The drop that makes a glass overflows

If you fill a glass until the top and the last section we do drop to drop, we reach a point where a drop enters the glass begins to overflow. We can consider that the penultimate drop completed volume of the glass and last drop did not fit and so it fell by the side. So just get out there would expect a drop, but in reality much more water overflows. This behavior is caused by the surface tension of the liquid that links the surface preventing it from breaking, thus the last drops before overflow don't fit but tension doesn't let water to fall by side. When it starts to overflow? So when the weight of the liquid is higher than the tension, the surface loses its mechanical consistency and breaks, it let out all the excess liquid.
There are other metastable situations that after passing the threshold of stability, under certain conditions so close to threshold, it remains stable until they were disturbed or too move away to threshold. The instantaneous vaporization of water’s glass when goes out of the microwave or droplets suspended in a cloud are other examples of metastability.
The key is in the transitional period between the two states. When for physical reasons a system must changes of state it takes a while to reach the new, instantaneous is only a perception, just as it is also immutability: diamonds out of the mine where they begin a long drawn period for reconverted into graphite, this process is very slow, in practice the announcement "a diamond is for life" is true but it is totally false that are eternal, sooner or later end up becoming graphite (after a few thousand years).
Accordingly many processes are apparently immutable from the point of view of the short human life and much longer process also from the historical point of view. This problem causes a problem of perspective in identifying situations of stability in nature. So that may seem a sign of transcendence is simply an anecdote from the viewpoint of the planet. Luckily science in the last century have been able to identify a lot of changes, first geological and biological, after environment that has enjoyed our planet. The progress is significant in the environment where we can see that the weather changes are very suddenly.
Now we are in front of one of the many climate changes the earth has undergone. For humanity should not be anything new: it was born into an ice age, it has passed another once and it has experienced all sorts of minor changes. But as I said most of these changes are usually not noticeable in a generation due to an apparent stability. With the exception of disasters usually described as the story was not the climate of the period. Descriptions of landscapes and battle where the climate was decisive and other indirect references are used to sense the weather of the period reported. We know that the republican Rome and the beginning of the empire it was warm weather in Europe because they wore light clothes, but from Marcus Aurelius they were covered so weather began to be cold. But there aren't references to this change. Why? They simply were not aware. Humans have the perception that time is stable, what we enjoy today the same weather as our ancestors, and psychologically we do not have any memory of the climate. So much so that when it reaches a heat wave in summer, everyone assures that had never been so hot and the weather is crazy, which can happen sometimes, the same way when something extraordinary is happening we are not able to find out. Climate is part of the landscape to humans, and landscape we believe unchangeable but the climate and the landscape are changing always.
The feeling of the immutability doesn't produce by the slowness of process, but rather the result of a succession of steady states. We have a mountain in a completely stable, but eventually the rain and vegetation barefoot the rocks of wall which fall down, but the vegetation stops the rocks and water cemented detached rocks, while it was dismantled the slope of a mountain there is a parallel mechanism that strengthens, so nothing moves and it leaving metastable the slope, until the strengthening can't support the weight of the detached area and succumbs the full wall. For residents of the area and the mountain does not move the landslide is a traumatic event off due to something specific, like a house that falls apart when we seek the causes, and probably three years ago that the house is falling.
The same happens to the climate. Small changes of orographic, orbital or solar radiation origin are also compensated for atmospheric changes that caused by the first changes which they are maintaining the stationary situation in a first instance. But the durability of the first changes: the orbitals are slow and orographic irreversible; make the collapse of the situation at last and it will change abruptly to new stability. So the weather has an apparent stability is abruptly broken to be placed in another relative stability. The engines are the first changes that have to do with the energy received by the atmosphere and the sea, but both the atmosphere and the sea are modified by the Biosphere too, which is the set of living beings. So human, as members of the Biosphere, also involved in the climate changes, as do elephants or bacteria.
The assimilation of the landscape to the climate causes a strange situation. As for us, the landscape is unchangeable but we can change it (make bridges, build houses, flattened margin...), then the weather is stable and if it changes also is due to our intervention. From here it was easy to identify climate change with human responsibility. And where various positions get until to deny climate change to avoid changing the way humans relate to the environment, even belligerent stances to stop it. I must say that two positions are totally useless, if the weather will have changed it will do.
Looking at the causes of the landslide we could have found that the trigger was a newly built road to the bottom of this. Not having built the road would have prevented the disaster? The answer is no, perhaps it would happen in time beyond or its scope had been reduced, but the rocks down one at one or all at time. Here the highway is the drop that made the glass overflow, which in this case was the slope of the mountain.
Humans are a more factor in climate, but our ability to transform the environment has been rising as we increased technology and we grow in number. On the other hand climate has a series of dynamic that are periodic as orbit and solar cycles, and others are evolutionary such as continuous modification of the topography and weather memory: the yesterday's weather influences to today and so on. Our power and influence on climate has increased and this should make us reflect on our actions, not for if we can influence less, impossible thing, rather if the influence is that we need.
We're losing a lot of time if climate change is our blame or if it really occurs, while the weather is starting to change in front of our noses. Even the evidence and current knowledge does not allow us to predict how and when, and in this vagueness is the excuse to establishment for doing nothing. At the same time the conservative nature of the human is fighting to stop climate change, which is totally impossible. When you break a cup never more became the same even you repair it. All climate change is irreversible; so that we stop to dirty now that are dirty remains dirty for much as we trying to clean up after.
We must understand that climate change is a process that is inherent to planet that is our home, and actions should be linked to be able to adapt to change as less traumatic as possible rather than ignoring or oppose them, because when it arrive, that will do it, we will stick with the step and changed, and the word traumatic must became an understatement to describe the situation. And if humanity has a secondary role as regards the weather, we should remember that a miserly drop is enough to overflow the glass.
Currently observed in the geological record that an increase in temperature leads to an increase in CO2, so surely the current increase in atmospheric CO2 is not entirely caused by humans. But this isn't excuse to continue burning coal as if anything happens because a portion of this is of human origin. As the drop that overflow the glass, probably the CO2 from androgynous source is the difference between a situation for a little warmer or little colder, and the return of an ice age or a tropicalitation the planet. Also in the geological record shows that this second type of change typically occurs in less than one hundred years. While humanity is still dreaming in stables climates.