Scientists warn that a crucial ocean current could collapse, altering global weather
Scientists warn that a crucial ocean current could collapse, altering global weather
New research warns of a possible collapse in Atlantic Ocean currents due to climate change. That could fundamentally alter global weather patterns.
Scientists are sounding the alarm that a crucial component of the planet’s climate system is in gradual decline and could one day reach a tipping point that would radically alter global weather patterns.
The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC, is a system of ocean currents that circulate water in the Atlantic Ocean like a conveyor belt, helping to redistribute heat and regulate global and regional climates. New research, however, warns that the AMOC is weakening under a warming climate, and could potentially suffer a dangerous and abrupt collapse with worldwide consequences.
“This is bad news for the climate system and humanity,” researchers from Utrecht University’s Institute for Marine and Atmospheric Research wrote in a new study published in the journal Science Advances.
tipping point scenarios are very horrifying. And all the global warming deniers will probably be like "but it wasn't because of global warming it was because this ocean current collapsed!"
45We told all those fish that if they kept swimming the way they were this would happen.
8You should try to understand others more, instead of building strawmen to give yourself an excuse to feel smug without challenging your ideas. Among the larger concerns that people have with the messaging on climate change is how the world's largest polluters, China and India, are always completely ignored. It strikes people that, if it really were such a massive and immediate threat, then it would be completely irrational to ignore the massive contributions those economies are making to the problem.
Canada, for example, could completely stop existing tomorrow and it wouldn't make even the smallest dent in global emissions. On top of that, life in a winter climate such as ours requires significantly more emissions simply to sustain the basics required for living, such as heat, and yet many of the very same people talking about the dangers of climate change are also importing massive quantities of people from nations with warm climates where people can much more easily live with little to no emissions.
All things considered, the arguments presented simply do not sound honest to many people.
-35But on the other hand China and India are the largest polluters because people everywhere on Earth demand to consume more and more. If you renew your wardrobe every year or buy every slightly interesting junk you see in Alibaba then you are a part of the problem.
Moreover not believing in climate change is very different from not believing the main polluters aren't this or that.
16Permanently Deleted
7China and India are better than Canada if you look at per capita. Also how does that change anything? Because some other countries are worse, we just shouldn't do anything?
Ontop of that, China is heavily investing in nuclear and public transportation, what's our excuse?
6Kinda funny to call out a logical fallacy and then immediately commit an ad hominem (whataboutism) fallacy. Your argument does not change the fact that this is happening and that we aren't doing everything we can to prevent it. No one involved in this issue is ignoring that China and India are part of the problem, there's just nothing we can do short of war or economic pressures. War is out of the question because no one would survive to fix the planet anyway, so economic pressure it is, which would once again require us to do something.
5It strikes people that, if it really were such a massive and immediate threat, then it would be completely irrational to ignore the massive contributions those economies are making to the problem.
It's because "these economies" are everyone's economies.
The world outsourced its slave labor and environmental disregard for regulations to two places, and you think it's sus that the world is hush hush on criticizing themselves?
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The gulf stream is weakening and could collapse too. I'm tired of living in interesting times.
40Why do you think the ultra rich are building themselves doomsday bunkers? Conflict and disaster are coming.
They believe the science they're asking you to ignore. They also believe they're not planning to stop anything.
28Which shows why obsecenely rich people need to be kept at bay. Anyone who builds a doomsday bunker while profiting off the destruction of the climate is a genocidal mass murderer who enjoys killing people.
Living in a doomsday bunker is so much fucking worse than living in a sustainable society, while being just very rich instead of obsecenely rich.
14Russia becomes the most fertile country if global warming occurs
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Anyone else feeling deflated?
28On the bright side, it says in the article they figure there's a 95% chance this will not happen in the next 75 years, and that we don't know enough about the natural variability in the current to draw up any significant conclusions. They said the last time the current shut down was after the last ice age, when a significantly larger amount of freshwater melted into the oceans than is melting today
20I've just given up, the world won't change so I just accept that climate disasters will happen and live day to day until disaster hits my area. Definitely not having kids that's for sure.
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Good article; this news has been making the rounds for quite some time, but this article actually goes into more thorough detail re: what various effects we might see worldwide.
15Oh, don't worry, we will ignore this too... We're all gonna turn this planet into a living hell for ourselves, and as a species, we will completely deserve the consequences.
14But not me. I want change. I want to put nature first... This sucks.
8we're going to vote/choose ourselves into pockets of extremism and then wipe each other out.
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If everyone were allowed to work from home for jobs that don't require physical presence, this would pretty much sort itself out. Also take the train instead of flying.
6While I agree that remote work is positive for the climate 1 )I think you overestimate the number of jobs that can be done remotely. 2) Emissions shift from transportation to home climate control, which may be a net positive in most cases but not necessarily.
It is a start but we need bigger policy changes than that for it to "sort itself out"
2I also feel this is may be good but could not be, the number you didn’t give is too large, the benefit would be good but might not be, and this simple step should be replaced with large complicated ones.
1Transportation already accounts for more carbon emissions than electricity generation. Green Energy is phasing out fossil fuels in most places albeit slowly. Unless you live somewhere with a fairly extreme climate you don't really need to use that much energy on climate control. I live in the Arctic and only run one heater in the whole apartment and only intermittently. AC uses less electricity than heating. The laptop I use uses the same amount of electricity whether I use it at home or the office. And I realise that there are many jobs that can't be done from home but it's ridiculous to not allow office workers to work from home.
Many of my colleagues burn a liter of diesel a day commuting to work. And that's in a place where you don't idle in traffic for an hour. If anyone who had an office job in LA for example just wasn't in traffic, you can bet your ass the air would be cleaner.
And yes you're right about needing wide scale policy changes. One of the big ones would be investing in high speed rail. Way more environmentally friendly than either flying or driving and more comfortable. And for many journeys doesn't actually take longer than flying. When you consider staking a half hour shuttle bus to the airport, waiting a half hour to get through security, hanging around at the gate, waiting for luggage, shuttle bus from the airport at the other end. It's actually quicker to take the train from London to Paris than it is to fly, more environmentally friendly, but still costs more.
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At this point, I don't care anymore. We're effed anyway, there is no future for us... Even when aliens landed and took over the world it wouldn't surprise me. Maybe they'll do a better job.
1That's a problematic way to think about it though. We can still get away with it, it's gonna be bad and loads of people will die and the world will be fucked, but it will be nothing compared to what might happen if we give up and let capitalists steamroll us.
Being apathetic leads to inaction and that's the opposite of what's needed right now. Even if it feels small and pointless, it's still something that can lead to a better future by composite effect (single snowflake in the avalanche kind of thing).16BTW friendly reminder that by the time this is posted and the time you read it we'll be releasing even more CO2 than any moment in history before. Not only have we not done a fucking thing about climate change, the rate we create CO2 has only increased.
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Just a note on this: Currents have broken down in the past.
-7Yes, and they've caused the extinction of the majority of multicellular species each time. The Earth's history is not stable, we've had 5 cataclysmic extinction events in the past and we're headed straight for a sixth.
11That's pretty much the point.
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Yeah, like when little ice age happened.
7We are still in an ice age. The classification of it is "permanent ice sheet", we accelerated it far beyond the natural cycle.
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