{"id":57732,"date":"2021-05-09T07:07:15","date_gmt":"2021-05-09T12:07:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57732"},"modified":"2021-05-09T07:07:15","modified_gmt":"2021-05-09T12:07:15","slug":"is-earths-climate-about-to-pass-the-tipping-point","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=57732","title":{"rendered":"\u00a0Is Earth\u2019s climate about to pass the tipping point?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u00a0Is Earth\u2019s climate about to pass the tipping point?<\/span><\/a><\/h3>\n
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\"FerranEd. note: This article first appeared in Spanish\u00a0here<\/a>. This is an interview with an expert (Ferran Puig Vilar) and award-winning author of a climate blog on tipping points. Photo credit:\u00a0<\/em>Ferran Puig Vilar.\u00a0CEDIDA POR EL ENTREVISTADO<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

The straw that breaks the camel\u2019s back. The last time the axe hits the tree before it falls. The last profitable barrel to be extracted from an oil well. There are many examples of Tipping points (TP). Although tipping points and points of no return are the buzzwords of our times, we should probably be using them more than we are.<\/p>\n

A range of studies have long indicated that attention should be paid to the effects of climate change on subsystems such as the Amazon, Greenland ice or permafrost. These effects have been debated for more than 20 years. Since then, thousands of pages have been written describing their interrelationships, warning of a coming disaster. As in\u00a0this article published in Nature<\/a>\u00a0by key figures in climate science, or\u00a0this article published in National Geographic<\/a>. However, despite the seriousness of the issue, mainstream media silence remains thunderous. We can even hear climate change deniers on prime time TV.<\/p>\n

We ask engineer and climate journalist Ferran Puig Vilar, who is publishing a special report on tipping points, and has been doing amazing work on climate education in his\u00a0prestigious, prize-winning blog<\/a>\u00a0for more than a decade:<\/p>\n

What is a climate tipping point?<\/strong><\/p>\n

It is an inflection point in the equilibrium of a significant element or subsystem (permafrost, Amazon, thermohaline current, Greenland) whose overshoot destabilizes it and generates a phase change, bringing the system to a new state that may \u2013 or may not \u2013 be one of equilibrium. There are 15 specified, 9 of which are in the degradation phase or have already been passed. They interrelate with each other causing knock-on effects.<\/p>\n

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