Jack Williams admits to being a bit uneasy with some of the headlines generated by a report he contributed to that was published last week in the journal Nature. ?Earth could reach devastating ecological tipping point by 2025,? blared a Slate.com post about the report.
?Some of the media reporting has fallen squarely into the angle of,’We’re going to die’– which is not my perspective and the point of the article,? says Williams, UW-Madison?s Bryson professor of climate, people and environment in the department of geography and the Nelson Institute?s Center for Climate Research. ?But there is a real but difficult-to-quantify risk of reaching and passing tipping points in the global ecosphere, and we are calling attention to that risk.?