Pretty hard to take climate change reporting seriously.
The media is an amplifier that only publishes the most alarmist scientific findings, always blanketed in paragraphs of the editors own apocalyptic interpretation.
Climate science is complex. There's a broad spectrum of findings, many are not world-ending, and sometimes disagree on the details.
If anything, the media understates the threat by mixing in a lot of debunked misinformation. It's hard to take most journalism seriously with the sensationalism bias, but we're already seeing serious negative effects from climate change in the most vulnerable countries.
The planet will be a very different place in 50 years.
> Is there an example of any we have already passed?
Reading about nature before humans or where humans settle shows that what passes as nature today is nothing like it used to be. That we are mostly ignorant of it doesn't change that we've passed many tipping points. Each extinction, for example, is irreversible and everyone here knows we're causing more than ever.
No. The list has nine tipping points that the authors are afraid we will pass in the future. From the article:
> Nine active tipping points:
> [...]
> The rainforests, permafrost and boreal forests are examples of biosphere tipping points that if crossed result in the release of additional greenhouse gases amplifying warming.
Well . . . I have now read the source article (https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-03595-0), and I would say that the authors fear that we have already passed or will pass these tipping points in the near future. I.E. they are basically inevitable, but we may be able to affect the rate of change.
> It seems like they are always saying we are on the brink of some "tipping point."
Of course, as soon as someone says “that’s it, science has concluded we’re all fucked” no one will see the value in the various money-shifting schemes that have been proposed to save the earth.
It's difficult to appreciate or convey the timescales involved here.
Human activities are pushing atmospheric CO2 concentrations to levels not seen for millions of years.
We've accomplished that in a scant 200 years of fossil fuel use, though with consumption doubling about every 30-40 years, half of the total has occurred since the 1970s.
Atmospheric and oceanic CO2 levels will remain elevated for many thousands of years.
The first awareness of a possible problem seems to have been in the 1850s (yes, the 19th century), and by the early 20th century, the US Naval Research Laboratory was warning of possibly impacts on civilisation. Comprehensive and consistent measurements didn't begin until the 1950s (Charles Keeling and his eponymous curve), and political efforts to address the challenge began in the 1960s. They've been less successful than early activists forecast.
The impacts of climate change not only develop slowly and over time, but through emergent and second-order effects, the full impacts aren't directly forseable. We know that temperatures on average will rise, as will sea levels. Local climactic effects may be above or below those averages. Direct changes include not only temperature but chemistry, and induced effects on ecosystems and human activities, including agriculture and disease. We're seeing long-term trends already in terms of temperatures, sea level rise, shifting climactic zones, changes to forest health, and more. Those are just the harbinger of what will all but certainly be vastly greater consequences playing out over coming decades and centuries.
If it helps: you're in the middle of a train wreck, as a bridge collapses, and the cars hurtle into a fuel storage dump, but are witnessing all of this in super slow motion. What looks like nothing happening is in fact things happening, and most especially approaching critical points at which either it's not possible to roll back to the previous state, much as a block tipped too far doesn't fall back, but continues over, or where behaviour changes dramatically, as the difference between tapping a windowpane and driving your fist through it. Nonlinear responses mean you cannot predict future states based on a steady extrapolation from past experience.
You are in the middle of the emergency -- the emergent situation. The brink lasts a long time, at human scales. On geological ones, this is the blink of an eye, or less.
The media is an amplifier that only publishes the most alarmist scientific findings, always blanketed in paragraphs of the editors own apocalyptic interpretation.
Climate science is complex. There's a broad spectrum of findings, many are not world-ending, and sometimes disagree on the details.