Date published: 2008/02/05
The BBC says:
Many of Earth's climate systems will undergo a series of sudden shifts this century as a result of human-induced climate change, a study suggests.
A number of these shifts could occur this century, say the report's authors.
They argue that society should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that climate change will be a gradual process.
...
In a formal survey the researchers said that a number of systems that influence the Earth's weather patterns could begin to collapse suddenly if there's even a slight increase in global temperatures.
...
The researchers have listed and ranked nine ecological systems that they say could be lost this century as a result of global warming. The nine tipping elements and the time it will take them to undergo a major transition are:
- Melting of Arctic sea-ice (about 10 years)
- Decay of the Greenland ice sheet (about 300 years)
- Collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet (about 300 years)
- Collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (about 100 years)
- Increase in the El Nino Southern Oscillation (about 100 years)
- Collapse of the Indian summer monsoon (about 1 year)
- Greening of the Sahara/Sahel and disruption of the West African monsoon (about 10 years)
- Dieback of the Amazon rainforest (about 50 years)
- Dieback of the Boreal Forest (about 50 years)
The paper also demonstrates how, in principle, early warning systems could be established using real-time monitoring and modelling to detect the proximity of certain tipping points.
It's rather amusing to read that "society should not be lulled into a false sense of security by the idea that climate change will be a gradual process". The international media is full of doom and gloom stories on climate change (such as this specific article) and a lot of them emphasize the tipping point issues. Indeed, Hollywood was so enamoured with this idea that they made a blockbuster film ('The Day After Tomorrow') about it. These scientists need to get out a bit more, and read the news a bit more, and watch TV a bit more.
And it's amazing that with global warming only bad things can happen. Sure, you can easily make an argument that the rate of change of the climate is extremely bad for the planet. But the idea that the change itself is extremely bad for the planet is bizarre. The temperature of the planet has never been constant. The global ecosystem has survived the highs and the lows perfectly happily. Some specific ecosystems might do worse, but others almost certainly will do better. On the other hand, the issue of the rate of change might mean that more bad things are likely than good things. And if the specific mechanism causes runaway temperature change then that is another issue. But this research was not about the rate of change. Just the change itself. And this research was not about a really large temperature change. Just about "a slight increase in global temperatures". And in spite of this, they could only find (or mention) bad things because they only know how (or want) to find bad things.
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