberia, where it can be in the 40s and 50s below zero or even colder in the winter, but in the 90s or even near 100 in the summer.  

You can imagine the kinds of disruptions this type of European climate change would cause.

By the way, if we go beyond these tipping points by increasing global temperatures further, we get into even more tipping points. Above two degrees Celsius, we could lose the Amazon rain forest, which helps regulate the global temperature.

Worse, permafrost in the Arctic would really, really melt, releasing more carbon and methane into the atmosphere, which would help accelerate climate change despite humans' attempts to cut back on emissions.

It's not like it's now too late, that we shouldn't even try to reduce emissions. It's not too late, but we ought to act fast. The quicker carbon emissions decline, the better the world will be for many generations to come.