Scientists Warn Earth Faces Cataclysmic Collapse

Global warming may not be the biggest threat to the earth anymore. Scientists now predict something much worse is in store.

Countless headlines, repetitive warnings, and numerous premonitions have developed over the idea that man-induced climate change could cause extreme ecological damage. We hear the term global warming pretty often from presidential campaigns to advertisements on the radio but a new worry has scientists terrified of what could become of earth.  A recent story that made headlines this week highlights 22 scientists from three different continents who claim that the earth is quite literally on the tipping point of an irreversible environmental state shift and that it could happen within the next few decades.

The rate at which we are losing biodiversity is alarming and certainly not new news. Forests and jungles are being stripped from the earth to make way for agricultural land to support the 7 billion people that live on this planet. The use of fossil fuels are continuing to dominate as developing countries increase their activities to sustain new life and technology. So what exactly is an environmental state shift? According to the scientists, a tipping point tends to occur when smaller ecosystems are disrupted between 50-90 percent. As of now, the biosphere is being completely and radically altered to the point that 43% of all habitable land is being used for growing food and urbanized areas. Apparently, once we reach the 50% mark, the world will drastically be transformed in a proverbial blink of an eye. The biologists, ecologists, theoreticians, geologists and paleontologists that were involved in the paper published in Nature, say that this has already happened a handful of times over the earth’s life cycle.

“The last tipping point in Earth’s history occurred about 12,000 years ago when the planet went from being in the age of glaciers, which previously lasted 100,000 years, to being in its current interglacial state. Once that tipping point was reached, the most extreme biological changes leading to our current state occurred within only 1,000 years. That’s like going from a baby to an adult state in less than a year. ” Arne Mooers, one of this paper’s authors from SFU, said.

The scientists go on to say that not only will this be happening within a short period of time but there will be no going back to the way it was once it tips over. Once a threshold induced planetary state shift occurs the earth will not have any recollection or memory of how to revert itself to the old system.

What will happen to the world if we reach this so called tipping point is partially unknown but the study suggests that it would have severe impacts on fisheries, agriculture, forests, and water resources which could in turn result in social and economic implications like major economic instability, famine, and war.

The co-author of the study Arne Moores says that he hopes the naysayers are right but the evidence doesn’t support that. The evidence is written in history and if anything, we should be learning from it.

The reduction of carbon emissions should be top priority but instead greenhouse emissions have risen by 45% since the year 1990. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature 30% of amphibians, 21% of birds and 25% of mammals are at the risk of extinction and none of the protection pledges that governments have made in the past are being followed through with. An evolution needs to occur within the human race. Globally we have morphed the world into what it is today and a globalized effort is what we need to save the earth. If nothing is done, we could become a part of an era in history that we no one will want to remember.

Photo Credit:  Some rights reserved by Sprengben  on flickr

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Angie Tarantino (156 Posts)

Angie Tarantino is a contributor and part founder of The Environmental Blog. She covers animal rights, green tips and general green news topics She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area in California. Follow @EcoChic314

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