http://www1.umn.edu/news/news-releases/2009/UR_CONTENT_132007.html
I read about this in the news this week but did not realize we had some people at University of Minnesota involved. Jarrod, we should add this guy to our list of interviewees.
Are these tipping points real?
There are tipping points in the human body (I'm always forces to draw this analogy to help my understanding and realize it may be completely false). Acidification, for example. In renal and respiratory physiology, this is a big deal. But we have clear understanding in medicine for how the body regulates pH and we have a good idea of how to intervene. Now who are the doctors for the planet and how can they intervene? I think the truth would be, they can't, the science is too new and there are limited ways to gather data (medicine can watch literally millions of people die and autopsy them, earth science cannot).
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Greg (from lab) brought this to my attention earlier this week. I think it is interesting. First, I think we must be cautious not to overstretch the information we (scientist) have garnered about this topic and use fear to change our current path (mostly because we are still new to this area, earth science). If we are to be in the business of correcting what we think we have already done, how do we sure we will not over "correct". For instance, say in 20 years global warming is really bad (just imagine) and some scientists get together and figure out a way to drastically alter how much sunlight gets through the atmosphere. 5 years later we may realize, oops, now its too cold. I think Brent can draw a similar analogy with past medical mistakes dealing with the human body.
ReplyDeleteHowever, the caveat to the above is that, like Brent mentions, we only have one go at this planet; therefore, swift changes may be imperative.
Research is the medicine for some of the aforementioned tipping points. For instance, fresh water per capita, we already have desalination processess and with proper funding we may be able to ramp those up.