Non-Fiction Reviews
Positive Tipping Points
How to fix the climate crisis(2024) Tim Lenton, Oxford University Press, £20, hrdbk, xii + 241pp ISBN 978-0-198-87578-9
We are all aware of the current climate crisis, even the minority who think it is a hoax (President Trump) but many think that global warming is a gradual affair. However, the reality is that it is not! The UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC's) 'second assessment report' (known in the trade as 'SAR') way back in 1995, warned that we needed to be aware of 'surprises' and that this is due to "the non-linear nature of the climate system". This means that you can push aspects of the Earth system – or even the Earth system as a whole – so far and the system (or sub-system) might suddenly react in a new way. We see this every day. For example, put a tray of water into your freezer and it will slowly cool, but the change to ice can be surprisingly fast.
There are many aspects of the Earth system that do this and a number have reinforcing feedbacks. For example, some Arctic ice melts each summer but the more the reflective ice melts the more heat-absorbing, darker sea is exposed. This warms further and so promotes more ice melt.
Permafrost melt is another. When this happens methane is released and methane is itself a powerful greenhouse gas that further warms the Earth system.
The thing is that there are a number of these elements and a number of 'tipping points' and if enough do tip then the Earth system as a whole could react with a jump in warming. It would cross its own tipping point.
The IPCC was right to warn us to be aware of 'surprises' back in 1995 but it was only until 2013 and it fifth assessment report (known in the trade as AR5) that it used the term 'tipping points'. Indeed, in Chapter 12 of its assessment's Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis, when discussing 'tipping points', cites a 2008 paper of which Timothy Lenton was the lead author; in short, he is amply qualified to write on the subject.
His new book, Positive Tipping Points: How to fix the climate crisis is written in two halves: the first is on 'tipping points' and the second is on how to remedy global warming. As such, it is a bit of a mental rollercoaster of a read. The first half spells out the problem with such clarity that readers are likely (Trump excepted) to fall into despondency: we are not in a good place. Greenhouse contributions have been such that we are approaching a number of critical tipping points that could suddenly accelerate warming. Time, it is very clear, is of the essence!
Yet this book is not a half glass empty, there are amid the looming doom possible solutions. The second half of the book provides numerous examples of remedies. These in themselves are not new news: we all know about the need to ditch fossil fuels and embrace non-fossil carbon energy sources. What is new is Lenton's approach to the societal change needed to bring all this about and – critically – that this change involves a tipping point, which, once reached, carries us over the line. It is this half of the book that gives us hope: the glass is half full.
Now, when it comes to implementing greenhouse policies that successfully curbs global warming, I have to confess being very doubtful: my own first book on climate change came out in the 1990s and since then I have charted the progress made, or lack thereof, due to continued emissions and the rhetoric of some of our political leaders (and not just Trump). However, Tim Lenton's Positive Tipping Points is encouraging: it is not all doom and, he opines, we can turn things around, and, he cites numerous examples: there have been successes, there is hope.
This book will interest all concerned about climate change, even those who may already have a number of popular science books on the subject, just because it is a new approach and one that should be listened to. Given that, I hope that those who should read it the most – policy makers (including politicians), economists, industrialists – actually do. This book is that important.
As for lay readers, though it has academic citations, it is written in a very easy to understand style. Regular followers of this site are into science even if they are not into science themselves (though many are, if the website's search engine analytics are to be believed) and so they will have no problem in following this book to its hopeful conclusion.
But how realistic is Tim Lenton's assessment that we might be approaching a socio-economic tipping point that will propel us into a fossil-carbon-free future? Well, we do not yet know: time will tell. However, I note one thing. While writing this review I saw in the news that globally, renewables had overtaken coal for the first time to generate electricity! Data from 88 countries that account for 93% of global electricity consumption show that renewables now generate 5,072 terrawatt hours (TWh) of electricity to coal's 4,895 TWh… Maybe, just maybe, the glass is half full.
Jonathan Cowie
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