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09/09/2022 – Multiple climate tipping points could be triggered if global temperature rises beyond 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, according to a major new analysis published in the journal Science. Even at current levels of global heating the world is already at risk of passing five dangerous climate tipping points, and risks increase with each tenth of a degree of further warming. An international research team synthesised evidence for tipping points, their temperature thresholds, timescales, and impacts from a comprehensive review of over 200 papers published since 2008, when climate tipping points were first rigorously defined.

Risk of passing multiple climate tipping points escalates above 1.5°C global warming — Tipping points world map. Figure by Biermann/PIK, based on Armstrong McKay et al, 2020

The research, published in advance of a major conference “Tipping Points: from climate crisis to positive transformation” at the University of Exeter (12-14th September), concludes human emissions have already pushed Earth into the tipping points danger zone. Five of the sixteen may be triggered at today’s temperatures: the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, widespread abrupt permafrost thaw, collapse of convection in the Labrador Sea, and massive die-off of tropical coral reefs. Four of these move from possible events to likely at 1.5°C global warming, with five more becoming possible around this level of heating.

Lead author David Armstrong McKay from Stockholm Resilience Centre, University of Exeter, and the Earth Commission says, “We can see signs of destabilisation already in parts of the West Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, in permafrost regions, the Amazon rainforest, and potentially the Atlantic overturning circulation as well.”

“The chance of crossing tipping points can be reduced by rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions”

“The world is already at risk of some tipping points. As global temperatures rise further, more tipping points become possible.” he adds. “The chance of crossing tipping points can be reduced by rapidly cutting greenhouse gas emissions, starting immediately.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Tipping Point That Will Destroy the World

January 12, 2022

The Tipping Point That Will Destroy the World

All of a sudden: Climate change tipping points appear with a vengeance

August 9, 2021

All of a sudden: Climate change tipping points appear with a vengeance

Across the world climate change seems to have arrived earlier than expected. There are world-class athletes with bodies trained for endurance and strength breaking down from the extreme heat visited on the Tokyo Olympics by mother nature. There are the continuing wildfires in the American West that take out entire towns. The drought there is so bad that states are thinking about paying farmers NOT to irrigate their crops as a conservation strategy.

One of the other effects of climate change is heavier rains and devastating floods. Recent floods in Germany were caused by rains characterized as once-in-a-millennium, rains which, for example, killed more than 200 people and caused $1.5 billion in damage to the German railway network. But, of course, statements about once-in-a-fill-in-the-blank rains or droughts seem less and less relevant in the age of climate change as what we call extraordinarily destructive weather just morphs into “the weather.”

Once-in-a-millennium rains also visited parts of China recently dumping in just three days an entire year’s rainfall on one town of 12 million.

The infrastructure we have built and the way we work and live are simply not designed for these extremes. Our systems are breaking down under the pressure of climate-change-induced extreme weather.

But the scariest thing is that all of the incidents I cited above could happen all over again next year and the next year and the next after that in the same places as extreme weather worsens and becomes just “weather.” In California, 2020 marked the worst fire season ever in the state. But 2021 is now on pace to be even worse.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

COVID-19 Is a Symptom of a Planet That’s Been Pushed Past a Tipping Point

November 26, 2020

COVID-19 Is a Symptom of a Planet That’s Been Pushed Past a Tipping Point

The pandemic could signal that we’ve passed a series of civilizational tipping points that will usher in a new era of ecological emergencies.

The COVID-19 pandemic signals that civilization has breached a major ‘tipping point’ that could pave the way for a dangerous new era of interacting ecological emergencies.

Scientific evidence accumulated over the last five years suggests that the pandemic didn’t come out of the blue, but is a direct consequence of industrial civilization’s breaching of key ‘planetary boundaries’—these are important natural ecosystems needed to maintain what scientists describe as the ‘safe operating space’ for human survival on the planet.

The more we destabilize those boundaries, the more this safe space for human habitation shrinks—and COVID-19 suggests that the world economy is now entering a volatile new phase of chronic instability due to not just one crisis, but the interaction of many crises including climate change, resource bottlenecks, food system failures and civil unrest. It is the escalating synergy between these crises, each of which is experiencing its own tipping points, which points to the risk we are crossing a planetary threshold in the global system.

This verdict doesn’t come from new data, but from applying a systems lens to understand the massive amount of data we already have. I assessed the evidence in a major report for the Schumacher Institute for Sustainable Systems, a British think-tank which has led on the European Commission’s CONVERGE project, among other things.

Pandemic: a symptom of civilization itself

Prior to 2020, warnings from public health experts of an incoming global pandemic had accumulated over the last few decades. All of them have based their diagnosis on examining the risks posed by the relentless expansion of industrial civilization.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“We’ve Reached The Tipping Point” – Guggenheim’s Minerd Warns Virus Will Deflate The Everything Bubble

February 29, 2020

“We’ve Reached The Tipping Point” – Guggenheim’s Minerd Warns Virus Will Deflate The Everything Bubble

Last week, Guggenheim’s Global CIO Scott Minerd exclaimed that “the cognitive dissonance in the market is stunning,” as he reflected on the ever-rising stock prices (and collapsing credit spreads) he was seeing in the face of growing global fears of the virus’ spread.

And as the market began to waken from its dissonant slumber, he warned:

“This is not a buy-the-dip market. It is a don’t-catch-a-falling-knife market. “

As he detailed to CNBC the threat the coronavirus poses to corporate earnings and the U.S. economy if the pandemic spreads.

And now, after an unprecedented collapse in stock prices and Treasury yields, Minerd details his portfolio positioning with coronavirus on the brink of pandemic.

The impact of the coronavirus has made for a crazy couple of weeks in the financial markets. Now spreading beyond Italy into other parts of Europe, it is on the brink of a pandemic and investors, fearing a sharp slowdown in global growth, have reacted by taking out support for yields for the long bond and the 10-year Treasury note. Bonds are comfortably below 2 percent and the 10-year Treasury yield is hovering around 1.3 percent. Unlikely as it may seem, technical analysis now indicates a target yield on the 30-year bond at 1 percent and the 10-year note at 0.25 percent. Stocks are nearing correction territory, with more downside likely.

At the same time that long Treasury yields are making new historic lows, credit spreads, while widening, remain relatively tight. This does not make any sense given the fundamental backdrop which indicate that defaults will rise significantly, particularly in energy, airlines, retailing, and hospitality. Nevertheless, central bank liquidity continues to drive flows into bonds at a record pace. These flows are keeping spreads tight and, until there is an interruption of the inflows, credit spreads will be contained.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Recession “Tipping Point” Triggered: 10Y Yield Crashes Below 1.40%; Countdown To 0% Rates Begins

February 24, 2020

Recession “Tipping Point” Triggered: 10Y Yield Crashes Below 1.40%; Countdown To 0% Rates Begins

Last night, when the implied 10Y yield (Japan was closed) dropped to just 1 basis point above 1.40%, we said that we are literally this close from BofA’s “tipping point” for the 10Y Treasury, below which a recession is virtually assured according to the NY Fed’s recession probability indicator, and which also triggers a 12-18 month countdown to 0% rates.

Well, this morning, with risk assets crashing, the yield on the 10Y has sliced below the 1.40% “tipping point” like a hot knife through butter…

… and is now less than 1 basis point away from the all time low of 1.3579% hit on July 8, 2016.

Why does 1.40% matter again?

Because, as we explained yesterday, breaking below this “tipping point” level requires more than 50% probability priced for the Fed cutting rates back to 0%! This means that breaking 1.4% in an on-hold context for the Fed creates a significant inversion of the curve, pushes recession signals higher, and pressures a further inversion of the FF1/FF6 spread which we found in Pricing cuts ahead of the Fed to have no false positives for Fed cuts following a -30bp inversion (currently -16bp).

What this means in practical terms from a duration perspective is that “the market may gap lower on a break below 1.4% for the 10Y Treasury”, as this corresponds to phase transition higher in recession probabilities and a clear challenge to the on-hold Fed stance, “particularly as convexity flows add to what would likely be a broader risk-off move. “

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Guest post: The irreversible emissions of a permafrost ‘tipping point’

February 15, 2020

Guest post: The irreversible emissions of a permafrost ‘tipping point’

Across vast swaths of the northern hemisphere’s higher reaches, frozen ground holds billions of tonnes of carbon.

As global temperatures rise, this “permafrost” land is at increasing risk of thawing out, potentially releasing its long-held carbon into the atmosphere.

Abrupt permafrost thaw is one of the most frequently discussed “tipping points” that could be crossed in a warming world. However, research suggests that, while this thawing is already underway, it can be slowed with climate change mitigation.Tipping pointsThis article is part of a week-long special series on “tipping points”, where a changing climate could push parts of the Earth system into abrupt or irreversible change

Yet, what is irreversible is the escape of the carbon that has been – and is being – emitted. The carbon released from permafrost goes into the atmosphere and stays there, exacerbating global warming.

In short, what happens in the Arctic does not stay in the Arctic.

Permafrost and the global climate

Permafrost is ground that has been frozen for at least two consecutive years. Its thickness ranges from less than one metre to more than a kilometre. Typically, it sits beneath an “active layer” that thaws and refreezes every year.

A warming climate puts this perennially frozen ground at risk. When temperatures rise, permafrost thaws – it does not melt.

There is a simple analogy: compare what happens to an ice cube and a frozen chicken when they are taken out of the freezer. At room temperature, the former will have melted, leaving a small pool of water, but the chicken will have thawed, leaving a raw chicken. Eventually, that chicken will start to decompose.

This is exactly what happens to permafrost when temperatures increase. One quarter of the landmass of the northern hemisphere is underlain by permafrost, which acts like Earth’s gigantic freezer and keeps enormous amounts of organic matter frozen.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Our climate is like reckless banking before the crash—it’s time to talk about near-term collapse

December 14, 2019

Our climate is like reckless banking before the crash—it’s time to talk about near-term collapse

Our food, finance, and logistics systems are worryingly vulnerable to climate shocks, Aled Jones and Will Steffen write. These are not distant existential issues raised by uncertain and abstract models of future climatic risk. They are urgent questions that humanity has been ducking for decades, but now demand urgent answers.

*****

After a quarter of a century of nations from around the world coming together to discuss progress in dealing with climate change, emissions are still rising. The 25th annual United Nations climate change summit is now underway—and for the sake of the planet, it’s high time it changed its approach.

While climate scientists, policymakers and environmental campaigners have been engaged in a decades-long conversation about the future of the planet, most people on planet Earth see no climate emergency. Put bluntly, the science of global warming has failed spectacularly to emotionally connect with much of society, particularly those in the most powerful positions—rendering policy makers ineffective despite repeated warnings.

The science and the warnings focus on curtailing the emission of heat-absorbing gases into the atmosphere that, left unaddressed, may threaten the viability of contemporary society and worsen a mass extinction event already in motion.

But these warnings are not connected with complex human systems, such as food, finance and logistics, leaving them to evolve as if climate change didn’t exist. Terms such as “tipping points” are on their own technical, distant and abstract, while humans are wired to prioritise the short-term.

This failure to connect the dots means humanity has rapidly entered uncharted territory, pumping out carbon ten times faster than at any point since the extinction of the dinosaurs.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Insights From The Wilderness – Human Civilization Will Not Survive Climate Intensification

January 4, 2019

Insights From The Wilderness – Human Civilization Will Not Survive Climate Intensification

I recognize that the title of this StonyHill Nugget is alarming and that I will be accused of holding extremist views on global warming and climate intensification. But I am concerned that the media and our government are not telling us the truth. Stated simply, the 1% that control the media, and the reigns of political power in Washington and other nations around the globe, have absolutely no desire or motivation to talk about the real threats embedded in global warming.

They know that the global economy is extremely fragile…..and talking about the deeper truths embedded in global warming and climate intensification would quickly kill the golden goose that is laying eggs of pure petroleum gold for them.

The realities of global warming embedded in the Governmental Global Warming Crisis Report released by governmental scientists on the Friday following Thanksgiving were clear. Global warming is not only going to change life as we know it by the end of the century, but also the impacts of global warming are already changing life as we know it ….and the rate of change is going to continue to accelerate.

Unfortunately, the report which was mandated by Congress tended to gloss over the climate impacts that are coming in the near future or already happening. It focused primarily on climate impacts that will not be experienced by humanity for fifty to eighty years in the future!

Here Is What Concerns Me…And Should Concern You

Global warming has been metaphorically described as a cliff we are about to walk off. Unfortunately, it’s more like a minefield. The further we walk out onto that minefield, the more we are likely to set off explosions and tipping points that can’t be reversed.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

2018: the tipping point

January 1, 2019

2018: the tipping point

My year in review — looking back, looking ahead

Published by INSURGE INTELLIGENCE, a crowdfunded investigative journalism project for people and planet. Please support us to keep digging where others fear to tread.

Over the last few years, the sense that world events are accelerating in a way that is increasingly difficult to keep up with has become tangible.

At talks I often ask my audiences the same question. ‘Have you experienced a sense of acceleration in world events in recent years? That things are speeding up, become more unpredictable?’

Overwhelmingly the answer is yes.

The sense of acceleration is not an illusion. On the one hand, it’s an artifact of the transformation of the global information architecture, where information on world events is now transmitted instantaneously around the world.

On the other, it’s a direct consequence of the fact that world events are increasingly interconnected in complex ways that we are not used to grappling with. But like it or not, understand it or not, that complexity isn’t going away.

The underlying driver of the sense of acceleration is that we stand at the beginning of the end. The world as we know it has started to come to an end, and with it a new world is being born. Exactly what that world will look like is unclear.

What we know is that the old world, and all its old, outmoded paradigms, are gradually grinding to a halt.

Neoliberal finance capitalism as we know it faces the resurgence of crisis, the inevitability of slow growth, declining productivity, and the probability of another global collapse even worse than that which occurred ten year ago.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Extinction Rebellion–A Tipping Point for the Climate Emergency?

November 20, 2018

THE EXTINCTION REBELLION – A TIPPING POINT FOR THE CLIMATE EMERGENCY?

The only rational response to the scientific evidence on climate change, is to declare a global emergency – to mobilise all of society to do whatever it takes to fix it. As the UN Secretary General Guterres recently stated: “We face a direct existential threat”.

Failure is really not an option when “failure” means we could “annihilate intelligent life or permanently and drastically curtail its potential” This is now a war for civilisation’s survival. [1]

Meanwhile we blunder on…. Deeply committed to making verbal commitments, while delivering pathetically inadequate actual responses. Responses that treat the clear and urgent advice of the world’s top scientists – that we face the risk of global collapse – as merely passing thoughts to be casually contemplated.

Well, time’s up. To quote Winston Churchill: “Owing to past neglect, in the face of the plainest warnings, we have entered upon a period of danger. The era of procrastination, of half measures, of soothing and baffling expedients of delays, is coming to its close. In its place we are entering a period of consequences …We cannot avoid this period, we are in it now…”

Enter the Extinction Rebellion.

This is group of people who have simply had enough. They have looked at the science and concluded that the world has gone mad, that we now face the risk of extinction. And they’ve decided not to stand by in the face of that – but instead to rebel against the madness that has overtaken us. To try to shock us all into action, to face up to reality.

Extreme? Over-reaction? Maybe. But maybe not.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“This Is The Tipping Point”: One Bank Is Calling For A 30% Market Correction

October 10, 2018

“This Is The Tipping Point”: One Bank Is Calling For A 30% Market Correction

While some believe that it is the level (or stock) of the 10Y yield during a rate rout that determines the resulting revulsion toward equities, while others claim that it it speed of the sell off (the “flow” angle) that matters, the reality is that the higher rates rise – whether fast or slow – the less attractive risk assets become (in a recent analysis, Bank of America calculated what the great un-rotation “magic number” is for yields).

And while violent interest rate repricings certainly have an impact on risk assets – if only over the short-term, until rate vol normalizes – as today’s market action confirms, a more comprehensive theory suggests that the US dollar (the world’s reserve currency) and US interest-rates (world’s risk-free-rate) cycle play a vital role in determining changes in asset prices and the global economy, especially after the gold standard was abolished in 1971.

In a new note from Nedbank’s Neels Heyneke and Mehul Daya, the strategists explain why they believe “we are approaching historical thresholds”, where tighter monetary conditions in the US have traditionally been the “straw that breaks the camel’s back” for the equity market and economic growth, and why “this time should be no different.”

To begin, Nedbank defines US real interest rate as the spread between the US 10-year bond yield and the natural rate of interest (r*). The Laubach-Williams r* estimate is basically the real short-term interest rate at which the US economy is at equilibrium, i.e., where unemployment and inflation are at the 2% target. This allows to determination of monetary conditions in the US relative to the underlying economy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Morgan Stanley: “We Have Hit The Tipping Point”

October 8, 2018

Morgan Stanley: “We Have Hit The Tipping Point”

Having been one of the most bearish voices on Wall Street for a good part of 2018, with downgrades of small caps and tech stocks earlier this summer and one month ago going so far as to call the peak of both Treasurys (in September) and Stocks (this December)…

… in his latest Sunday Start note, Morgan Stanley’s chief US equity strategist Michael Wilson, takes what may end up being yet another premature victory lap following the latest equity selloff inspired initially by surging rates and the continued chaos over the Italian budget process and – overnight – the Chinese market crash, and writes that “the break higher in interest rates last week appears to be the tipping point, enabling the rolling bear market to complete its unfinished business in these last bastions of safety.”

Wilson also reminds us that based on the bank’s Equity Risk Premium framework, the S&P 500, as a whole, had become overvalued for the first time since January, and that “this overvaluation was apparent as yields on the 10-year broke through the 3% barrier. Small caps had already been underperforming for several months, but as rates moved above 3%, their underperformance accelerated. With last week’s surge toward 3.20%, weakness finally came to the high-flying growth stocks where valuation is the most stretched.”

In short: for Wilson, it’s all downhill from here, even though the stock peak appears to have come some 2 months earlier than he had predicted earlier.

We present his full note is below:

The Tipping Point

September bucked the normal seasonal pattern, proving to be a fairly calm month for financial markets. Global equities even started to broaden out a bit with international stocks doing better, led by Japan. Credit markets also displayed resilience with one of their better months this year, despite the fact that the rates market was suffering one of its worst.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dangerous climate tipping point is ‘about a century ahead of schedule’ warns scientist

April 13, 2018

Dangerous climate tipping point is ‘about a century ahead of schedule’ warns scientist

A slowing Gulf Stream system means catastrophic East Coast flooding will get much worse.

Taxis sit in a flooded lot after Hurricane Sandy October 30, 2012 in Hoboken, New Jersey. CREDIT: Michael Bocchieri/Getty Images — TAXIS SIT IN A FLOODED LOT AFTER HURRICANE SANDY OCTOBER 30, 2012 IN HOBOKEN, NEW JERSEY. CREDIT: MICHAEL BOCCHIERI/GETTY IMAGES

“I think we’re close to a tipping point,” climatologist Michael Mann told ThinkProgress in an email. The AMOC slow down “is without precedent” in more than a millennium he said, adding, “It’s happening about a century ahead of schedule relative to what the models predict.”

The impacts of such a slowdown include much faster sea level rise — and much warmer sea surface temperatures — for much of the U.S. East Coast. Both of those effects are already being observed and together they make devastating storm surges of the kind we saw with Superstorm Sandy far more likely.

The findings come in two new studies published this week. One study published in the journal Nature, titled “Observed fingerprint of a weakening Atlantic Ocean overturning circulation,” was led by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research. It finds that the AMOC has weakened “around 15 per cent” since the mid-twentieth century, bringing it to “a new record low.”

Another new study in the same issue of Nature “supports this finding and places it in a longer climate history context,” as Potsdam’s Stefan Rahmstorf notes at RealClimate.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Climate changes can kick in below 2°C limit

October 19, 2015

Climate changes can kick in below 2°C limit

Extensive melting of the snow on the Tibetan plateau could be a tipping point.
Image: katorisi via Wikimedia Commons

Sudden shifts in settled climates can occur long before global warming reaches the internationally-agreed safety level, European scientists say.

LONDON, 18 October, 2015 – Climate change could arrive with startling speed. New research has identified at least 37 “tipping points” that would serve as evidence that climate change has happened – and happened abruptly in one particular region.

And 18 of them could happen even before the world warms by an average of 2°C, the proposed “safe limit” for global warming.

Weather is what happens, climate is what people grow to expect from the weather. So climate change, driven by global warming as a consequence of rising carbon dioxide levels, in response to more than a century of fossil fuel combustion, could be – for many people – gradual, imperceptible and difficult to identify immediately.

But Sybren Drijfhout, of the University of Southampton in the UK and his collaborators in France, the Netherlands and Germany, are not so sure.

They report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that they “screened” the massive ensemble of climate models that inform the most recent reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and found evidence of abrupt regional changes in the ocean, the sea ice, the snow cover, the permafrost and in the terrestrial biosphere that could happen as average global temperatures reached a certain level.

The models did not all simulate the same outcomes, but most of them did predict one or more abrupt regional shifts.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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