Back to Basics: My Analogies

Our Earth systems usually operate between certain boundaries in a roughly cyclical relationship (although time-scales vary per cycle), i.e. think glacial-intergalcial cycles as Yannick's blog is covering http://interglacialglacial.blogspot.co.uk.

Thus I like to think of natural cycles as operating something like this:-

Note that for the ball above, friction doesn't exist so the ball won't stop rolling and the ball wouldn't always reach the edge before reversing direction.

So when considering tipping points, conditions surpassing certain boundaries and causing irreversible change I think of (i.e. leaving the normal cycle):-

Lastly, what if the the ball were to fall off the cliff onto a downslope? This would represent a positive feedback i.e. X produces more of Y which in turn produces more of X. So taking us further and further from our original cyclical relationship whilst the situation simultaneously worsens/grows in size. Like a snowball rolling down a hill....

I find little analogies like this to be really useful, especially when trying to get to grips with a new topic or subject area. It's amazing how you can come up with analogies for pretty much anything if you put your mind to it....

Remember, little things can make a big difference.