More than half of the tipping points that can lead to long-term irreversible climate changes on earth and threaten civilization have been activated. Various scientists state this in an article published in Nature scientific journal.
The nine tilt points can behave like a row of dominoes. “As soon as one or two dominoes are knocked down, they push the earth in the direction of the other,” explains Professor Will Steffen of the Australian National University (ANU) in Canberra. “We fear that it will be impossible to prevent the entire row of dominoes from falling over, causing a waterfall that could threaten the existence of human civilizations.”
The active tipping points are the melting of the Arctic sea ice and the ice plains in Greenland and Antarctica, the thaw of the permafrost and the felling of the trees of the boreal forest and the Amazon.
“This can lead to the uncontrollable release of carbon into the atmosphere that was previously stored in the earth, which will accelerate global warming and the destabilization of the ice plains,” said Steffen. By melting the ice plains, the sea level would rise “irreversibly” to 10 meters. “We have less and less time to respond,” the scientists warn.
Although most countries have signed the agreement to limit global warming to at most 2 degrees Celsius, we are heading for global warming of at least 3 degrees, it still sounds.
