EcoAlert: New Global 'Tipping-Point' Warning System for the Planet
There is no centralized system to monitor and report changes in the Earth’s life-support systems. So scientists in 77 nations have established the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) and the Group on Earth Observation Biodiversity Observation Network (GEO BON), which integrates existing data streams into one platform to provide a global warning system for Earth’s biological and social systems.
“The connections between nature and society are most complex and little is known about the tipping points of our socioecological systems,” says Kirsten Thonicke and some of her colleagues from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK).
The image below shows the urban sprawl of Mexico City. Every week humans create the equivalent of a city the size of Vancouver. In 2007, Earth's 6.8 billion humans were living 50 percent beyond the planet's threshold of sustainability. Even with modest UN projections for population growth, consumption and climate change, by 2030 humanity will need the capacity of two Earths to absorb CO2 waste and keep up with natural resource consumption, the World Wildlife Federation has warned.
The Daily Galaxy via www.earthobservations.org/ and www.pik-potsdam.de
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TIPPING POINT
-- James Ph. Kotsybar
In the millennium’s first dozen years,
they say we’re headed for a tipping point --
a disastrous sum of many fears
when Nature herself will crash and disjoint.
It’s not the Mayan calendar that’s cause,
nor the Sun’s circumstantial alignment,
but our careless consumption without pause
and our uncontrolled wholesale consignment.
Our survival’s not a dress rehearsal.
We are fast approaching the precipice
where it will be too late for reversal.
Earth’s ecosystem hangs over the abyss.
If you’re reading this and claim you don’t care,
we don't need to wait; we’re already there.
Posted by: James Kotsybar | November 20, 2012 at 07:03 PM
@ James
Nice poem.
Posted by: George Botha | November 21, 2012 at 02:10 AM
Don't worry folks; mandating that our food be put into biofuels and stifling development in 3rd world nations will exterminate billions from the planet soon. Our handlers have a plan already set in motion. You are digging your own grave supporting this green agenda.
Posted by: Lee Robidas | November 24, 2012 at 03:13 AM
Shut up with global warming. This has nothing to do with science. It's all politics and green anti-development agenda.
Human can't change climate. The sun does as it as in the past, even when human weren't there.
Posted by: Christian Rioux | November 24, 2012 at 06:12 AM
Wow Christian are you completely retarded or do just live in a f-in box with no contact to the outside world??? You clearly have no clue what you are talking about and this web page, the internet and human race are far better off with out your dumbass comment...
Yes we do not affect the sun and what it does but we do use, abuse and destroy every asspect of nature to provide our selves with what we believe to be a comfortable existence. Sure we do not controll the weather but you best believe just like Easter island when we have cut down the last tree and killed all of the animals that call earth home we have had a far greater impact on the earths ecosystem then anything event in the last 100,000 years
Posted by: Kain janzen | November 28, 2012 at 11:46 AM