
The North Atlantic ocean current may be slowing - maze-le
https://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/08/video-the-north-atlantic-ocean-current-may-be-slowing/
======
pier25
Consistently every year we see news of scientists saying that climate change
is going faster than expected. That there is more methane trapped in the
permafrost than expected[1], that the models the IPCC used didn't take into
account such and such thing and so the next results are going to be closer to
reality[2], that the cooling effect of aerosols is much greater than
expected[3], etc.

At this point I just assume we are pretty much fucked. Even if we reached zero
emissions today we'd still be suffering the consequences of climate change for
centuries.

[1] [https://phys.org/news/2018-03-permafrost-
methane.html](https://phys.org/news/2018-03-permafrost-methane.html)

[2] [https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/new-climate-
models-p...](https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/new-climate-models-
predict-warming-surge)

[3]
[https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6427/eaav0566](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/363/6427/eaav0566)

~~~
psadri
A complex system such as the climate (a huge understatement) is full of non
linear of feedback loops that we don’t understand or are even aware of. It’s
very hard to model such a system accurately.

Chances are humans will be a blip after all? It’s amazing to me that we humans
usually wait till the shit hits the fan before we do something about it. It
must be some kind of evolutionary advantage inducing strategy in our behavior.

~~~
dantheman
There are many things that can be done, unfortunately for anything truly
effective to be done we need:

    
    
      1. Lower the quality of living for a huge amount of humanity
      2. Have massive technological breakthroughs
      3. Embark on large scale geo-engineering
    

2 & 3 are the only moral choices - condemning the world to live in poverty
isn't ok.

Europe and the US are only ~25% of all emissions and the rest of the world is
increasing at a staggering rate.

~~~
pier25
4\. lower the human population

Not having kids is probably the biggest contribution one can do for the
environment, specially on countries with very high emissions per capita such
as the US.

~~~
petre
No worries, it's self regulating. No need to not have kids. I have a shimp
colony in an aquarium. It only grows as much as the food source allows it to.

It would probably get crowded and quite hot in the future, but we'll manage
without eugenics and not having kids, or having just one kid, which was tried
before in China and was a failure.

~~~
UnFleshedOne
Try feeding your shrimp with algae wafers, get them to reproduce a lot, then
stop feeding them. Sure, population will downregulate to sustainable levels
again, but individual shrimp will wiggle some choice words at you with their
whiskers, while they are starving to death and are being consumed by their
friends and family.

------
rossdavidh
Interesting topic, and perhaps the article/video that this article references
is good, but the article in yaleclimateconnections.org is virtually devoid of
any actual quantitative data. "May be"...how likely? "...slowing"...by how
much? 1% chance of a 1% slowdown? 99% chance of a 99% slowdown? This article
is virtually contentless.

------
chupa-chups
Its quite impressive that this current transports 1 PW (yes, petawatts:
[http://www.pik-potsdam.de/~stefan/thc_fact_sheet.html](http://www.pik-
potsdam.de/~stefan/thc_fact_sheet.html)). If it would be stopping completely,
this would naively (excluding other accompanying effects) remove 1 PW of
heating from the coasts of Europe.

This 1PW of heat would need to disperse somewhere else.

~~~
esotericn
The effects of the gulfstream are utterly enormous.

Compare the climate at the arctic circle in Norway/Sweden to Canada.

The Arctic itself is very asymmetrical as a result.

~~~
mrfusion
I never understood why the Gulf Stream heats Europe but not the us east coast.
It passes by there first. It seems like it would only get colder after that.

~~~
coldtea
> _I never understood why the Gulf Stream heats Europe but not the us east
> coast._

Who said it doesn't? It absolutely does, that's one of the reason why the east
coast is warmer than equivalent (as of latitude) areas in Europe are (plus
other effects on the weather there).

~~~
mrfusion
The east coast isn’t warmer. France is the same latitude as Maine.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
[https://oceancurrents.rsmas.miami.edu/atlantic/spaghetti-
spe...](https://oceancurrents.rsmas.miami.edu/atlantic/spaghetti-speed/gulf-
stream.jpg) shows the Gulf Stream as being pretty far away from Maine, though.
From that map, I'd expect it to warm the US east coast below Cape Hatteras,
and not much north of there.

~~~
mrfusion
Wow that explains it. Thanks. A picture=1000 words.

This even shows a cold pocket of water by northern Florida.

------
hindsightbias
James Burke explains it 30 years ago:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfE8wBReIxw&t=47m35s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfE8wBReIxw&t=47m35s)

~~~
NeedMoreTea
It's sobering how on the money After the Warming was. The most glaring thing
looking back from now was how little time he thought would be wasted, in a few
years of PR and denial, before humanity finally gets its act together with a
global world war scale response and a, IIRC, UN Planetary Atmosphere
Authority.

A good take on what we _should_ be doing, even now. Well worth a watch of the
whole 2 programme mini series - just forgive the late 80s CGI. :)

------
bhouston
Been hearing about the possibility of this since 1999 or there about when it
was covered at a university lecture. Then there was the movie:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After_Tomorrow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_After_Tomorrow)
Like global warming, it is regularly predicted and in some ways we become
immune to the predictions because it is on such a long time scale compared to
our attention.

Humans do not do well with long-term threats in which we have to make everyday
sacrifices. We do better with long-term threats that are clear economic
opportunities, such as buying better airport scanners and the like, something
the sales guys can really sink their teeth into.

~~~
theandrewbailey
That movie was mentioned in the article.

------
pvaldes
If true, is a problem for Europe and there will be consequences and
significative economical loses.

In the list of posible benefits is the "instantaneous" recovery of submarine
kelp forests vanished in the last decades

------
phkahler
It would be nice to have measurements of the current, rather than just the
temperature. The colored plot also looks suspicious, I wonder if it's based on
a deviation from normal rather than absolute temperature.

~~~
tony_cannistra
> I wonder if it's based on a deviation from normal rather than absolute
> temperature.

It is.

------
droithomme
The global conveyer belt is really important to global climate. There has been
speculation that warming and CO2 absorption by oceans could cause it to slow
or stop, triggering an ice age or other extreme catastrophic extinction-level
events.

Fun to think about: maybe it's happened before after a similar industrial era,
buried far below. (Unlikely but conceivable.)

------
FairKing
Why Iceland is green and Greenland is icy?

