Pressure points . . .

[OneBlueSky]

The climate is changing. But where will we see the devastating effects first? Ian Sample reports on Earth's 12 most fragile places

Thursday October 14, 2004
The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1326273,00.html

(snip)

John Schellnhuber, research director at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, played a key role in identifying the dozen systems where global warming could produce sudden and dramatic environmental damage. He calls them the "tipping points", the achilles heels of the planet.

At a conference earlier this year, Schellnhuber and other scientists called for a concerted, global effort to investigate the earth's known tipping points and to search for new ones. Only then, he says, will we be able to identify where the consequences will be felt first.

"It'll take a global effort to understand these, and we have to make sure that none are activated through human actions," he says. Here, we present a list of the tipping points and what might happen if they are triggered.

the twelve "tipping points" identified are . . .

- Sahara desert
- Amazon forest
- Ozone hole
- Greenland ice sheet
- Tibetan plateau
- Salinity valves
- North Atlantic current
- El Niño
- West Antarctic ice sheet
- Methane clathrates
- The monsoon
- The Atlantic circumpolar current

- much more . . . including explanations of each of the preceding items . . .

http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1326273,00.html