Laundry list of tipping points already passed

[JobOne, 6-22-2023, "Eleven critical climate change and global warming tipping points defined," Job One for Humanity, ] WL

Introduction "Crossing a negative tipping point is a mega-consequence that will usually crash an area so thoroughly that it will be nearly impossible to reestablish the pre-crash level. If you are eventually able to recover from a crossed tipping point crash, it will be so expensive, difficult, and slow --- you will curse the day you let any area go beyond its tipping point." Lawrence Wollersheim While you are learning about key global warming tipping points, it is critically important to understand that no compensatory calculations for the effects of any global warming tipping points being crossed were ever included in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC,) calculations for precisely how much we have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to save ourselves from extinction. This is important because the IPCC's global fossil fuel reduction calculations are currently being used by all of the member governments of the United Nations (about 190 countries,) for setting their own internal national fossil fuel reduction programs. This horrific failure to include crossing any global warming tipping points in our current global and national fossil fuel reduction calculations is also true for the world's most recent 2015 Paris Climate Agreement. As you will soon discover this omission of including proper calculations for crossing global warming tipping points as the world continues to warm is the recipe for mutually assured destruction. Yes, this failure to include allowance calculations for crossed tipping points also means that the national fossil fuel reduction programs of every member of the United Nations using the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement targets is also based on incomplete and inaccurate calculations. In other words, our current global fossil fuel reduction calculations are based on the inconceivable belief that "everything will work perfectly within our rapidly warming climate systems all of the time and we will never crossing any key global warming tipping points." Unfortunately, the immutable laws of mathematics and physics also do not work that way, particularly as we simultaneously continue to add massively more carbon and methane to our atmosphere each year. We all know how "everything always goes perfectly as planned all of the time" so, there's nothing really to worry about here or, is there? As you explore the key global warming tipping points described below the shocking meaning to your future well-being of our government's not including crossing any global warming tipping points in their calculations for how much we have to reduce our global and national fossil fuel use to prevent extinction will become much clearer to you... Why global warming tipping points are important to your future: If we can determine where the global warming tipping points are, we can better predict system collapses and future catastrophes and prepare for them, as well as locate other interconnected tipping points. Tipping points can create highly dangerous positive feedback loops. Positive feedback loops—endless, self-reinforcing cycles can speed a global warming process so much that it will jump from a gradual, linear progression to a very steep, exponential progression or a falling off a cliff progression or complete system collapse which can lead to mass human extinction within our lifetimes. The global warming tipping point information disclosed below presents a grave extinction threat for humanity as well as animal and biological species. To avoid triggering extinction-producing climate tipping points we will have to reduce our global fossil fuel use to the levels described on this important page to our futures! What is a global warming tipping point? Tipping points do not occur only within the climate. They can and will occur in almost any area of life, causing large and unexpected changes. Knowing when they're coming is essential if you do not want to be blindsided by catastrophic global warming consequences. This document contains everything you need to know about global-warming-related tipping points. Because of the complexity of tipping points and their initiating processes, this document may be more challenging, but you do not have to understand everything about tipping points perfectly!. By the time you finish this, you will have gleaned enough about the critical and dangerous role of global warming tipping points to understand their high potential impacts both on your present day-to-day life and your future. To make this document a bit more manageable, the most complex science has been placed just before the end along with a humorous 11-minute animation link to help you visualize important tipping points and principles. Although this page is science-filled, it is essential reading to understand the depth of our current climate change emergency and the Climageddon Extinction Scenario global warming prediction model. The simple definition of a global warming tipping point is: The point where some process or new stimulus causes a sudden and significant change in the status of the ongoing process or system, causing it to jump from one state to a new, significantly different state. This sudden change is not only significant; it is often extreme! As an example of a sudden and significant change, imagine a wine glass tipping over and going from the state of being full to empty. After the wine glass tipping point has been passed, a transition to a new state quickly occurs. Like the falling of the wine glass, tipping points can often lead to the sudden collapse of a process. If you think about a tipping point on a graph causing a steep slope change, you will understand why knowing when tipping points will occur is so important. (See the Tipping Points Have Points of No Return graph below for what a tipping point does to the slope of a graph line.) Tipping points are often also irreversible, comparable to wine spilling from the glass. No matter how hard you try, standing up the wine glass will not put the wine back into it. Similarly, many global warming tipping points are also irreversible or almost irreversible in any time frame relative to a human lifespan! For example, the West Antarctic ice shelf appears to have passed its tipping point and is now in an irreversible melting process. Once escalating global warming is finally ended, it may take tens of thousands of years to restore that ice shelf—if it ever could even happen. Points of no return Before a tipping point is reached, there is another key milestone in the process. It is the point of irreversible process momentum toward that tipping point, or what is commonly known as the point of no return. In simple mechanical systems like in the wine glass example, the point of no return can occur very close to the actual tipping point. Even though the point of no return may be close to its tipping point, the two are separate parts of the tipping point process. In complex climate, human, biological, or geological systems, the point of no return can occur long before the actual tipping point. This is because global warming and our climate are complex adaptive systems. The developmental processes that eventually trigger a tipping point usually involve many factors and many processes beyond a single mechanical balance point or a simple mechanical falling process as in the wine glass spilling example. (If you're curious, at the end of this document you will find a section that provides more information about the complex qualities and nature of complex adaptive systems). Chapter_4_Tipping_Points_Have_No_Return.png In the wine glass example, the point of no return is the moment of directional motion and momentum where the forward-falling glass is no longer able to teeter backward and maintain or return to its original upright position and stability. In the wine glass tipping scenario, the point of no return is quite visible. Once it falls past this last balancing point of still reversible direction and momentum and crosses its point of no return, it can no longer stop itself from falling further and crossing the wine glass’s last balancing point, thus irreversibly tipping and spilling the wine out of the glass. By contrast, global warming points of no return tend to be largely invisible—i.e., irreversible fates are set in motion before we know they are happening. However, if you can determine the point of no return for any global warming tipping point, you can “buy” yourself critical forecasting capabilities that can give you some warning for approximately when that tipping point will be crossed. Being aware of global warming process points of no return will be extremely useful in preparing for and predicting global warming tipping points and catastrophes. "Tipping points are so dangerous because if you pass them, the climate is out of humanity's control: if an ice sheet disintegrates and starts to slide into the ocean there's nothing we can do about that." —James Hansen Contrary to what many people believe, tipping points are not just rare high-impact events. Knowing global warming, climate, human, and biological tipping points as well as how and when they will occur will be the key to creating all future planning as global warming escalates, and our global climate continues to destabilize. The 11 major climate change and global warming tipping points within the climate, human, and biological systems There are many global warming system and subsystem tipping points within the climate, human, and biological systems. The key process that directly or indirectly causes the global warming tipping points to be crossed is increasing heat, as is implied in the term global warming. When global warming tipping points are crossed, one or more of them can trigger processes leading to: sudden large-scale catastrophes in climate, human, and biological systems, irreversible global warming, irreversible climate destabilization, and/or extinction-level climate destabilization. The major global warming tipping points (other than increasing temperature,) within the interacting climate, human, and biological systems are: The total amount of water vapor in the atmosphere. Water vapor is the gaseous state of water. It is the most important natural greenhouse gas. When it condenses onto a surface, a net warming occurs on that surface. In the atmosphere, water vapor increases as heat increases. Increased heat evaporates more water from oceans, lakes, and rivers, which creates more water vapor and heat in an endless self-reinforcing cycle—another positive feedback loop. At some point, this positive feedback loop triggers a tipping point, and the process goes from a gradual linear heat-producing progression into a steeper exponential progression. The result is that the average global temperature increases even faster. Humans cannot survive if the air is too moist and hot, which would happen for the majority of human populations if global temperatures rise by 11–12 °C, as landmasses warm faster than the global average. The total amount of melting ice. Increased heat melts more sea ice, ice shelves, and glaciers, resulting in more water flowing into our oceans and increasing sea levels. This process repeats with each increase in temperature in an endless, self-reinforcing cycle—a positive feedback loop. At some point, this positive feedback loop triggers a tipping point, and the increased heat and ice melting process can go from a gradual linear progression (1, 2, 3 ,4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10) to a far steeper exponential progression (2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1,024, 2,048, 4,096, 8,192, 16,384). The albedo effect. The whiteness of polar ice reflects heat away from the planet. This is called the albedo effect. As the polar ice melts, significant areas darken and therefore absorb more heat rather than reflecting it outward. At some point in this melting process, a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop occurs, which again reduces the albedo effect’s total heat-reflecting capabilities. This in turn further increases global warming. As before, this self-reinforcing cycle of loss of reflectivity and increasing heat will eventually move from a gradual linear progression to a steep exponential heat-increasing progression. The release of methane from the warming of polar permafrost and tundra. As the temperature continues to increase, a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop triggers a permafrost and tundra methane release tipping point, leading eventually to the exponential progression mentioned before. This could be a very critical tipping point because methane produces 20 to 100 times the heat-creating effect in the atmosphere as compared to carbon dioxide. This increased methane within our atmosphere will also remain there from three years to decades before it decays back into simple carbon. To emphasize how dangerous this is for our future, in February 2013, scientists using radiometric dating techniques on Russian cave formations to measure melting rates warned that a 1.5° Celsius (2.7° Fahrenheit) global rise in temperature compared to pre-industrial levels was enough to start a general permafrost melt. (From David Spratt’s Climate Reality Check). We are almost at 1.5° Celsius right now, and even higher temperatures are inevitable. Please also note that melting permafrost in tundra also has the potential to cause local and global pandemics caused by ancient viruses and bacteria being released from the permafrost. Already in Siberia, they have had anthrax and smallpox outbreaks because of melting permafrost and tundra. The die-offs of carbon-eating and oxygen-producing sea plankton are because of the warming, carbonization, and acidification of the oceans. As this continues to intensify, it also creates a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop, which triggers a tipping point, and the die-off process goes from a gradual linear progression into a steeper exponential progression. This results in sudden and rapidly increasing die-offs in the ocean fish populations that live on this plankton, as well as sudden and rapidly increasing drop-offs in the ocean’s oxygen-producing capabilities. (Oxygen-producing plankton are critical to our future. They produce 50% - 80% of the world’s total oxygen supply). The ever-increasing atmospheric heat is captured and stored by the oceans and sent to lower levels of the ocean. These captured and stored masses of deep warm water can suddenly rise to the surface again. This will release a massive amount of additional heat directly into the atmosphere and quickly spike the average global temperature. The loss of the atmospheric carbon-eating forests because of heat, drought, wildfires, and timber-harvesting or agriculture-related clearcutting. As temperatures rise and droughts, heat, forest fires, and clearcutting kill trees, we lose our essential carbon-eating forests, which increases the carbon and heat in the atmosphere. This process eventually triggers a tipping point and the forests’ loss of carbon-eating capabilities goes from a gradual linear progression into a steep exponential progression of forest loss and escalating carbon in the atmosphere. This results in a sudden additional spike upward in average global temperature. Soils that normally absorb carbon begin releasing it back into the atmosphere from their previously-stored or inherent carbon because of the escalating heat. This increasing heat-induced release of carbon by the soils creates a self-reinforcing positive feedback loop. This triggers a soil carbon release tipping point and the process goes into a more exponential progression. This also results in a rapid increase in average global temperature. The changes in major ocean currents help to stabilize our weather and seasons. Research is now expanding on how increasing heat will affect currents like the North Atlantic current. Because of global warming, if the North Atlantic current were slowed down or diverted from its presently established pathway, it would create very significant changes in weather patterns, which would affect growing seasons, rain, snowfall, and temperature—all of which have strong effects on vital crop yields. The global warming-caused pandemic potential. When ancient ice, glaciers, permafrost, or frozen tundra melts, it releases still-living bacteria and viruses never seen before. This means we could soon be unleashing the ultimate global pandemic. So many different types of new bacteria and viruses could be released at once that even our best scientists would not be able to create and distribute the vaccines needed in time to contain disease outbreaks or a growing global pandemic. Total weight of rising seas and melting ice shifting. Although research is sparse in this area, it has been posited that the total massive weight change from all ice melt areas (where ice covers land masses) as well as the heating, expanding, and shifting weight effect on seas caused by global warming can move existing tectonic plates. This plate motion could cause earthquakes and volcanic eruptions at an unprecedented scale. If the shifting of these tectonic plates causes numerous or massive volcanic eruptions around the planet, we could also go into a volcanic winter. If the shifting of tectonic plates triggers a supervolcano-like eruption, the years that the sun would be blocked could kill off most of the human population. Chapter_4_Global_Warming_Tipping_Points.png There are many other known and unknown tipping points in both climate and biological systems not mentioned above. The 11 above are only the ones that are the most important and the ones we know the most about. When you are thinking about the collective and individual impacts of the above 11 tipping points, you must also add in their impact on human social, economic and political systems and the tipping points within those unique systems. For example, as we continue to cross more of the 11 tipping points mentioned above, we will first experience the severe system crashes which normally occur when the tipping point is crossed, and then our social, economic, and political human systems will begin experiencing extreme stress. This will then also push them over their own internal tipping points. One way this could happen is as follows. As crops fail from droughts, rain bombs, and extreme temperatures, food prices will skyrocket, populations will riot and then, law and order will break down as more people die. Eventually, the weaker countries will collapse under the weight of these internal climate catastrophes and resource conflicts. Next, as the weaker nations collapse, they will create more desperate climagees (climate migrants rushing into the stronger nations.) As this happens, the strongest nations will also experience a breakdown in law and order, and, in the later phases of the Climageddon Extinction Scenario, they too will experience a complete social and political breakdown.