31 August 2019 | New Scientist | 3YOU rock your chair back, confident
you are still in control and can restore
equilibrium. Before you know it, you are
on the floor, struck by an irreversible
change you can’t swing back from.
That’s the dangerous thing about
tipping points: you don’t know you have
reached one until it is too late. Earth’s
climate could now be facing at least two.
Reports from Brazil’s National
Institute for Space Research suggest that
wildfires in the Amazon are occurring
in unusually high numbers (see page 5).
They haven’t yet been confirmed as
record-breaking, but many see them
as evidence that the anti-environment,
pro-agriculture policies of Brazil’s
president, Jair Bolsonaro, are driving
illegal burning of the rainforest.
This is disastrous for the people and
wildlife living there, and for the planet.The Amazon is a region of extraordinary
cultural and biological diversity, and
a huge global sink of carbon dioxide.
We need it to have a chance of keeping
global warming to a manageable level.
Fewer trees means less water vapour
being pumped into the atmosphere.
Intact regions of forest start to suffer.
At some point, the whole may reach
a tipping point where the untouched
forest dies and the Amazon flips to
become a non-forest ecosystem.We don’t know where that point is.
Some studies indicate that we could
get there if a fifth of the rainforest is
lost. Others suggest a tipping point
could be reached as soon as 2030.
Meanwhile, an unprecedented
number of fires are ripping through the
Arctic (see page 20). There, the tipping
point is of a different nature: a sea-ice-
free Arctic creating positive feedbacks
that accelerate warming. That risk is now
so dire that some researchers say we
should investigate local geoengineering
options to prevent it (see page 38).
The law of unintended consequences
means that must be a last resort. As
for the Amazon, Bolsonaro must be
persuaded to about-face, if necessary
by withholding aid and trade deals.
We know by now what we all have to
do. Let’s not test the tipping points. ❚The climate tipping point
Two crises mean irreversible change is no longer an abstract concept
The policies of
Brazil’s president,
Jair Bolsonaro,
have seen an
increase in
Amazon burningEV
AR
ISTO^ SA/AFP/GETT
Y^ IMAGESThe leader
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