Tag Archives: tipping point 2025

more on how tipping points could unfold

Leave a reply

I’ve suggested that the climate tipping point might only be called in retrospect, and that the year we pick might be 2025. Not because it can be pin-pointed that precisely, but because if we decide in retrospect that the 2020s were about when it happened, that will be a nice round number to pick.

Here is one scenario from OneEarth journal on what a cascade of tipping points could look like.

The risk of a hothouse Earth trajectory

Warming from greenhouse gas emissions accelerates Arctic sea ice and Greenland Ice Sheet loss, reducing albedo and adding meltwater that weakens the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). A weakened AMOC shifts tropical rainfall patterns, increasing drought risk and potential dieback in the northern Amazon forest, further amplifying global warming through the feedback involving carbon loss. Note that once one tipping point is crossed, it will likely impact the timing and temperature thresholds for other tipping points.

August 2025 in Review

Good bye summer 2025!

Most frightening and/or depressing story: A gigantic incoming object could be the alien ship that will put us out of our misery. Okay, probably not. The interesting and scary thing is that as our ability to look at the nearby universe improves, we are seeing more surprising stuff. But how are we supposed to think about let alone do anything about a very low probability existential threat like this one? We are not even responding to the “somewhat likely” (nuclear war, pandemics) and “likely happening right now” (a climate tipping point leading to future collapse) existential threats in front of us. I suggested that the tipping point will be called in retrospect, and 2025 might be a nice round number for the history books.

Most hopeful story: No matter what impression we are being given in the U.S., economic forces continue to push towards renewable energy and electrification worldwide.

Most interesting story, that was not particularly frightening or hopeful, or perhaps was a mixture of both: Designer babies are here, and the trend towards the rich and powerful accelerating their own evolution (and a few governments making this available to the masses) can only accelerate.