Gulf Stream weakening now 99% certain, and ramifications will be global
livescience.com
livescience.com
"If it collapses, it could lower temperatures by up to 10 or 15 degrees in Europe and lead to rising sea levels in the eastern US. It would also disrupt rain that billions rely on for agriculture."
Why should we be concerned it's going to weaken by 100% in less than 40 years?
Why should we expect the climate will be the same in 100 years as it is today? The climate has always been changing. Europe was in an ice age from 1300 to 1850.
Do you think we could've done anything to stop that? Or should have?
Is that a little or a lot? Do you know? The Gulf Stream is what’s keeping my country habitable, so maybe I want a bit more reassurance?
The periods you mention are associated with crop failure and widespread famine. There were a lot less people back then.
High altitude isn't exactly a panacea...
The equator will be death around it will be not that great, beyond that will be refuges. So Russia is looking great. There is a huge climate change boon Russia is set to receive within the next 50-100 years. Maybe Canada too and Scandinavia
Massive hyperbole. If temperatures increase 4.5 f - in South America, where most people live around the equator will be fine.
Same for Indonesia.
India's population is pretty heavily focused in the North and should will also not all overheat to death.
Don't know about Africa.
Also - moving north if you think the AOC will collapse is a losing strategy. Scandinavia will be colder than Greenland today. Europe will be colder than Canada.
Personally, living in India, I’ve watched my summers become worse and worse every year. And while I have no way to measure it, my productivity keeps going down with it in the summer.
Peter Ward's Under a Green Sky does a fantastic overview of this subject, and outlines how most mass extinction events have likely been triggered by sudden changes in atmospheric CO2 through various mechanism.
The only sure way to protect yourself is to be part of a society - something our hunter gatherer forebears quickly latched onto.
The AMOC has high "inter-annual variability", it changes a lot from year to year. Which is why they need 40 years' data to run statistical tests.
North-western Europe isn't going to switch to a frozen mode, there will be hot years and cold years. It'll be all weather, all the time.
Edit: as to where to live, I'd recommend staying in an OECD country, somewhere with a temperate maritime climate. Not at sea level, but 100 metres / 300ft up is enough. Near Vancouver or Seattle maybe.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...
For sea-level rise climate change mitigation, look at topographical maps of coastal areas. Some coastal areas have very quick climbs in elevation as you move inland. Others remain very shallow for incredible distances. The more dense an area is with wealth (think Manhattan), the more likely it is for there to be actual mitigation to sea-level rise like substantial seawalls. But the more dispersed the population and infrastructure is, the less possible that will be.
For precipitation related changes, extreme weather / natural disaster related changes, etc. we don't have much reliable modeling. But consider what the economy and demographics are like in the area you reside in, how much existing poverty or famine there is, how reliable infrastructure is, and whether your area is a net food importer or net food exporter and how much margin it has to undergo decreased agricultural productivity and still feed itself. Consider the ease or difficulty with which net-food-importer-region displaced refugees would be able to migrate to your area, as well as the size of such populations.
Wouldn't it be the case that the measurement of almost any aspect of nature will show a 4% change over 40 years and so can produce similar headlines? <X> is going up / going down. This has ramifications for the globe.
https://www.politico.eu/article/climate-change-gulf-stream-a...
I don't understand this one. Why would the reduction in warm water brought to Greenland cause the ice sheets to melt more?
But that's just me speculating. It definitely seems counterintuitive.
I think it’s important to understand that the earth is deeply dynamic and constantly changing, and has incredible variation in often cyclical patterns over hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands of years.
While we know human caused elements are accelerating trends, it’s important to separate the human accelerant from the fact that the Earth herself goes through regular and quite massive changes — that climate change can affect — but that are normal, quite natural and quite civilization and food growing pattern interrupting sized.
We have been in a period of unusual climate stability…
Edit: I’m getting heavily downvoted so I feel the need to clarify, as this comment is not incorrect or even controversial in climate circles. We have experienced rapid changes inside of single human lifetimes many times, and It’s important to be able to talk about science openly without labeling everyone who doesn’t parrot exactly the narrative you expect them to conform to just because it kinda sorta looks like a climate denier even though it isn’t. Very much not what I would expect of the HN crowd.
Here’s a write up:
> Most likely, freshwater delivered from the ice sheet to the North Atlantic periodically disrupted the overturning of the ocean, causing the transport of tropical heat to the north to reduce and then suddenly increase again. While this mechanism is unlikely to occur today’s world, it does show us that, at least regionally, the climate is capable of extraordinary changes within a human lifetime – rapid switches we certainly want to avoid experiencing.
https://www.bas.ac.uk/data/our-data/publication/ice-cores-an...
Further:
> A new study suggests climate conditions in the Sahara Desert have changed from wet to dry about every 20,000 years. The study was carried out by scientists at America's Massachusetts Institute of Technology, or MIT. Findings were published in the journal Science Advances.
https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/study-africa-s-sahara-....
There is precious little discussion of the research on natural climate change and the patterns that man made climate change is enhancing, and it’s very, very important to learn about the natural cycles and how man made climate change changes them.
If that’s worth downvoting simply because it doesn’t align with the Only Allowed NarrativeTM for anything climate related then HN is no longer the discussion platform for reasonably intelligent people it once was and that would be very sad indeed.
I can’t imagine how you’d all react to my Native American friends who are all talking about a coming ice age. They think the opposite is about to happen.