Is the Amoc Shutting Down? and What does It Mean for Scotland?
Yesterday Andy Wightman tweeted, in response to this article on the Amoc breakdown (‘We don’t know where the tipping point is’: climate expert on potential collapse of Atlantic circulation’) saying, this is: “The end of Scottish nationalism or at least the territory to which it relates”.
Jonathan Watts writes: “…for some countries that will be in the midst of this, like Norway, and Scotland, the risks will be existential and raise the question whether people can continue to live there or whether most of them would rather move.”
The speakers at the Arctic Circle meeting are H.E. Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, Minister for the Environment, Energy and Climate, Iceland Stefan Rahmstorf, Professor of Physics of the Oceans, Potsdam University
This is what Andy Wightman was talking about:
I am a retird former
Well it looks like the end really is nigh now. It’s no laughing matter. No-one, least of all the billionaires, is going to lift a finger to stop it. They are all too addicted to money. They think they can somehow avoid the consequences of their madness. They won’t.
So much for the World Economic Forum. So much for its puppet governments and ‘owning the science’. They are all finished. And so is our Western lifestyle. And so, quite possibly are we all. Let’ just face it – millions of people are just going to die. It could be you.
The rest of us need to figure out a way to survive somehow. That must mean listening to the planet and acting on what it tells us. And being the change, not waiting for some ‘hero’ to rescue us, We will need food, clean water, and warm dry homes (but not too warm!). We also need an ecosystem to be part of.
We need to invert the pyramid, which currently typically features a human or god, a few humans, a ruling class etc, over humans with rights, humans without and other animals, plants and fungi, niches/ecosystems/biomes, biosphere, geosphere (or humans > other organisms > populations > communities > ecosystem and the planetary biosphere, geosphere). We need to have a form of government which places the geosphere (with its component realms), then the planetary biosphere, then global ecosystems etc on top, then all the communities and populations of lifeforms, us humans at the bottom trying to clean up our messes, and we can bury our leaders and gods.
Clear and unequivocally pointing the way to our futures. What will remain of our civilization and societies as we scramble for somewhere to survive? Will our technology and ingenuity be sufficient to maintain a foothold for existence into the coming eras?
Is it shutting down?
Umm…
No
Great MaggyC. Thanks for the scientific update.
The AMOC breakdown has been touted for sometime. For example, in 2004 The Pentagon predicted “Siberian Britain” by 2020.(See https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2004/feb/22/usnews.theobserver)
However, more recently monitoring of the Florida Current (key to AMOC) shows 40 years of stability (https://globalocean.noaa.gov/reassessing-the-stability-of-the-florida-current-new-insights-from-40-years-of-observations/).
Please feel free to make your own mind up on this and do further research but to me reports of the death of AMOC are not only exaggerated; they are blatant scaremongering.
Meantime, China has upped coal production, Japan is building new coal-fired power stations while the UK is now reliant on wind and solar. Pray to whichever deity you fancy that we don’t get a winter like 2009/10 anytime soon.
GMOC (Global Meridiona Overturning Current) has several elements, or links in a chain; they are all key, the Florida Current is just one of several links. Warming waters in, or adjacent to, the tropics isn’t particularly germane to conversations about the breakdown of the thermohaline mechanism, at far northern latitudes. Focusing on a mechanism remote from where the issue is, is on a par with saying breaking your femur won’t affect your mobility, because you haven’t broken your ankle.
The two things that affect the density of seawater are temperature and salinity. As Arctic ice cover drops and the icecaps melt, the northern waters will become less dense; if it reaches equilibrium with the density of the warmer, more saline, waters from the south, it will lose the impetus to sink to the bottom of the ocean. This process, presently, provides energy to pull the warmer waters into northern areas. If it fails, the preceding links (North Atlantic Drift; Gulf Stream) will have their influence restricted to more southerly latitudes.
Also, with 57% of our UK electricity coming from non renewable sources (2023), its a bit of a stretch to suggest were “reliant” on renewable sources at this stage. You are also understating the reliability of offshore wind. One part solution, to intermittency, is to have some redundancy built-in, to compensate for suboptimal conditions; that is having more capacity than 100% under ideal conditions, we’re clearly a long, long way from that. Furthermore, conditions onshore, affected by buildings, hills and trees are a world away from those found offshore; especially when you consider hub heights of 100 metres and rising.
Having read a lot (like yourself) around the AMOC issue it seems that a catastrophic pulse event is more of a threat rather than the gradual process you describe.
The Lake Agassiz burst of 12000 years ago seems a more likely cause. (https://www.ualberta.ca/en/folio/2021/08/massive-ancient-lake-across-prairies-emptied-quickly-enough-to-set-off-an-ice-age-study-suggests.html).
Is such a mechanism is present currently?
Re “renewables”, 57% sounds like a lot to me. I just fear that without the coal fired stations to back us up during the transitional years we could experience major difficulties in winter.
If its ‘scaremongering’ its by the world’s top scientists Jim? Why would they do this?
See here – one of hundreds of peer-reviewed papers: https://www.sciencefocus.com/comment/atlantic-current-collapse
I approach any article by the BBC on climate issues as follows:
First, don’t believe the BBC.
Second, don’t believe the BBC.
Third, don’t believe the BBC.
I’m being flippant but you will probably discover that most of these studies will also, quite reasonably, contain more disclaimers than a share tips website.
(To be fair on 1st November, BBC Radio 4 did broadcast a very good interview by Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at Reading University concerning the Spanish floods. Basically the Spanish Government were given ample warning and did nothing. Just like in Pakistan in 2022.)
Many reasons. Fat publicly funded salaries & repeated research grants spring to mind. The chance to have their egos groomed by unquestioning so-called journalists from the mainstream media another. For instance the “Met Men” that were previously joke figures are now “climate scientists” (forgetting for example the 1987 UK Hurricane Debacle which I had been personally briefed about 6 days before.).
Not just scientists also time-expired politicians like Lord Deben who got £600K p.a. For chairing the “independent” Climate Change Committee. Lord Deben? Previously known as John Selwyn Gummer of burger fame.
I know who Lord Debden is. Your argument seems to be that climate change doesn’t exist because Lord Debden gets paid a lot of money. Is that right?