Climate Tipping Points And The Damage That Could Follow

Short Wave

NPR

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4.7 • 6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2022

⏱️ 13 minutes

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Summary

If Earth heats up beyond 1.5 degrees, the impacts don't get just slightly worse--scientists warn that abrupt changes could be set off, with devastating impacts around the world. As the 27th annual climate negotiations are underway in Egypt and the world is set to blow past that 1.5°C warming threshold,
Emily Kwong talks to climate correspondents Rebecca Hersher and Lauren Sommer about three climate tipping points--points of no return that could cause big changes to the Earth's ecosystems.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to shortwave from NPR.
0:05.0	Hey shortwaveers, I'm Emily Kwong here with NPR Climate Correspondence, Rebecca Hersher
0:10.0	and Lauren Summer.
0:11.0	Hey!
0:12.0	Hey there, so today we have a story about how change happens.
0:17.0	Change is like this.
0:18.0	Okay.
0:23.0	Is that a rushing river?
0:25.0	A waterfall?
0:26.0	Yeah, kind of.
0:27.0	It's a sound that I recorded standing on a massive piece of ice.
0:31.0	It's like two-mile thick in the thickest part.
0:34.0	It's the Greenland ice sheet.
0:35.0	Oh, that's an important place.
0:37.0	It also just sounds more like water than ice.
0:42.0	Exactly, that's kind of the problem.
0:44.0	The ice is melting as the earth gets hotter, but it's not like the slow steady process
0:49.0	where a little more warming means a little more melt and so on.
0:53.0	At a certain point, it accelerates.
0:56.0	It gets faster and faster.
0:57.0	And the big question is how much faster?
1:00.0	Because all that melt water is ending up in the ocean and it's raising sea levels.
	...

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