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How Close Are the Planet’s Climate Tipping Points?

Earth’s warming could trigger sweeping changes in the natural world that would be hard, if not impossible, to reverse.

 Right now, every moment of every day, we humans are reconfiguring
Earth’s climate bit by bit. Hotter summers and wetter storms. Higher seas
and fiercer wildfires. The steady, upward turn of the dial on a host of
threats to our homes, our societies and the environment around us.

We might also be changing the climate in an even bigger way. For the past two
decades, scientists have been raising alarms about great systems in the
natural world that warming, caused by carbon emissions, might be pushing
toward collapse.

These systems are so vast that they can stay somewhat in
balance even as temperatures rise. But only to a point. Once we warm the
planet beyond certain levels, this balance might be lost, scientists say.
The effects would be sweeping and hard to reverse. Not like the turning of
a dial, but the flipping of a switch. One that wouldn’t be easily flipped
back.

 New York Times 11th Aug 2024

August 14, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | climate change