SYDNEY, Australia — More than half of the tipping points that could lead to longterm irreversible changes on Earth and threaten civilization have been activated, scientists warned.
The scientists, including Emeritus Professor Will Steffen from the Australian National University, or ANU, in Canberra, argued in an article published in the journal Nature that the nine tipping points could act like a row of dominoes.
“As soon as one or two climate dominoes are knocked over, they push Earth towards others,” Steffen said in a statement released by the university Thursday to accompany the Nature article.
“We fear that it may become impossible to stop the whole row of dominoes from tumbling over, forming a cascade that could threaten the existence of human civilizations.”
The active tipping points include the loss of Arctic sea ice and ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica, the thawing of permafrost, and the destruction of boreal forest and the Amazon rainforest.
“The biosphere tipping points could trigger the uncontrollable release into the atmosphere of carbon that had been previously stored in the earth, accelerating the heating and further destabilizing the ice sheets,” Steffen said.
The melting of the ice sheets would lead to an “irreversible sea-level rise” of around 32 feet, he added.
