New study confirms gulf stream weakening
phys.org
phys.org
Something related in the novel Project Hail Mary affected me greatly: "I've run the best models I have. Crops are going to fail. The global staple crops are wheat, barley, millet, potatoes, soy, and most important of all, rice. All of them are pretty sensitive about temperature ranges. If your rice paddy freezes over, the rice dies. If your potato farm floods, the potatoes die. And if your wheat farm experiences ten times normal humidity, it gets fungal parasites and dies."
Sure, we may not be looking at freezing rice paddies, but flooding is absolutely affecting people all over the world due to the warmer air holding more moisture.
Not at all a happy thought, I'm sorry.
a) our problem is not only the climate change, but overshoot / polycrisis
b) there is a profit to be made even from the collapse, maybe bigger than ever
Nothing will get changed, because solving the problems would mean dismantling the system.
I don't want you to be correct, but I fear that you are. My heart breaks thinking about it. My stepdaughter is 23, and she's going to live through some very tough times.
People in positions of power and influence seem to think they can flee to New Zealand and life will continue as before. I don't know how to disabuse them of that notion.
Overshoot encompasses many aspects, including biodiversity loss, deforestation, pollution, resource depletion, and much more.
The fundamental issue is the need for constant growth in a finite environment. Almost all money in the system is created through loans by banks, and there is an interest on that money that must be paid, typically around 3% or so, and this interest compounds exponentially.
As a result, our growth is exponential, and there is no sign of it slowing down. Our GDP doubles every 30 years, while our finite natural environment is the first to be sacrificed in an attempt to service one's debts.
All we see is an attempt at solving the energy, and only partially - because it's the easiest problem. We don't see any real debate about degrowth, reforestation, equity, food system, financial system ... no real progress on any front.
- We should stop using fossil fuels as soon as possible.
- Transitioning to plant-based diets can free up an area the size of both Americas, allowing for reforestation that would halt biodiversity loss and sequester as much carbon as we've released since the Industrial Revolution.
- Agriculture must be reformed to eliminate our reliance on harmful pesticides and practices that destroy biodiversity.
- Overfishing and pollution must be stopped to preserve marine life and ecosystems.
- Developed countries should pursue degrowth while supporting the development of less developed nations.
- Education and restoration should be prioritized over exploitation.
Animal species have witnessed a 70% decline in just the last 50 years. How long until our insect and pollinator populations collapse? How long until forests completely lose their ability to retain moisture and generate rain? How long until oceans are devoid of fish or sharks (with 90% already gone), leading to the collapse of the entire marine ecosystem? How long until major crop failures occur?
There have been collapses of civilizations before, but there has never been a total collapse of the biosphere as well. So I too worry for the future of today's young.
Sorry for the rant.
That's a common mistake. It won't. Plants sequester carbon only while they are alive. When they die, the carbon returns to the atmosphere. A forest, even with that size won't make a significant impact on carbon stored compared to how much oil and coal we burned. The only solution would be to re-create the carbon deposits, but that can't happen anymore.
Good luck to us, I’m not confident we can do it. I’m hoping we can though, I have a toddler. I hate climate deniers, to me they are trying to make my son’s life worse and worse because they don’t want their life to be lesser than they expected.
Are there regions that benefit from the changes that will happen to the weather?
New places that can be used to grow things, new places that might be more appealing to live than it is now?
Should we start looking at transitioning to the changes that you say are inevitable?
I cannot see any positive effects. We should try to prevent the inevitable, while there's still some time. Not long. But some.
> Should we start looking at transitioning to the changes
I’m starting to think we're likely to face a future akin to that depicted in Threads (1984) or The Road (2009), and I’m not sure anyone can truly prepare for it.
You see negative effects because scientists who have spent great time and effort have found connections to and predicted negative effects.
Has anyone spent a similar amount of time and effort looking for positive effects? If not, how can we expect to know about any positive effects?
For now, American citizens can ask congress to support a carbon fee and dividend [1], which would create a financial incentive for the system to dismantle itself. There are few forces in the world more powerful than individuals deciding to save money.
[1] https://citizensclimatelobby.org/get-loud-take-action/energy...
Oh well, the system may simply collapse and not be able and it won’t be pretty. But that will be a starting point for rebuilding.
So... I'm not optimistic.
Some countries (China and Russia) see advantages in warming for themselves (shipping through the arctic for both, increasing agricultural land area for both).
I generated a little graph showing the trends (using Our World In Data) and wrote a few comments a while back:
https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/03/co2-emissions-will-keep-risin...
[0]https://www.worldometers.info/co2-emissions/co2-emissions-pe...
The world not being in great shape globally, does not necessarily mean individuals not having good lives.
/s
So, overall, not necessarily positive.
If Africa becomes uninhabitable, everyone there will either die or migrate to Europe. Most EU coutries already hope that they drown crossing the Mediterranean. It's already happening, but the migration now is very low. When the migration will increase, I see WW2 repeating: concetration camps, genocide, shoot-them-at-the-border type of things.
The latter sounds like the worst part. The world is not prepared for the immense headache that would be crop failure across India.
> "While we can definitively say this weakening is happening, we are unable to say to what extent it is related to climate change or whether it is a natural variation," [the first co-author] Piecuch said. "We can see similar weakening indicated in climate models, but for this paper we were not able to put together the observational evidence that would really allow us to pinpoint the cause of the observed decline."
but also...
> [The second co-author] Beal added, "The Gulf Stream is a vital artery of the ocean's circulation, and so the ramifications of its weakening are global. I used to think of the ocean as our last remaining frontier, wild, pristine, and indomitable. It saddens me to acknowledge, from our study and so many others, and from recent record-breaking headlines, that even the remotest parts of the ocean are now in the grip of our addiction to fossil fuels." (emphasis mine)
Seems a little disingenuous to state in the publication that you cannot conclude the cause of the decline, and then in the press release go about definitively blaming it on fossil fuels, including stating that this conclusion is supported by your study.
With weather we can show that severe events have become more common.
I'd have to read the study thoroughly to know for sure but it seems they can show certain effects of the fossil fuels industry but not actual causation of the overall slowdown, which may be impossible to prove.
This results from human-made global warming in the same way as a smoker’s lung cancer results from smoking. The conclusion is also the same in both cases: “don’t do it”. Nobody can prove that it will kill, but it drastically increases the odds.
Also, note that this is not at all unexpected. I remember articles in scientific vulgarisation magazines in the 1990s discussion this and the fact that, counter-intuitively, global warming could result in local cooling in Western Europe because of a weakened Gulf Stream. We are still far from that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...
In July 2023, a paper from a pair of University of Copenhagen researchers suggested that AMOC collapse would most likely happen around 2057, with the 95% confidence range between 2025 - 2095.
It may be a controversial paper, but all probabilities are off after this year. So there is a possibility that it could collapse as soon as two years from now.
This would be bad, but now has me wondering, what would happen to all that energy if it doesn't travel up towards the north pole to be cooled? Could we have an extra hot Central Atlantic, Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean?
Does anyone know of any studies which have looked into this?
Since we asked you to stop (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37384170) and you've not only ignored that request but persisted in doing exactly what we asked you not to, I've banned the account.
>> we were not able to put together the observational evidence that would really allow us to pinpoint the cause of the observed decline
>> the grip of our addiction to fossil fuels
I take the above to mean that the ocean’s current state cannot be proven to be caused by climate change. But climate change models do indicate a similar effect would be had. So, given the current state, any future effect of climate change would only make things worse.
Importantly, “in the grip of” only implies a future determined by “the hand that grips” not that the past or present was necessarily produced by the same hand.
So it's more accurate to say that the synthesis of all recent research indicates fossil fuel emissions are a causal factor. The statement could have been worded more clearly, but it's supported by the scientific evidence.
But you know, you have to wonder just how many big business astroturfers there are here. We know the oil companies knew about climate change in the 70s, and buried it. It's not at all unbelievable that they would pay influencers and the like to peddle downplays of climate devastation, in order to slow responses.
Obviously, we don't know for sure, since accts here are semi-anonymous. But it would make a great deal of sense to sow confusion and condemnation and downplay the anthropocene.
And since this is a wealthy and techy audience you can dial up the upper-middle class fantasies of just buying an EV, installing solar on your roofs, and getting Tesla batteries for your own home.
Go a little further still and you reach the Geoengineering Cope... which also fits here...
The question is which of a few different climate change model scenarios we’re in, and which of their tipping points we just crossed, not whether climate change drove the weakening of the Gulf Stream.
El Niño can cause these effects. https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html
I am skeptical of your claim.
15.9 million square kilometers was the recorded antarctic sea ice coverage in August 1966. https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140017193/downloads/20...
You seem to imply that short term year on year variations in Antarctic sea ice (between 1964 and 1966) is a reason to doubt the multi-decade measurement of gulf stream weakening discussed in the article, but you have provided no reasoning to support your opinion.
1979 was the maximum, and nobody disputes that.