What is
"The Tipping Point"
equilibrium/ danger of collapse
a critical moment/ collapse of a system
"the point of no return"
Categories where we may find this term applied:
warfare
WW2:
Hitler breaks his pact with Stalin, invades Poland.
Japan attacks Pearl Harbour.
USA which was not officially involved in WW2 is now at war with Japan in the Pacific, and soon after also declares war v. Germany and Italy in Europe.
Stalin and Hitler
In 1939, his regime signed a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, resulting in the Soviet invasion of Poland.
Germany ended the pact by invading the Soviet Union in 1941.
Chamberlin and Hitler
He is best known for his foreign policy of appeasement, and in particular for his signing of the Munich Agreement on 30 September 1938, ceding the German-speaking Sudetenland region of Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany led by Adolf Hitler.
Following the invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939, which marked the beginning of the Second World War, Chamberlain announced the declaration of war on Germany two days later and led the United Kingdom through the first eight months of the war until his resignation as prime minister on 10 May 1940.
Pearl Harbour
The day after the attack, Roosevelt delivered his famous Day of Infamy speech to a Joint Session of Congress, calling for a formal declaration of war upon the Empire of Japan.
Congress obliged his request less than an hour later. On December 11, Germany and Italy declared war on the United States, even though the Tripartite Pact did not require it.[nb 21] Congress issued a declaration of war against Germany and Italy later that same day.
So was there a tipping point in WW2?
The scale of this was was so large that there were many moments which can be called hugely significant. Far too many to list them all. But for me the most decisive moment was the invasion of Pearl Harbour which brought the USA into the war against all the Ais powers, first Japan, then Germany and Italy.
I'm only an amateur historian so what's my opinion worth? However I think that this moment where Japan attacked the US and drew it formally into the war marked the beginning of the end of WW2. There were many huge events still to take place before the end of war in Europe but with the US now fully committed to the war with all its resources, it enabled Britain and Russia to fight more decisive battles with material support from the US and "tipped the scales" against Germany, and Italy.
D Day
The Normandy landings were the largest seaborne invasion in history, with nearly 5,000 landing and assault craft, 289 escort vessels, and 277 minesweepers participating. Nearly 160,000 troops crossed the English Channel on D-Day, with 875,000 men disembarking by the end of June.
The operation began the liberation of France, and the rest of Western Europe, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front.
If the US had not entered the war on the side of Great Britain, would D Day have been possible? D Day was a hugely monumental event which actually spread over many days before the five beach heads were connected, and then the counter attack against Germany in Europe had a real chance of success. Prior to the Normandy landings, Germany was well in the ascendancy and things looked incredibly grim for all Europeans.
It still took 11 months until May 8th 1945 to end the war in Europe. And a further 4 months before the surrender of Japan ended WW2 in the Pacific region.
Economics
These two events are often lumped together for obvious reasons:
Wall Street Crash of 1929
The Wall Street Crash of 1929, also known as the Great Crash or the Crash of '29, was a major American stock market crash that occurred in the autumn of 1929. It began in September, when share prices on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) collapsed, and ended in mid-November. The pivotal role of the 1920s' high-flying bull market and the subsequent catastrophic collapse of the NYSE in late 1929 is often highlighted in explanations of the causes of the worldwide Great Depression.
The Great Depression 1929- 1939
Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide gross domestic product (GDP) fell by an estimated 15%. By comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession.[3] Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s. However, in many countries,[specify] the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. Devastating effects were seen in both rich and poor countries with falling personal income, prices, tax revenues, and profits. International trade fell by more than 50%, unemployment in the U.S. rose to 23% and in some countries rose as high as 33%.[4]
I think we can assume that when the stock market crashed on 29th October 1929, that day was a pivotal moment which we might call "a tipping point", but it really began a few days earlier, the 24th October "BLACK THURSDAY" .
These days were immensely significant dates... what followed was a worldwide depression which lasted in some countries for about 10 years. Could we say that either of these two dates was a "tipping point"? If we think of the world economy at that time as a huge chimney swaying in the wind, people might have known that a crash was coming, but it only started to topple on the 24th. By Black Tuesday, the 29th, the whole damn thing had bitten the dust. In the course of those five days in October 1929 the collapse of the Wall Street Stock Exchange, shook the world.
If we view these 10 years which ended with the outbreak of WW2 we could say that the collapse was a "tipping point" and once the financial structure started to topple it was inevitable that it would come crashing down. But what we cannot say is when it reached that critical point of progressing from stable, equilibrium, to unstable, toppling. Was it on a day, an hour or a minute? Or was it a few days before the 24th... or even more, a week or two?
A bridge collapses
Let's take the example of the collapse of the West Gate Bridge in Melbourne 1970. This construction was progressing along with union issues, over budget issues and other issues as most public projects do, but one day a huge section came crashing down, killing many people and injuring many.
Two years into construction of the bridge, at 11:50 am on 15 October 1970, the 112-metre (367-foot) span between piers 10 and 11 collapsed and fell 50 metres (164 feet) to the ground and water below. Thirty-five construction workers died and eighteen were injured, and it remains Australia's worst industrial accident.[23]
Many of those who died were on lunch break beneath the structure in workers' huts, which were crushed by the falling span. Others were working on and inside the span when it fell.
West Gate Bridge
This was indeed a catastrophe for Melbourne and shook public confidence for years. How could anyone be confident that the project could even be saved and a successful completion might occur, which it has had... it still serves a total of between 180,000 and 200,000 cars, trucks, and motorcycles use it per day, according to VicRoads.
What led to this horrific collapse? Was there a single pivotal moment which divided the time when it was "stable" or "safe" from the moment it started to tear apart? Or was this not a moment but a measurable period which was not measured?
Was it something, a process occurring over some days while people just turned a blind eye to the signs?
One thing we can say for sure there was a time when people were up there working, and then it started to tear apart and fall into the river. The division between these two "times" is what delineates a "tipping point" which we could call a point of "no return", there's no going back! It marks a separation in time between what went before and what is yet to come.
A condo collapses in Florida
Champlain Towers
Across the other side of the world, the devastating collapse of the Champlain Towers in Florida in June 2021, was caused by suspected concrete cancer, a US Engineer and Concrete Specialist has said.23 Feb 2022the fracturing of the mast of a yacht,
a tall ship in a storm
the sinking of the "Mary Rose"
The Mary Rose
Many accounts of the sinking have been preserved, but the only confirmed eyewitness account is the testimony of a surviving Flemish crewman written down by the Holy Roman Emperor's ambassador François van der Delft in a letter dated 24 July. According to the unnamed Fleming, the ship had fired all of its guns on one side and was turning to present the guns on the other side to the enemy ship, when she was caught in a strong gust of wind, heeled and took in water through the open gunports.[74] In a letter to William Paget dated 23 July, former Lord High Admiral John Russel claimed that the ship had been lost because of "rechenes and great negligence".[75] Three years after the sinking, the Hall's Chronicle gave the reason for the sinking as being caused by "to[o] much foly ... for she was laden with much ordinaunce, and the portes left open, which were low, & the great ordinaunce unbreached, so that when the ship should turne, the water entered, and sodainly she sanke."[76]
The most common explanation for the sinking among modern historians is that the ship was unstable for a number of reasons. When a strong gust of wind hit the sails at a critical moment, the open gunports proved fatal, the ship flooded and quickly foundered.[79]
tearing down statues of historical figures
Saddam Hussein
Colonial Masters
GLOBAL WARMING / 1.5 °C
The World Meteorological Organization estimates a 66% chance of global temperatures exceeding 1.5 °C warming from the preindustrial baseline for at least one year between 2023 and 2027.[76][77]
Because the IPCC uses a 20 year average to define global temperature changes, a single year exceeding 1.5 °C does not break the limit.
The IPCC expects the 20-year average global temperature to exceed +1.5 °C in the early 2030s.[78]
So, the fact that we have reached 1.5 °C in 2023 is not enough? It's only a single year!
But things got pretty ugly around the world in 2023, as they have done for the past five or so years.
This article sums it up with great clarity:
"Earth Clocks Hottest January on Record,
Marking 12 Months Above 1.5 Degree Celsius
Warming Threshold"
But was it a "tipping point"?
Have we reached a tipping point yet, or do we still have time, e.g. until we have averaged 1.5 °C for some years? And how many years would we need to achieve that average?
I have another take on it... very simply have we reached the point where we simply cannot REVERSE the trend?
It's one thing to say we can slow it down, but another thing entirely to reverse the trend.
You can use the Ice Sheets of the Artic or the Antarctic to see this in action. But you can also use the melting glaciers of landlocked countries to see it more clearly.
For me the bad news out of Switzerland is a major example... Switzerland lost 6% of it's glaciers in a single year and has lost 10% in two years.
The good people of Switzerland have taken some drastic steps to SLOW the rate of the melting and try to retain their glaciers:
However they're fighting a losing battle. Despite all their efforts to cover the glaciers with reflective sheeting on a huge scale, the melt continues.
In total the Swizz glaciers have reduced by 50% in 85 years:
Now my question could be expressed like this:
How long now before the Swiss lose all their remaining glacial ice?
But I have a more troubling question:
What would it take to reverse the loss of ice cover in the Swiss alps and to recover some of the ice lost over the last 85 years?
Is this a ridiculous question?
It's not a frivolous question because it goes to the heart of the matter.
It simply does not change if we talk about the human impact upon global warming, or if we do not agree on that as a major factor. What would it take to cool the Earth to the point where our ice sheets recover, whether they are on the mountains or on the polar caps?
It is a terrifying prospect... we may soon reach a point where there are no glaciers in many places where they were the norm.
So is there a tipping point? A decisive moment which we reach beyond which there is no return, no possible reversal?
I hate to be so pessimistic but I think we are way past the tipping point because the Earth takes hundreds or thousands of years for significant changes to occur, such as the "little ice age" which occurred in Europe from about 1300 and last till about 1800 CE;
The Little Ice Age (LIA) was a period of regional cooling, particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic region.[2] It was not a true ice age of global extent.[3] The term was introduced into scientific literature by François E. Matthes in 1939.[4]
The period has been conventionally defined as extending from the 16th to the 19th centuries,[5][6][7] but some experts prefer an alternative timespan from about 1300[8] to about 1850.[9][10][11]
Winter Landscape with Skaters
is a c.1608 oil-on-oak painting by the Dutch artist
Let's say Europe experienced this "little" ice age for about 500 years, and that since about 1850 the little ice age receded!
It created huge problems for Europe but while it lasted it became the norm! People considered the climate of that period as "normal" for their times, and adapted to it in many ways:
But for us this period would be abnormal. We are in the time of global warming, and that warming is accelerating. We may have reached the tipping point, beyond which there is no return.
Has planet Earth got some tricks up its sleeve to save us from what is happening right now, and from what is yet to come?
In a previous blog I presented one of Ian Gibbins video pieces which is well worth showing here again:
Thank you Ian for permission to use this fine video.
I welcome responses from anyone who might like to add to or challenge anything I have raised here.
Some extra reading suggested by Ian Gibbins:
A recent (6 Feb) article in The Conversation re climate tipping points:
Also:
There is a whole area of mathematics called “catastrophe theory” , which was developed by Rene Thom and others in the 1960s/70s. It led to a much wider appreciation of non-linear systems which underlie many areas of physics, mechanics and biochemistry / biophysics. How nerve cells generate and transmit electrical impulses (something I used to teach and research) is a classic example of a non-linear biophysical system.
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