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The Tipping Points of Climate Change: How Will Our World Change? Earth.Org  Martina Igini  Jan 11th 2024Prior to the Industrial Revolution and all the subsequent detrimental human activities, the global average amount of carbon dioxide was about 280 parts per million (ppm). Today, that level is close to 420 ppm; and every tonne of CO2 emissions adds to global warming. The IPCC has identified several so-called ‘tipping points of climate change’, critical thresholds in a system that, if exceeded, can lead to irreversible consequences. But when exactly will we reach them, who will bear the brunt, and, most importantly, is there a way to avoid it?                                                           
 
What Are the Tipping Points of Climate Change? .......The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) defines tipping points as “critical thresholds in a system that, when exceeded, can lead to a significant change in the state of the system, often with an understanding that the change is irreversible.”he last time carbon dioxide levels on our planet were as high as today was more than 4 million years ago. And it did not take us long to get to where we are now. Within just 60 years or so, the annual rate of increase in atmospheric CO2 was about 100 times faster than previous natural increases. Prior to the Industrial Revolution and all the subsequent detrimental human activities, the global average amount of carbon dioxide was about 280 parts per million (ppm). Today, that level is close to 420 ppm.   Every tonne of CO2 emissions adds to global warming. This tight correlation is highly suggestive of the fact that increasing anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions is going to cause drastic changes in weather patterns, habitation, and biodiversity. The truth is that, in response to global warming, many of the world’s ecosystems are already getting closer and closer to catastrophic and potentially irreversible alterations.  Climate science is clear about one thing: the only way we can stop further warming is by achieving net zero greenhouse gas emissions. However, given the thermal inertia of the earth’s system, further warming over the next decade is still unavoidable, even if we were to reach net-zero emissions tomorrow. With this in mind, there is no sugar-coating of the fact that humanity is going to inevitably be confronted with increasingly frequent and severe hazards such as droughts and rising sea levels in the years to come.
The IPCC identifies several tipping points of climate change. Here are the 7 most likely to be crossed this century due to human activity:      Greenland ice sheet        Permafrost       Ocean circulation and temperature (AMOC)       Monsoons       Amazon Rainforests        Antarctic ice sheets       Coral reef die-offs. 
When Will We Reach The Tipping Points of Climate Change? In the early 2000s, there was a general consensus among scientists that most tipping points could be reached in the event of a 4C-increase in global temperatures. However, more recent assessments found that exceeding 1.5C of global warming risks crossing several of these thresholds. That is why climate scientists across the globe have long called governments for more serious commitments to keep the global temperature rise below 1.5C. The IPCC describes this as a “vital” necessity if we want to avoid the devastating impact of extreme weather events in the coming decades and, even worse, pass the burden on to future generations. The Earth’s surface temperature has already increased by nearly 1.2C compared with the average in 1850–1900 and we are perfectly on track to reach the much feared 1.5C threshold between 2026 and 2042 in a scenario where emissions are not rapidly reduced. 
 
What Happens If We Reach the Most Pressing Tipping Points?
1. Greenland Ice Sheet.......The Arctic ice sheet is warming 3 to 4 times faster than the rest of the world, adding almost 1mm to global sea levels every year. This can be explained by the fact that, as the sun-reflecting ice surface melts as a consequence of global warming, deeper layers of the ocean as well as land are exposes; and because both the blue ocean and land absorb the sun’s energy better and faster, this vicious cycle inevitably leads to an increase in temperatures across the region and thus further melting. As the world’s second-largest ice sheet, the Arctic holds enough water that, if melted completely, could raise sea levels by 7.2 metres (22 feet). A 1.5C increase in average temperatures could be the threshold at which the region’s ice sheet melting would become irreversible. The melting of Greenland’s massive ice sheet is already occurring so rapidly that it is now the main factor in global sea level rise, according to satellite data from 2022. In the past two decades, Greenland lost more than 5,100 billion tons (4,700 billion metric tons) of ice, an amount that is enough to flood the entire United States in half a metre (1.5 feet) of water.
2. Permafrost.......Permafrost refers to a ground that remains frozen for at least two consecutive years and is essentially a mixture of rock, soil, sediment, ice, and organic material. Permafrost is isolated from the atmosphere by a boundary called an “active layer”, consisting of live plants in summer, with added snow in winter. The active layer transfers heat from or to the permafrost.  This permanently frozen layer below the Earth’s surface – which covers parts of Siberia, Alaska, northern Canada, and the Tibetan plateau – also holds the largest global carbon reserve from plants and animals that died and decomposed over thousands of years. Scientists estimate that it contains about 1,400 billion tons of carbon, nearly double the amount present in the atmosphere.As the climate warms and permafrost begins to thaw, carbon dioxide and methane are released into the atmosphere. The spread of these highly toxic gases, scientists warn, would add up to 0.3C to global warming and could lead to humanity reaching other tipping points of climate change much faster.
3. Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC)........AMOC – or Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – is a large system of ocean currents driven by differences in the density of water, which determines their temperature. The AMOC acts as a conveyor belt, redistributing heat throughout the Earth’s climate system by bringing it from the tropics in the Southern Hemisphere all the way to Greenland and carrying cold water back south. The freshwater input from glaciers’ melting, however, significantly weakens these currents.......read on and none of it is good news.                https://earth.org/tipping-points-of-climate-change/

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Category: Climate Issues
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Like walking through time’: as glaciers retreat, new worlds are being created in their wake.Guardian Katherine Hill 13 Sept 2025  From the slopes behind the village of Ernen, it is possible to see the gouge where the Fiesch glacier once tumbled towards the valley in the Bernese Alps. The curved finger of ice, rumpled like tissue, cuts between high buttresses of granite and gneiss. Now it has melted out of sight. People here once feared the monstrous ice streams, describing them as devils, but now they dread their disappearance. Like other glaciers in the Alps and globally, the Fiesch is melting at ever-increasing rates. More than ice is lost when the giants disappear: cultures, societies and entire ecosystems are braided around the glaciers.

The neighbouring Great Aletsch, like the Fiesch, flows from the high plateau between the peaks of the Jungfrau-Aletsch, a Unesco region in the Swiss canton of Valais and Europe’s longest glacier. It is receding at a rate of more than 50 metres a year, but from the cable car above it remains a mighty sight. Clouds scud across the sky and shafts of light marble the ice. On the rocky slopes leading down to the glacier from the ridge, there are pools of aquamarine brilliance, the ground speckled with startling alpine flowers. The ice feels alive, with waterfalls plunging into deep crevasses and rocks shimmering in the sun. “It’s just so diverse, these harsh mountains and ice, and up the ridge, a totally different habitat,” says Maurus Bamert, director of the environmental education centre Pro Natura Aletsch. “This is really special.” Participants now pray for the glacier not to vanish, but they once prayed for it to retreat and stop swallowing their meadows

Many of the living worlds in the ice and snow are not visible to the human eye. “You don’t expect a living organism on the ice,” Bamert says. But there is a rich ice-loving biotic community and surprising biodiversity that thrives in this frozen landscape. Springtails or “glacier fleas” survive on the snow’s crust – this year alone, five new species were identified in the European Alps. But there are also algae, bacteria, fungi and ice worms, as well as spiders and beetles, which feed on springtails. As ice melts, this landscape and its inhabitants, human and non-human, are all affected. Along the glacier’s path, ice turns to water and the rushing sound of the river becomes audible. In 1859, at the greatest extent of its thickness, the glacier reached 200 metres higher than it does now. The landscape revealed by the melt is mostly bare rock, riven with fissures that spill across the hillside. Jasmine Noti from Aletsch Arena, the regional tourism organisation, says these widen each year, new cracks appear and routes are redesigned. The ice acts like a massive buttress, gluing the hillside together, and as it melts, slippage and instability increase.

As the edges of the glacial valley descend into the cool cover of the Aletschwald forest, “it’s like walking through time”, says Bamert. On the higher slopes, older pines dominate, but lower down the trees thin, and the pioneer species of larch and birch cover the hillside: early signs of newer postglacial reforestation. It only takes about five to 10 years for plants to colonise the land. Further down yellow saxifrage and mountain sorrel cling to the rocks. All this was once under ice sheets, but the succession of growth tells a story of glacial retreat, historic and recent.....[ed and if the warming continues alpine environments will transform into the forests below......read on   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/sep/13/switzerland-alps-fiesch-aletsch-glaciers-retreat-ecosystems-mountains-culture-aoe

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5 Charts Show Climate Progress as Paris Agreement Turns 10  Scientific American November 22, 2025  Meghan Bartels edited by Andrea Thompson The 2015 Paris Agreement forged a path for the world to stave off the worst climate change scenarios. Here’s where we stand 10 years later. Ten years ago the world came together to forge a path out of the climate emergency in the form of a global treaty dubbed the Paris Agreement. Under the accord, nations committed to keeping global temperatures to “well below” a two-degree-Celsius increase over preindustrial levels and to striving to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees C. These goals were ambitious and required greenhouse gas emissions to begin declining by 2025. Yet emissions continue to rise. Annual negotiations around seeing the Paris Agreement through have continued over the past two weeks at this year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP30, in Brazil, where participants are acknowledging two simultaneous truths: we have made meaningful strides in protecting our planet, but huge leaps are still needed to avoid the worst outcomes.
 
Those leaps are daunting, given that President Donald Trump is once again pulling the U.S. out of the accord and that countries such as China and Saudi Arabia are also still trying to keep fossil fuels in the energy mix. China, however, is rapidly overtaking the U.S. as a renewable energy powerhouse, and solar and wind have seen exponential gains globally in recent years. These five charts show why the Paris Agreement is vital—and how the world is doing 10 years into the endeavor. The Paris Agreement is built around temperature increases compared with an unspecified preindustrial baseline, generally taken as the latter half of the 19th cIn 2015 the average global temperature was 1.1 degrees C hotter than it was during the preindustrial period. Today it is around 1.3 degrees C. (In 2024—the hottest year on record—the planet was more than 1.5 degrees C, but the Paris agreement looks at the average over many years. The World Meteorological Organization projects that 2025 will be around 1.4 degrees C above the preindustrial average and either the second or third hottest year on record.)
The increase is grim but not the end of the story—especially if humans can stop climate pollution quickly enough to reverse the warming trend. “Every ton matters; every tenth of a degree we avoid matters; every year matters,” says Costa Samaras, an energy policy expert at Carnegie Mellon University.entury. Every year since 1970—more than half a century—temperatures have been above this average and soaring upward......read on and the graphics are very revealing     https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-paris-climate-agreement-is-turning-10-these-5-charts-show-what-progress/

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2025 NDC Synthesis Report.....This report provides valuable new insights, albeit limited in scope, on the basis of the 64 new NDCs submitted by 64 Parties to the Paris Agreement and recorded in the NDC registry between 1 January 2024 and 30 September 2025, covering about 30 percent of total global emissions in 2019. It is not possible to draw wide-ranging global-level conclusions or inferences from this limited data set. Nevertheless, the report highlights many key lessons, about progress being made and major challenges ahead, emerging from the NDCs synthesized:
  1. The new NDCs show a progression in terms of quality, credibility and economic coverage, with 89 per cent of Parties communicating economy-wide targets (compared with 81 per cent in their previous NDCs);
  2. The new NDCs include responses to the outcomes of the first GST, with 88 per cent of Parties indicating that their NDCs were informed by the outcomes of the GST and 80 per cent specifying how;
  3. The emissions trajectories set out in the new NDCs are broadly consistent with a linear trajectory from the Parties’ 2030 targets to their long-term net zero targets, showing that Parties are laying out clear stepping-stones towards net zero, although acceleration of action is still needed;
  4. Collectively, the new NDCs show a reduction in projected emissions of 17 (11–24) per cent below the 2019 level;
  5. All NDCs go beyond mitigation to include elements, inter alia, on adaptation, finance, technology transfer, capacity-building and addressing loss and damage, reflecting the comprehensive scope of the Paris Agreement;
  6. Adaptation and resilience are featuring more prominently in NDCs, with 73 per cent of the new NDCs including an adaptation component;
  7. Implementation of the new NDCs necessitates strong, ongoing international cooperation, and new and innovative approaches to unlock finance and support for developing country Parties at scale.
Content of the report......Mandate and background   In accordance with the Paris Agreement, each Party is to prepare, communicate and maintain, every five years, successive NDCs that it intends to achieve and each successive NDC will represent progression reflecting the Party’s highest possible ambition and be informed by the outcomes of the GST.  The communicated NDCs are to be recorded in the NDC registry, maintained by the secretariat......read the full report.....https://unfccc.int/process-and-meetings/the-paris-agreement/nationally-determined-contributions-ndcs/2025-ndc-synthesis-report#Mandate-and-background

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  • Climate Gates......Maybe we don't need billionaire opinions on everything  Bill McKibben  Oct 31, 2025 I feel quite strongly that we should pay less attention to billionaires—indeed that’s rather the point of this small essay—so let me acknowledge at the outset that there is something odd about me therefore devoting an edition of this newsletter to replying to Bill Gates’ new missive about climate. But I fear I must, if only because it’s been treated as such important news by so many outlets—far more, say, than covered the UN Secretary General’s same-day appeal to international leaders that began with a forthright statement of the science. Here’s Antonio Guterres: The truth is that we have failed to avoid an overshooting above 1.5C in the next few years. And that going above 1.5C has devastating consequences. Some of these devastating consequences are tipping points, be it in the Amazon, be it in Greenland, or western Antarctica or the coral reefs.’ I

In fact, I could probably just note that Gates, with impeccable timing, decided to drop his remarks at the same moment that Hurricane Melissa plowed into Jamaica, doing incalculable damage because of winds made stronger by the ocean heat attributable to global warming.  As Jeff Masters reported......"Human-caused climate change increased Hurricane Melissa’s wind speeds by 7% (11 mph, or 18 km/h), leading to a 12% increase in its damages, found researchers at the Imperial College of London in a rapid attribution study just released. A separate study by scientists at Climate Central found that climate change increased Melissa’s winds by 10%, and the near-record-warm ocean waters that Melissa traversed — 1.2 degrees Celsius (1.2°F) warmer than average — were up to 900 times more likely to be that warm because of human-caused climate change.".And, oh, the same day Hue, in Vietnam, reported one of the two or three greatest rainfalls in recorded human history: five feet of rain in 24 hours, the kind of deluge made ever more likely by a warming atmosphere that can hold more water vapor. As the Associated Press reported, “global warming is making tropical storms stronger and wetter, according to experts, because warmer oceans provide them with more fuel, driving more intense winds, heavier rainfall and shifting precipitation patterns across East Asia.”

Anyway, Bill Gates’ letter......."There’s a doomsday view of climate change that goes like this: In a few decades, cataclysmic climate change will decimate civilization. The evidence is all around us—just look at all the heat waves and storms caused by rising global temperatures. Nothing matters more than limiting the rise in temperature. Fortunately for all of us, this view is wrong. Although climate change will have serious consequences—particularly for people in the poorest countries—it will not lead to humanity’s demise. People will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future. Emissions projections have gone down, and with the right policies and investments, innovation will allow us to drive emissions down much further."...... It was wrong of him to write it because if his high-priced pr team didn’t anticipate the reaction, they should be fired. 

I assume they did, and that they were okay with the entirely predictable result from our president. Here’s how the Washington Times described it......“I (WE!) just won the War on the Climate Change Hoax,” said Mr. Trump in a Wednesday post on Truth Social. “Bill Gates has finally admitted that he was completely WRONG on the issue. It took courage to do so, and for that we are all grateful. MAGA!!!”....... Bill Gates didn’t, of course, say that. He said climate change was real and we should be worried about it, but that it wouldn’t lead to “humanity’s demise” or “the end of civilization” (which seems like the lowest of low bars) and that......."Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease"......and therefore that’s where we should focus our money. His letter is actually directed at delegates to the global climate conference next month in Brazil, essentially telling them to back off the emissions reductions and concentrate on growing economies in the developing world because “health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.”

Any conversation about Bill Gates and climate should begin by acknowledging that he’s been wrong about it over and over again. He’s explained that up until 2006—i.e., 18 years after Jim Hansen’s testimony before Congress laying out the science, and well past the point where George W. Bush had acknowledged its reality—he like Trump thought the whole thing was a crock. “I had assumed there were cyclical variations or other factors that would naturally prevent a true climate disaster,” he explained—at the time he was the richest man in the world, and yet his scientific advisors couldn’t get across the simple facts to him. And he was last heard from on the topic in 2021, when he wrote a book explaining that it was going to be very hard to do renewable energy because it came with a “green premium”—i.e. it cost more. Sadly for his argument, that was pretty much the year that sun and wind crossed the invisible line making them less expensive than coal and oil and gas. (You can read my review from the New York Times here, and you can read his response to it in Rolling Stone here where he explains “McKibben is stuck in this time warp.”)

So—if we were listening to people on the grounds of whether they had a good track record, the world would not spend a lot of time on Gates and climate. But if you have a hundred billion dollars all is forgiven, and so there has been lots of fawning coverage. The fact that Gates framed all this in a way designed to appeal to the president is so obvious that it hardly bears mentioning (the richest men in the world have all been sucking up to him, so no extra shame here); let’s instead just go to the heart of his argument. Which is weak in the extreme.Bill Gates didn’t, of course, say that. He said climate change was real and we should be worried about it, but that it wouldn’t lead to “humanity’s demise” or “the end of civilization” (which seems like the lowest of low bars) and that. Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease and therefore that’s where we should focus our money. His letter is actually directed at delegates to the global climate conference next month in Brazil, essentially telling them to back off the emissions reductions and concentrate on growing economies in the developing world because “health and prosperity are the best defense against climate change.”

Any conversation about Bill Gates and climate should begin by acknowledging that he’s been wrong about it over and over again. He’s explained that up until 2006—i.e., 18 years after Jim Hansen’s testimony before Congress laying out the science, and well past the point where George W. Bush had acknowledged its reality—he like Trump thought the whole thing was a crock. “I had assumed there were cyclical variations or other factors that would naturally prevent a true climate disaster,” he explained—at the time he was the richest man in the world, and yet his scientific advisors couldn’t get across the simple facts to him.

And he was last heard from on the topic in 2021, when he wrote a book explaining that it was going to be very hard to do renewable energy because it came with a “green premium”—i.e. it cost more. Sadly for his argument, that was pretty much the year that sun and wind crossed the invisible line making them less expensive than coal and oil and gas. (You can read my review from the New York Times here, and you can read his response to it in Rolling Stone here where he explains “McKibben is stuck in this time warp.”)

So—if we were listening to people on the grounds of whether they had a good track record, the world would not spend a lot of time on Gates and climate. But if you have a hundred billion dollars all is forgiven, and so there has been lots of fawning coverage. The fact that Gates framed all this in a way designed to appeal to the president is so obvious that it hardly bears mentioning (the richest men in the world have all been sucking up to him, so no extra shame here); let’s instead just go to the heart of his argument. Which is weak in the extreme. Bill Gates didn’t, of course, say that. He said climate change was real and we should be worried about it, but that it wouldn’t lead to “humanity’s demise” or “the end of civilization” (which seems like the lowest of low bars) and that......"Although climate change will hurt poor people more than anyone else, for the vast majority of them it will not be the only or even the biggest threat to their lives and welfare. The biggest problems are poverty and disease"......read on    https://billmckibben.substack.com/p/climate-gates?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

More Articles …

  1. The Story of CO2 Is the Story of Everything
  2. Reality of Climate Tipping Points and the importance of Correcting Misleading Narratives
  3. Even the Guardian's Environment EditerMonbiot has been converted to Nuclear.....
  4. What has Changed 20 years on from Hurricane Katrina? - Huge Improvements in Hurricane Forecasting!

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