Climatic Destruction Tipping Points Coming…Next Year
Friday, February 8th, 2008 by Maryam Webster
‘TIPPING POINTS’ COULD COME THIS CENTURY
A number of key components of the earth’s climate system could pass their ‘tipping point’ this century, according to new research led by a scientist at the University of East Anglia. The collapse of the Indian monsoon season could happen as early as next year, followed in ten years by the complete melt of the Arctic sea ice and displacement of the West African monsoon season causing greening of the Sahara desert and Sahel border territories. The Sahel includes Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Niger, Nigeria, Chad, Sudan, and the "Horn" of Africa.
Other events are hundreds of years in the future, and are increasingly worse in perspective. And may or may not be good.
Published today by the prestigious international journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS), the researchers have coined a new term, ‘tipping elements’, to describe those components of the climate system that are at risk of passing a tipping point.
The term ‘tipping point’ is used to describe a critical threshold at which a small change in human activity can have large, long-term consequences for the Earth’s climate system.
The nine tipping elements and the time it will take them to undergo a major transition are:
- Melting of Arctic sea-ice (approx 10 years)
- Decay of the
Greenland ice sheet (more than 300 years) - Collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet (more than 300 years)
- Collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation (approx 100 years)
- Increase in the El Nino Southern Oscillation (approx 100 years)
- Collapse of the Indian summer monsoon (approx 1 year)
- Greening of the Sahara/Sahel and disruption of the West African monsoon (approx 10 years)
- Dieback of the Amazon rainforest (approx 50 years)
- Dieback of the Boreal Forest (approx 50 years)
These were the findings of lead author Prof Tim Lenton of the University of East Anglia (UEA) and colleagues at the Postdam Institute of Climate Impact Research (PIK),
The paper also demonstrates how, in principle, early warning systems could be established using real-time monitoring and modelling to detect the proximity of certain tipping points.
"Society must not be lulled into a false sense of security by smooth projections of global change," said Prof Lenton.
"Our findings suggest that a variety of tipping elements could reach their critical point within this century under human-induced climate change. The greatest threats are tipping of the Arctic sea-ice and the
Read the original here: http://snipurl.com/9climatetippingpoint
When I first put up my website in 1996, I got a nastygram from the Merriam Webster dictionary people as I too am a prolific writer and produced tons of material that contained words in their book. Imagine the cheek, they said. They desisted after a spell of chatting with me. An almost magical sense of charm and persuasion goes a long way back among the women in my family. 
Speaking of the Dalai Lama, I have received two initiations from His Holiness Tenzing Gyatso, the Fourteenth Dalai Lama. The White Tara longevity empowerment and the Medicine Buddha initiation and blessing for my work in healing. It’s not as cool as you think though - I was one of about five thousand that day to receive these blessings. And he was going along so fast in Tibetan you had a hard time keeping up with the visualizations of a white Buddha above a towering stack of golden Buddhas all holding lotus flowers and so on and so on.
If you like cats and you’re a computer nerd, you might "has" seen the picture at left. (No, it’s not my kitties, 
I am an accomplished frontierswoman. Though you wouldn’t think it to look at me, I can make my own paper and ink, spin, weave, dye woven goods with native plants, make soap in a cast iron cauldron, split logs, make brooms and other tools of wood and local plants, harvest and manage forest foods such as hickory nuts, boil the hickory branches to get three kinds of food: salt, sugar and milk (yep, you can), muddle and sweeten ground roasted acorns for frontier flour, construct a log cabin (well, in theory, I only did it once and that was with a lot of help - those logs are heavy!), grow, harvest and make herbal medicines (plus know how to use them), midwife human and animal babies into the world, make shoes from leather, plants or refuse such as old tires (great for treads), set, manage and harvest a trotline for fish, snares for rabbit and quail, plus skin and dress the meat if called upon to do so (not my favorite thing) and tan the skins. I can build a fire with a bow drill and pine duff or other local tinder, though it takes a long time. I can construct a shelter out of almost any material available, and find food in a forest even in winter. What’s more, I have a hardy spirit and am a survivor, born of a long line of women who persisted, shared their knowledge and endured to win in life.
I’ve not been called on to do any of these frontier tasks in a long time, but the memory still persists. My mother was a great one for recapturing the pioneer spirit and my great grandmother on my father’s side up in the Smoky Mountains of Carolina (they really do look like they’re smoking - see?) thought a girl child should know how to weave and dye and make soap, ink, paper and so on. 
I was recently asked by a client how to remain professional in a contentious situation. Here is something I wrote a long time ago that still applies:
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