The nation’s top climatologist believes “tipping points” is a valid term in the climate discussion. He notes that there is some “reticence” about the term.
In an email he explains, “A famous climate scientist hangs up on [Washington Post reporter] Juliet Eilperin when she uses the tipping point phrase.” He then defends use of the term strongly:
However, “tipping points” is not only a valid concept, but it is what distinguishes the global warming problem from other problems such as the (particulate) air pollution problem. A “tipping point” and its consequences occur because of the combination of climate system (ocean and ice sheet) inertia and the long lifetime of some human-made greenhouse gases. There are points at which the climate system is sensitive to small additional global warming. I believe we are near tipping points now: not much additional global warming is needed to cause loss of Arctic sea ice, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and part of the Greenland ice sheet. Because of ocean thermal inertia some additional warming is in the pipeline (quantifiable via the planetary energy imbalance). Only little (if any) additional forcing is needed to move the climate system through (at least some of) those (large!) climate changes and associated impacts.
The upshot is a real danger that the system will run out of our control, i.e., these changes will become unavoidable. As we realized years ago, we cannot “wait and see” in the climate problem. We have to be smart enough to understand what is happening early on.
More here.
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