Chapter
Climate Change & Global Tipping Points
37:29 - 47:22 (09:53)
Researchers warn that the melting of ice sheets and thawing of permafrost may be triggered even at 1.5 degrees of warming, leading to a domino-like tipping cascade that could push the global climate beyond a critical threshold into an alternate feedback loop called Hothouse Earth. This could cause hostile conditions, making some regions uninhabitably cold and others warmer, as well as triggering anomalies that cannot be predicted with a focus only on the most likely outcomes.
Clips
Small incremental changes in ecosystems can reinforce each other until a feedback loop is replaced with a radically different one.
37:29 - 42:54 (05:25)
Summary
Small incremental changes in ecosystems can reinforce each other until a feedback loop is replaced with a radically different one. Research shows that humans hunted fauna to extinction, which consequently led to forest fires that continue to this day, disrupting the continent's own flying rivers.
ChapterClimate Change & Global Tipping Points
EpisodeThe Sunday Read: ‘Has the Amazon Reached Its “Tipping Point”?’
PodcastThe Daily
New evidence indicates that even a 1.5 degree Celsius global temperature rise could trigger irreversible melting of ice-sheets, widespread defrosting of permafrost, and other events that will have catastrophic effects on climate patterns across the world in a domino-like fashion, possibly leading to the feedback loop called Hothouse Earth.
42:54 - 47:22 (04:28)
Summary
New evidence indicates that even a 1.5 degree Celsius global temperature rise could trigger irreversible melting of ice-sheets, widespread defrosting of permafrost, and other events that will have catastrophic effects on climate patterns across the world in a domino-like fashion, possibly leading to the feedback loop called Hothouse Earth.