I'm delighted to say that the issue of the @thebulletin.org magazine that my colleague Dan Drollette and I have been working on for months, all about tipping points, is out today. My introduction to the issue is here: thebulletin.org/premium/2025... - ThreadSky

jessimckenzi.bsky.social • 22 days ago

I'm delighted to say that the issue of the @thebulletin.org magazine that my colleague Dan Drollette and I have been working on for months, all about tipping points, is out today. My introduction to the issue is here: https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-03/introduction-almost-everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-tipping-points-but-were-too-afraid-to-ask/

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andrewdessler.com•21 days ago

that looks like a great issue! I think it would be really useful for teaching about climate impacts.

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•21 days ago

thank you!! <3 i totally agree; i anticipate returning to and referencing these articles for my own future writing/reporting

mattjohenry.bsky.social•22 days ago

📌

jmsantiago.bsky.social•20 days ago

📌

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•22 days ago

To write the intro, which also briefly introduces the whole idea of "tipping points," I interviewed three climate scientists who have all studied and written on climate tipping points at length. We've published those conversations as well as a kind of mag supplement https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/earth-on-the-brink-looking-back-on-nearly-two-decades-of-tipping-point-research/

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•22 days ago

Tim Lenton: "I think tipping points has worked partly because people can get the concept, and partly because it’s a faithful description of what can actually happen in systems."

https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/the-riskometer-has-been-going-up-all-the-time-tim-lenton-on-tipping-points/

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•22 days ago

Thomas Stocker: "There is a gap opening or widening between those colleagues—respected colleagues—who say, well, “tipping is probably not the primary issue in the climate system,” and others who find all kinds of indicators that things may tip."

https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/notoriously-difficult-to-investigate-and-even-more-difficult-to-predict-thomas-stocker-on-tipping-points/

lp7.bsky.social•22 days ago

📌

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•22 days ago

David Armstrong McKay: "When you’re looking at something like an ice sheet, that can have a self-sustaining-change type tipping point. But on a human time scale, that’s not abrupt to us. It’s abrupt to the ice sheet."

https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/metaphors-can-grow-legs-david-armstrong-mckay-on-tipping-points/

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•22 days ago

The entire issue is available now to Bulletin subscribers, but all the articles will be free at some point on a rolling basis, so I will share those here when the paywall is temporarily lifted.

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•22 days ago

Starting off hot with AMOC:

"We don’t have adequate observations to locate where the AMOC is in respect to its collapse points.

We don’t even know for sure that collapse points exist in the real system. We have to be honest about this: We don’t know for sure."
https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-03/is-the-amoc-headed-for-a-tipping-point-interview-with-henk-dijkstra/

frankreif.bsky.social•22 days ago

The limits of reductionism and complex/chaotic/emergent system has divided scientists for a long time. It's most evident in biology, I learnt about it from Sapolsky lectures linked below.

But also Physics. Tim Palmers Primacy of Doubt: https://www.primacyofdoubt.com/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_njf8jwEGRo

rossqsmith.bsky.social•21 days ago

We will soon know which tipping point it was that killed us.

frankreif.bsky.social•22 days ago

I'd like to know more about the origins of the concept of non-linear change. 1950s is far too late. Biology/ecology/evolution has its roots in debates about the Cambrian explosion, mid 19th century. Political philosophy with historical cycles/revolutions/events long before that.

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•22 days ago

Really good point! I focused on Earth system tipping points in my intro, and discussed the shift away from a uniformitarianism with David McKay, but not so much non-linear change outside of that realm, or predating that

https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/metaphors-can-grow-legs-david-armstrong-mckay-on-tipping-points/

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•21 days ago

Whoops, meant to link to the interview https://thebulletin.org/2025/03/metaphors-can-grow-legs-david-armstrong-mckay-on-tipping-points/

frankreif.bsky.social•21 days ago

"There was this worry that the phrase undersells the uncertainty around these thresholds" Quite. I suspect this is at the root of the deep-seated discomfort the term causes. The worry is that we won't know until it's already happened, either a subsystem, or some cascade of them.

frankreif.bsky.social•21 days ago

In combination with all the other problems associated with preemptive mitigation. Temporal and geographical dislocation between cause and effect. The effects being mediated through other proxies, which in themselves exhibit natural variability.

frankreif.bsky.social•21 days ago

I consider the nonlinearity between temperature rises and impacts is rather tame in comparison. At the very least, we can be grateful that there's a simple linear relationship between GHGs and temps.

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•22 days ago

It's not an exact fit, but you might be interested in my interview with Joseph Tainter about civilizational collapse (currently paywalled, but will be freely available later) https://thebulletin.org/premium/2025-03/fragile-impermanent-things-joseph-tainter-on-what-makes-civilizations-fall/

frankreif.bsky.social•22 days ago

As a guy, there are way too many of us who get into the civilizational collapse grand theory of history pontification. Especially Classical Rome/Greece and Bronze Age. I have developed a general suspicion of it. It's why I like Graeber/Wengrows Dawn of Everything to open up the discourse.

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•22 days ago

I wanted to work a "how often do you/I think about the Roman Empire" joke into my intro for that interview so bad!!!!

But tbh I haven't stopped thinking about Tainter's book since I read it, or bothering friends/acquaintances/strangers with anecdotes about it whenever possible...

frankreif.bsky.social•21 days ago

Have you read The Great Leveler by Walter Scheidel? Similar vibe but through the lens of inequality and violence. Which, given the correlation of inequality and sustainability, leads to a very bleak outlook. Fortunately, there's plenty to critique there too.

frankreif.bsky.social•22 days ago

Ha, yeah, it's a real problem! Harari/Pinker/Diamond are the big ones. But the bottom of the barrel for me is Peter Turchin's Cliodynamics. It's a weird combination of economics, history and "objective" self-confident arrogance.

wuhanclams.bsky.social•16 days ago

Hehe, without fail:

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•16 days ago

I think it's unfair to take that out of context. The point is not that it's never too late to stop global warming/climate change/tipping, period, and therefore we can hold off on climate action.

Just that it can always get worse!! So there's always a reason to act, now AND later. Hope that helps

wuhanclams.bsky.social•15 days ago

Well I hope you're right!

jessimckenzi.bsky.social•15 days ago

that it can always get worse??😅

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