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Earth's Climate Has Passed Its First Irreversible Tipping Point and Entered a 'New Reality' (404media.co) 167

Posted by msmash from the grave-concerns dept.
Climate change has pushed warm-water coral reefs past a point of no return, marking the first time a major climate tipping point has been crossed, according to a report released on Sunday by an international team in advance of the United Nations Climate Change Conference COP30 in Brazil this November. From a report: Tipping points include global ice loss, Amazon rainforest loss, and the possible collapse of vital ocean currents. Once crossed, they will trigger self-perpetuating and irreversible changes that will lead to new and unpredictable climate conditions. But the new report also emphasizes progress on positive tipping points, such as the rapid rollout of green technologies.

"We can now say that we have passed the first major climate tipping point," said Steve Smith, the Tipping Points Research Impact Fellow at the Global Systems Institute and Green Futures Solutions at the University of Exeter, during a media briefing on Tuesday. "But on the plus side," he added, "we've also passed at least one major positive tipping point in the energy system," referring to the maturation of solar and wind power technologies.

The world is entering a "new reality" as global temperatures will inevitably overshoot the goal of staying within 1.5C of pre-industrial averages set by the Paris Climate Agreement in 2015, warns the Global Tipping Points Report 2025, the second iteration of a collaboration focused on key thresholds in Earth's climate system.
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Earth's Climate Has Passed Its First Irreversible Tipping Point and Entered a 'New Reality' More

Earth's Climate Has Passed Its First Irreversible Tipping Point and Entered a 'New Reality'

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  • Sadly, I'm over it (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @10:57AM (#65721604)

    I recognize the issue, but short of walking into the woods and living in a canvas tent while foraging for berries until I die of some random illness or animal encounter... or survive long enough to freeze to death in the coming winter... there's not much I can do.

    I recycle, and that's mostly bullshit. I try to reduce my use of things that are difficult to recycle, but even as we're told plastic is bad, more and more products come in plastic bags or blister packs. Sometimes there are multiple layers of plastic packaging - and none of it is accepted by my municipal recycling program.

    My home is fairly well insulated, but my furnace burns natural gas. It has to, because there's no way in this climate I could afford a heat pump that could keep my home warm in February.

    I drive a car with an internal combustion engine, because an electric costs $40k and won't make the trip to my parents' house. I drive to work because 99% of this country is built around the assumption you are driving... even as we build housing with insufficient parking and tell people they should take public transit options that don't exist.

    I'm middle aged and approaching 'senior' status. I'm done beyond voting for the best option I can at the polls. It's the kids' turn. Fight you buggers, fight. You need the planet for longer than I will.

    • It's the kids' turn. Fight you buggers, fight. You need the planet for longer than I will

      QFT! I had that conversation with my daughter recently. It's their turn; the fight has gone out of me.

      but short of walking into the woods and living in a canvas tent while foraging for berries

      My plan is a slightly upscaled version of this... small south facing house near a stream... polytunnel for vegetables and a dog.

      • Don't let the fight go out of you, you've got to set the example. You don't have to campaign but as long as you vote for sensible people with sensible policies there is less chance of the morons winning. Don't vote and you let the idiots rule

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm middle aged and approaching 'senior' status. I'm done beyond voting for the best option I can at the polls. It's the kids' turn. Fight you buggers, fight. You need the planet for longer than I will.

      to be fair the boomers and genX have been voting against those interests for decades now so it feels a little bullshit to say "hey younger kids, pick up the slack even though we pulled up the ladder and put some of the worse people in power so we could preserve our wealth"

      not talking about you specifically but your generational cohorts. and young people not voting enough is not a this generation thing, its an every generation thing.

      it just tragically funny that the 50-80 year olds theyre hot potatoing the e

      • You do realise that this whole intergenerational warfare thing is just standard divide-and-conquer tactics cooked up by the ruling classes and their propagandists-for-hire, don't you?

        The truth is that most - as in all but a very tiny fraction of a percent - boomers (and genX-ers) have absolutely no say in anything of any importance, and never have had - no more than most millennials or gen-z or whatever stupid marketing bullshit demographic term they come up with next.

        They're not the ones buying up all the

    • Ditto. The more people who speak up about how EVs don't work for them, hopefully the more industry and government notices and make them into something that do work.

      • No. For the US, the solution is high speed rail, safe bike paths, trams. Make it prohibitively expensive to live in car-centric areas like suburbs. Also we need to depopulate the south (move them to the upper half of the land mass) because hurricanes, heat, tornados, etc are only going to get worse. We would save lives, save money, and be better stewards of the earth.

        • No the answer is not to have more and more people live on top of each other in densely populated cities. That just brings crime and poverty.

    • lots you still do, like refusing to spend any money at classist corporate business

      become a vegetarian, buy only organic, whole foods, at small stores, shop local, and at farmers markets, vacation locally, work for small local business, treat people fairly, help those in need especially friends and family, install rooftop solar and a reverse meter, buy an EV and an electric bike etc etc.

      avoid unethical people and businesses at all cost, never give money to evil people

      • And then watch as Bezos or someone else globes trots around with their super yacht. When those people start treating this like a crisis, maybe the rest of us will as well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by haruchai ( 17472 )

      My 1st Earth Day event was 1985, for years i hauled recyclables in garbage bags on public transit until curbside became available, have mostly rented since the 80s and have never had an electric bill that exceeded 300 kWh usage in a month despite sometimes having electric heat in places with very cold winters.
      For most of the past 20 years, my usage has been about 150 kWh monthly, often much less.
      Haven't owned a car in 20 years and only 2 in past 40 years & never a lot of driving.
      I don't think my lifetim

      • Because you're obsessed with individual action for systemic problems. I'm American but I figured out years ago that individual action cannot solve systemic problems.

        Recycling is a scam from the plastic industry. You can Google and easily find that out. You don't have a choice but to drive. If you're using that little amount of electricity it's probably because you don't live in a place where it gets extremely cold or extremely hot. Other than that or you live in some place that gets very cold and you've

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by haruchai ( 17472 )

          i had all of that figured out long before most people alive today were even conceived.
          i was a paying member of Greenpeace for 10 years until the mid-90s.
          i had a side hustle way back with efficiency & environmental retrofits of residential buildings & was part of an initiative to shutter coal plants

    • Very on time see: TED rado hour "Future You"
      https://www.npr.org/programs/t... [npr.org]

      The point is that we, humans suck at working on thing that fruit in the far-future and the above explains why.

    • Nissan leaf is $30k, and used EVs are super cheap.

  • if they did they wouldn't be moving 10s of millions of people from countries with extremely low carbon footprints to the west with high carbon footprints.

    • Re: our leaders obviously don't believe in it (Score:4, Insightful)

      by TJHook3r ( 4699685 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @02:32PM (#65722186)
      Wait until climate change sends millions marching towards more hospitable areas

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by haruchai ( 17472 )

        Wait until climate change sends millions marching towards more hospitable areas

        it's already begun

    • It's really just one big party, the American Business Party. That's all America actually cares about is business. Both parties have their billionaire donors and their corporations to keep the party going.

      All the "social" stuff is to get Joe average excited.

  • Jem Bendel is a person who has explored how we can live with our new reality of a broken climate (as sell as societal breakdown).
    He has a book "Breaking Together" which explores options for living with climate change.

    "In the introduction, Professor Jem Bendell frames the book’s central thesis: that societal collapse is no longer a distant possibility but a lived reality for many. He begins by reflecting on his earlier “Deep Adaptation” paper, which argued for acknowledging the inevitabilit

  • Caribbean corals (Score:5, Informative)

    by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @11:29AM (#65721724)

    "The report singled out Caribbean corals as a useful case study"

    And I can tell you that they are mostly dead. I visited several islands there over this past summer, vast fields of coral that were fairly healthy and full of wildlife just a few years ago were completely gone. It's a tragedy. The locals were amazed at how quickly it happened.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by rsilvergun ( 571051 )
      Yeah that's the big problem. When you hit that tipping point everything just kind of happens at once so it's tough to get people behind fixing anything.

      And it's so easy to distract voters with silly little culture war bullshit issues. Especially the older voters who are more likely to show up to the polls. To be fair it's really easy to use common voter suppression tactics to prevent young people from voting

      • When you hit the tipping point, it is too late - pretty much by definition. No matter what you do, you really can't tip it back. The main thing is to try to avoid the next tipping point.

    • Re:Caribbean corals (Score:4, Informative)

      by Thrakkerzog ( 7580 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @01:54PM (#65722092)

      I visited Aruba in 1999 and spent a good amount of time snorkeling. The corals were beautiful and there was so much life. I went there again in 2023 and a good portion of the corals were dead. There was still a lot of life, but also a lot of lionfish, an invasive species. I'm glad that my kids got to see the small amount of living coral before it is gone.

    • And I can tell you that they are mostly dead.

      It is a shame that corals are not economically viable. Sure, they are useful for tourism, but they are not directly viable to our economy. The only thing that matters to the people that matter is money. You don't matter so your opinion and observations are not needed. "Thank you for being alive for a short period. We hope you enjoyed your stay, but we really don't care about you."

  • This is another report from modern climate deniers claiming we are making progress even though emissions have been increasing. They are amazed at how fast the coral has disappeared but nothing was ever done to prevent it. "Progress" is people buying a new EV instead of a new ICE vehicle even though producing the EV actually immediately adds more emissions than the ICE vehicle. Sometime in the future, the EV will make up for that. But, in the meantime, the coral disappeared with a little help from the added

    • But, in the meantime, the coral disappeared with a little help from the added emissions of the EV.

      Do coral reefs really matter though? Sure, it's a milestone, but not an existential one. The whole point of EVs (and solar, and wind power) is not to stop CO2 emissions right here right now (you can't do that), but to prevent a total climate collapse long-term.

      Which btw will probably happen because "AI" (LLMs) is gradually undoing CO2 emission reductions, with "hyperscalers" using all kinds of CO2-intensive

      • Re:Modern Climate Denial (Score:5, Informative)

        by Zocalo ( 252965 ) on Monday October 13, 2025 @03:10PM (#65722302) Homepage

        Do coral reefs really matter though? Sure, it's a milestone, but not an existential one.

        Yes, they absolutely do matter, and yes it is potentially an existential one. Coral reefs are the most biodiverse part of the seas and are the source of many of the ocean nutrients that get carried around the globe on currents like the AMOC, so they play an essential part in the overall ocean food chain that many people rely on to survive. Removing the coral reefs from those people's food chains would be akin to the impact of removing Alfalfa from the US food chain that ultimately leads to all that beef and dairy produce.

        Also, if their primary food source is unable to support them, they're not likely to stay put and starve for the greater good, are they? Where do you think they are going to start marching towards?

        • I understand food webs just fine, but I find the claim that coral is existentially important to be dubious.
          Were that the case, I'm pretty sure we would already be experiencing rapid ecosystem collapse.

          I'm pretty sure phytoplankton are the alfalfa.

        • Blah blah blah. How does that fit into the economic report due at the end of the quarter? If it is not immediately measurable, it does not matter.

    • Hey, I'll bite!

      I keep cars for 15 to 20 years, and I recently replaced a 2008 ICE vehicle with a 2025 EV. From what I have read, I have already passed the hurdle of the manufacturing emissions and I will have less emissions from here on out than I would if I had purchased an ICE vehicle.

      • I keep cars for 15 to 20 years, and I recently replaced a 2008 ICE vehicle with a 2025 EV.

        What happened to your 2008 car? If someone is still driving it, then it wasn't replaced in terms of emissions. Someone who otherwise would have had to walk, bike, take the bus or skip the trip is driving it instead of you.

        I have already passed the hurdle of the manufacturing emissions and I will have less emissions from here on out than I would if I had purchased an ICE vehicle.

        How many gallons of gas per 100 miles do you figure the alternative would be burning? Because the comparison isn't to some generic ICE car, its to the available ICE/Hybrid car with the fewest emissions. Or at least the best alternative available to you. That would include buying a used ICE

        • > What happened to your 2008 car? If someone is still driving it, then it wasn't replaced in terms of emissions. Someone who otherwise would have had to walk, bike, take the bus or skip the trip is driving it instead of you.

          It replaced a far less efficient vehicle that someone else had. Their clunker was scrapped / parted / recycled.

          > How many gallons of gas per 100 miles do you figure the alternative would be burning? Because the comparison isn't to some generic ICE car, its to the available ICE/Hybr

          • It replaced a far less efficient vehicle that someone else had. Their clunker was scrapped / parted / recycled.

            If their clunker still ran someone else is driving it. People don't drive cars to the junkyard. And if it didn't run, then it made no difference whether you bought an EV or not.

            Clearly I have no way to prove this, but I have choice in my energy supplier where I live and it comes from a wind farm

            So you only charge your car when the wind is blowing so hard there is excess win power available to charge it? I think that is fantasy. You charge when you need to and your power comes from whatever source of additional power is available and least expensive. Solar and wind are often the least expensive, but, as a result, they are u

            • > If their clunker still ran someone else is driving it. People don't drive cars to the junkyard. And if it didn't run, then it made no difference whether you bought an EV or not.

              Since the frame rusted out and it would not pass the state safety inspection, it was absolutely scrapped.

              > So you only charge your car when the wind is blowing so hard there is excess win power available to charge it? I think that is fantasy. You charge when you need to and your power comes from whatever source of additional

              • Since the frame rusted out and it would not pass the state safety inspection, it was absolutely scrapped.

                So it was going to the scrapyard whether you bought a new EV or a used car. There was no reduction at all from you putting a new EV on the road. Just a smaller increase than if you put a new ICE vehicle on the road.

                battery storage systems exist to handle the situation you are describing

                No, they don't. They exist to store power when it is cheap to be used at peak demand when it is expensive. So unless you charge your EV when demand for power is at its peak, you aren't likely using stored power either.

                by all accounts, power plants are more efficient than ICE when it comes to emissions.

                What does that mean in terms of emissions? The "accounts" I have seen that mak

        • Even a dirty coal plant is more efficient than a hybrid. You’re an idiot

  • A cold war gets trillions thrown at it no questions asked, no complaints about budgets, just gets done. Why Every Country is Preparing for a War They Can't Afford: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]

  • They're just peddling the usual bullshit that coral reefs are dying.
    Nope. This is just stressing the warm-water corals which are the minority of coral species. There's little comment on how this may actually benefit the cold water corals and deeper corals as less delicate and less specialized than their warm water cousins.

    Corals date from before the Cambrian explosion, about half a billion years ago. They evolved when the avg global temps were on the order of +40c (today is 15c, and we're getting colly

    • Corals date from before the Cambrian explosion, about half a billion years ago.

      No they don't. This is a flaw that the paleontologists accidentally promulgated by using the same word for utterly unrelated orders. Reef-building organisms appeared in the Cambrian, but they are completely unrelated to present corals. Paleontologists tagged these fossils "corals" because from a gross structural view they looked similar, but they are not. They even use a different mineral (calcite, instead of aragonite).

      The early reef-building organisms called corals became extinct in the great Permian

      • "| Corals date from before the Cambrian explosion, about half a billion years ago.
        No they don't. This is a flaw"

        AFAIK Jung's study last year pushed coral/algae symbiosis back to the Devonian, no?
        https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
        It's short of 500mya, but not meaningfully so to my point.

        "98% of corals failed to survive the KT* extinction,"
        At least from what I can see (summarized at) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ( but also from other sources ) it wasn't 98% of corals, it was 60% - the 98% is JUST warm wat

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by XXongo ( 3986865 )

          Corals date from before the Cambrian explosion, about half a billion years ago.

          No they don't. This is a flaw

          AFAIK Jung's study last year pushed coral/algae symbiosis back to the Devonian, no? https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]

          Interesting article, thanks for the link. However, it does not challenge the fact that the reef-building "corals" of the Devonian are not related to the animals we call corals today. The corals of the Devonian went extinct. All of them. There was, according to the article, symbiosis (which is cool), but that was not today's corals.

          ...

          "98% of corals failed to survive the KT* extinction,"

          At least from what I can see (summarized at) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] ( but also from other sources ) it wasn't 98% of corals, it was 60% - the 98% is JUST warm water corals,

          My error. We were talking about warm-water corals, and I quoted the extinction for warm-water corals, but failed to so state.

          which is basically already what I'm saying:
          "Approximately 60% of late-Cretaceous scleractinian coral genera failed to cross the Kâ"Pg boundary into the Paleocene. Further analysis of the coral extinctions shows that approximately 98% of colonial species, ones that inhabit warm, shallow tropical waters, became extinct. The solitary corals, which generally do not form reefs and inhabit colder and deeper (below the photic zone) areas of the ocean were less impacted by the Kâ"Pg boundary. Colonial coral species rely upon symbiosis with photosynthetic algae, which collapsed due to the events surrounding the Kâ"Pg boundary,[71][72] but the use of data from coral fossils to support Kâ"Pg extinction and subsequent Paleocene recovery, must be weighed against the changes that occurred in coral ecosystems through the Kâ"Pg boundary.[35]"
          One might argue that a 40% survival rate vs 24% (for all species collectively) in such a catastropphic event/span would strongly suggest that corals are particularly durable.

          Just not the warm-water ones we're discussing.

    • Holy fucking hell. I'd say that you need a general refresher on how evolution works, but I think that frankly, you're too fucking stupid to really absorb it.
      Corals and their associated ecosystems have been nearly completely wiped out on multiple occasions, from nothing but rapid temperature fluctuations.

      • And I'd say you're deeply committed to your theology but whatever.

        ANY long-lived species on this planet has - self evidently - survived multiple near extinction events.
        What part of "repeatedly survived" is unclear for you?

        10 people fall off a cliff, 9 die. 1 survives.
        That one and 9 others fall off another cliff, 8 die. The original survivor and one other.
        Those 2 and 8 others fall off another cliff, 4 die. The 6 survivors include the previous 2.
        Those 6 and 4 more fall off a cliff, 9 die. The original sur

        • No, you missed the point of my criticism.

          The coral that live today are nothing like the coral that lived then.
          They're both stony colonial critters that live in the ocean- that much is true. Life is always finding new ways to fill a niche- especially after the old inhabitant is wiped out.

          Modern coral date from the Triassic, not the fucking Cambrian.
          Cambrian corals are dead and gone. Nothing related to them survived.
          It's true that modern coral survived the KT boundary- but really, so did most things.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tragedy ( 27079 )

          10 people fall off a cliff, 9 die. 1 survives.
          That one and 9 others fall off another cliff, 8 die. The original survivor and one other.
          Those 2 and 8 others fall off another cliff, 4 die. The 6 survivors include the previous 2.
          Those 6 and 4 more fall off a cliff, 9 die. The original survivor from the first cliff is still alive.

          I am trying to make sense of what you are trying to say here. One thing I do have to say is that, all other things being equal, it looks like there would be only about a 1 in 1000 chance of that one individual surviving those multiple falls off various cliffs. So, either they just got really, really lucky, or all else isn't equal and this one individual has some special quality that makes them resistant to dying from falling off cliffs. Whether that's mutant healing powers or that they are a cult leader who

  • Propserity jesus will return before them and he doesnt care if they have been bad stewards so long as he gets his tithe. Boomers will already have shuffled of this mortal coil,

  • During the HO the world was warmer than today and the coral reefs were just fine.

  • Last In heard, we had passed 3 of 4?

    Should we reduce our impact on the planet? Obviously.

    However, this oanic-filled clickbait is counterproductive to that goal. Fewer and fewer people take these stupid pronouncements seriously, which leads them to the other extreme of not caring at all.

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