Rutgers: Scientists Question the Use of "Tipping Point" Metaphor in Climate Change Discussions

[OKIsItJustMe]

Scientists Question the Use of “Tipping Point” Metaphor in Climate Change Discussions

By Kitta MacPherson
Date December 3, 2024

The concept may be confusing the public and inhibiting action, researchers say
A group of scientists, including researchers from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Princeton University and Carleton University, has questioned the accuracy and utility of the metaphor “tipping point” in calling attention to the threat of climate change.

The phrase, while perhaps initially useful as a clarion call that warns about sudden, drastic changes, may now be confusing the public and impeding action, researchers said.

Writing a perspective in Nature Climate Change, the scientists, from the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, Princeton’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, and Climate Resilient Societies through Equitable Transformations (ReSET) Lab at Carleton University as well as six other academic institutions, argue that the notion of tipping points, when referencing physical and human aspects of the Earth’s changing climate, is not well-defined and often applied inappropriately. There also is no evidence, they said, that the apocalyptic tone of the phrasing is driving action.

The researchers said the public is more likely to respond to threats that are perceived as relatively certain, near-term and nearby than to what are viewed as abstract dangers, the timing of which are either highly uncertain or unpredictable.

…

http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41558-024-02196-8

[jfz9580m]

1. Interesting to read

Especially since I just read this:
https://www.noemamag.com/its-time-to-give-up-hope-for-a-better-climate-get-heroic/

It is a frustrating and important question how to message so the public gets the stake for their children’s lives if not their own. But also that it is not empty alarmism etc.

I think if we explained to the general public that the planet is finite and that population explosion/consumer culture will end up in the depletion of more and more non-renewable resources we would have a better shot than trying to sell “shop till you drop and still save the planet!” It might make more sense explained in terms of fewer real and sustainable jobs ultimately, worsening public health and spiralling crises..

Our lifestyles are not sustainable. Real green jobs imagined with actual creativity so real sustainability is worked in would make so much more sense than anything we are doing. Nature itself is rich in information. But we have this one model of economic growth relentlessly shoved down our throats by people like Musk, Andreessen etc. It is idiotic.

When I look at the amount of garbage we generate I wonder why it never occurred to anyone thus far to make a serious push to make recycling metals and plastics a profitable and useful pursuit:

https://www.motherjones.com/environment/2024/11/demand-critical-metals-e-waste-recycling-clean-energy-climate-vince-beiser-book-power-metal/

Only 22 percent of that e-waste is collected and recycled, the UN estimates. The rest is dumped, burned, or forgotten—particularly in rich countries, where most people have no convenient way to get rid of their old Samsung Galaxy phones, Xbox controllers, and myriad other gadgets. Indeed, every year, humanity is wasting more than $60 billion worth of so-called critical metals—the ones we need not only for electronics, but also for the hardware of renewable energy, from electric vehicle (EV) batteries to wind turbines.

Lab made meat is another one-would reduce so much animal suffering and be better for the planet.
Thoughtful advocacy the world over regarding the importance of smaller family sizes across the board is another one. But the UN, highlighting their general cluelessness recently said population explosion should not be discussed. We see its effects everywhere (including the rise in extremism that is inevitable when an increasingly large number of people compete for what in any real sense are dwindling resources and opportunities for most of us who are middle class or below) and not discussing it ensures that it will only be discussed by hate groups. Common sense is not something our species actually likes.

[OKIsItJustMe]

2. Decades ago, my mother told me "I expect them to 'mine landfills.'"

Her thinking was that there were rich deposits of metals just beneath the surface. (Why dig deep into the ground to produce “ore?”)

Personally, I don’t think that any type of “messaging” will save us. We’ve tried multiple approaches and still, we hear “Drill baby! Drill!” What we need is a way to travel back in time to create compelling “messaging” in the “post-war” period.

While, clearly, the population explosion helped get us into this mess, I don’t see birth control getting us out of it. Here’s the way I see it, using “back of the envelope” reasoning here, Let’s assume:

1. average life expectancy is 70 years, and always will be
2. age brackets are even
3. persons of every age are responsible for the same level of emissions
4. (To celebrate the “New Year”) everyone stops having babies, Jan, 1, 2025

• After 7 years (Jan 1, 2032) our population will have decreased 10% and emissions will have been cut by the same amount.
• After 35 years (Jan 1, 2060) our population will have been reduced by ½ and our emissions will have been cut by the same amount.

The stated goal is to achieve “Net Zero” (a 100% cut in emissions) by 2050. That’s a problem.

Do you see where I’m going with this? Cuts in population and emissions like that, while dramatic are not sufficient to decrease “global heating” let alone reverse it.

We need much more dramatic cuts than that, much sooner. “Net Zero” is not enough to stop the heating. We need “Net Negative” and you will not achieve that through “birth control” alone, if it is achievable at all. To achieve “Net Negative” will require a lot of work, and, well… “Sr. Citizens” are notoriously unproductive.

Now, if a miracle occurs, and we discover some very easy, very effective, very quick way to remove phenomenal amounts of “greenhouse gases” from the atmosphere and the oceans, then, in theory, we could just do that faster to make up for the population, if that population were willing to live in a more sustainable fashion.

[jfz9580m]

3. Well..

(To celebrate the “New Year”) everyone stops having babies, Jan, 1, 2025

Well no. That would be way extreme and not feasible. I was thinking more of a purely voluntary 0-3 child policy (depending on personal preference not your “fitness” to reproduce) being advocated for instead of pretending as our media, businesses and politicians (especially authoritarians, the religious and those who prize cheap labor) do that there is no connection between the degradation of our ecosystems and our population sizes.
I disapprove of how environmentalists have made a point of eliminating that point altogether from the debate and for such wrong headed reasons. The way to ensure that only racists or Thanos types/Malthusians discuss the issue (or rather let things get really bad by not discussing the issue in any sane way, but exploiting it politically and economically) is to stick our heads in the sand.

Even if you don’t care about factory farming or biodiversity loss as I do, it doesn’t make sense for anyone’s future to not include small family size as an explicit way to plan ahead.

It just doesn’t make sense. For someone who keeps talking about population collapse Musk seems to think none of us can connect the dots between someone constantly being bullish for more automation and robots and the destruction of safety nets while also saying the right people (the billionaires love them some eugenics) should have more kids.

I think the billionaire class wants a population collapse and to basically repopulate the earth with their seed . These are people whose stupidity and crassness are unfathomable to the decent human mind.

Some kind of fucked up eugenics based worldview along with a fondness for the chaos, cheap consumer goods, cheap labor and deregulation that population explosion results in. Its spiralling effects are that people have less access to the most basic resources-education and healthcare. But hey if we stick our heads in the sand no one will notice our lives suck more and more and we are fighting for a shrinking if not nonexistent resource pool.

It is as if, if we don’t say here are ways the rest of us can at least try to work to salvage our futures rather than pretending to mimic the ostensibly head-in-the-sand class which is politely silent about the fate of most people at this rate.

“We need much more dramatic cuts than that, much sooner. “Net Zero” is not enough to stop the heating. We need “Net Negative” and you will not achieve that through “birth control” alone, if it is achievable at all. To achieve “Net Negative” will require a lot of work, and, well… “Sr. Citizens” are notoriously unproductive.

Well I agree with your assessment up to a point but as for productivity, what I really see the world over is a lot of people without many employment opportunities or the means to acquire skills to get sustainably employed.

What really exists increasingly is a gig economy. And what that means often is an increasingly angry and upset group of young, unemployed males with deep frustrations under the surface in every part of the world. Not that it is not understandable. And a lot of weary and broken women with frustrations. It is like a powder keg of racial, gender and religious tensions and war everywhere.

But that is the increasingly invisible populace everywhere whose futures are being destroyed. I don’t understand how we are ignoring globally just how many people will descend into misery and poverty from climate change. Let alone the wiping out of ecosystems and more suffering for animals.

Yeah it looks bleak.


That said you might enjoy Noema OkIsItJustMe. I rediscovered Noema and it is more green themed lately. It is a cool magazine with interesting ideas but without that faint whiff of right wing bullshit that stuff like Edge magazine has. Edge is also sometimes interesting but stinks of stuff like the Californian Ideology and other nonsense often.

I agree it all looks bleak. But after we all die at least it will be nice for the billionaires and their minions.

[OKIsItJustMe]

4. My little illustration was reductio ad absurdum

It demonstrates the fastest cuts could be made through birth control.

I think the billionaire class wants a population collapse and to basically repopulate the earth with their seed . These are people whose stupidity and crassness are unfathomable to the decent human mind.

I realized after the Trump/Musk “interview” that Musk is essentially totally ignorant of even the most basic facet of climate science.

https://singjupost.com/full-transcript-elon-musk-interviews-donald-trump/?singlepage=1

…

So it’s you know, I don’t think it’s right to sort of vilify the oil and gas industry. And the world has a certain demand for oil and gas, and it’s probably better if the United States provides that than some other countries. And it would help with prosperity in the US. And at the same time, obviously, my view is, is like, we do over time want to move to a sustainable energy economy, because eventually you do run out of I mean, you run out of oil and gas.

Climate Change Concerns

ELON MUSK: It’s not there. It’s not infinite. And there is some risk. I think it’s not the risk is not as as high as, you know, a lot of people say it is with respect to global warming.

But I think if you just keep increasing the cost of a million in the atmosphere long enough, eventually, it actually simply gets uncomfortable to breathe, people don’t realize this. If you go, if you go past 1000 parts per million of CO2, you start getting headaches and nausea. And so we’re now in the sort of 400 range, we’re adding, I think, about roughly two parts per million per year. So I mean, still gives us what it means, like, we still have quite a bit of time.

…

That level of ignorance is appalling, especially in the CEO of a company with a reputation for combatting climate change. So, yeah, I’m not surprised he doesn’t understand the dynamics of population growth.

I agree it all looks bleak. But after we all die at least it will be nice for the billionaires and their minions.

No, I don’t think it will be. I don’t believe they will survive much longer than the rest of us (and perhaps not as long… remind me, how did the French nobility make out in the 18th century? How about the Russian nobility in the early 20th century?)

[jfz9580m]

5. Agreed

No, I don’t think it will be. I don’t believe they will survive much longer than the rest of us (and perhaps not as long… remind me, how did the French nobility make out in the 18th century? How about the Russian nobility in the early 20th century?)

Yeah I think they are worried about that. I saw this a while back and it illustrates how almost childlike the minds of the ruling class tend to be:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/02/the-apocalyptic-delusions-of-the-silicon-valley-elite

He joined editor-in-chief Nathan J. Robinson on the Current Affairs podcast to discuss how Silicon Valley’s elite are trying to shield themselves from the consequences of inequality and climate destruction.
Douglas’ latest book builds on an experience he had several years ago, where several billionaires called him out into the desert to ask him how to survive “The Event,” an anticipated apocalyptic catastrophe that would send them heading for their bunkers. He shows how the super-rich often don’t feel like winners. They feel scared about a coming giant global rupture. Some want to upload their consciousness and merge with machines. They are lost in fantasies about a transcendent future that bear striking similarities to Christian ideas of the Rapture.
The conversation touches on many topics, including right-wing conspiracy theories, Timothy Leary, metaverses, simulated cats, James Brown, plants, bunker jacuzzis, and Mussolini. But it focuses on what Douglas calls “The Mindset,” the ideology held by the world’s “tech bros” that envisions an escape from material reality and the merging of humans and machines. Douglas makes the case for viciously mocking tech bros who entertain damaging and delusional beliefs. He shows how what we really need is to care for the planet, care about each other, and not lose ourselves in techno-solutionist fantasies about transcending the material world. The “bunker strategy” for dealing with chaos, he says, won’t work, because human survival depends on the survival of society. “What happens when you need a new heater for the jacuzzi?” he asks. You can live alone in a bunker for a few weeks or months, maybe. But the only realistic long-term path forward is to build a resilient society and planet.

They really see a simplified model of the world where you follow some Thatcherite model of the world and society where you and the three other billionaires you know invented and built everything and deserve to be allowed to exploit the earth free of any repercussions. And since the media largely gushes and fawns over them and puff pieces like these glorify their narcissism, who is to call it out? :

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sallypercy/2023/09/26/is-elon-musk-the-greatest-leader-on-earth/
🤮