Atlantic meridional overturning circulation

Heatmap declares, to wallop Donald Trump over the Iran war, that, quote, now is the worst time for diesel to get expensive, end quote, because, quote, agricultural equipment largely runs on diesel, and with the harvest season coming up, that spells bad news for farmers, end quote.

But isn't the whole point of carbon taxes, carbon credits, and regulatory restrictions to drive up the price of hydrocarbon energy so people use less of it? And then it turns out that hydrocarbon energy is secretly where food comes from? Oh dear, you've only just thought of it now? Then, from the, ah, shut up file, yet another AMOC scare story.

Something called Astrum Earth declares that, quote, the end of Europe is coming, AMOC, end quote.

And if you're wondering why we care what they have to say, it's because MSN swept it up, and then instead of putting it in the bin, published it on the internet.

But as usual, they miss the real story, which is that ocean currents are so poorly understood that nobody even knows if it's likely that the AMOC will collapse, slow down, speed up, or anything else.

Mind you, if you like apocalypse, we were recently offered a dystopian sci-fi novel asking what would happen if someone told AI to stop global warming, and it acted on it and on the notion that humans are the cause.

and then so close, and yet.

Yeah, by the way, I think from from for now on the rest, Andrew, we can just talk about what you think and don't worry about the report because you and I are going to be going on SRM and and that's what you think about it, not not necessarily what the official report is.

But one of the big risks that the UK faces and we all face is the collapse of the AMOC or the Atlantic Marooning Overturning Circulation, the Atlantic Ocean Conveyor Belt that brings warm water from the tropics to northern europe and we've had a number of shows on that and many climate scientists think that we could hit a tipping point for that around 2050 and if it shuts down that let's put it this way it really screws the uk and and uh what's your thought on the risk of a mock collapse

so so again i am a climate scientist but my specialism isn't a mock but we have we have kind of included AMOC assessment in the report.

And my own feelings is that AMOC is definitely a risk.

We've seen it.

There's been historic evidence of it collapsing, particularly, I think, in the Younger Dryas period, where there was a period of about 1,000 years where the AMOCs did collapse due to the huge, because of the ice melt of the last glaciation and kind of an outwelling from the in the North Atlantic, which caused AMOC to shut down.

There's quite clear evidence of that.

I think there's still, the science community is still a bit divided in terms of the evidence.

Yeah, but so under global warming, we also saw a signal that there's sort of a blob in the middle of the North Atlantic Basin with increased storm activity.

And we attribute this, or we think that this might be due to the AMOC weakening.

So this might be the thing you were talking about, that now under global warming, storms seem to get more intense.

I'm still a

But what I'm saying is how do I know if I'm in Northern Europe, what's an SAI climate in terms of storms and just a normal global warming climate in terms of storms, because from your description, they seem to be somewhat similar.

So what's the difference now? Well, if I live in a world of global warming, say 2040, 2050, where global warming is really starting to kick in and we're getting 42, 43 degrees summers in the UK, And very, like, mild Mediterranean-type winters with heavy storms, but not a lot of frost.

That's kind of what a global warming, unless you have an AMOC collapse or something radical, then that's probably what the British climate will be in the kind of 2040s, 2050s, yeah? Hot, dry summers, warm, wet winters,

yeah?

Code Pink co-founder Jody Evans joins us.

Plus the single biggest fast shift we might expect, Dr. Rene Van Vesten with surprising news about the Gulf Stream and AMOC.

And this isn't what we thought was going to happen.

Welcome to Radio EcoShock.

Americans call it the Gulf Stream.

The Scots do too.

There's a lot of confusion about the Gulf Stream and then AMOC, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

Please explain each of them so we can get started.

To give you an idea of why I mean by that, there's one research paper published by the OECD, which uses a model done by Tim Linton.

Tim wrote the chapter and they asked him to consider what would happen if the AMOC shut down.

Do you know what the AMOC stands for?

No, not exactly.

Atlantic meridional overturning circulation.

And that makes a 10 degree difference to the average temperature of Europe.

without that running temperature will fall by 10 degrees.

Now, Tim did a study of what happens if the AMOC shuts down at a two and a half degree increase in global average temperature as well, bearing in mind that Europe will actually get much colder because of the AMOC shutting down.

The fact that the planet is heated up a little bit more by virtue of that CO2 will make it more likely that additional force will burn down right which will release more co2 that'll heat the planet and so on i mean there are lots of feedback loops or there are feedback loops associated with arctic ice with um with melting of glaciers, with sea surface temperatures, with clouds, with all sorts of these feedback loops that are essentially unstoppable once they get going.

And the AMOC is another one of these sort of tipping point events that we're looking at is this thing is going to happen over decades to centuries, but at this point is unstoppable, this sort of decline in bringing the warm Gulf currents up towards Europe and the inevitable result of that.

So I don't know the particulars of the feedback loop you're talking about, but I certainly would concur that there are carbon cycle feedback loops happening right now on the planet.

Well, thank you so much for talking with us again.

when Steve Keen lays out his timeline for climate catastrophe.

And he focuses specifically on the AMOC, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation.

Right.

We need to explain the mechanics of this because it's not just some gradual warming trend.

Like how does the system actually work?

Okay, so the AMOC is essentially a massive global ocean conveyor belt.

Mm-hmm.

And it's driven entirely by differences in water temperature and salt content.

They had a moment where they could have said, hey, we want to work with mankind.

We don't want billions of people to die but they chose instead to lie so the argument I put forth in the piece I wrote is that given the stakes which you know we all know it's billions of death it is devastation across this planet It's drought, hot zones, desertification, it's fires, it's the AMOC shutting down and crazy cold.

that there has never been a lie like this told.

But I zoomed in specifically to what I believe is the heart of the lie, which is not people that deny climate change.

And these projections where, you know, these institutions or news outlets tell us that 2C will result in a billion to two billion deaths.

I've been around the climate movement long enough to know that all of the projections are way optimistic.

I mean, I saw AMOC shutdown go from 400 years to 200 to 100 to any day now.

I really believe 2C warning, which we are right at the front door of, is game over.