Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point. Extreme climate within decades | Hacker News Reader

Atlantic Ocean is headed for a tipping point. Extreme climate within decades

theconversation.com

42 pointsjanandonly33 comments

I've read everything I can about climate change at this point, having both been actively trying to keep aware of the issue for over a decade and really accelerating my knowledge as much as someone who isn't a climate scientist can.

The thing I will say about this is that the communication often given to traditional news outlets is actually holding back[0]. Things are already much worse than they thought it would be, and its accelerating faster than they thought it would, but many in the community feel that if they didn't include some positive messaging - even if subtle - that the average person (and therefore, most of society) would lament to doom and do nothing, as opposed to trying to move the needle as much as possible, even though we can't escape many (if not all?) the worst issues wrought by climate change.

I'm willing to bet that the models on this have or are converging on within 5-10 years as opposed to multiple decades, given the propensity to report on best case scenarios

[0]: https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2023/10/03/1-5-degrees-celc...

I think this idea made sense in the era of the time, when climate science had to beg and be polite to survive on the airwaves, lest they be obliterated once again by people like Rupert Murdoch.

That era is, to an extent, gone. May as well be clear about the challenge at this point - because the issue isn't people, its organizational.

To move the needle at those depths of power, the regular joe needs large, coordinated power.

in a graduate program for green minded people, this was discussed in detail for months on end. Basically from a mass communication point of view, you are right. You cannot simply declare unsolvable doom and expect results. It is psychologically and emotionally too much. You get polarized people who argue, deny, mock or despair, commit slow or fast suicide, etc..

Skilled communicators start and stop with something that is accessible to the listener. There has to be a binding element of some kind to cause the listener to be bonded to the speakers, in some way, directly or indirectly... even if the path forward is not clear

Can someone chime in to explain more specifically the realistic details of extreme climate we should expect within 5 to 10 years?

Based on past events that we assume were caused by similar events:

> Modelled 21st century warming under the "intermediate" global warming scenario (top). The potential collapse of the subpolar gyre in this scenario (middle). The collapse of the entire Atlantic Meriditional Overturning Circulation (bottom).

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cd/Sgubin20...

The truth is whatever happens will fuck us up big time, we're way too dependant on existing infrastructures/agricultures/city hubs/&c. none of it would be moveable in such a short period. Allies were fighting on airports tarmacs for masks during covid, imagine what would happen in this scenarios

I really wonder what the best mitigation strategy in this time line is going to be for individuals. My own is to have an EU passport and an American passport. It's hard to tell which of these regions will fare better, but having a hedge strategy seems to be the way. The US has more climate zones, but Europe is far more socially functional and might do better in terms of collective action and survival. Not to mention car dependency in the US might prove to be a death blow to many types of sustainable living models. Also, Americans are going to fall to pieces when even the smallest amount of convenience is ripped away from them.

My suspicion is that no one really knows; telling the future is always difficult. The consequences of adding carbon to the atmosphere will continue to accumulate as more carbon is added (and the really scary part is when feedback loops kick in that then add more carbon on their own). In 5 years, it will be a bit worse, and then in 10, a bit more. I think about what it must feel like to be a teenager today to be staring down decades of this.

My impression is more of the same: stronger storms, weirder weather, extremer extremes. If the Atlantic Ocean current does collapse (probably won't happen in the next ten years, but there's a good chance it does by the end of the century) then northern latitudes on the Atlantic will freeze and farming may well become infeasible there.

https://www.preventionweb.net/news/58-human-infectious-disea...

> I'm willing to bet that the models on this have or are converging on within 5-10 years as opposed to multiple decades, given the propensity to report on best case scenarios

It's true that historically climate science (especially UN climate science) has been politically-intertwined, which has colored the message.

But you can't apply a global adjustment to all reported results, with the expectation that everything is underreported.

It may be underreported. It may be overreported. But the reported results are the results.

Without digging into the model (and likely having climate modeling expertise), it's impossible to classify the error direction and magnitude more closely.

... that said, I think ocean currents are one of the more reliable models, because of their scale and the amount of sampling that's been and is being done.

The AMOC is one of the most studied climate phenomenon. We have known for decades that with a large enough freshwater forcing in models you can shut it down. The question is how big is the forcing needed and do the models accurately represent the important processes (namely convection in the North Atlantic which is difficult to get right). Unfortunately, there is a long history of sensationalized AMOC headlines.

See the link below for expert responses:

https://www.sciencemediacentre.org/expert-reaction-to-modell...

The scientific consensus according to the IPCC AR6 is that the AMOC is currently slowing down not shutting down but models disagree wildly on the magnitude of that slowdown

“ The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) will very likely decline over the 21st century for all SSP scenarios. There is medium confidencethat the decline will not involve an abrupt collapse before 2100. For the 20th century, there is low confidence in reconstructed and modelled AMOC changes because of their low agreement in quantitative trends. The low confidence also arises from new observations that indicate missing key processes in both models and measurements used for formulating proxies and from new evaluations of modelled AMOC variability. This results in low confidence in quantitative projections of AMOC decline in the 21st century, despite the high confidence in the future decline as a qualitative feature based on process understanding. {9.2.3}” https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/chapter/chapter-9/

The 100-year impact of the Atlantic Ocean circulation shutting down is surprisingly specific.

https://images.theconversation.com/files/573569/original/fil...

Northern/eastern Europe, the UK, and the Nordic countries get substantially colder.

North America has much milder changes.

This makes them even more dependent on Russian gas for heating

Or, you know, nuclear...

Imagine you live in a quaint little neighborhood. Everyone mostly gets along. You’ve got a nice neighborhood watch. You look out for each other. Except this one guy over the hill who is kind of a dick. Let’s call him Vlad. Everyone tolerates him because he provides heating oil at a good price. One day he kicks in his neighbor’s door, decides it’s his house now and threatens dude’s family. (“He’s my cousin so I can do anything I want, besides we speak the same language so this is my house now”) his neighbor (of course) fights back. Now they’re in a stalemate.

The neighborhood comes together and sends him a stern letter. “Nobody’s going to buy your heating oil if you keep on” Vlad laughs and keeps on firing into his cousin’s house.

Everyone claims to stop buying oil but somehow vlad keeps getting oil money (there’s probably someone in Chinatown not playing by the rules) Vlad promptly spends all his extra money on more guns.

On the one hand you can just let Vlad mess with his cousin. On the other hand Vlad is a bully and a bully doesn’t stop with intimating one dude. Besides, he also keeps threatening the neighborhood watch. Whenever he gets drunk he rants about rolling tanks across everyone’s pansies.

The fact is, Vlad will continue to be a dick and your best move is for everyone to throw rooftop solar on the roof and install a heat pump.

When the global demand for oil plummets, Vlad won’t have money to keep stockpiling ammo and his relevance will fade.

More likely it kills thr gas industry entirely.

The Gulf Stream doesn't shut down, it's a physical phenomenon driven by geostrophic gyres and is an example of an intensified western boundary current (pdf):

https://www.ess.uci.edu/~yu/class/ess228/lecture.10.ocean-ci...

If you don't have bottom water formation in the North Atlantic due to increased glacial melt off Greenland, then the Gulf Stream influence on Northern Europe gets blocked somewhat. The claim in the paper is that this will result in North Atlantic sea ice having a larger winter extent thus leading to climatic extremes in the winter in the region.

However, this goes against the trend of decreasing summer ice coverage in the Arctic, so you have some countervailing forces involved, and predicting the outcome of this struggle is a difficult thing to model, so this would be a 'maybe' outcome. Note also that the Gulf Stream is currently warming so the struggle between opposing forces has another component:

https://www.whoi.edu/press-room/news-release/gulf-stream-is-...

Best bet seems to be increasing climatic instability on a seasonal basis, a kind of whip-saw situation, and thus the best policy options (given that fossil fuel combustion is apparently going to remain constant for the next three decades by all estimates) is to invest in hardening infrastructure, preparing for heat waves and agricultural impacts as well as floods and cold snaps.

Another long-term effect of decreased ocean circulation is oceanic hypoxia and anoxia, which of course is also enhanced by fertilizer runoff.

Critical Atlantic Ocean current system is showing early signs of collapse

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39319867

And alot of discussion 6 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36864319

I am the poster of this post, and I am very curious if anybody can tell me why it is flagged?

Too spicy subject? Not of interest to HN community? Something else?

The best way I put these numbers into human scale, is not in terms of harm to humans, but by the fact that people studying the environment have PTSD.

It should be really obvious by now that trying to prevent problems that will happen AFTER most of us are dead is an exceedingly futile exercise. Most humans aren't even capable of saving for retirement. How did anyone expect we were going to solve the next generation's climate problems? Humans are just not wired that way.

Taking this a little further though, I'm not even sure we're up to the challenge technologically. Imagine how laughable it would have been to ask Civil War era scientists to figure out flight, or nuclear power, or rocketry, or telecommunications.

That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to go to the moon in hot air balloons.

We have not cracked unlimited, clean, fusion energy; we have abysmal battery technology; our high-efficiency transportation infrastructure sucks; but somehow we're going to solve the next generation's climate problem?

I don't know - maybe it's overly optimistic of me, but I think the next few generations are going to solve this problem and they're going to do it in ways that will make anything we could muster look utterly unserious.

> but I think the next few generations are going to solve this problem and they're going to do it in ways that will make anything we could muster look utterly unserious.

Yes that's exactly why I throw my trash on the streets, someone else will pick it up later, why bother ? /s

You do realize that half the planet still does this? And even in places that are fastidiously clean, people did this not even one generation ago?

It should also be really obvious that there are many ways to prevent these problems at the source. We can ramp up regulations on pollution to be much, much stricter than they are now, and give them real teeth. We can combat overseas pollution with sanctions and trade agreements. We can reject politicians who stymy these efforts, and sometimes even backpedal efforts by leaving the Paris Agreement and making a fuss.

There are many avenues open to solving climate change problems that don't involve inventing global terraforming.

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