[POST] Tipping points, slipping points
Meanwhile, back at Earth, doom looms and loops
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Once our linked cars reach the edge of the rollercoaster’s first drop, it’s all gravity from that point on and we just have to hold on for dear life.
We inexorably approach that cliff-with-no-hanging-allowed, buoyed only by our firm disbelief — per Trump — in climate change.
Trump, as we all know, makes his own luck.
As for my children and those who come after? They’re going to be shit-out-of-something, alright.
We are entering an age of environmental do-loops powered by their own momentum.
From America’s New Map:
Over the next decades, humanity faces several accelerating feedback loops that will trigger no-turning-back points in regions such as the Arctic/Antarctic (ice melt, loss of solar reflection); Amazon (carbon-sink loss); and Siberia (methane release). Once tipping points are reached, the resulting climate dynamics leap beyond human causality and become self-perpetuating.
ECONOMIST: Earth’s climate is approaching irreversible tipping points; Scientists are racing to work out just how close they might be
The Economist does a nice job of summing up the Big One that is the Amazon, aka, “Earth’s lungs.” This is known as the Amazon dieback:
The Amazon rainforest is so big that it makes its own climate. As they photosynthesise and transpire, its billions of trees collectively produce enough moisture to form clouds. These, by some estimates, are responsible for at least a third of the rainforest’s life-sustaining rainfall. But climate change is disrupting this circular process. The build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere has raised regional temperatures, worsened droughts and increased the risk of fires. All kill trees.
Fewer trees means less rainfall, higher temperatures and yet more fires. Climate-change-induced deforestation therefore risks becoming self-perpetuating. And the more humans with chainsaws do to help things along, the sooner the dire day will come when the forest has shrunk so far that nothing can be done to restore it. Much of the basin will turn into a dry savannah, and the tens of billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide stored there will be released into the atmosphere, further heating the planet.
Here’s some resulting radical acceptance: to save itself, humanity will inevitably get into the business of terra-forming … right here on Earth. We’ll learn to manipulate local climates of our own making because we’ll have to.
A great map listing a number of these doom-loops, from The Economist:
It mirrors the data visualization we offered in America’s New Map:
Summing up system-level doom loops:
Melting polar ice decreases Earth's reflectivity (albedo), meaning darker ocean/water surfaces absorb more heat
Rising global temperatures thaw permafrost, releasing greenhouse-gas-without-peer methane
More frequent and severe droughts + wildfires destroy carbon sinks
Higher temperatures, extreme weather, and pests reduce crop yields, forcing farmers into more desperate ag practices
Warmer oceans absorb less CO2, reducing their role as carbon sinks
Increased temperatures change cloud patterns, reducing solar reflection
As calamities pile up, governments and communities divert resources toward immediate recovery and away from mitigation
Continuous stress and episodic shocks speed up the collapse of ecosystems, eliminating the critical climate regulation services they naturally (pun intended) provide.
Stack them on top of one another and, yeah, it gets pretty scary for anyone with a still-lengthy life runway.
A positive glimpse of this future: We sensor-up the planet like never before, using drones like never before, tap into AGI and other advances afforded by the looming Technological Singularity to optimize our adaptations and mitigation efforts — to include mastering the manipulation of local climates … and humanity basically surmounts that stunning requirement imposed by climate change — namely, that all species adapt and evolve at a rate roughly 10,000 times the historical norm.
So, what are the positive tipping points we might seek along the way?
Mass adoption of renewable energy (the anti-Trump future) to produce electricity (cheaper wind & solar), in turn reducing the use of coal and oil (China, India, and Brazil have already crossed this cost threshold)
Electric vehicle (EV) market domination (see anywhere but Trump’s America)
Transition from fossil-based heating to heat pumps and similar technologies to clean up residential heating
Widespread adoption of regenerative agriculture practices (believe me, it’s more the government that’s the problem here as farmers live to adapt to changing climate, as they have throughout history)
Widespread reforestation efforts sparking widespread ecosystem recovery and thus carbon capture capacity
When green finance (e.g., Zillow’s climate-risk disclosure, sustainable public funds [see Biden’s IRA focus], divestment from fossil fuels) reaches a critical mass, it drives broader investment and innovation
Social movements and citizen-demand eventually force ambitious policies (again, an ABT or anybody but Trump future).
One senses a pathway here: financial pain forces political response triggers positive tipping points resulting in a normalizing or plateauing of the change trajectory.
The rollercoaster evens out and slows down.
Positive feedback loops intermix and grow stronger as a result, just like negative ones do.
The only thing we know for sure is that transformational change is coming no matter what: we can attempt to steer it to our benefit or we can just take it on the chin. Older generations naturally prefer to gut it out while younger ones naturally demand a comprehensive response.
As such, this becomes a huge resource fight on generational terms, just like the one between AI and humanity.
In fact, I sense an x-y forming here … AI v humans on one axis, mitigation v adaptation on the other … to be continued tomorrow.
