We’re all familiar with kids in the back seat of a car on holiday asking the famous question: “Are we there yet?”
This is also the biggest question relating to the worldwide environment and climate change. Have we reached the “tipping point” where climate change moves forward of its own momentum?
The scientific consensus seems to be not quite. Scientists have held that global average temperatures could rise a total of perhaps 2°C, about 3.6°F, before “tipping” into runaway climate change. Current and expected warming already put us nearly there, but we might just avoid going off the cliff. Current efforts to get global commitment to 80 percent emission reductions by 2050 are designed to halt warming just in time.
However, a series of changes are showing that the 2°C tipping point might always have been a mirage. Ice at the North Pole is melting faster than expected, which will heat the region quite quickly. This threatens to melt permafrost, mostly in Russia and Canada. We should perhaps have been calling it “perma” frost; it has turned out to be both more carbon-rich, and more sensitive, than previously believed.
Melting of glaciers, more voracious forest fires and slowed absorption of carbon by the seas are all happening faster than anticipated. It seems likely that not only are we “there” – past the tipping point – but we may have been “there” several years ago.
The only hope now seems to be to try to put a very large and very threatening genie back into its bottle. This is never an easy task in legend, and it won’t be in reality either.
About the Author
Floyd Smith is an expert in the study and use of emerging technologies. Floyd has written more than a dozen books on a variety of topics, with sales of more than a million copies. He has worked for companies including Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and HSBC on a variety of technology, communications and sustainability projects. Floyd’s latest book, Runaway: How the Earth “Tipped” into Runaway Climate Change, will be published in January 2010. Floyd writes on the future path of climate change for GREENandSAVE.
