I’m interested in maybe a bit of expansion of your conclusions here. Your last two sentences say: ”This means my optimism is more in the form that I now think that tipping points alone are unlikely to cause a collapse of global civilization due to temperature changes. Still, we should be careful, as many of the past abrupt transitions in climate are not well understood and the Earth system might have some unwelcome surprises for us in store.”
What do you think this means for the overall contribution of tipping elements to global civilisation collapse? Am I to interpret the “alone” and “due to temperature changes” as suggesting that tipping elements, in concert with other factors, may have a contribution, if not alone and just due to temperature changes? Or is this merely that you don’t think that this part of the literature review can say anything beyond that narrow scope? If the latter, will you be investigating the other impacts?
I think that tipping elements could make a significant contribution to the destabilization of global civilization, which ultimately could contribute to collapse. This would likely not happen via temperature, but by other disruptive elements like significant sea level rise or destruction of ecosystem. However, the main effects of this are likely beyond 2100. Therefore, I am really unsure how this will ultimately play out. I think to make a good estimate of this we are currently knowing too little. Hopefully, the next special report of the IPCC will be about this. This would make things likely much clearer. Therefore, I’ll probably not investigate this much further right now, as things seem to uncertain.
I’m interested in maybe a bit of expansion of your conclusions here. Your last two sentences say:
”This means my optimism is more in the form that I now think that tipping points alone are unlikely to cause a collapse of global civilization due to temperature changes. Still, we should be careful, as many of the past abrupt transitions in climate are not well understood and the Earth system might have some unwelcome surprises for us in store.”
What do you think this means for the overall contribution of tipping elements to global civilisation collapse? Am I to interpret the “alone” and “due to temperature changes” as suggesting that tipping elements, in concert with other factors, may have a contribution, if not alone and just due to temperature changes? Or is this merely that you don’t think that this part of the literature review can say anything beyond that narrow scope? If the latter, will you be investigating the other impacts?
I think that tipping elements could make a significant contribution to the destabilization of global civilization, which ultimately could contribute to collapse. This would likely not happen via temperature, but by other disruptive elements like significant sea level rise or destruction of ecosystem. However, the main effects of this are likely beyond 2100. Therefore, I am really unsure how this will ultimately play out. I think to make a good estimate of this we are currently knowing too little. Hopefully, the next special report of the IPCC will be about this. This would make things likely much clearer. Therefore, I’ll probably not investigate this much further right now, as things seem to uncertain.