Why we should be far more afraid of climate tipping points

Climate tipping points? Demagoguery and scaremongering! There is no scientific basis for this nonsense! Gripped by medieval superstition!

“Scientists argue we may cross the point of no return for some ecosystems in a little more than a decade, reports James Temple.

The issue: For decades, scientists have warned that global warming could surpass dangerous tipping points, propelling rain forests, ice sheets, and coral reefs into effectively irreversible death spirals. A commentary in Nature this week warns we may now be rapidly approaching the thresholds that could set some of these events into motion.

Even worse: The phenomena may be more interlinked than once believed, raising the possibility of a “global cascade of tipping points that led to a new, less habitable, ‘hothouse’ climate state,” the authors write. Research suggests we may doom the Greenland ice sheets with as little as 1.5˚C of warming, a level the planet could reach by 2030 (temperatures have already climbed about 1˚C).

”

"The Greenland ice sheet is melting at an accelerating rate. It could add a further 7 m to sea level over thousands of years if it passes a particular threshold. ... But that timescale is still under our control. The rate of melting depends on the magnitude of warming above the tipping point. At 1.5 °C, it could take 10,000 years to unfold; above 2 °C it could take less than 1,000 years"

Too bad! Greenland is called green land, because the Vikings settled on this lush green island from about 900-1300 AD during the Medieval Warm Period until the Little Ice Age set in! 

The best computer models cannot even predict the weather accurately for more than 24 hours. Thus, climate predictions of a hundred years or even a 1000 years from now are completely ridiculous and total garbage! The complexity of weather and climate models is very similar!

The Download Your daily dose of what’s up in emerging technology (MIT Technology Review)

Climate tipping points — too risky to bet against The growing threat of abrupt and irreversible climate changes must compel political and economic action on emissions.