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News: Tripping over tipping points/elements
Citation:
GLASER, J. A. News: Tripping over tipping points/elements. CLEAN TECHNOLOGIES AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY. Springer-Verlag, New York, NY, 12(4):335 - 339, (2010).
Impact/Purpose:
To inform the public.
Description:
The term “tipping point” has been used to identify a critical threshold susceptible to a tiny perturbation that can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system. “Tipping element” has been introduced to describe large-scale components of the Earth system that may pass a tipping point. A special issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States (PNAS) recently focused on Tipping Elements in Earth Systems has examined potential policy-relevant tipping elements in the climate system with anthropogenic forcing to assess the current position of their tipping points. Subjects such as the evaluation of El Nino/southern oscillation response to global warming, irreversible ice sheet retreat and unstoppable loss, and climate change induced Amazon rainforest dieback were evaluated in this special issue. An earlier PNAS research article investigated the imprecision of probability assessments of tipping points identified for the global climate system. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) has underscored the importance of land degradation by human activity and the condition of the planet’s assessed ecosystems as instances of critical thresholds and tipping points important to the global environment and government. The UNEP calls global government to establish more environmentally sustainable business practices in response to the concern for these approaching thresholds and tipping points.
