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.
Won’t somebody think about the profits?
exactly what the profits predicted
The profits always know best!
such wise profits
There Is No Business to Be Done on a Dead Planet
lies. the business will move underground
No business on the dead planet - only business inside it
I do think about them… I do not get any… but I think about them. 🤔
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!”
We told all those fish that if they kept swimming the way they were this would happen.
You 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.
But 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.
Moreover not believing in climate change is very different from not believing the main polluters aren’t this or that.
That’s my point though. when you hand wave away every dissenting voice the way the commenter I replied too did, you’re not understanding a very large segment of opposition to climate change initiatives, and therefore are incapable of meaningfully engaging on the issue. And there are those who encourage this behaviour in an attempt to isolate us within partisan silos, to make it impossible for anyone to be an active participant in issues which affect us all.
I was the original commenter heh. I am not against engaging in meaningful discussions especially if both sides can keep their cool and are genuinely interested in the discussion. I agree that usually the most straightforward way is some sort of synthesis because in reality complete conversion of one large group to another side is very slow if not impossible.
But, making a joke about it does not nullify the possibility of such discussions, atleast for me. Because making a joke about even a politically charged topic doesnt necessarily mean I am a blind supporter of one side or the other.
ps: I am sure if you find the right community somewhere in reddit, you will also encounter tons of jokes against climate change supporters. That does not really anger me or want me to stay away from discussing with these people.
You’re right. Climate change is a massive problem, but countries with small populations can’t do much about it. Canada, in particular, has little room to maneuver: massive country, extremely cold climate, small population. Canada’s actions in regard to mitigating climate change are mostly about “leading by example” (to the degree that anyone cares what Canada does) and solidarity with others who care.
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China 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?
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.
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?
Yes I do think it’s sus when the very same people who are screaming about an impending apocalypse, and the need to hamstring every other economy, pretend to see nothing at all wrong with China and India producing such vast quantities of emissions. It’s sus as fuck.
The scientists pointing out the impending collapse of ecological systems and the corporate regulators seeking revolving doors to lobbying gigs are very different people with very different aims.
The scientists at the oil companies wrote alarmist research at the same time the marketing people were downplaying environmental concerns. Different people in different roles have different motivations and objectives.
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Kinda 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.
The gulf stream is weakening and could collapse too. I’m tired of living in interesting times.
Why 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.
Which 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.
The first one gets shock
The second one gets attention
The third one develops the pattern
Suddenly redistributing wealth is important for our economy and society more than it was before the first.
It’s not just immorality of it, it’s the absolutely fucked logic of it. How many of them have actually thought through the scenario in which they have to actually use their doomsday bunker? How long will their supplies last? How many people they pay to help them would still do so after the value of money drops to nothing? They won’t last long.
Russia becomes the most fertile country if global warming occurs
Anyone else feeling deflated?
On 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
nice, so it wont happen in our lifetimes!
Talk for yourself. With my luck, they’ll find a way to prolong my life to 120 years.
I’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.
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.
Oh, 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.
But not me. I want change. I want to put nature first… This sucks.
we’re going to vote/choose ourselves into pockets of extremism and then wipe each other out.
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.
While 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”
I 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.
Transportation 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.
WFH is actually less energy efficient than the sum of transport costs and large, communal work spaces.
Yeh ok Elon, take a hike.
“Trust the science (which matches my preexisting beliefs)!”
You’re almost self aware about it
So where is your evidence?
Do you have a source for that?
Twenty six of the 39 studies suggest that teleworking reduces energy use, and only eight studies suggest that teleworking increases, or has a neutral impact on energy use.
Your source does not say what you seem to think it says.
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.
That’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).BTW 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.
Oh? And what has changed so far? Because I’ve been holding onto hope my whole life and nothing. has. changed…
what’s more dangerous? Apathy or fraud? Because your thinking is just fraud.
Plenty of things have changed, as with everything, it’s gradual.
Obviously we need a big bang in how the world works but that’s not gonna happen anytime soon.
Most CO2 emissions are growing less fast than they used to, renewables are on the rise, electrification is rising as well, nuclear power is also on the rise both on generation and new construction.
People have slowly realised that there is actually something wrong with the climate in the last decades.
It’s very slow, too slow and it’s gonna get tough but we’re getting there.
I’m not sure to understand how me thinking, that action and progress, as slow as they are, is a fraud.https://ourworldindata.org/co2-emissions
We’re not getting anywhere. You’re being spoon-fed greenwashed nonsense.
Every major country’s highest CO2 emitting years are in the past. Renewable energy is far cheaper than most fossil fuels. Renewables will become the majority energy supplier for the planet next year. We won’t stop at 1.5C, but that was just a milestone for a climate agreement. We’re no longer looking at >4C, and we’re closing in on avoiding >3C.
Don’t get me wrong, shit’s going to get tough, but we’re not doomed, not yet.
That’s just not true.
Energy generation is about to experience a renewable tipping point, so our source of energy has changed a bit! It’s something :-). I’ve stopped hoping that people will change, now I’m just waiting for the “fuck you got mine” generation to die and leave us alone. The outcome is the same, but I’m less bothered by it all.
Just a note on this: Currents have broken down in the past.
Yes, 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.
That’s pretty much the point.
Yeah, like when little ice age happened.
We are still in an ice age. The classification of it is “permanent ice sheet”, we accelerated it far beyond the natural cycle.
