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Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

e360.yale.edu

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Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#21

Post by jaapz »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #12
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #4

“Scientists” have been warning the world about this since Stommel issued his paper in 1961: https://tellusjournal.org/articles/10.3402/tellusa.v13i2.949... It’s going to shut down The ice caps and antartic ice are going to melt entirely The Gulf Stream is going to collapse Global emissions have skyrocketed with no brakes since then 1.5C target was a joke. 2.0 target is a joke. There is no world where humans can coord…

The archeological and geological records strongly suggest we've been down this road before. There's as much arrogance in assuming we can prevent this, as there is in assuming we caused it (perhaps hastened it). Best use of national or global resources is preparing for the outcome, not trying to prevent it.

Wheres the research that shows this has happened before at the same timescale?

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#22

Post by 4ndrewl »

luxuryballs wrote: post #7

not to diss the science and the work involved around it but this kind of alarmist stuff makes me wonder how many similar things have happened in the past but nobody noticed because nobody was looking or even knew how to track such a thing, the environment is so complex, seems unlikely that we can make heads or tails of this, and in 50 years some new understanding will flip all of our current models (no pun intended!)…

De be sure to let us know when you've completed your research into this topic.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#23

Post by causal »

I think climate change is a compelling crisis but I find these types of “could maybe happen according to some models” type of catastrophic scenarios a little frustrating because they soak up a lot of attention with scary headlines, reinforcing hopelessness in those who care while providing ammunition to skeptics when the catastrophe doesn’t materialize.

It’s also easy to question methodology for anyone who has done academic modeling and knows how easy it is to get the result you want. Much harder to argue against the basic first principle that injecting trillions of barrels of oil into the atmosphere is literal geoengineering and it’s gonna have consequences.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#24

Post by gmueckl »

luxuryballs wrote: post #7

not to diss the science and the work involved around it but this kind of alarmist stuff makes me wonder how many similar things have happened in the past but nobody noticed because nobody was looking or even knew how to track such a thing, the environment is so complex, seems unlikely that we can make heads or tails of this, and in 50 years some new understanding will flip all of our current models (no pun intended!)…

There are a couple of things wrong here. First off, there is a historic climate record that goes back centuries and is fairly accurate. Second, the climate prediction models are tested against this historic record. They reproduce the historic climates quite well. The error margins are generally shrinking due to model improvements.

But when making actual predictions, the models need to make assumption about anthropogenic parameters like CO2 and methane emissions. That's the largest remaining uncertainty at this point. Given the same assumptions, climate models generally agree on the outcome.

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#25

Post by 4ndrewl »

howmayiannoyyou wrote: post #12
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #4

“Scientists” have been warning the world about this since Stommel issued his paper in 1961: https://tellusjournal.org/articles/10.3402/tellusa.v13i2.949... It’s going to shut down The ice caps and antartic ice are going to melt entirely The Gulf Stream is going to collapse Global emissions have skyrocketed with no brakes since then 1.5C target was a joke. 2.0 target is a joke. There is no world where humans can coord…

The archeological and geological records strongly suggest we've been down this road before. There's as much arrogance in assuming we can prevent this, as there is in assuming we caused it (perhaps hastened it). Best use of national or global resources is preparing for the outcome, not trying to prevent it.

Citation needed

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#27

Post by thrance »

jedimastert wrote: post #10
kocsonya wrote: post #2

Hot take on HN, but techno-optimism sounds so stupid when it comes to climate change... You can't engineer macro climate/ecology, since capital has no interest in human and it's surrounding environment balanced cohabitation.

> capital has no interest Selfish humans. "Capital" is a mental model, it's not some force of nature or hand of god.

Selfishness has nothing to do with it. Capitalism rewards anti-social investment strategies and capital accumulation, so that's what we get. "Capital" is not a force of nature, it's an emergent force from our economic system. It behaves sort of predictably and can be described: that's economics.

EDIT: got to love how anytime you write something even remotely critical of capitalism you get auto-downvoted. Fine, "climate change is only because of bad, selfish people". Is this explanation more palatable?

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#28

Post by john_alan »

jaapz wrote: post #18
john_alan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate also doesn't change in macro over a lifetime. It's very real, but the notion that it's changing over a 5 year period is nonsense. things aren't "shutting off".

Climate has changed over a lifetime though.

[flagged]

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#29

Post by john_alan »

hiddencost wrote: post #9
john_alan wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate also doesn't change in macro over a lifetime. It's very real, but the notion that it's changing over a 5 year period is nonsense. things aren't "shutting off".

Wishful thinking... I wonder how people like you end up so hostile to experts.

[flagged]

Re: Scientists warn Atlantic current at risk of shutting down

#30

Post by ahartmetz »

namenotrequired wrote: post #8

Isn’t calling AMOC “the primary source of warmth for northern Europe” wildly overstated?

It would be correct if it said "Abnormally high temperatures for the latitude". Most of Europe would be 10 °C colder or so without. We'd be really screwed over here.
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