Climate ‘tipping points’ That Can’t Be Defined Don’t Exist
Among the metaphors that obstruct thought rather than facilitate it is the notion of multiple tipping points
For any given thing, or system, there can logically only be one; before it you don’t tip, after it you do. But in the wacky world of climate they’re everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
You see “Humanity is moving dangerously close to irreversible tipping points that would drastically damage our ability to cope with disasters, UN researchers have warned.”
Does the UN go on to warn of planetary destruction and runaway catastrophe?
Er, not this time, instead it mentions:
“the withdrawal of home insurance from flood-hit areas and the drying up of the groundwater that is vital for ensuring food supplies.”
So everything’s a tipping point now, and a tipping point is something that up to five minutes ago we called a potential problem, and even if it happens nothing has actually tipped over. Everything and nothing.
And what kind of irreversible tipping point is it if, as a Guardian story also insists:
“A new report from the UN University (UNU) in Germany has set out a series of risk tipping points that are approaching, but said having foresight of these meant that it remained possible to take action to prevent them.”
So one more last chance again too, and more verbal confusion, this time over what this famous “last” means.
Our favourite entry in the “tipping point” contest is “America mysteriously hit a deadly tipping point – and no one knows why”. Or that, we dare say.
Apparently:
“Sometime in the past year, this tiny planet we live on in an obscure corner of our Milky Way galaxy went through some sort of tipping point, a ‘state change’ of sorts, and now things are different from how they’ve been at any other time in the 300,000 year history of the human race.”
Oh really? Yup. Unfortunately “Nobody knows for sure what that change or tipping point is.”
Bummer. Evidently it could be “variations in dust concentrations in the Northern Hemisphere’s atmosphere… the January, 2022 eruption of the volcano at Hunga Tonga–Hunga Ha’apai… a change in worldwide regulations mandating ships at sea burn cleaner diesel fuel” or even El Niño.
But whatever it is, it’s big and it’s bad:
“scientists – typically not prone to hyperbole – publishing in the peer-reviewed journal BioScience about this anomaly open their article with: ‘Life on planet Earth is under siege. We are now in an uncharted territory.’”
Peer-reviewed you say? Well, that’s reassuring; we were tempted to dismiss it as alarmist hyperbole. Moreover the piece doesn’t even mention the headlined United States once, except to say “if everybody in America were to simply adopt ‘Meatless Mondays,’ it would save the nation 70 million gallons of gas every year”.
But it raves on about oil industry profits, social justice, coral reefs bleaching and dying, carbon taxes, “climate extremes that are wiping out crops” and on and on including public transit. And we know exactly nothing and everything:
“While nobody is exactly sure why we’ve hit this year of sudden anomalies, scientists are certain it’s a blinking red neon warning that we must change our course or suffer an unimaginable catastrophe.”
So we didn’t hit a tipping point yet? After all that? Or know what it might have been if we had? What a rip-off.
At least the Guardian attempts to define tipping points. But they get it hopelessly wrong:
“Tipping points are triggered by small increases in their driving force but rapidly lead to large impacts.”
Um no. Tipping points are where the line of force gets outside the object and it falls over.
Also, if you’re wondering where climate got to in that banquet of doom, well, it’s taken for granted:
“The climate tipping points are large-scale changes driven by human-caused global heating, while the risk tipping points are more directly connected to people’s lives via complex social and ecological systems.”
And the point isn’t to undertake a sober analysis that separates them out and weighs the dangers of each and the costs of tackling it. It’s to run in circles screaming and virtue-signaling.
As in “Real transformative change involves everyone”. So if just one person sits it out it can’t work? Um no. That would be expecting words to have meanings again.
Still, in case you just can’t get enough tipping apocalypse, another version of this item says:
“Water scarcity and species extinction can lead to irreversible and life-threatening impacts if humanity does not change course, according to a new report by the United Nations University in Bonn published on Wednesday.
‘As we indiscriminately extract our water resources, damage nature and biodiversity, and pollute both Earth and space, we are moving dangerously close to the brink of multiple risk tipping points that could destroy the very systems that our life depends on,’ lead author Zita Sebesvari told DPA.”
Of course by now we’ve gone over so many tipping points the falling sensation is gone. Was never there, actually.
Except the sensation of ennui at a metaphor that makes no sense because a cliff with multiple “tipping points” is a gentle incline.
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Alan
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There are no tipping points in thermodynamics because temperature always move to an equilibrium. The only way temperatures can increase or decrease dramatically is if the energy from the sun changes and one day in the very distant future that will happen.
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Richard Greene
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Baloney
Energy in from the sun minus energy out from Earth trying to cool itself = net change in the global average temperature. You left out half of the equation.
You also failed to define “dramatically”
I would say the +/- 5 degree C, estimated average temperature changed derived from ice core studies were dramatic. They were caused by changes in planetary geometry. The feared +2.0 degree C. warming predicted by the Climate Howlers does not seem dramatic to me, but it is to them.
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Richard Greene
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We all know the +1.5 dehgree C. tipping point was pulled out of a hat and means nothing. One decimal place is malarkey.
over the past 26 years I have calculated a better tipping point: +1.57428 degrees C. — five decimal places — that’s real science folks.
+1.5 degrees C. is a nothingburger.
Nothing will happen
+1.57428 degrees C. is A REALLY BIG DEAL.
If the average temperature exceeds that tipping point, your dog will die. We all love dogs, so don’t let this happen. And your children will be next.
Save the dogs and the children: The only cure for climate change is communism.
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Whokoo
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I am uncertain if this comment from Greene is satire or senility.
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Richard Greene
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You are a climate denier who does not care about dogs … or children.
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Herb Rose
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A perfect example of you reasoning ability. You don’t agree with me therefore you don’t like dogs or children.
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Whokoo
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Wrong again Granma, it is communism I do not care for.
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sunsettommy
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I see it as satire.
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Richard Greene
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Dogs are going to die, and the world is going to end from too much CO2. and you think this is satire?
How can you doubt compter models and Ph.D. scientists?
While it is true that Ph>D scientists have predicted global warming doom since 1979, I see that as brilliant early warnings, not 44 years of wrong predictions.
Of course it i impossible to prove the world will end from too much CO2 but we have to trust the experts.
I have a theory that it is actually impossible to prove anything … but I can’t prove it.
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VOWG
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CO2 will never be high enough in the atmosphere to kill people. Good grief it was 5,000 to 7,000 ppm when the dinos roamed the earth. Now at a bit over 400 ppm you think we are all going to die.
denis dombas
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Senility is the case with Richard
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Herb Rose
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Hi Denis,
It is not senility but lack of sleep. He is up at 2:00 in the morning commenting on PSI.
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Richard Greene
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Hey Herb!
Refuting your climate science claptrap comments does not require much sleep. I usually write my replies while doing a New York Times crossword puzzle using a pen, while reading an article, and cooking breakfast, with one hand tied behind my back.
The internet was invented by Al Gore for the sole purpose of promoting endless arguments between total strangers using monikers.
Have a nice day.
Herb Rose
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Hi Richard,
The internet, like the GHGT, was not invented by Al Gore. It was created (like most of the features you use on the computer) by Xerox. Xerox was only interested in copiers and the advances they developed were stolen by others (Bill Gates, Steve Jobs). Al Gore’s false claim results from him sponsoring legislation that allowed the internet to be implemented.
Enjoy your breakfast,
Herb Rose
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Hi Richard,
During a lunar eclipse the surface temperature drops over 400 F in a matter of minutes, due to radiating heat into space. If the Earth is radiating so much energy into space why does its temperature only drop 20F during the hours of the night?
Herb Rose
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hi Richard,
Companion question.
Since the Earth and moon are receiving the same energy from the sun and the Earth’s atmosphere does not absorb any of that energy, why doesn’t the surface of the Earth heat up to 250F? The sunlit sides of satellites orbiting the Earth do.
JaKo
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May I step away from “safe assumptions?”
I think I see that this RG phenomenon may be just a lure to get burned. Nobody, in their right mind, would assume that the IPCC “models” would be worth the thought about its validity — almost 40 years of blatant failure is hard to deny or ignore; and the “tipping points” are there as well. So, we may welcome Mr. Hyper – Allegory / Sarcasm, whatever, to the PSI???
Sometimes I wish I was wrong 😉
Cheers, JaKo
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Herb Rose
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Hi Jako,
I think with Richard that it is more about being thought to be right and being part of the 99%, than actually being right. He will accept beliefs that his own experience tells him is wrong (the Earth, not the sun is heating the atmosphere) if it provides ego support from others over his self confidence in his own judgement.
Cheers, Herb
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Richard Greene
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The IPCC models have been a great success
They were programmed to scare people
They have scared lots of people.
Do you actually think they were programmed to make accurate long term climate predictions?
The predictions of climate doom came first
The computer games were programmed to say the same thing. Except the Russian INM model — but we can’t trust those pesky Russians, so never mind that their INM model least overpredicts global warming.
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