Tipping points and climate change: Metaphor between science and the media

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.