Researchers have predicted the collapse of the AMOC could happen any time between 2025 and 2095 — far sooner than previous predictions, although not all scientists are convinced.
TL;DR: New statistical model suggests that the AMOC (including gulf stream) could collapse to the much slower pattern by 2025 to 2095. This is a century earlier than previous predictions and the researchers were concerned. There is some questions on the accuracy of the model used, and that needs more research.
Personally I don’t think we should wait for further testing to vet the model before acting. Try to do better now.
It’s kind of important whether it’s 2095 (prepare for it, set up nuclear, reduce carbon emissions) or 2025 (fuck global warming, we need fuel and we need it now, the more carbon emitted the better).
The collapse of the current in the model is a direct result of global warming. The solution is to act like climate change is an emergency because it is.
That’s true if it’s closer to 2095. If it’s closer to 2025, there’s fuck all we can do to stop it, and so we need to do what’s best to survive it, which is not the same as what’s best to prevent it.
Scientists shouldn’t talk about the chances of not if something is sure enough. Politicians will latch onto that. Just make broad statements and go. Just like with the movie ‘Don’t look up’.
We could try to vote people who will take action OR incentivize consumers to be more proactive BUT. Neither is ever going to happen.
I was having dinner with my brother’s family and we were watching an interview with some celebrity that my sister-in-law adores. Dude is heavy in green activism and lists fast food places which are bad actors for climate and also farmers rights, etc. So my SiL announces we are never eating at such and such place again (I can’t remember, I never eat fast food anyway). The very next night they order takeout from said fast food place. They also always order same day deliver from Amazon despite it never actually arriving same day, but they get packages every damn day. Tons and tons of packaging for crap they always throw out or give away to neighbors eventually. This isn’t unique to them.
This is MOST of America and I suspect the rest of the developed world. We are effed.
cant elect people in america who would do anything, when we’re busy trying to fend off full blown fourth reichdom by electing the least awful candidate each election.
But carbon taxes, externality corrections, cost of recycling plastic is in the cost of the product. Let the market fix it all. But no, people won’t even agree to raise taxes on fuel
As long as we finally get colder weather and snow in Germany again, I’m all for it. No, not really because it’s horrible but I try to see the positive things.
I can remember a time when elon musk was still saying smart things… like if there’s even a 1% chance of it destroying the planet. We should do everything to avoid it.
Actually this is one of the climate issues I am not that worried about. Yea it can happen, yea there wil be problems but even in climate models with 0 sea currents , the winds will make up for most of it. It won’t be a km of ice covering Europe etc.
More worried about extreme weather that happens with or without the amoc
Nobody is claiming that there will be a literal ice age here. What part of Europe are you from where people actually think that will happen?
Even a small change in weather patterns can have disastrous consequences across many industries and aspects of society however, and must be taken extremely seriously. Will this be an apocalypse of biblical proportions? No. Will it plunge us into various types of suffering and despair? Yus.
BRIEF: As the ocean warms and land ice melts, ocean circulation — the movement of heat around the planet by currents — could be impacted. Research with NASA satellites and other data is currently underway to learn more.
Edit: climate.nasa.gov is fantastic for this kind of stuff, btw. They have tons of data from their satellites you can download, visualizations, videos, charts, graphics, tutorials…just all sorts of things. It’s very cool.
I asked Bing chat a similar question. Here the sobering answer:
The Gulf Stream is a crucial system of ocean currents that plays a vital role in Earth’s climate. If it were to collapse, the consequences would be significant and abrupt. Some of the potential consequences include:
Fast sea level rise in the Atlantic¹
More extreme winters in Western Europe¹
Disruptions to monsoon systems in the tropics¹
Greater cooling and more powerful storms across the Northern Hemisphere¹
Severe disruption to the rain that billions of people rely upon to grow crops in Africa, South America, and India¹
Extreme cold to Europe and parts of North America¹
Raised sea levels along the U.S. East Coast¹
Endangerment of the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets¹
It is important to note that scientists are warning that the Gulf Stream could collapse at any time². The shutdown of this ocean current could lead to serious consequences globally, impacting heat and rainfall distribution². A major Atlantic current could collapse by midcentury as a result of climate change, prompting extreme cold in Europe and sea level rise along the eastern coast of the U.S., according to a study³. It is crucial that we take action to prevent this from happening.
Those are all the problems for places that don’t get the heat the AMOC moves. It doesn’t list the problem for the places where that heat doesn’t leave.
Maybe I don’t get it, but as far as I understand, the golf stream brings hot air to north Europe. This is why you can live on Iceland while at the same latitude on the center of Canada is unhabitable.
Well that’s pretty scary… I mean, at least the scientists say that it’s more likely the current will just slow down rather than completely collapse? But then again, all the climate change models predicted a much more conservative timeline on when we would be experiencing the effects of climate change than what is actually happening in the real world now… so idk, scary shit man ☹️
they also have admitted to only announcing the most optimistic results because nobody would believe them if they didn't, and if people did it would be devastating
That was dumb of them. Enough people would believe to make make actual changes. To move earth and societies. Now what do we got? Too many people that don’t believe because they tried to make people believe. I think that all continues to be a massive mistake. Just know that most people aren’t that smart and you can convince a lot of them. Be not scary enough and those same not smart people will work against you with their emotion based reasoning.
Ugh, and of course because of that people have been dragging their feet on making necessary changes to the point of doing basically nothing anyway… I feel like the risk of people saying it’s too extreme maybe would have been worth instilling a sense of panic in people over climate change? Feels panic worthy to me
The doom depends on where you live. Florida? Yup, probably, but you where already living in hell. Europe? Iced up North Sea, really snowy north, big ice caps, Spain and portugal getting more cool…doesn’t sound that bad, to me personally.
Mostly florida, as the “AMOC” transports the heat away from florida. Could very well be, that a stoppage of the AMOC would create a Hypercane and completely wreck everything in Florida. Cuba could also be absolutely done for. Canada would also probably have a LOT more snow - the Soutpole however would probably stop existing and what exactly is going to happen to Brazil is a complete unknown. Some simulations show the insta death of the rest of the rain forest. Some simulations actually show the opposite. However, Europe, Africa and Asia probably would see a lot lower temps - what exactly that would mean for the Climate in those areas is also highly speculative - however, it’s something that happened quite often throughout the history of earth. North America however has lots of other parts liveable, when Florida is “dead” and basically the Sahara.
No, the collapse of the AMOC was pretty rapid in the past as well. And it’s separate from climate change. Man-made global warming is very complex and there are various things contributing to it.
"Despite being so common in English as to be known as the "Chinese curse", the saying is apocryphal, and no actual Chinese source has ever been produced." - Wikipedia
I just long for a time when the conspiracy theorists are yelling about the end of the world and the scientists are running the country, not the other way around.
I was going to save humanity but I have a responsibility to a handful of shareholders that yell at me in meetings so… You can really see how hard this is for me
Revolutions take over where reason stops. The people in power have the means to do the right thing, but sometimes they look out for a few people and will destroy thousands. That’s not a good option, as people get more desperate
Climate change is not something that has a simple solution to it and governments just refuse to do so for whatever reason. That’s a naive view that ignores all the complexity of this issue.
For example: stopping all carbon emissions is not going to stop climate change. Not only do you need to become carbon-neutral but you also need to get all the excessive carbon out of the atmosphere. How?
Why the extreme? Cutting back and investing in things that are better should be a mandate, not an idea or option. And certainly we cannot allow an administration to roll things backwards just because someone bribed them donated to their campaign
Carbon is causing global warming. We know how to fix global warming because we are causing it, we just have to stop doing it.
This article is about global cooling which is bizarre and not something we expected would be happening. We haven’t got a clue why it’s doing that. It maybe natural, or it maybe it’s something we’ve done in a complicated way, but we don’t know so we don’t know how to fix it.
If this is just an ice age why may as well burn all the coal now to try and stave it off.
Although in reality I think this needs a lot more research before we do anything because this announcement makes no sense within our current understanding of the environmental science.
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