Tipping Points

“Humans aren’t the first species to alter the atmosphere; that distinction belongs to early bacteria, which, some two billion years ago, invented photosynthesis. But we are the first species to be in a position to understand what we are doing. Computer models of the earth’s climate suggest that a critical threshold is approaching. Crossing over it will be easy, crossing back quite likely impossible.”

Elizabeth Kolbert in  Field Notes From a Catastrophe (2006)

That critical threshold is the tipping point, beyond which the climate begins to essentially feed on itself, changing the Earth significantly for thousands of years.  But along the way there are other tipping points, and we have quite likely passed some.  The Earth's atmosphere is getting hotter and will continue to do so for probably hundreds of years.  The climate is changing right now.  What's not known is whether it has passed the point at which human civilization will no longer be possible.

The latest UN climate report says as much.  It is about changes that can no longer be stopped, but it holds out hope that the ultimate tipping point has not yet been reached, though it probably will soon.  A changed climate cannot be changed back, not for a very long time.  We've made the world of the near future.

The CNN story on the report begins: "Your forecast for the next century: Hotter, drier and hungrier, and the chance to turn down the thermostat is slipping away. That's the latest conclusion from the United Nations, which urged governments to address the "increasingly clear" threats posed by a warming climate before some options are closed off for good.

The UN report analyzes efforts to deal with causes (mitigation) and effects (adaptation.)  There are lots of details but quite simply nobody is doing a very good job at either.

The report pleads with nations of the world to control greenhouse gases.  CNN quotes: Cutting emissions now "increases the time available for adaptation to a particular level of climate change," the report states. But it adds, "Delaying mitigation actions may reduce options for climate-resilient pathways in the future."

In its typically leaden language, the report is saying two things here.  First, the reason to cut emissions is to increase the time we have to deal with the effects of the climate change that's coming.  It's no longer to stop the climate from changing, with the effects we're beginning to see.  It's changing, and it's going to keep changing, probably much faster, to a hotter world than humans have ever experienced.  We need time to adapt to this world, which means a whole lot more than getting used to hotter summers.  It means dealing with huge changes in what food grows where, with droughts, floods and superstorms, with the spread of hot-weather infectious diseases, with rising seas and acidic oceans. With the dominoes of displaced and dying species of animals and plants as they affect the food chain and a lot more.  It means dealing with conflicts and even wars caused by these effects.

The second point is that if we don't deal with the causes--with greenhouse gases--we "may reduce options for climate-resilient pathways in the future."  Translation: if it gets worse, civilization and perhaps the human species will be fighting for survival.

There's a lot more in the report, and a lot more in the news that supports the main points of the report.  If anything, the news suggests things are getting worse faster.  (And there have been cries from within the climate community that the report's summary has been watered down.)

But I want to move onto another tipping point--the one in which an emotional consensus is reached to deal with this reality, and it becomes the central issue driving our political and civic life.

Some have hoped that a particularly eloquent clarion call might do it.  (I wrote a little about this recently.)  That hasn't happened.  Some fictional stories in print and on film suggest that a big enough terrible event will do it.  Paul Gilding's nonfiction book The Great Disruption (2001) suggests that when environmental calamities combine with resource depletion the global economy will stop growing, and the ensuing catastrophes will lead swiftly to a new economic and environmental system based on new priorities and principles that will, among other things, deal with the climate crisis : a tipping point.

Gilding believes civilization will not collapse and the outcome will eventually be positive (though he mentions that we will probably lose a billion people along the way,) based on his faith in humanity's response.  The whole process will take decades.

But why?  When scientists are all but unanimous, when the effects are already happening--why is human civilization incapable of anticipating such a mortal threat and preemptively acting to prevent it?  That's the question of our age, and I've tried to suggest some possibilities in my "climate inside" posts, for example.

Whatever the reasons, it's clear that no report, no catastrophe is going to convince the hardcore of people whose worldview is religiously political (or politically religious), and who believe that the vast majority of scientists are inventing the climate crisis for political reasons. (Everybody but their scientists, who are demonstrably inventing things for political and economic reasons.)

Exactly why we listen to these people and allow them to control things is another question.  It may be partly because we naturally don't want to believe it either, at least not now that we know it's coming.

Last week this story asserts that forecasters are saying that there's a 60 to 75% chance that a new El Nino is forming, perhaps as soon as April, and that it might be a Super El Nino, which could send temperatures soaring in 2015 for sure and possibly in 2014 as well.  The considerable heat trapped in the oceans could be released quickly.

These are changes we will feel immediately (if this happens.) It will also be further evidence that "normal" no longer exists.  The extremes of 2013 will be replaced by different extremes in 2014.  Could it be a tipping point in public perception?  Anything is possible.  But I wouldn't count on it.

 When it comes to the climate itself, the tipping point is a result of physics, brought about by the accumulation and complex interaction of factors. This El Nino could be a climate tipping point, which we would eventually realize. But it's perhaps more likely that things will change noticeably in fits and starts, both gradually and suddenly.  The most important changes may well remain invisible for awhile.  Others will accumulate over time before they have noticeable effects.

The fact that we're getting El Ninos so close together is itself yet another possible indication that global heating has already tipped over into a self-reinforcing regime.  The same is true about the violence and nature of storms and extreme weather, as this post at Real Climate explains.  Extreme events are extreme because they are out of the ordinary.  But they are becoming ordinary.  Yet even this is controversial, well beyond the usual deniers.

But what are the chances that this El Nino's effects will provide a political tipping point into robust public support for aggressive efforts to deal with the climate crisis?  As noted in comments to the Think Progress post, Australia is already experiencing the kind of heat that El Nino could bring to the U.S. for example.  But that didn't stop Australia from voting out the government that made dealing with the climate crisis a priority, and voting in a government that is busily trying to roll back all sorts of environmental measures.  So it's hard to hold out much hope.

The human species has missed all kinds of opportunities to be prepared for this.  Yet some of that same preparation--moral commitments, clarity, psychological skills included--will be necessary to deal with this future.  Because one way or another, life is lived.