Destruction of Nature and Tipping Points

The world is now warmer than in the last 125,000 years. CO2 is the highest for 2 million years. The warmer the world the greater the loss of species.

The world’s climate is changing, Everywhere is affected, there is no place that is not affected. What we can see on our doorstep is the following:

1. Climate is Changing and Global Climate is Warming

2. Acidification of Oceans and land

3. Ecosystems are being lost and habitats are being destroyed. This can be from:

   • Overfishing;

   • Deforestation

   • Urban expansion

   • Intensive farming

4. Rivers, lakes, oceans, land and the atmosphere are getting more polluted

5. Their are more emissions from the burning of coal, oil and gas for transport, industry and domestic use

6. An increasing global population is adding more pressure on natural resources, habitats and pollution.

7. Plastic is polluting oceans, land and rivers.

Extinction and Tipping Points

There have been five mass extinctions in the Earths history, with species now being lost at the fastest rate than now for any of them. Studies of one 252 million years ago from fast heating due to volcanic eruptions left only 5% of life left. Once an ecosystem loses key species in the plants, predators or prey roles then a tipping point is reached and an ecosystem can collapse very quickly.

Tipping Points describe what happens to a key environmental system if it changes from one state to another state. All environmental or global systems are linked and are determined by Tipping Points. These global environmental systems are what keeps the Earths climate what we have known it to be. If they reach the Tipping Point, then the reality is that the Earths climate will change drastically. This is evident in records of what the Earths climate has been in the past, so is based on firm science. More details can be found in the book Hothouse Earth by Bill McGuire of how climate can breakdown very quickly.

This is happening now. Research published in Nature by the world’s most eminent climate scientists found that 9 of the Earth’s 15 tipping points have been activated, and that there is scientific support for declaring a state of planetary emergency. The tipping points result in vast amounts of carbon being released into the atmosphere leading to runaway global heating.

This research cites that even if we reach the target of a 1.5C rise in temperatures that these tipping points may be triggered, so basically it could be too late already. We should not however give up. We have to make drastic changes before 2030 as Greta says. The 9 active tipping points are:

1 Greenland ice sheet - the loss of ice is accelerating

2 Arctic Sea ice - Reduction in area and loss of ice is accelerating

3 Russian Permafrost - Is melting and is no longer frozen

4 Boreal Forest in North America - Forest fires and pests are reducing forest cover

5 Atlantic circulation - Slowdown since the 1950’s. It could stop altogether making Europe much colder

6 Amazon Rainforest - Has frequent droughts and could become a dry savannah with little further deforestation

7 Coral Reefs - Large scale die-offs of reefs around the world affecting reef ecosystems

8 West Antarctic Ice Sheet - Loss is accelerating leading to instability and rapid loss of ice

9 Wilkes Basin East Antarctica - Ice loss is accelerating leading to instability and rapid loss of ice

Other tipping points that are at risk are:

10 Arctic winter sea ice reducing

11 Alpine Glaciers melting and disappearing

12 Jet Stream in the Atlantic weakening

13 Elnino Southern oscillation variations

14 The Sahel in Africa heating

15 Indian summer monsoon weakening

And of course these tipping points trigger one another like cascading dominoes. See here for more information.

The Impact on People