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Environmental Communication
ISSN: 1752-4032 (Print) 1752-4040 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/renc20
Tipping Points and Climate Change: Metaphor
Between Science and the Media
Sandra van der Hel, Iina Hellsten & Gerard Steen
To cite this article: Sandra van der Hel, Iina Hellsten & Gerard Steen (2018): Tipping Points and
Climate Change: Metaphor Between Science and the Media, Environmental Communication, DOI:
10.1080/17524032.2017.1410198
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2017.1410198
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa
UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Tipping Points and Climate Change: Metaphor Between Science
and the Media
Sandra van der Hel
a
, Iina Hellsten
b
and Gerard Steen
c
a
Environmental Governance Group, Copernicus Institute of Sustainable Development, Utrecht University, Utrecht,
The Netherlands;
b
Amsterdam School of Communication Research, ASCoR, Faculty of Social and Behavioural
Sciences, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands;
c
Department of Dutch Studies, Faculty of
Humanities, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
ABSTRACT
Over the past decade, scientists and journalists have prominently utilized
the metaphor of a tipping point for drastic, irreversible and dangerous
climate change. This paper shows how the tipping point metaphor
became a multi-purpose bridge between science and the news media,
describing how its meaning and use developed and diversified in
interaction between these two domains. Within the scientific domain,
the metaphor developed from a rhetorical device conveying a warning
of drastic, irreversible and dangerous climate change to a theoretical
concept driving empirical research. The news media soon picked up the
tipping point metaphor for abrupt and dangerous climate change,
turning it into a common part of the journalistic lexicon. Moreover, both
science and the news media developed another, societal use of the
tipping point metaphor, calling for radical societal change to avoid
climate change catastrophe. The tipping point metaphor is hence not a
monolithic notion but a highly versatile concept and expression,
allowing it to be used for various communicative purposes by distinct
stakeholders in different contexts.
ARTICLE HISTORY
Received 13 May 2017
Accepted 13 November 2017
KEYWORDS
Metaphor; tipping point;
climate change; climate
science; news media
1. Introduction
It is by now a familiar proposition that the notable changes in our climate may be so threatening that
they may tip our complete ecological system into a qualitatively different state. This possibility of a
global climate tipping point has received ample attention in studies of climate change communi-
cation (Antilla, 2010; Bellamy & Hulme, 2011; Hulme, 2008; Nuttall, 2012; Risbey, 2008; Russill,
2008,2015; Russill & Lavin, 2012; Russill & Nyssa, 2009; Skrimshire, 2008; Werners et al., 2013).
However, most of this literature does not address the implications of the fact that tipping points
involve metaphorical language and thought. Russill (2008) and Russill and Nyssa (2009) are the
notable exceptions: they describe the introduction and increasing prominence of tipping point as
a metaphor in communication about climate change in the news media (UK and US) and science
between 2005 and 2007. Following Schon (1979), Russill and Nyssa (2009) identify the climate
change tipping point as a generative metaphor, because the term is used in “an effort to solve a policy
problem by re-structuring public perceptions in a new and substantive way”(p. 341). In other words,
talking about climate change in terms of tipping points illuminates aspects that were not part of the
© 2018 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the
original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
CONTACT Sandra van der Hel s.c.vanderhel@uu.nl
ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION, 2018
https://doi.org/10.1080/17524032.2017.1410198
debate before, and suggests other responses to climate change than were considered previously—a
classic case of metaphorical framing (cf. Burgers, Konijn, & Steen, 2016).
We aim to follow up on Russill and Nyssa (2009) and explore how the meaning and use of the tip-
ping point metaphor in science and the news media developed over a 10-year period, from 2005, when
it was first introduced, until 2014. We combine a linguistic and discursive approach to the study of
metaphor. This allows us to understand, on the one hand, the use of specific linguistic expressions
of the tipping point metaphor, and, on the other, the framing function of the metaphor in climate
change discourse (Nisbet, 2009) and as a bridge between climate science and the news media.
In the next section, we give an introduction to the tipping point phrase as a metaphor, including a
brief sketch of the use of the phrase over time and in different contexts, and a discussion of (possibly
multiple) source domains of the metaphor. Then, we present our theoretical framework, which com-
bines three discourse perspectives on the tipping point metaphor, dealing with its function in science
(Boyd, 1993), its function as a boundary object between the domains of science and the news media
(Star & Griesemer, 1989), and its function as a discourse metaphor in society (Hellsten, 2002; Zinken,
Hellsten, & Nerlich, 2003,2008). Thereafter, we describe our method of data collection and analysis.
The main section of the paper analyses the use of the tipping point metaphor in scientific and news
media communication about climate change. The resulting complex picture is finally related to
implications for language users in various roles (scientists, journalists and citizens) using the tipping
point phrase when communicating about climate change.
2. The tipping point metaphor
Metaphors are sets of mappings between distinct conceptual domains, one functioning as a source
domain and the other as a target domain (Gibbs, 2008). The source domain of the tipping point meta-
phor involves the physical domain in which concrete entities such as a chair or a glass of water can be
tipped over and fall, and thus have a tipping point. This is the point at which the object is displaced
from a state of stable equilibrium into a new equilibrium state that is qualitatively dissimilar (and
typically worse) from the first. An object tips over when its centre of gravity passes the balance
point. If this happens with a chair, or a person on a chair, or any other entity or system that is upright
and needs to be upright, the consequence is that they are on their back, on the floor. If this happens
with a container like a glass, the consequence is that its content spills out and spreads. Things more-
over do not tip over of their own accord but it takes a force to tip them over, from people to shakes and
earthquakes. This knowledge about the tipping points of concrete entities can then be mapped on to
the knowledge of more abstract and complex phenomena, such as the climate system.
This type of cross-domain mapping yields insights about the target domain, in this case the cli-
mate system, that are driven by our knowledge of the source domain, in this case concrete objects
that are in a state of (im)balance in physical space. If the climate system is like an object with a tip-
ping point, it can tip over when its centre of gravity passes the balance point. What that balance point
is, how the centre of gravity of the complete climate system can be conceptualized, what it means for
it to tip, how and when this system will tip and with what consequences—all of these then become
substantial questions for scientists, journalists, policy-makers and the general public to consider. If
the climate system has (been) tipped and is on its back, it cannot function the way it used to, and this
in turn raises substantial questions about which functions are invalidated as opposed to which
remain in order. If the climate system is spilling the contents it contained, which are then spreading
in undesirable ways, the question is which aspects of the climate are involved and how harmful their
uncontrolled spreading is. And finally, pressing questions are raised with respect to the forces that
are operating at this moment to push the climate system beyond its tipping point, how close in time
we have got to the tipping point, and how we can control and contain those forces in order to stop
their negative influence on the climate system.
A popular science fiction novel by Kim Stanley Robinson, set in a world threatened by global
warming, describes climate change tipping points as follows:
2S. VAN DER HEL ET AL.
They had passed the point of criticality, they had tipped over the tipping point in the same way a kid running up
a seesaw will get past the axis and somewhere beyond and above it plummet down on the falling board. They
were in the next mode, and coming into the second winter of abrupt climate change. (Robinson, 2005, p. 645)
Interesting here is the direct metaphorical mapping to a seesaw that tips. Yet, rather than a seesaw
that tips back and forth, the paragraph seems to imply that the tipping is of more permanent nature.
This potential irreversibility is common for the tipping point metaphor when speaking about climate
change. The image that comes to mind—and indeed, an image that is often portrayed in popular
articles discussing climate tipping points—is an image of the earth on the edge of a cliff, only inched
away from tipping over and falling into the abyss. This image clearly establishes a metaphorical map-
ping to the physical source domain of tipping over into a new, fundamentally different, and undesir-
able state.
Climate change is not the only nor the first target domain for the tipping point metaphor. In
the 1960s, the phrase was used in the sociological literature to refer to abrupt racial changes in
neighbourhood residential patterns (Grodzins, 1957). From the 1970s onwards, the phrase became
used in mathematical ecology and bifurcation theory (Russill, 2015). Bifurcation theory involves
the idea of multiple stable states of a system, also called equilibria. A certain disturbance or per-
turbation can initiate a positive feedback mechanism that switches a system into an alternative
stable state, i.e. it can push the system past the tipping point (Russill, 2015). A more recent
and prominent metaphorical mapping connects the source domain of the physical tipping point
of a concrete system to a more abstract tipping point of a population with a disease. The Canadian
journalist and bestselling author Malcolm Gladwell popularized this interpretation of the tipping
point metaphor with his book The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference (2000).
Gladwell refers to a tipping point as “that magic moment when an idea, trend, or social behavior
crosses a threshold, tips, and spreads like wildfire”(2000, p. 12). He extends the at that time
already conventionalized epidemiological metaphorical use of the tipping point to the spread of
ideas, fashions and trends in society, which, he argued, should be seen as epidemics or viruses.
This book became immensely popular in the years immediately before the tipping point phrase
was introduced in the climate change debate.
The tipping point phrase hence became defined in the general English lexicon as “a time when
important things start happening in a situation, especially things that you cannot change,”the
first definition of this term in Macmillan’s English Dictionary (Rundell, 2002; cf. Gladwell, 2000).
In the Oxford English Dictionary tipping point is defined as “[t]he point at which a series of
small changes or incidents becomes significant enough to cause a larger, more important change”
(OED online, www.oed.com). It is quite likely that the success of the tipping point metaphor in
the climate change debate is partly due to the linguistic availability and ubiquity of the more general
tipping point metaphor in the early 2000s (cf. Russill, 2008). However, other than Gladwell’s“magic
moments,”scientists describe climate system tipping points as dangerous, catastrophic and poten-
tially irreversible.
Scholars of environmental communication have criticized this use of the climate tipping point
phrase for its connotation of danger, catastrophe and irreversibility (e.g. Hulme, 2008; Nuttall,
2012; Skrimshire, 2008). The main criticism is directed at the alleged tone of alarmism that sur-
rounds the phrase. Hulme (2008), for example, argues that the tipping point concept is used to nour-
ish the discourse of global climate catastrophe, based on fear for an unknown future (Hulme, 2008).
Nuttall (2012) sees in the tipping point phrase a revival of determinism, with human agency being
left defenceless against the risks of climate change. However, this scholarship does not explicitly con-
sider the metaphorical dimension of the tipping point phrase, forgoing an opportunity to analyses
the underlying mappings that may explain different meanings and uses. The aim of our study is
hence to enrich the debate on climate change tipping points by a linguistics and discursive analysis
of the tipping point metaphor.
ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 3
3. Theoretical framework
Metaphors play an important role in guiding how we perceive complex issues, both in the public
domain of newspapers and in scientific work. Metaphors have been studied in the context of science
(e.g. Black, 1962), as common ground for scientific and other discourses (Bono, 1990; Maasen, 1994),
and as a crucial part of everyday discourse (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). We build upon these previous
studies, and focus on the metaphor of tipping point. In this paper, we consider three potential, inter-
related functions of the climate change tipping point as a metaphor. First, its function within the
climate sciences. Boyd (1993) distinguished two common functions of metaphors in science. On
the one hand, metaphors can have a pedagogical function, allowing to communicate complex scien-
tific phenomena to a broad audience. At the same time, metaphors may also assist in structuring new
conceptual domains within science itself, thus functioning as theory-constitutive devices (Boyd,
1993). We examine this dual scientific function of the tipping point metaphor for climate science,
considering whether and when the metaphor has a pedagogical or theory-constitutive function.
Second, we consider the potential function of the tipping point metaphor as a boundary object
between science and the news media (Star & Griesemer, 1989). Boundary objects provide a shared
understanding around issues. They offer a common ground for multiple discourses by allowing for
several interpretations of the meanings of what looks like the same metaphor (cf. Hellsten, 2000;
Hellsten & Vasilieadou, 2015). In this sense, the tipping point metaphor can function as a bridge
across scientific and public discourses. This, however, may also lead to contestation and variation
in its meaning, as we will examine for our materials.
Third, we consider the development of the tipping point metaphor from the perspective of what
are called “discourse metaphors”(Zinken et al., 2008). Discourse metaphors are defined as “relatively
stable metaphorical projections that function as key framing devices within a particular discourse
over a certain period of time”(Zinken et al., 2008, p. 5). We examine whether the tipping point meta-
phor is also turning into a regular metaphorical expression shaping public discourse around climate
change without explicitly calling on the metaphorical meaning of the phrase. An important issue
here is whether the predictable career of metaphor (Bowdle & Gentner, 2005), from novel to con-
ventional, has taken place and how it has affected meaning and use of the metaphor. Part of this
possible career of a metaphor is the variation between deliberate and non-deliberate use (Steen,
2017). Variation in deliberateness concerns the use of the tipping point phrase as a metaphor—a rhe-
torical device that in fact makes people really think about one thing, the target domain (climate) in
terms of something else, the source domain (tipping points)—however briefly. This has to be con-
trasted with the appropriation of this phrase by the media and the sciences as a conventionalized
metaphorical expression to simply denote “a time when important things start happening in a situ-
ation, especially things that you cannot change”(cf. Gladwell, 2000). In other words, can the tipping
point be seen as an active metaphor today, or should it be understood as a simple conventional
expression that happens to be metaphorical but does not restructure our on-going thought in any
source domain determined way? Possibly, these different expressions of the phrase persist in differ-
ent contexts of use.
We hence employ three perspectives on the tipping point metaphor, dealing with (a) its two basic
functions in science, (b) its function as a boundary object, providing a shared topic between the
domains of science and the news media and (c) its function as a discourse metaphor in society.
These approaches can be examined by means of a more detailed analysis of the linguistic, conceptual
and communicative aspects of the metaphor involved in its uses in language and discourse.
4. Method
The tipping point metaphor was introduced into the target domain of climate change in 2005. Fol-
lowing Russill and Nyssa (2009), we chose this year as the starting point for our analysis. We col-
lected textual data for a 10-year period, from 2005 to 2014, from news media and scientific
4S. VAN DER HEL ET AL.
articles. For the domain of the news media, we used LexisNexis to search for publications in major
world newspapers. We collected all publications in major world newspapers during the studied
period that use the word climate and the phrase tipping point(s) in the heading or lead (i.e. the
title or the first paragraph) of the article. The search query we used is HLEAD (climate AND (tipping
point OR tipping points)). We then filtered out duplicates, i.e. articles with a strong similarity, such
as articles published under the same title and by the same author. This resulted in a set of 326 articles,
distributed over the various years included in our analysis as shown in Figure 1.
We downloaded all articles, including the date of publication, journal of publication and author,
for textual analysis. Within this dataset most, but not all, uses of the tipping point metaphor refer to
the target domain of climate change. In the year 2005—when the tipping point metaphor was first
used by climate scientists to refer to abrupt changes in the climate system—the use of the tipping
point metaphor tends to refer to other target domains than climate change (e.g. political tipping
points, technological tipping points). We decided not to exclude these articles from our dataset
because they indicate that the application of the tipping point metaphor to the climate system target
domain was not yet conventionalized. In later years in our dataset, the tipping point metaphor was
almost always explicitly linked to the target domain of climate change, in addition to references to
tipping points in other systems (e.g. social, political and technical).
For the scientific domain, we collected scientific articles from Thomson Reuters’Web of Science
that used the word climate and the phrase tipping point(s) in the title, abstract or keywords. For the
period 2005–2014, this resulted in a total of 301 articles, distributed over time as shown in Figure 1.
We downloaded the metadata (date of publication, journal, authors, number of citations, etc.) and
abstracts of these articles. Based on a textual analysis of the abstracts and insights from the metadata,
we collected the full texts of articles that were of particular interest for our analysis. This included the
first five articles that used the term tipping point in reference to changes in the climate system, the
five most-cited articles, articles by the authors who introduced the tipping point metaphor into cli-
mate change research (James Hansen, John Schellnhuber), and articles published in high-impact
journals such as Nature,Science and PNAS. We examined this set of articles in more detail, expecting
them to be most influential in shaping the meaning of the tipping point metaphor in climate science.
Not all articles that we collected refer to climate system tipping points specifically. Yet, all articles
link the metaphor to climate change in some way, either by focusing on (ecosystem, societal and
technical) changes as a result of climate changes or by discussing larger earth system tipping points
(with abrupt climate change being considered one of those).
We closely read the news items and scientific articles in our datasets, analysing the texts on two
levels. First, we focused on the use of the tipping point phrase in its context within the text. This
approach was chosen to scrutinize the discursive aspects of the metaphor. A focus on the discursive
aspects requires taking into account the encompassing textual context in which the metaphor is used.
Who uses the phrase? On whose authority? And to refer to which events or phenomena? Second, we
zoomed-in on the specific sentence in which the tipping point phrase occurred, focusing on its
Figure 1. Number of articles published between 2005 and 2014 in major world newspapers (grey) and academic journals (black).
ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 5
linguistic, conceptual and communicative characteristics (Steen, 2011). We paid attention to the use
of the tipping point phrase in combination with particular subjects, verbs, adverbs and adjectives. We
also considered the use of quotation marks and other punctuation. Connections with cognitive-lin-
guistic proposals for conceptual metaphors were explored in order to see how expressions related to
metaphors in thought such as CHANGEISMOTION,GOODISUP/BADISDOWN and so on (cf. Gibbs,
2008). And finally we focused on the question whether metaphors were used deliberately as meta-
phors, which involves checking whether the addressee’s attention is drawn to the notion of a tipping
point as a referent in the discourse in its own right (e.g. Steen, 2017); in other words, are addressees
asked to really think of climate change as a concrete object or entity that can tip over or be tipped
over, exhibiting downward motion in physical space? This dual analysis of textual context (discur-
sive) and language use (linguistic) allowed us to identify and compare the meaning, use and function
of the metaphor over time and across the news media and the sciences.
5. Results
Combining insights from our linguistic and discursive analysis, we have found different uses of the
tipping point metaphor in science and the news media on climate change. These can be organized in
four partly overlapping episodes, characterized by distinct linguistic and discursive uses of the meta-
phor across science and the news media:
(1) In the climate sciences, the tipping point metaphor was first introduced from 2005 onwards as a
rhetorical device, warning the public and scientific peers for abrupt and possibly irreversible
changes in the climate system. This use of the metaphor is characterized by occasionally clearly
deliberate metaphorical language use explaining tipping points as motion in space.
(2) Meanwhile, journalists adopted and employed the notion of a tipping point in climate change as
a metaphorical scientific concept with societal implications, also occasionally exhibiting features
of deliberate metaphorical use.
(3) From around 2007, the tipping point phrase becomes popular as a theory-constitutive metapho-
rical model for research in the climate sciences.
(4) Finally, from around 2011, notions of tipping points in news media on climate change become
used as conventionalized ideas and expressions for important impending change, no longer
automatically drawing attention to the metaphorical status of the phrase.
We discuss these four episodes in turn below.
5.1. Scientists introduce climate system tipping points to the public
The notion of climate system tipping points was used for the first time by Professor Hans Joachim
Schellnhuber, an internationally renowned climate scientist and founder of the Potsdam Institute for
Climate Impact Research, in an interview with BBC reporter Alex Kirby at the 2004 European Open
Science Forum in Stockholm (Kirby, 2004). Schellnhuber later recalled that he tried several phrases
to explain the notion of abrupt changes in the climate system (such as “switch-and-choke points”
and “large scale discontinuities”) (Blaustein, 2015), a process of selection which points to the delib-
erate nature of his metaphorical speech at the time. It was the metaphor of a tipping point that was
picked up by the BBC journalist. Schellnhuber continued using the tipping point metaphor, employ-
ing the expression to rephrase existing research into what were then called “critical thresholds”and
climate system “hotspots.”The first scientific studies by Schellnhuber and his colleagues that utilized
tipping point as a theoretical concept, enabling its use as a theory-constitutive metaphor, were pub-
lished several years later (e.g. Lenton et al., 2008; Schellnhuber, 2009).
In December 2005, the NASA climate scientist James Hansen stated, in his address to the Amer-
ican Geophysical Union: “we are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which
6S. VAN DER HEL ET AL.
there is no redemption”(Hansen, 2005, p. 8). In calling attention to the threat posed to humanity by
anthropogenic climate change, Hansen used the term tipping point in combination with the equally
metaphorical but much more dangerous notion of a precipice, which in its literal sense (convention-
ally) dramatizes the notion of a deep and dangerous fall that is also inherent in tipping point. The
combination of the two terms draws attention to the source domain of the tipping point in terms of
motion in space. Moreover, given the magnitude of the problem, the religious, conventional meta-
phor of redemption gets revitalized as a metaphor too, invoking no release from the powers of evil.
The ostensible goal was to illustrate in graphic terms of space, motion and values that future changes
in the climate system would be bad, rapid and abrupt, and might be irreversible:
(1) I present multiple lines of evidence indicating that the Earth’s climate is nearing, but has not
passed, a tipping point, beyond which it will be impossible to avoid climate change with far ran-
ging undesirable consequences. (Hansen, 2005,p.1)
(2) …, we are on the precipice of climate system tipping points beyond which there is no redemp-
tion. (Hansen, 2005, p. 7/8)
Given the sheer scale of the climate problem, it is possible to read the tipping point not just as
some abstract moment in time when drastic change may occur, but see it as presented in physical
terms as motion towards a place (nearing, but has not passed, beyond). Even though this is conven-
tional metaphorical language for time, the metaphor may have been used deliberately as a rhetorical
device to make people think about climate change in terms of sudden and (potentially) dangerous
motion in space. Whether it was intended as such or taken up as such, neither or both, is impossible
to determine. But it clearly is possible that it was meant to persuade the general public of a message
about the target domain of climate change by changing their perspective and drawing attention to
the source domain of a tipping point, setting up a mapping that points to the dangers of abrupt,
and potentially irreversible, climate change.
As the above instances illustrate, experts in the domain of science utilize the media to develop this
message. Hansen’s use of the tipping point as a conceptual source domain is considered to be the
start of the tipping point trend in climate change communication (Russill & Nyssa, 2009). Other
scientists picked up on this metaphor and used it in communication to the media to point out
the dangers of abrupt climate change. According to Russill and Nyssa (2009), “[t]he desire to
increase public urgency is driving [this] main-streaming of tipping points in climate change com-
munication, not the reporting of peer-reviewed research”(p. 342). Indeed, in the first three years
after its introduction (2005–2007), coverage of climate change tipping points in major world news-
papers (35 times) far outnumbers peer-reviewed scientific publications (11 times; see Figure 1).
In contrast to the use of the metaphor in direct communication of scientists with the media to
convey an image of abrupt and dangerous change in the climate system, we find more meticulous
use of the tipping point phrase within the peer-reviewed literature. The first peer-reviewed scientific
article on tipping points in the climate system, published in The Journal of Climate, introduces the
phrase as follows:
(3) The large changes that began in 1989 suggest that the system had reached a tipping point, a state
of the system for which temporary changes in the external forcing (dynamics) created a large
internal response that is no longer directly dependent on the external forcing and that is not
easily reversed. (Lindsay & Zhang, 2005, p. 4881)
(4) The late 1980s and early 1990s could be considered a tipping point during which the ice-ocean
system began to enter a new era of thinning ice and increasing summer open water because of
positive feedbacks. It remains to be seen if this era will persist or if a sustained cooling period can
reverse the processes. (Lindsay & Zhang, 2005, p. 4879)
ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 7
The physical source domain of the metaphor is clearly present in organizing the explanation of a
tipping point that is still required at this stage. It involves a state of a system (object) when external
forces (the forces that tip over the object) create a large internal response (the tipping over). How-
ever, whether this choice of words is in fact driven by attention to the nature of the physical source
domain or whether it is simply knowledge about the target domain is not easy to decide. In other
words, it is not clear whether the reference to the physical source domain of the tipping point is
explicit. Note that it is specifically mentioned that this movement/tipping is not easily reversed,
also indicating that it is not in principle impossible to turn a tipped system back to its original,
desired state.
Within this first set of scientific articles on climate system tipping points, the metaphor is
occasionally extended to the social domain when making policy recommendations, with the claim
that socioeconomic tipping is needed to avoid dangerous climate system tipping points:
(5) International climate policy needs to induce a socioeconomic tipping to a low or no-carbon
economy if we are to avoid climate change tipping points. (Lenton & Schellnhuber, 2007, p. 97)
(6) So, what can we do? The best choice is to avoid tipping events at acceptable social costs. This can
be achieved by inducing a fast transition to a low/no-carbon economy […]. When we say “fast”,
we envisage a Third Industrial Revolution in the sense of a socioeconomic tipping event. (Len-
ton & Schellnhuber, 2007, p. 98)
Note that the language is different, the grammar of induce a socioeconomic tipping (5) including
an active verb tipping. Something similar holds for socioeconomic tipping event (6). In these cases, the
notion of tipping is not embedded in the conventionalized set phrase tipping point and can draw
more attention to its basic meaning of caused (downward) movement in space. This may reflect
the greater urgency felt by the scientists for undertaking socioeconomic and political action outside
their own domain against the dangers of something (climate change) they were already rather fam-
iliar with.
Thus, the first use of the metaphor in 2005–2007 in the climate sciences shows a prominent,
sometimes deliberate use by climate scientists of the tipping point metaphor as a metaphor recruiting
our knowledge of physical motion to convey the prospect of dangerous and abrupt climate change to
the public, and at the same time an urgent, occasionally deliberately metaphorical call for action to
avoid the doom scenario of crossing climate system tipping points. This is a first demonstration of
the tipping point metaphor as an exegetical (pedagogical) metaphor functioning as a boundary
object between science and the media, gradually turning into a discourse metaphor structuring
the debate on abrupt climate change in society.
5.2. Attention for tipping points in news media
Between 2005 and 2007, climate tipping points received increasing attention in the news media. In
2006, the metaphor even made it to the cover of Time Magazine, which stated that “earth is at a tip-
ping point”(Kluger, 2006). In our dataset, we see the number of newspaper articles using the tipping
point metaphor when reporting on climate change spike in 2007 with 61 occurrences (see Figure 1).
Yet most of the news articles from 2005 that combine the terms climate change and tipping point
are in fact not about climate system tipping points. Instead, these articles discuss tipping points that
are needed or anticipated in public opinion or in the political response to climate change. Journalists
initially used the phrase tipping points to refer to social phenomena, involving radical changes in the
attitudes and policies related to climate change challenges. This is in line with the way Malcolm
Gladwell used the metaphor in his popular book and indicates that by 2005 the tipping point meta-
phor was part of the general lexicon of journalists. In other words, the social tipping points referred
to in these articles were already conventionalized in use; they did not involve an active recruitment of
knowledge about physical motion but simply meant “big change.”
8S. VAN DER HEL ET AL.
However, in the summer of 2005, journalists also started to report on tipping points in the climate
system. Most of these journalistic articles refer to two key events. The first is a study on defrost of
Siberian peat ground (permafrost):
(7) It is a scenario that climate scientists have feared since first identifying “tipping points”—deli-
cate thresholds where a slight rise in the earth’s temperature can cause a dramatic change in the
environment, which itself triggers a far greater hike in global temperatures. (Grodzins, 1957)
(8) Climate scientists warned that a vast expanse of western Siberia has begun an unprecedented
thaw, which could cause a “tipping point”in global warming. (Newman, 2005)
The tipping point is placed in adverted commas in both texts, signalling it’s unfamiliar, still
strange, scientific use. This suggests that journalist aimed to clearly show that the phrase is used
by others, in this case scientists. It potentially also draws attention to the metaphorical status of
the phrase, suggesting that we may need our knowledge about physical tipping points to understand
what scientists may mean by climate tipping points.
The second set of articles refers to scientific studies of the decline of Arctic sea ice:
(9) Researchers had long considered Antarctica very cold and, therefore, very stable climatically. But
the dramatic disintegration of the Larsen B ice shelf over five weeks that February and March
heightened concern that large parts of the frozen continent might be near the tipping point.
(Calamai, 2005)
(10) The greatest fear is that the Arctic has reached a “tipping point”beyond which nothing can
reverse the continual loss of sea ice and with it the massive land glaciers of Greenland,
which will raise sea levels dramatically. (Connor, 2005)
The physical space and motion terms around these tipping points (be near [9], and reach and
beyond [10]) are all regular spatial language use to talk about time and do not necessarily carry delib-
erately metaphorical force. This may be in line with the fact that tipping point itself had become a
conventionalized metaphorical term for big change at that time. The use of the linguistic expression
does not necessarily draw people’s attention to the source domain of tipping as motion in space. In
other words, in processing these expressions, people may only think of referents from the target
domain of time and change instead of from the source domain of space and motion.
Along these lines, many of these newspaper articles refer to scientific warnings for dangerous tip-
ping points in the climate system, but simply in terms of time, not genuine, gravitational, tipping
points:
(11) The world’s ecological clock is ticking. Scientists say unless we dramatically reduce greenhouse
gases by 2050 we will reach what they call the “tipping point”, where the damage to the earth’s
environment becomes irreversible. (Weekes, 2005)
(12) Even more concerning are recent warnings from scientists that we might be approaching a tip-
ping point, beyond which major climate change will become irreversible. (“Common-sense sol-
utions can ease impact of global warming,”2006)
(13) …the tipping point is when the exponential rise in Earth’s temperature, already underway,
takes off with planet-destroying vengeance. (Zwicker, 2006)
Yet, the above quotations also illustrate that the object at risk of unprecedented (8), dramatic (7; 9;
10), irreversible (10; 11; 12) and planet-destroying (13) tipping points is a generalized we,us,o
r
humanity rather than a single individual, city or nation. This involves a change from the social tip-
ping points that were part of the common lexicon of journalists—pointing to individual actors who
follow a group process but in principle could act differently—to tipping points as encompassing
events in nature without a will of their own, which are subject to inevitable causes explained by
ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 9
physical laws. The use of the tipping point metaphor in this more explicitly physical sense conveys a
lack of human control over potentially detrimental changes in earth’s climate.
In sum, in this second phase of using the tipping point metaphor in the climate change debate, we
see journalists taking up the tipping point metaphor as a new concept that explicitly comes from
science, developing it and explaining it to the public. It is marked off as a specialist, scientific concept
by the use of inverted commas, distinguishing it from the conventionalized, generally accepted use of
tipping points as moments of social change, which does not seem to carry overt metaphorical force
anymore. Especially when it comes to the target of the tipping point we see a difference in language
use, with climate tipping point referring to a generalized humanity at risk of tipping (rather than an
active individual who follows a group process) and in this way perhaps drawing on the physical
source domain of an object that tips over and falls. It is not clear whether, to journalists, the meta-
phor functions as an exegetical (pedagogical) or theory-constitutive metaphor, even though, as we
saw in the previous section, scientists initially explicitly used the metaphor as a pedagogical tool
in communicating with the media. Because of this cross-over between domains, the metaphor func-
tions as a boundary object with potentially different functions in the two domains. The meaning con-
veyed in the news media is one of catastrophic and potentially irreversible climate change
threatening humanity, a message that is strengthened in reference to the authority of the scientists
that introduce the phrase in public debate.
5.3. Tipping point reaches the mainstream of climate science
While news media attention for climate tipping points decreased after 2007, the number of scientific
articles published on the subject increased exponentially at the same time (in our dataset coverage in
major world newspapers decreased from 61 to 33 between 2007 and 2009, while the number of scien-
tific publications increased from 7 to 30 publications per year over the same period; see Figure 1).
During this period, the metaphor that had been deliberately introduced by scientists into the public
debate in 2005 was given another use, as a conceptually charged technical term, in the scientific cli-
mate change literature. In 2008, less than three years after the first scientific article on the topic was
published, it was argued in the journal Science that the use of the tipping point had moved from a
marginalized position to the mainstream of climate science (Kerr, 2008).
As the following quotes illustrate, the focus on abrupt change in the climate system expressed by
the tipping point metaphor is itself not new. However, older concepts such as critical threshold
(metaphorical), regime shifts (metaphorical) and alternative stable states created a different image
than the tipping point phrase.
(14) We discuss the existence of cryospheric “tipping points”in the Earth’s climate system. Such
critical thresholds have been suggested to exist for the disappearance of Arctic sea ice and
the retreat of ice sheets: Once these ice masses have shrunk below an anticipated critical extent,
the ice–albedo feedback might lead to the irreversible and unstoppable loss of the remaining
ice. We here give an overview of our current understanding of such threshold behavior.
(Notz, 2009, p. 20590)
(15) In the Earth’s history, periods of relatively stable climate have often been interrupted by sharp
transitions to a contrasting state. One explanation for such events of abrupt change is that they
happened when the earth system reached a critical tipping point. However, this remains hard
to prove for events in the remote past, and it is even more difficult to predict if and when we
might reach a tipping point for abrupt climate change in the future. (Dakos et al., 2008,
p. 14308)
(16) It seems inevitable that the ongoing and rapid changes in the physical environment of the mar-
ine Arctic will push components of the region’s existing social ecological systems—small and
large—beyond tipping points and into new regime. (Carmack, McLaughlin, Whiteman, &
Homer-Dixon, 2012, p. 56)
10 S. VAN DER HEL ET AL.
The tipping point phrase is often used as a synonym for the equally metaphorical notions of criti-
cal thresholds or threshold behavior (14). However, the concept of tipping points focuses in particular
on that moment when the threshold is reached (15) and when the entity is pushed beyond the
threshold and into a new regime (16). Thus, other than the term critical threshold, the tipping
point phrase draws special attention to the moment in real and proximal time when abrupt change
may or even will in fact occur (15). This is an idea that is mostly compatible with the notion of cross-
ing a threshold. Moreover, the tipping point phrase, more than critical threshold, regime shifts and
alternative stable states, particularly highlights the abrupt change (the tipping) that will occur at the
tipping point: the entity will be disturbed and end up somewhere else or in a distinctly different state.
This abrupt change is also apparent in the visual scientific representation that is generally used in
publications to explain the phenomenon: a horizontal movement is followed by a vertical drop,
the two core spatial motion concepts illustrating the drastic (negative) change that will take place
once a tipping point is passed.
Note how the content and language in (14), (15) and (16) are prominently time oriented. The
tipping point is explained in conventionally metaphorical language (reach,passing of critical
threshold) making use of space and motion to talk about change over time. The language might
be read as deliberately metaphorical (push components …beyond tipping points) but this reading
is not enforced since each of these words can be given a straight conventionalized target domain
meaning without needing the detour through caused motion in space. At most, this language is
ambiguous between deliberately metaphorical and non-deliberately metaphorical, in the former
case requiring thinking via setting up referents from the source domain and projecting on to the tar-
get, but in the latter case not—the latter seeming the more likely use of these utterances.
In this third phase, the metaphor is also occasionally extended to the social domain, such as in
quote (17), which deliberately bridges the physical meaning of tipping points across the climate sys-
tem and social domain. Other than in the previous phase (when articles referred to socioeconomic
tipping as an active verb), the tipping point phrase is now directly mapped onto the social domain,
indicating that virtuous tipping points can be identified as moments in space or time.
(17) Tipping points—where a small perturbation triggers a large response—can occur in many
complex environmental systems. They produce abrupt and sometimes irreversible change,
are inherently difficult to predict, and thus pose considerable challenges to the occupants
and managers of those systems. However, tipping points can also represent opportunities.
[…] a series of virtuous tipping points are identified, which can help transform the relation-
ships between human societies and the environmental systems we depend upon. (Lenton,
2013,p.1)
Thus, in this third phase of using the metaphor, we see the exegetical use of the tipping point
metaphor by scientists to the general public being complemented by an increase in theory-constitu-
tive use in science itself.
5.4. Renewed/on-going media attention
In the news media, the metaphor (re-)gains attention from 2011 onwards. Warnings from scientists
about tipping points in the climate system continue to be reported in the media:
(18) THE Earth is within decades of reaching an irreversible tipping point that could result in “pla-
netary collapse”, scientists warned yesterday. They called for drastic action, such as rapid curbs
on population growth, to prevent food supplies being threatened by major changes to farming
caused by climate change. (Dalton, 2012)
ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 11
Yet, renewed attention is mainly linked to others, such as politicians, picking up the concept to
talk about climate change. Warnings about climate tipping points are mainly voiced in the context of
various climate conferences, such as the United Nation’s Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in June
2012, and the climate conference in Durban a year earlier. The news media follow closely such
top-level political climate change meetings, and quote the scientists and policy-makers’use of the
metaphor to warn about climate change.
(19) THE greenhouse gas cuts promised around the world will not be enough to avoid the “tipping
point”into dangerous climate change, according to a United Nations report released before
next week’s climate conference in Durban. (Cubby & Wroe, 2011)
(20) US Secretary of State John Kerry was set to issue a clarion call last night for the world to do to
more to combat climate change, warning the planet is being pushed to “a tipping point of no
return.”(“Kerry warns Asia on climate ‘tipping point’,”2014)
Note that the metaphor is again placed in scare quotes, drawing attention to the authority (United
Nations report, US Secretary of State) using the phrase to talk about climate change. Tipping points
are also identified as abrupt changes in specific, crucial, geographical locations on the Earth, such as
the Amazon and the Arctic, thus imagining tipping points as specific points of change:
(21) Billions of trees died in the record drought that struck the Amazon basin in 2010, raising fears
that the vast forest is on the verge of a tipping point, where it will stop absorbing greenhouse
gas emissions and instead increase them. (Carrington, 2011)
(22) While the climate system has many tipping points, Superstorm Sandy may have marked one of
the more important in terms of public opinion. At the very least, it has blown away the absurd
political taboo against talking about a subject we can easily do something about. (“Letters:
Superstorm Sandy,”2012)
In quote (22) creative language is used to make a connection between climate tipping points and
human action that can counter this threat, as we have seen also in scientific articles.
In this last phase of use, the tipping point metaphor seems to be employed as a conventional meta-
phor referring to drastic change instead of the deliberate metaphor that was introduced by scientists
in 2005 to call for action to counter climate change. This might reduce its status as a boundary object
between science and the media, as the metaphor, in this context, appears to be turning into a generally
accepted phrase that happens to be metaphorical about climate change as well as policy change. In
this phase, we can see that the tipping point metaphor has developed into a discourse metaphor, pro-
viding flexibility for different interpretations of the meanings attached to the metaphor in each of
these discourses. This flexibility makes the metaphor vital, able to spread rapidly both within and
between domains, yet also controversial, giving rise to different perspectives and entailments.
6. Discussion and conclusion
In this article, we examined the meanings and uses of the tipping point metaphor in the climate
change debate. This metaphor suggests a moment in time when a system can be pushed across a
balancing point so that it tips over and falls. Our close analysis of the meanings and uses of the tip-
ping point metaphor in the news media and climate sciences revealed subtle variations and develop-
ments over time in the two domains (see Table 1 for an overview).
Since 2005, the tipping point metaphor has been used deliberately by climate scientists to convey a
warning that abrupt, irreversible and dangerous climate change is imminent. The metaphor was
picked up by the news media (prior to the publication of the scientific articles) and developed
into a commonly used metaphor about possible, grave dangers of on-going climate change. Here,
we observe that the tipping point metaphor functions as a deliberate boundary object between
12 S. VAN DER HEL ET AL.
science and the news media on climate change, on the one hand guiding the conceptual development
within the sciences and on the other facilitating communication of abrupt climate change across the
sciences and lay audiences. Typical for boundary objects, the tipping point metaphor offers a com-
mon ground for different discourses by allowing multiple interpretations of the meanings of the
metaphor (Hellsten, 2000). Yet, partly due to these multiple meanings, the tipping point metaphor
is also controversial, with critics pointing to the tone of alarmism that surrounds the concept
(Hulme, 2008; Skrimshire, 2008), the deterministic language by which human agency appears defen-
celess against the risks of climate change (Nuttall, 2012), and the overly simplistic extension of the
tipping point concept from the climate to the social domain (Russill, 2008; Russill & Nyssa, 2009).
The tipping point phrase represents a less common example of how metaphors generally travel
between the sciences and news media. Typically, metaphors between science and the public domain
start their journey as new terms in developing scientific theory, and may then be taken up as ped-
agogical tools to communicate complex phenomena to the public (Deignan, Littlemore, & Semino,
2014, p. 99). The tipping point metaphor is an example of the less common reverse journey, begin-
ning as a rhetorical device to communicate the dangers of abrupt climate change to the public (in
2005–2007) and then developing into a theory-constitutive metaphor in the climate sciences
(2007 onwards). While the exegetical function of the metaphor aims at explaining the underlying
process to others, in the theory-constitutive phase, the metaphor starts shaping a subdomain of cli-
mate science.
Over time, the meanings and uses of the metaphor developed from a vivid illustration of rapid
changes in climate (in 2005–2007) to a conventionalized phrase for emphasizing the urgency of
actions to counter climate change. Across the sciences and news media, the phrase tipping point
was used much less frequently as a deliberately metaphorical expression, turning into a more general
expression designating moments of great change in any context, accommodating to previously con-
ventionalized uses that had already ended up in various dictionaries as such. This suggests that the
specific metaphorical mapping may have bleached and stopped drawing attention to the various
properties of the source domain—even though it may be revitalized and used deliberately any
time, especially in cartoons portraying the earth on a precipice over a deep ravine. The deliberate
function of tipping points as a boundary object, introduced by journalists to describe the complex
scientific issue of climate change, diminishes over time. Moreover, this evolution is not just due
to developments in the climate change debate but also interacts with other phenomena, including
most notably the success of Malcolm Gladwell’s bestselling book The tipping point. The use of the
phrase tipping point in the climate change debate got included in the more general conventionalized
Table 1. Overview of the main results.
Episodes Linguistic Discursive
Theoretical
interpretation
Scientists introduce
metaphor to the
public (2005
onwards)
Draws attention to the source domain
of the tipping point in terms of
motion in space (nearing, but has not
passed, beyond)
Warning the public of abrupt,
dangerous and potentially
irreversible climate change
Exegetical
(pedagogical)
metaphor
Attention in news
media (2005
onwards)
Use of adverted commas; spatial
language to talk about change over
time; passive object (we, us, humanity)
Explaining complex phenomenon to
the public; conveying scientific
warning
Boundary object
Mainstream of climate
science (2007
onwards)
Synonym for threshold, but focus on the
moment of change (tipping);
language is ambiguous between
deliberately and non-deliberately
metaphorical
Conceptually charged technical term;
considered part of “mainstream”
climate science
Theory-
constitutive
metaphor
Renewed/on-going
media attention
(2011 onwards)
Use of adverted commas; specific
location as object (forest; artic sea ice);
no longer drawing attention to the
metaphorical status of the phrase
Metaphor picked up by other actors
(e.g. politicians); reference to specific
locations and events; linking climate
change and human action
Discourse
metaphor
ENVIRONMENTAL COMMUNICATION 13
metaphorical expression and simply means “a time when important things start happening in a situ-
ation, especially things that you cannot change.”
Whereas tipping points in the climate system are presented as dangerous and beyond our control,
tipping points in the societal domain are portrayed as positive and necessary to avoid abrupt climate
change. This flexibility allows the metaphor to function as a discourse metaphor, which we particu-
larly observe for the fourth episode studied here. The metaphor has clearly become part of the gen-
eral lexicon on climate change, being used not just by scientists and journalists, but also, for example,
by high-level politicians and in international reports. It is a discourse metaphor that has lost its delib-
erate origin. It does not seem to function as a framing device very often—in the sense of directing
actual interpretation and reasoning about the target domain via aspects of the source domain—
which raises questions about the relation between discourse metaphor and framing as well as the
evolution from deliberate to less deliberate use of metaphors, which we suggest should be further
explore in future research (Burgers et al., 2016; Zinken et al., 2008).
Mapping the tipping point phrase in the climate change debate hence reveals a wide range of cru-
cial target domain implications and questions for both scientists, journalists, decision-makers and
the general public. There are many possibilities for varied selection and presentation of these gen-
erally hidden aspects of metaphorical conceptualization, and these are used in both deliberate and
non-deliberate ways. By explicating the complex ways in which the tipping point phrase in the cli-
mate change debate draws upon these metaphorical possibilities, we hope our article can help both
scientists and journalists in managing their language use in important public debates.
Acknowledgement
We gratefully acknowledge part of the data collection and analysis by Robin Meyer.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
We gratefully acknowledge the support by the Network Institute KNAW Academy Assistants programme (2012–
2013) at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.
ORCID
Sandra van der Hel http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6552-9616
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