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Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

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Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#51

Post by jorisboris »

bawolff wrote: post #34

> Back in 2021, a study in Nature Geosciences showed that the AMOC was the weakest it’s been in more than 1,000 years. Out of curiosity, what happened 1000 years ago to make it so weak? 1000 years ago is still human time scales - there were people living in europe and north america at the time. We have written records from the europeans at least. Its not like this was 100,000 years ago.

1000 years ago there was the medieval warm period which at least for Northern Europe provided warmer temperatures than today (eg grapes in the Netherlands)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medieval_Warm_Period

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#52

Post by SupremumLimit »

renewiltord wrote: post #21
f_allwein wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s the science: https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/possible-nort... „Under high-emission scenarios, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a key system of ocean currents that also includes the Gulf Stream, could shut down after the year 2100.“

75 years to work on a solution to a possible problem? I rate humanity’s chances. But Europe is responsible for a third of cumulative emissions. Once they undo that bit it should be okay. Negative emissions for 75 years will be hard but they can perhaps undo the damage they’ve done to the Earth.

How’s it going so far? Greenhouse gas emissions only keep rising. There’s no basis to rate humanity’s chances positively based on actual evidence to date, even despite all the positive developments in renewable energy generation and storage.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#53

Post by SupremumLimit »

roenxi wrote: post #50
PinkMilkshake wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. That's not the problem, though. The problem is almost nothing else can. Livestock, staple crops, pollinating insects, etc.

How big a problem is that over a multi-decade time horizon? There is a pretty big variation in average temperatures by country [0]. Somehow People everywhere from Thailand to Greenland manage to find food. All else failing it is a possibility to trade for calories. Let alone technology improvements that might save the day by accident. I mean, it might make places uninhabitable over the course of a few generations, bu…

[flagged]

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#54

Post by lelanthran »

bawolff wrote: post #37
8bitsrule wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow humanity survived 10,000 years of the last ice age. Without central heating. Of course, furs will be harder to come by.

Being cold doesn't seem that big a problem. I think the bigger concern is what sudden climate shifts might do to agriculture. If some farmland becomes much less viable on a wide basis, that might be much harder to adjust to on the short term. I can't help but think of all the historical societies that collapsed due to even mild pressure on the food supply.

> I can't help but think of all the historical societies that collapsed due to even mild pressure on the food supply.

They didn't have the logistical advantages we have today (storage and transport).

Okay, when prawns fished from the coast of Mozambique are no longer viable some other spot will, necessarily, become viable.

Historical societies did not have the technology to simply farm in another place when their current place become hostile to farming. We already do this.

The only danger we have is if the global area for farming decreases. I do not think this will happen - it will merely shift around.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#55

Post by palmotea »

unglaublich wrote: post #33
8bitsrule wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow humanity survived 10,000 years of the last ice age. Without central heating. Of course, furs will be harder to come by.

They were already excellent at survival, and they migrated, and many of them died young. Sure, _humanity_ will survive, but a large part of the population won't.

> They were already excellent at survival, and they migrated, and many of them died young. Sure, _humanity_ will survive, but a large part of the population won't.

Hence the egregious exaggeration of the title. Even large fractions of the population dying != "Bye Bye Humanity."

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#56

Post by f_allwein »

renewiltord wrote: post #21
f_allwein wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here’s the science: https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/possible-nort... „Under high-emission scenarios, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a key system of ocean currents that also includes the Gulf Stream, could shut down after the year 2100.“

75 years to work on a solution to a possible problem? I rate humanity’s chances. But Europe is responsible for a third of cumulative emissions. Once they undo that bit it should be okay. Negative emissions for 75 years will be hard but they can perhaps undo the damage they’ve done to the Earth.

It is a global challenge. Climate change is caused by rich people in developed countries (the average Indian person causes very low co2 emissions). There are some good initiatives to mitigate climate change, but so far, it is too little, too late. The US taking a back seat does not help either.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#57

Post by t0bia_s »

SupremumLimit wrote: post #53
roenxi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How big a problem is that over a multi-decade time horizon? There is a pretty big variation in average temperatures by country [0]. Somehow People everywhere from Thailand to Greenland manage to find food. All else failing it is a possibility to trade for calories. Let alone technology improvements that might save the day by accident. I mean, it might make places uninhabitable over the course of a few generations, bu…

[flagged]

And you know future because of... Wikipedia?

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#59

Post by tim333 »

SupremumLimit wrote: post #48
roenxi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't actually all that scary; humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. If the change caught everyone by surprise it'd be a huge problem but it seems to be fairly well understood and there is lots of time to adjust. Worst case scenario seems to be that people will stop migrating to Europe.

The ignorance of this comment is breathtaking. How are the crops going to grow if the temperature drops by 15 degrees Celsius? What marine and terrestrial ecosystems can survive a sudden catastrophic change like that? What’s going to happen to the weather patterns after this planet-scale shift? How do you “adjust” to the collapse of your food supply and entire ecosystems?

Grow the crops somewhere else? The earth's climate has always changed - the sea was 100m lower 20k years ago and much of Europe covered by ice. But it doesn't change so much over one human lifetime.

Re: Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse

#60

Post by tim333 »

shrubby wrote: post #4

This scary, yet almost nothing on the news. We're living in a fake world and pretending everything is fine. Adam Curtis made a movie HyperNormalisation and we're living it also today. Adam Curtis: “HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating,…

>almost nothing on the news

Maybe not that exact variant but there have been thousand of hours of climate change stuff in the news, including worrying about changing ocean currents.

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