Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early as 2025(oilprice.com)
oilprice.com
Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early as 2025
https://oilprice.com/The-Environment/Global-Warming/Scientists-Warn-Gulf-Stream-Slowdown-Could-Begin-as-Early-as-2025.html
43 comments
I look at that chart too often for my own good. I don't know how people can look at that and think that we can continue as usual, though I do understand that at the end of the day, what's an individual supposed to do?
Clarification because the headline is written to mislead:
"Their model suggests that the current could begin collapsing anywhere from 2025 to 2095."
"Their model suggests that the current could begin collapsing anywhere from 2025 to 2095."
Oilprice.com is always like that. Everything always sounds urgent regardless of the actual content.
The 2025 date while possible, is much less likely than a middle of the range date.
That said, with the rate that dates relating to climate issues keep getting moved forwards, I would be surprised if in 5 years we dates like between 2030-2060 being proposed.
The 2025 date while possible, is much less likely than a middle of the range date.
That said, with the rate that dates relating to climate issues keep getting moved forwards, I would be surprised if in 5 years we dates like between 2030-2060 being proposed.
> dates relating to climate issues keep getting moved forwards
Funny how when the exact same thing happened measuring the charge of the electron (ie not deviating around the ultimate value, but systematically moving in one direction), it became the quintessential example—literally taught in schools—for detecting confirmation bias in scientific data.
https://scipython.com/blog/measurements-of-the-electron-char...
If the climate numbers are always being revised upward, it strongly indicates that the original predictions were being systematically fudged downwards. It's not hard to see why: governments and institutions don't want to be accused of "alarmism."
Funny how when the exact same thing happened measuring the charge of the electron (ie not deviating around the ultimate value, but systematically moving in one direction), it became the quintessential example—literally taught in schools—for detecting confirmation bias in scientific data.
https://scipython.com/blog/measurements-of-the-electron-char...
If the climate numbers are always being revised upward, it strongly indicates that the original predictions were being systematically fudged downwards. It's not hard to see why: governments and institutions don't want to be accused of "alarmism."
[deleted]
Your source looks like Feynman has perhaps embellished that story.
Also, isn't it quite different when there's a canonical measurement (Millikan) versus where there isn't one (climate change) ?
Also, isn't it quite different when there's a canonical measurement (Millikan) versus where there isn't one (climate change) ?
>isn't it quite different when there's a canonical measurement
Not really. For an unbiased estimator the "revisions" should be random (half upward and half downward), so if you're always making improvements in one direction you can infer some sort of systematic bias.
Not really. For an unbiased estimator the "revisions" should be random (half upward and half downward), so if you're always making improvements in one direction you can infer some sort of systematic bias.
And when it doesn't harken well move on to some other hyperbolic doomsday, this has literally been going on for thousands of years. Humans have constantly, hubristically , predicting the end of the planet and humanity based on the existence of humanity for millennia. They are selling, always selling.
There is a decent book on this called 'Apocalypse Not' by John Michael Greer that covers the history of all these end times predictions. Good thing for putting these kinds of claims in perspective.
Yes, we have big issues facing us, some we can solve, some we can merely respond too. But we have to be mindful about some of the alarmist language that can be used. While many want to alarm people into action, it can also become fear that paralyze folks from doing any action.
Yes, we have big issues facing us, some we can solve, some we can merely respond too. But we have to be mindful about some of the alarmist language that can be used. While many want to alarm people into action, it can also become fear that paralyze folks from doing any action.
> we have to be mindful about some of the alarmist language
Exactly! It probably won't drive us to extinction - a mere few billions will starve/suffer from extreme weather events/die in miserable conditions. A fair price to pay for better returns for shareholders!
Exactly! It probably won't drive us to extinction - a mere few billions will starve/suffer from extreme weather events/die in miserable conditions. A fair price to pay for better returns for shareholders!
Got a source for that? Billions starving sounds like part of the unscientific alarmism.
FWIW the UN FAO (Food and Agriculture) Climate change and food security: risks and responses report maps out multiple scenarios based on degrees of response to the various climate change possibilities.
These include "billions" (ie > 2 billion) facing hunger, food insecurity and starvation to varying levels .. which is not hard to imagine given that the 2015 number for that was already 0.8 billion and the world population will be increasing until 2050 at least.
I'll assume that those interested can find and read the report for themselves.
These include "billions" (ie > 2 billion) facing hunger, food insecurity and starvation to varying levels .. which is not hard to imagine given that the 2015 number for that was already 0.8 billion and the world population will be increasing until 2050 at least.
I'll assume that those interested can find and read the report for themselves.
Do you have a link? All links I can find are broken ones to the FAO's website which doesn't seem to have it.
But even what you said doesn't mean billions will starve or die from miserable conditions. Maybe billions will have to put on a raincoat as they're "suffering" from more rain than usual. This is the problem with alarmism - exaggerated claims that aren't coming from science.
But even what you said doesn't mean billions will starve or die from miserable conditions. Maybe billions will have to put on a raincoat as they're "suffering" from more rain than usual. This is the problem with alarmism - exaggerated claims that aren't coming from science.
FAO webmasters are shuffling papers (maybe) .. the link of first hit was good from 2020 until 6 days ago - it seems dead now.
The meta data car landing page is there:
https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/metadata/publications...
with a WARNING
Give them a day or so to migrate doc storage I guess.
> But even what you said doesn't mean billions will starve or die from miserable conditions.
You asked another user for a link, I found the premise interesting and found a well researched paper that includes billions experiencing starvation within the entire possible scenarios (action needs to be taken to avoid type paths into the future).
> This is the problem with alarmism - exaggerated claims that aren't coming from science.
Well, that's your position - I work in geophysical exploration for minerals and energy etc. and none of the IPCC statements within the climate reports seem wildly exagerated, they strictly layout scenarios based on current trends in resource usage and responses and parallel those that are a standard deviation or so above and below.
The meta data car landing page is there:
https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/metadata/publications...
with a WARNING
Website experience degraded The European Climate and Health Observatory is undergoing reconstruction until June 2024 to improve its performance. We apologise for any possible disturbance to the content and functionality of the platform.
Give them a day or so to migrate doc storage I guess.
> But even what you said doesn't mean billions will starve or die from miserable conditions.
You asked another user for a link, I found the premise interesting and found a well researched paper that includes billions experiencing starvation within the entire possible scenarios (action needs to be taken to avoid type paths into the future).
> This is the problem with alarmism - exaggerated claims that aren't coming from science.
Well, that's your position - I work in geophysical exploration for minerals and energy etc. and none of the IPCC statements within the climate reports seem wildly exagerated, they strictly layout scenarios based on current trends in resource usage and responses and parallel those that are a standard deviation or so above and below.
I'd have to wait for the site to get fixed to be sure but "billions facing hunger, food insecurity and starvation to varying levels" is a much weaker statement than "billions experiencing starvation". The former describes how the world already is today.
Just because they are interested doesn't mean they want the facts.
And he's also very critical about the "other side of the coin" : "business as usual, mankind to the stars" predictions.
He's IMHO a bit too complacent about some of the now possible worst case scenarios : yes, the end of the current Ice Age (that Homo has evolved in) likely won't be the end of mankind, but when thinking about the Earth returning into a more normal state, you have to remember that it also involved periods where most of it was too hot for mammals to inhabit, that the Sun is slightly hotter now, and that a potential future Arctic & Antarctic jungles civilization will still kind of suck because it still involves months-long nights and days.
He's IMHO a bit too complacent about some of the now possible worst case scenarios : yes, the end of the current Ice Age (that Homo has evolved in) likely won't be the end of mankind, but when thinking about the Earth returning into a more normal state, you have to remember that it also involved periods where most of it was too hot for mammals to inhabit, that the Sun is slightly hotter now, and that a potential future Arctic & Antarctic jungles civilization will still kind of suck because it still involves months-long nights and days.
Yeah the way it rhymes with an apocalypse cult is pretty interesting.
(Not asserting that it is an apocalypse cult of course)
(Not asserting that it is an apocalypse cult of course)
I don't think that "as early as 2025" is dishonest regarding the measurements and facts.
Sure, the headline is written in a way that draws attention, but it is not dishonest clickbait or written to mislead, IMO.
Others here have hinted at the so-called "hot-model" fallacy, which is relevant to the timeline. [^1]
Apart from that, the article does make clear that "collapse" can be a gradual process.
Even climate change effects that hit very suddenly in a climatological sense can easily spread out over hundreds of years.
This does not in any way rule out tipping points with extreme changes that wreck ecosystems, e.g. average temperatures dropping or rising by 10 degrees Celsius over 20 years in some regions.
[1] Sabine Hossenfelder has a great video on this topic, should be findable by querying "climate sensitivity".
The search results I find are mostly (affirmative) statements of that "hot model Problem", such as this article: https://www.science.org/content/article/use-too-hot-climate-...
I am not a climate scientist, but I have heard the claim that the models that best model 2020-2024 (especially 2023-24) disprortionately often fall into the category of having been dismissed for being "too extreme" before.
Sure, the headline is written in a way that draws attention, but it is not dishonest clickbait or written to mislead, IMO.
Others here have hinted at the so-called "hot-model" fallacy, which is relevant to the timeline. [^1]
Apart from that, the article does make clear that "collapse" can be a gradual process.
Even climate change effects that hit very suddenly in a climatological sense can easily spread out over hundreds of years.
This does not in any way rule out tipping points with extreme changes that wreck ecosystems, e.g. average temperatures dropping or rising by 10 degrees Celsius over 20 years in some regions.
[1] Sabine Hossenfelder has a great video on this topic, should be findable by querying "climate sensitivity".
The search results I find are mostly (affirmative) statements of that "hot model Problem", such as this article: https://www.science.org/content/article/use-too-hot-climate-...
I am not a climate scientist, but I have heard the claim that the models that best model 2020-2024 (especially 2023-24) disprortionately often fall into the category of having been dismissed for being "too extreme" before.
Link to paper (open access): https://tos.org/oceanography/article/is-the-atlantic-overtur...
Highly recommended. The paper is an excellent overview and exploration of the topic.
Anyone familiar with how this will impact climate in Western Europe, from say Portugal to western France?
It isn't so much that the overall temperatures will change too much when averaged out, that would relate more to the slow down/stopping of the AMOC.
First order effect, this would mean that you get less predictable weather events. Essentially, heat domes and artic blasts become much more persistent, sticking around for weeks or even months (worst case) rather than just brief periods.
Second order, A month long heat wave can kill a lot of crops followed by a month low wet spell that can completely flood the same area.
Third order effect, In metropolitan areas this is an inconvenience. For the food system, this is deadly.
Forth order effect, a fragile food system that feeds the metropolitan areas - things get dicey fast. Tough times, tough leaders, rise of authoritarianism etc. May you live in interesting times.
First order effect, this would mean that you get less predictable weather events. Essentially, heat domes and artic blasts become much more persistent, sticking around for weeks or even months (worst case) rather than just brief periods.
Second order, A month long heat wave can kill a lot of crops followed by a month low wet spell that can completely flood the same area.
Third order effect, In metropolitan areas this is an inconvenience. For the food system, this is deadly.
Forth order effect, a fragile food system that feeds the metropolitan areas - things get dicey fast. Tough times, tough leaders, rise of authoritarianism etc. May you live in interesting times.
The fourth order effect is overlooked and it's my biggest short-term concern. In particular the destabilizing of low income countries near the equator in the face of precarious wet bulb temperatures, indirectly leading to the destabilizing of the global north in response to climate refugees fleeing the equator.
Short term that is the biggest issue that I fear.
I am in Australia and I have said it for many years, if it goes badly, we will welcome refugees with open arms. Those arms being machine guns and explosives.
That we will move into the realm of Lifeboat ethics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics
I do hope that do not take this path as it would become the greatest moment of shame for our whole species.
I am in Australia and I have said it for many years, if it goes badly, we will welcome refugees with open arms. Those arms being machine guns and explosives.
That we will move into the realm of Lifeboat ethics.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lifeboat_ethics
I do hope that do not take this path as it would become the greatest moment of shame for our whole species.
The Gulf Stream is responsible for the temperate climate of Europe which enables the swathe of farmland that it has.
A slowdown is expected to lead to a temperature drop from artic air being able to circulate further down, which would shorten growing seasons and probably change farmland distribution.
The effect of this happening over individual human generations in an environment where established farmland is hundreds to thousands of years old would be considerably expensive to adapt to.
A slowdown is expected to lead to a temperature drop from artic air being able to circulate further down, which would shorten growing seasons and probably change farmland distribution.
The effect of this happening over individual human generations in an environment where established farmland is hundreds to thousands of years old would be considerably expensive to adapt to.
How did humanity respond the last time this happened?
There is no history of this happening before, at least not on the time frames we are talking about here. This is thousands of years of change in decades. It isn't so much just the change but the pace that is the issue. Like how jumping off a building and taking the elevator achieve the same amount of change but on a very different time frame and thus very different results.
Do we know how the Gulf Stream worked during the last ice age maximum, when the Rhine river still flowed over land-locked British Channel (1)?
1. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=f1e7378b962d42168fd...
1. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=f1e7378b962d42168fd...
That is a good question but I suspect we wouldn't know. Just educated guesses and I cannot find those at the moment.
I think the other big issue is that back then we didn't have industrial civilization and high level agriculture dependent on specific environmental factors.
I think the other big issue is that back then we didn't have industrial civilization and high level agriculture dependent on specific environmental factors.
We weren't agrarian back then, we were still hunting stuff with sticks and simple stone tools (12,000 years ago/ 10,000 BCE).
From the paper:
While the entire globe has warmed, the subpolar North Atlantic has resisted and even cooled. This is exactly the region where the AMOC delivers much of its heat, and exactly the region where climate models have long predicted cooling as a result of the AMOC slowing down.
[A] cold subpolar North Atlantic correlates with summer heat in Europe (Duchez et al., 2016).
For example, in summer 2015, the subpolar Atlantic was the coldest since records began in the nineteenth century— while Europe suffered a strong heatwave. Subsequent study has shown that heatwaves are increasing three to four times faster in Europe than in other regions of the Northern Hemisphere [...]
While the entire globe has warmed, the subpolar North Atlantic has resisted and even cooled. This is exactly the region where the AMOC delivers much of its heat, and exactly the region where climate models have long predicted cooling as a result of the AMOC slowing down.
[A] cold subpolar North Atlantic correlates with summer heat in Europe (Duchez et al., 2016).
For example, in summer 2015, the subpolar Atlantic was the coldest since records began in the nineteenth century— while Europe suffered a strong heatwave. Subsequent study has shown that heatwaves are increasing three to four times faster in Europe than in other regions of the Northern Hemisphere [...]
One way to get rough idea is to compare regions that are similarly far north but without a Gulf Stream. E.g. UK and Canada.
Western Europe is a misnomer.
Most of it should be all called Northern Europe and North of Northern Europe.
Paris sits between Vancouver and Seattle.
London is the same latitude as Calgary.
Hamburg is at the same latitude as Edmonton.
If the golf stream slows downs or gets diverted north towards Greenland much of Europe will freeze.
Most of it should be all called Northern Europe and North of Northern Europe.
Paris sits between Vancouver and Seattle.
London is the same latitude as Calgary.
Hamburg is at the same latitude as Edmonton.
If the golf stream slows downs or gets diverted north towards Greenland much of Europe will freeze.
That's not how geography works...
Do you consider Sao Polo to be in north America because Johannesburg is more southern?
Do you consider Sao Polo to be in north America because Johannesburg is more southern?
No, and it’s clear that it wasn’t my point so don’t be silly or obtuse.
People don’t realize how far north most of Europe is because of its very temperate climate powered by the golf stream.
Everything from the English Channel up to the Baltics should be much much colder than it is.
The daily mean temperature in London is around 6c in January vs lower than -8c in Calgary.
The record low temperatures in London are higher than the mean daily minimum in Calgary.
Besides the impact on things like farming the infrastructure of many European cities isn’t built to withstand the winters it may have in a few decades.
People don’t realize how far north most of Europe is because of its very temperate climate powered by the golf stream.
Everything from the English Channel up to the Baltics should be much much colder than it is.
The daily mean temperature in London is around 6c in January vs lower than -8c in Calgary.
The record low temperatures in London are higher than the mean daily minimum in Calgary.
Besides the impact on things like farming the infrastructure of many European cities isn’t built to withstand the winters it may have in a few decades.
> The daily mean temperature in London is around 6c in January vs lower than -8c in Calgary.
You can't compare a coastal city with an average elevation of like 10 meters and an inland city perched more than 1000m above sea...
You can't compare a coastal city with an average elevation of like 10 meters and an inland city perched more than 1000m above sea...
Fine let’s compare it to Charlottetown it’s 5 degrees further south than London and its daily mean in January is -8c as well…
Indeed, this was the intent of my inquiry: what will climate look like for the next 100 years between certain latitudes in Western Europe (Porto vs Lisbon, Madrid and Bilbao vs Valencia, Malaga and Sevilla, Bordeaux vs Toulouse, etc).
Portugal is quite up north too, Porto is the same latitude as Chicago, Lisbon is the same latitude as DC.
Some good questions from this year-old article:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-simulations-q...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/new-simulations-q...
The Day after Tomorrow? We have a decade of public warning.
https://climatereanalyzer.org/clim/sst_daily/
We spent most of 2023 (April to December) 4 to 5 standard deviations above the mean for 1981-2011. This year has been higher than Q1 2023's figures by a considerable margin.
This might have something to do with decreasing sulphur dioxide concentrations from switching shipping over to cleaner fuel, or it might not.