There is this concept in Physics and Ecology (and in other types of systems too) called Tipping Points. It conjectures that there is a "last straw" that will inevitably change the entire "state" of a system, rapidly flipping it in "another state." A different state that is not easily reversible, nor likely to return to its original state, by simply removing that "last straw" that "tipped" the interlocking system.
Think of paddling a canoe across a large lake. The waves are light at the beginning to the trip. But as the paddling day wears on, they get progressively bigger, until one especially large wave (or one ungraceful rower), manages to tip the whole canoe into the drink. Splash!
The stable state of "floating safely," has suddenly been "flipped" in another entirely different state -- that of "treading water." And even if the waves die down, the canoe won't suddenly "right itself" to its previous state. No, that will take some herculean effort of the water-treaders, or the help of passerby's in their own still stable boat.
Well this idea of "tipping points" often gets applied to the global systems of Climate too, and in particular the "progressively bigger" changes in heat energy it is absorbing, as each new CO2-laden year tallies up its new warming influences. It is this idea of "tipping points" that get most Climate Change advocates up on our high horses of "urgency."
For example, once the arctic ice is gone, we fear there will be no herculean effort great enough, that we can perform as as disjointed network of societies, that would easily bring it back. It will have "tipped" into an "iceless state" -- which will in turn cause its own changes -- such as fewer and fewer cold fronts from the north, to moderate inter-continental heating. Similar "tipping point" arguments are made for the "reservoir of frozen methane" on the planet; the Ocean Circulation Salinity conveyor engine; the moderating effects of deep pockets of Cold Ocean waters (driving Jet Streams and La Nina's). Each of these could sudden tip into a different state, one that would likely not be as helpful to our "economies," as the "stable states" that we now have exceedingly grown used to, and have well-adapted to.
Well, there is this new theory making the Scientific Journal rounds -- that these "global tipping points" changes might more like the "proverbial frog" sitting in a gradually warming pot of water ... than a canoe that has been abruptly tipped.
First a bit more on "classical" Tipping Points ... Afterall, there still is "no use crying over spilt-wine," anyone?
Tipping point (climatology) -- wikipedia.org
A climate tipping point is a somewhat ill-defined concept of a point when global climate changes from one stable state to another stable state, in a similar manner to a wine glass tipping over. After the tipping point has been passed, a transition to a new state occurs. The tipping event may be irreversible, comparable to wine spilling from the glass: standing up the glass will not put the wine back.
[...]
Scientists and other specialists continue to express concern about global warming and irreversible tipping points. They have used metaphors such as "the door is closing" and warned of global food and water shortages, hundreds of millions of people being displaced by rising sea levels, and storms becoming ever more frequent and severe worldwide.[4] Others have tried systematically to short-list large scale components of the Earth system that may be subject to tipping points, defining tipping points as a variety of phenomena, including the onset of positive feedback, hysteresis effects, and the possible effect of statistical noise at critical points.[5]
Well here's the new "steady-state"
global change theory, that is upsetting the classical/quantum/complexity apple cart ...
apples get back in there. Well actually more like:
'those toppled apples can only roll so far'.
Quick-Change Planet: Do Global Climate Tipping Points Exist?
by Dave Levitan, ScientificAmerican.com -- March 25, 2013
[...]
“You’re pushing an egg toward the end of the table,” says Tony Barnosky, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. At first, he says, “not much happens. Then it goes off the edge and it breaks. That egg is now in a fundamentally different state, you can’t get it back to what it was.” Barnosky was the lead author on a much-discussed paper in Nature[DL1] last summer that suggested the world’s biosphere was nearing a “state shift” -- a planetary-scale tipping point where seemingly disconnected systems all shifted simultaneously into a “new normal.”
[...] The only way such a massive shift could occur, Brook says, is if ecosystems around the world respond to human forcings in essentially identical ways. Generally, there would need to be “strong connections between continents that allow for rapid diffusion of impacts across the planet.”
This sort of connection is unlikely to exist, he says. Oceans and mountain ranges cut off different ecosystems from each other, and the response of a given region is likely to be strongly influenced by local circumstances. For example, burning trees in the Amazon can increase CO2 in the atmosphere and help raise temperatures worldwide, but the fate of similar rainforests in Malaysia probably depend more on what’s happening locally than by those global effects of Amazonian deforestation. Brook and colleagues looked at four major drivers of terrestrial ecosystem change: climate change, land-use change, habitat fragmentation and biodiversity loss; they found that truly global nonlinear responses basically won’t happen. Instead, global-scale transitions are likely to be smooth.
[...]
There goes all my 'End-is-Near' placards. Maybe that egg rolling off the table,
was actually hard-boiled first? In which case we end up with a lot of individual fragmented "shell states" --
instead of an irreversible 'Humpty Dumpty dilemma'?
Global Tipping Point Not Backed by Science, Experts Argue
ScienceDaily.com -- Feb. 28, 2013
[...]
A tipping point occurs when an ecosystem attribute such as species abundance or carbon sequestration responds rapidly and possibly irreversibly to a human pressure like land-use change or climate change.
Many local and regional-level ecosystems, such as lakes and grasslands, are known to behave this way. A planetary tipping point, the authors suggest, could theoretically occur if ecosystems across Earth respond in similar ways to the same human pressures, or if there are strong connections between continents that allow for rapid diffusion of impacts across the planet.
"These criteria, however, are very unlikely to be met in the real world," says Professor Brook. "First, ecosystems on different continents are not strongly connected. Second, the responses of ecosystems to human pressures like climate change or land-use change depend on local circumstances and will therefore differ between localities."
The only problem with
this nuevo "untippable world", is that all us frogs in the simmering pot -- sooner or later we (or our 'tadpoles')
still DO eventually get cooked.
Big Question: Is Earth past the tipping point?
link to video
posted by Institute on the Environment, University of Minnesota
Those old school scientists still think things can tip drastically -- even if only on a local level:
Is Earth Nearing an Environmental "Tipping Point"?
Humanity may be pushing the planet toward sudden, irreversible ecological changes
by Lauren Morello and ClimateWire, ScientificAmerican.com -- June 7, 2012
[...]
"We know that at the landscape scale, if you disturb between 50 to 90 percent of patches, you see major changes in ones that you haven't disturbed directly," Barnosky said. "We know that we are at a point on the planet where you have more than 43 percent of the land surface wholesale transformed for human needs. If we transform more and more, we'll be at a point where even places we haven't transformed with our sledgehammers will go through major changes."
[...]
And afterall isn't
THAT where we each actually live and breath, and work and forage, anyways --
on some LOCAL chunk of this incredible complex, interlocked rock? ... Rivet!
Sooner or later, something's got to give! Steady state like, or in one big local swoosh!