Climate tipping points

There has been increasing mention of tipping points recently in relation to climate change. A tipping point is "the point at which a series of small changes or incidents becomes significant enough to cause a larger, more important change".

For example a small rise in temperature causes hot dry brush to ignite or a small rise in water level causes a dam to collapse.

Such events are usually very hard to reverse.

One climate-related tipping mentioned is the collapse of the Amazon rainforest into a drier savannah ecosystem. The forest in Brazil may be approaching this fate. See this MSN report. Once this happens there is not enough rain to regrow the forest. Are the forests in Guyana changing to savannah?

Other tipping points concerns the melting of ice in the Artic and Antartic. Once the ice melts the exposed land absorbs the energy of the sun better and warms faster. See this BBC report.

Other tipping points concern the release of methane from melting permafrost in the Artic and from frozen deposits below cold seas. Methane accelerates global warming.

Wikipedia - country carbon footprints?

Wikipedia is a great resource for information about countries and a favorite of students. However there is a lack of prominent information on country pages about greenhouse gas emissions and related data. Do we not need a section or subsection giving at least the current status?

A quick check of a few countries revealed surprisingly minimal information buried in various sections or nothing at all. One has to go to general articles on these issues to find useful data. Is there some reason for this that I am missing? There seems to be a lack of environmental info in general on country pages.

History will likely judge countries on their action or lack of action on this issue. It deserves more attention. It is up to internet users to take note and get busy. Perhaps Wikipedia can give some suggestions of how to format this data starting with something basic, so that countries can be easily compared.

I hope to work on generating interest in this here in Guyana.

Edited Dec 14