Failure to Slow Warming Will Set Off Climate ‘Tipping Points,’ Scientists Say
Sofia Perez
News Article (The New York Times): https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/08/climate/global-warming-climate-tipping-point.html
Scientific Article (Science): https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abn7950
The overarching topic of the news article and scientific article that I reviewed concerned the degree of climate change with the current level of warming even with the Paris Agreement in place. The NYT article was published in September of 2022 shortly thereafter the publishing of the Science article (also September of 2022). The Science article, titled: “Exceeding 1.5°C global warming could trigger multiple climate tipping points” conducted a massive literature review and synthesized a new list of core global and regional tipping points by defining thresholds, timescales, and impacts on these tipping points. They further illustrate how policy plays into preventing our world from reaching these tipping points which would bring us closer to being in danger of extreme climate changes.
A Critical Tipping Point (CTP) is defined by authors in the article as “a critical threshold at which a tiny perturbation can qualitatively alter the state or development of a system.” The authors of the scientific article found 7 regional and 9 global tipping points of which many are at a dangerous point of being approached earlier than what was previously speculated. For each global and regional tipping point, an in-depth discussion of the timescale, threshold, and overall impact is thoroughly examined in the literature and discussed. They further concluded that if the Earth reaches warming of 1.5°C or more (likely even with the Paris agreement in place), multiple tipping points will be surpassed leading to increase in sea levels, increased release of heat-trapping gases, loss of ocean mixing, etc. The greater the increase in temperature, the greater the likelihood of multiple tipping points being surpassed and causal interactions between tipping points to occur where even tenths of degrees make a difference in the outcomes we will see in climate change.
The figure below nicely summarizes these findings; (A) shows the likelihood of tipping points being reached in relation to temperature change, (B) shows the various forcing pathways and their associated temperature change, and (C) shows the total tipping points reached as a function of time, following the various forcing pathways.
The authors also discuss how many of the threshold estimates and transition timescales are highly uncertain for elements such as the Atlantic circulation and deforestation of the Boreal and Amazon forests. Even more, many elements are too uncertain to categorize, like the Congo rainforest, or even have yet to be discovered, further stressing the importance of mitigation alongside the Paris agreement. Because of this, the authors suggest that an improved and more refined systematic scanning of candidate tipping elements using models is needed.
Shifting to the news article, I found that The New York Times overall clearly supports the points being made in the Scientific Article to highlight the importance of climate change to the general public. They ensured to not only just focus on the one research article, but also brought other outside resources to support the findings presented in the scientific study. For example, they quoted members of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and other non-research affiliated experts. While they did link most of the mentions to one of their articles, they used strategic vernacular to ensure readers associate what was to follow with prestige and credibility, which I believe was a good move to further press the importance of the research and findings.
On the other hand, there were a few shortcomings that I did find could have been improved upon. For one, they never directly defined what the article defined as climate “tipping points.” Although they made it clear that our climate was going to be negatively impacted with warming, I felt that if they would have defined tipping points and that they signaled self-perpetuating and irreversible damage, the article would have been that much stronger. Further, the only external link that was not another NYT article was the Science article itself. For example, instead of linking the research that was done by the IPCC when they mentioned it, they linked it to a NYT article discussing the findings done by the panel instead. Lastly, instead of concluding the article with an overall summary, the NYT ended with the discussion of being primarily uncertain with the findings. While this is obviously good to mention, I felt that placement at the very end was not ideal since readers will hang onto that information the most since it is at the very end. This may hinder the overall message that the audience ends up taking away.
Overall, I would rate the NYT article a 9/10. I thought the author did a good job of presenting the main findings of the scientific article and utilizing external sources to support their findings. They made sure to include pertinent examples/findings of climate change effects from various tipping points and quotes from the lead author on the scientific article. They ensured to communicate the key point of the sensitivity from a >1.5 degree change that will lead to a spread of tipping point consequences. Because they did not directly define climate tipping points and only hyper-linked their articles (beside the study itself), I docked them a point. I felt that the overall message for the general public was presented fairly well and in a representative way that the message of the findings would be understood, and for those that wanted more information could view the Science article for themselves.
Thank you for sharing these articles! I enjoyed them and it places a lot of the impacts from climate change into perspective. Similar to you, I am concerned about the location of where the NYT article placed the discussion of the uncertainty in the study. For a single read through, it is likely to stay fresh in ones mind due to it being at the end. I am curious if you feel the discussion of the uncertainty itself is necessary and if you do, do you think it was comprehensive enough? I have concerns that climate skeptics could pick quotes out from this out of context to try to convince others that 1.5-2 degrees C of warming will not have an impact because "we cannot know for sure." How would you frame a discussion on the uncertainties of the Science articles findings to help prevent this?
ReplyDeleteHi, Mike! I completely agree with you that climate skeptics can pick and choose what would support their already skeptical notion on climate change (confirmation bias if you will). I think that the NYT could have presented the uncertainties by quoting from the authors of the scientific paper themselves instead of inserting other quotes from different science experts. Further, as I mentioned above I think the placement was poorly chosen, which if the uncertainties were more within the article may have read better.
DeleteHello,
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the article published by the NYT I was also pretty surprised that the author failed to describe what a "climate tipping point" was especially because how frequently the phrase was used. The reason for this could be either just laziness or because the phrase was pulled from another article. I'm curious to see how a wide variety of readers would define the phrase after reading just the article - does it create an idea of imminent doom or instead a phenomena that is somewhat reversible?
Hi, Siri! I think that "tipping points" may not necessarily seem reversible, but without defining them make them seem not as much of a pressing concern. Further, it may make (especially climate skeptics) people feel like it is some sort of 'made up' concept that doesn't bear any actual scientific measurements with since it is not directly defined. I think this was a major downfall especially considering the author of the NYT used it in their title for the article.
DeleteHi Sofia,
ReplyDeleteGreat post! I also felt that the NYT article's placement of what can be called an "uncertainty disclaimer" was in an inopportune place in the text. The NYT article had already described the motivation of the work to reduce uncertainty about global tipping points and detailed how the findings inform the urgency to cut emissions. Essentially, I think the placement of this claim weakens the delivery of the information that the NYT article is trying to convey.
In class, we often discuss issues with news media transparency when it comes to the delivery of scientific claims. For instance, we have talked about the importance of differentiating which results are modeled and which are experimental. When this transparency can be accompanied by a weakening effect, like in this NYT article, what is the best way for a media outlet to be cautious in its delivery by including a claim of uncertainty without being dismissive of the integrity and impact of the findings?
Hi, Madeline! I kind of mentioned this above in responding to Mike, but I think that it is important to know of the uncertainty in whatever scientific data/article/research is being presented via a news article to the public, but the delivery shouldn't be put on other outside scientists as the NYT article did. I feel that it may have been a better delivery if they quoted what the primary authors said about their own research's uncertainties because it almost gives those authors more credibility for disclosing the information and it doesn't seem so dismissive when using opinions of non-authors.
DeleteHey Sofia,
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I could not access the NYT article, but the Science article was a fascinating but scary read. It feels like we are approaching an impending doom, and I admittedly am quite frightened that although this has been acknowledged for years, the world will not enact strict enough policies to fix our trajectory before it is too late to avoid some of these CTPs. I would be very curious to hear Professor Ault's expert opinion on this in class. I personally would have liked to hear more about ocean acidification in this article, because I feel that this is one of the most dangerous CTPs, but least talked about in the general media. They only mentioned it once, but destroying the biodiversity of the oceans in the coral reefs would set off an unthinkable chain of events; moreover, the ocean acidification will affect our phytoplankton which NOAA estimates to produce between 50-80% of the entire world's oxygen (https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ocean-oxygen.html)!! I feel like the Amazon gets most of the attention, as it absolutely deserves a lot and plays a key role in our world, but ocean acidification is arguably the scariest problem and I would like to see it emphasized more in reviews like this. I would love to discuss and learn if there is a field of science emerging for this 'environmental doomsday' preparation, in that what if we cannot avoid the CTPs? Is humanity prepared to mitigate the consequences with pioneering solutions of science? Rather than waiting for the sluggish political debates and policies to pass through countries, is there research into solutions that can immediately reverse things like ocean acidification to buy us some time?
Hi, Seth! Just for the future, you actually can access all NYT articles if you use your umich login (for free!!) and subscribe if you want to get them to your email (also for free!). In regards to your concerns, I totally agree that it would have been nice if the NYT highlighted more in depth of some of the specific CTPs, but I also think that in journalism it is important to keep things as concise as possible to make sure that people at least make it through reading the whole article as well. As for your questions, truthfully I am not sure, these may be questions for Professor Ault but I definitely think it will be important for humanity to be prepared to deal with our own consequences.
DeleteHi Sofia! I enjoyed reading the articles you selected, thanks for sharing. While I agree that the placement of the uncertainty disclaimer was unfortunate in the New York Times article, I also kind of think it's refreshing for an article to actually mention uncertainty in scientific models, for the sake of transparency. Also, I was wondering if these articles made any mention of the global south being disproportionately affected by these "tipping points." When I skimmed through I didn't notice anything like that being discussed and I thought it was unfortunate.
ReplyDeleteHi, Sabrina! The NYT did not directly make any notes about this as far as I am aware, but the scientific article did mention this: "AMOC collapse would have global impacts on temperature and precipitation patterns including North Atlantic cooling, Southern Hemisphere warming..." Other than that, it wasn't directly obvious that the Southern hemisphere was being disproportionately affected. This would have been strong to include in the NYT article to grasp the attention of people living in this part of the world.
DeleteHi Sofia, thanks for the great article and analysis. I had never heard of "tipping points" before, it's both encouraging and scary to learn that overshooting the target temperature limit is not a point of no return. I liked the quote in the article that said even if we overshoot the 1.5 degree limit, every tenth of a degree after that still counts. If we make progress in limiting warming but end up overshooting 1.5 degrees by a small amount, it won't necessarily lead to catastrophic consequences. I think that the author concluded the article well by stating that the main goal of the study wasn't to definitively state which tipping elements should be considered, but rather defining the temperature thresholds for the tipping elements which they successfully achieved. Is there a certain part of the study that you thought was especially impactful which could be used instead of the current conclusion for the article?
ReplyDeleteHi, Ben! Really great question. I think that it would have made the article stronger if the NYT included possible mitigation efforts that could possibly be carried out alongside the Paris Agreement since the scientific article notes that it is important that other actions be taken beside the Paris Agreement alone. I wouldn't eliminate their conclusion thought, just add this tid bit due to who the audience is.
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