Scientists question use of ‘tipping point’ metaphor in climate change discussions

Earth and climate – an ongoing controversy

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The use of an ‘apocalyptic tone’ doesn’t seem to work while tipping points are often ‘vague’, ‘confusing’ and may give ‘an illusion of precise scientific understanding’, say the researchers. They go on to demand more ‘climate action’, itself a vague and confusing term.
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A group of scientists, including researchers from Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Princeton University and Carleton University, has questioned the accuracy and utility of the metaphor “tipping point” in calling attention to the threat of climate change, says Phys.org.

The phrase, while perhaps initially useful as a clarion call that warns about sudden, drastic changes, may now be confusing the public and impeding action, researchers said.

Writing a perspective in Nature Climate Change, the scientists, from the Rutgers Climate and Energy Institute, Princeton’s Center for Policy Research on Energy and the Environment, and Climate Resilient Societies through Equitable Transformations (ReSET) Lab at Carleton University as well as six other academic institutions, argue that the notion of tipping points, when referencing physical and human aspects of the Earth’s changing climate, is not well-defined and often applied inappropriately.

There also is no evidence, they said, that the apocalyptic tone of the phrasing is driving action.

The researchers said the public is more likely to respond to threats that are perceived as relatively certain, near-term and nearby than to what are viewed as abstract dangers, the timing of which are either highly uncertain or unpredictable.

“While many of the physical phenomena bundled under the ‘tipping points’ label are systemically important and well worth studying, the tipping-points framing does not necessarily highlight—and may obscure—their most critical or consequential aspects,” said Robert Kopp, the paper’s first author, a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences, and a Visiting Fellow at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
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“Tipping points” and their multiple uses in science and beyond aren’t well defined and provide an illusion of precise scientific understanding, the authors said.

“Attempts to subsume so many issues and behaviors under the same label and common interpretive framework do not advance science,” said co-author Michael Oppenheimer, the Albert G. Milbank Professor of Geosciences at Princeton University.

As the use of “tipping points” has expanded to describe not only climatic events but social ones—ranging from social cohesion to food prices—its all-encompassing use has rendered it necessarily vague. This is not helpful toward inspiring action, the authors said.

Full article here.