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
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I do think about them… I do not get any… but I think about them. 🤔
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.
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
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just a note on this: Currents have broken down in the past.
Yeah, like when little ice age happened.