“Climate change is happening more rapidly than anyone thought possible. Should humankind stop worrying about global warming and instead start panicking? My conclusion is that we are still left with a fair chance to hold the 2°C line, yet the race between climate dynamics and climate policy will be a close one.”

Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Founding Director, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK);Member, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

For too long, much of the scientific community, looked upon climate change with concern, but not alarm. The data simply did not point to an urgent problem. Rather, it was one that would have gradual implications for civilization—one we could likely adjust to or possibly invent our way out of. But as we face an unfolding array of escalating ecological tipping points and our scientific understanding grows more sophisticated, it is beginning to look like science was too slow to understand the true danger of climate change.

As it turns out, the world is already beyond the looking glass but only beginning to realize it.

In 2007, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) produced their Fourth Assessment Report (FAR), the bleakest assessment put forth by this international body of governments and scientists. Surveying the IPCC’s body of work, the trend toward increasing concern is clear. Way back in 1994, the IPCC’s Second Assessment Report had forecast a global increase in temperature in the range of 1.0ºC to 3.5ºC. This was revised in 2001 in the Third Assessment Report which forecast an increase of 1.4ºC to 5.8ºC. In 2007, the FAR put the increase at 2.4ºC to 6.4ºC.

And now, just two years later, the FAR is already hopelessly outdated, with the likely scenario looking much more like the old worst case scenario. The Global Humanitarian Forum, an organization led by former Secretary General of the United Nations Kofi Annan, concedes that far too often, the scientific community and especially governments and NGOs, have been far too conservative:

“The urgency is all the more apparent since experts are constantly correcting their own predictions about climate change, with the result that climate change is now considered to be occurring more rapidly than even the most aggressive models recently suggested.”

At play in this constant parade of distressing updates is the growth in understanding of how the climate works. Also at work has been the increase in computer power available to researchers. Today’s climate model run on laboratory mainframes that are far more powerful than just a few years ago. And the data available for those models is always improving. All of this is good in terms of scientific progress, but it may prove to be good data that came too late. For crucial tipping points in the global climate are now occurring much earlier than expected.

A tipping point in climatology is an event where one stable state is suddenly overturned by a new stable state. In terms of global warming, these tipping points are characterized by dramatic shifts toward a hotter world.

Some recent El Niño events have been considered as global warming tipping points. Born in the surface waters of the tropical East Pacific, the El Niño is a periodic temperature event that can have powerful impacts on global weather. In 1976, for example, an El Niño was blamed for wild weather across the world that year, but it also had a permanent effect on the temperature of the Pacific. Before 1976, the tropical Pacific waters often fell below 66.5ºF, but after 1976, those waters rarely went below 77ºF (Flannery, 2005, p 84-86).

A similar El Niño event occurred in 1997-98, which was largely blamed for devastating fires in Indonesia. But, once again, this event also impacted the temperature of the central western Pacific, which now is often above 87ºF. Moreover, the 97-98 El Niño also permanently moved the Jet Stream farther north.

More recently, we have witnessed another tipping point—one which will only increase future tumbles toward a hotter Earth. In 2006, scientists studying the Arctic sea ice made a startling claim: By 2040, the summer Arctic Sea would be ice-free. But then, a year later, nature sent its own message by melting the summer sea ice by half its normal size. Suddenly, the prediction of an ice-free Arctic had to be radically revised to 2012.

It should be added that such a change in the Arctic would have profound affects on the amount of heat absorbed by the ocean. This is because the white ice sheet of the Arctic reflects 70-80% of the sunlight that hits it whereas the darker water of the ocean absorbs only 4%. Undoubtedly, the loss of this enormous mirror, could very well be the mother of all tipping points, for it could unleash a series of other tipping points with terrible impacts for civilization.

The Global Humanitarian Forum notes some other tipping points that might be brought about sooner than originally feared. One such tipping point would be the shutdown of the Gulf Stream which keeps the Northeast seaboard of the United States and all of Europe from being much colder than today. Another might be a rapid melting of the Greenland Ice Sheet, which would raise sea levels worldwide by 6.5 meters (21.3 feet).

Each of these North Atlantic phenomenon are linked to the Arctic. The Greenland ice sheet relies on the cold of the surrounding ocean to remain stable. The Gulf Stream requires a balance of salinity in the ocean to drive its cycle around the North Atlantic, salinity that could be diluted by melting ice. The melting of sea ice in the arctic, then, would put the climate of the whole world in jeopardy…and possibly much sooner than anticipated.

The next assessment by the IPCC is due in 2014, two years after what may be the first ice-free summer in the Arctic. It will be a world where the new boom towns of the Arctic coast will be thriving as age-old shipping routes shift to the far north. For these new towns, the dawning of a hot earth will bring great opportunity, their populations swelling with frontiersmen and women—the founding members of cities that will shine bright during the twilight of humanity. For them, the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report may not seem so dire, but for the billions in the sweltering south, what? What tipping points will they have witnessed by that year?

And how badly will the IPCC estimate the problem then?