(Illustration  ‘Tipping Point,’ by Ingram Pinn, and found here).

Beyond the normal shitstorms of modern life in real time, probably and most-likely the greatest horror facing all of us here on planet earth inches forward quickly, though in a more-subtle motion, to a decisive break where we’d be f*cked no matter what we do — climate change.
Although Joe Biden and his people are getting down to brass tacks finally after four lost years, the shift in our environment is seemingly moving toward a ‘tipping point’ where climate shit starts heading downhill without any sort of break. Climate scientists for years have warned about such a time, which might be closer than we think.

A new risk analysis reveals a maybe domino-like effect with our world climate could make life shittier than forecasts have predicted, and soon, too.
Details via the Guardian this afternoon:

Tipping points occur when global heating pushes temperatures beyond a critical threshold, leading to accelerated and irreversible impacts. Some large ice sheets in Antarctica are thought to already have passed their tipping points, meaning large sea-level rises in coming centuries.

The new research examined the interactions between ice sheets in West Antarctica, Greenland, the warm Atlantic Gulf Stream and the Amazon rainforest. The scientists carried out 3m computer simulations and found domino effects in a third of them, even when temperature rises were below 2C, the upper limit of the Paris agreement.

The study showed that the interactions between these climate systems can lower the critical temperature thresholds at which each tipping point is passed.
It found that ice sheets are potential starting points for tipping cascades, with the Atlantic currents acting as a transmitter and eventually affecting the Amazon.

“We provide a risk analysis, not a prediction, but our findings still raise concern,” said Prof Ricarda Winkelmann, at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany.
“[Our findings] might mean we have less time to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and still prevent tipping processes.”

The level of CO2 in the atmosphere required to push temperatures beyond the thresholds could be reached in the very near future, she said.
“In the next years or decades, we might be committing future generations to really severe consequences.”
These could include many metres of sea-level rise from ice melting, affecting scores of coastal cities.

“We’re shifting the odds, and not in our favour — the risk clearly is increasing the more we heat our planet,” said Jonathan Donges, also at PIK and part of the research team.

In May, scientists reported that a significant part of the Greenland ice sheet was on the brink of a tipping point. A 2019 analysis led by Prof Tim Lenton at the University of Exeter suggested the world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, resulting in what the researchers called “an existential threat to civilisation.”

The climate crisis may also mean much of the Amazon is close to a tipping point, at which carbon-storing forest is replaced by savannah, researchers have warned.
The ocean currents of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), of which the Gulf Stream is an important part and keeps western Europe mild, are at their weakest in more than a millennium.

The research, published in the journal Earth System Dynamics, used a new type of climate model because existing models are very complex and require huge computing power, making them expensive to run many times.
Instead, the researchers used an approach that focused specifically on how the temperature thresholds for the tipping points changed as the systems interacted, allowing them to run the 3m simulations.
…
“The study suggests that below 2C of global warming — ie in the Paris agreement target range — there could still be a significant risk of triggering cascading climate tipping points,” said Lenton.
“What the new study doesn’t do is unpack the timescale over which tipping points changes and cascades could unfold – instead it focuses on the eventual consequences. The results should be viewed as ‘commitments’ that we may be making soon to potentially irreversible changes and cascades, leaving as a grim legacy to future generations.”

Nice bit of ominous news, but to add even more fuel to the fright, backstabbing could hamper any kind of climate control — sort of fox in charge of the hen house routine.
Shitty report from The New York Times, also this afternoon:

During a contentious meeting over proposed climate regulations last fall, a Saudi diplomat to the obscure but powerful International Maritime Organization switched on his microphone to make an angry complaint: One of his colleagues was revealing the proceedings on Twitter as they happened.

It was a breach of the secrecy at the heart of the I.M.O., a clubby United Nations agency on the banks of the Thames that regulates international shipping and is charged with reducing emissions in an industry that burns an oil so thick it might otherwise be turned into asphalt.
Shipping produces as much carbon dioxide as all of America’s coal plants combined.

Internal documents, recordings and dozens of interviews reveal what has gone on for years behind closed doors: The organization has repeatedly delayed and watered down climate regulations, even as emissions from commercial shipping continue to rise, a trend that threatens to undermine the goals of the 2016 Paris climate accord.

One reason for the lack of progress is that the I.M.O. is a regulatory body that is run in concert with the industry it regulates.
Shipbuilders, oil companies, miners, chemical manufacturers and others with huge financial stakes in commercial shipping are among the delegates appointed by many member nations.
They sometimes even speak on behalf of governments, knowing that public records are sparse, and that even when the organization allows journalists into its meetings,
it typically prohibits them from quoting people by name.
…
The stakes are high. Shipping, unlike other industries, is not easily regulated nation-by-nation.
A Japanese-built tanker, for instance, might be owned by a Greek company and sailed by an Indian crew from China to Australia — all under the flag of Panama.
That’s why, when world leaders omitted international shipping from the Paris agreement, responsibility fell to the I.M.O., which has standardized the rules since 1948.

So if the I.M.O. does not curb shipping emissions, it is unclear who will.
And for now, the agency is not rushing to change.

“They have gone out of their way to try to block or water down or discourage real conversation,” said Albon Ishoda, a Marshall Islands diplomat.

Even ‘tipping points‘ won’t matter when you have these heartless assholes going about their merry way.

(Illustration out front from the UN’s International Children’s Painting Competition, and found here).