Is it just me, or does anyone else who sees temperatures in degrees Fahrenheit (without a Celsius conversion) in a summary of a scientific report like this just automatically consider it an American fluff piece and click-bait to be ignored?
It might be my naive reading, but it seems that flooding the ocean with 4-5% of the gulf stream flow with fresh water from glacier melt (I think that’s a lot) will cause a shut down in the year 3700 or so. Even I, as a climate change believer, think that’s a little too far out there to be considered germane.
Graph A (www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adk1189) just has model year and not the actual year in the common era. I just assumed all of it was extrapolation from today, which shows a cliff in about 1700 years, so give or take 3700CE.
No, but this kind of reasoning is why it’s referred to as climate change now. We don’t just get higher temperatures, the defining feature is unpredictable weather.
the idea of northern europe ending up in a deep freeze while much of the rest of the world bakes is not new. these scenarios have been modeled for decades. I remember over 20 years ago, while naively considering “escape options”, learning about the AMOC, the great conveyer and other modeled outcomes.
long story short… there is no escape. we either fix the fundamental problems in our societies (and adapt to the damage we have already done) or it all collapses into a probable species ending spiral.
It feels like governments have just seen this as a foregone conclusion and are trying to position in an “every person for themselves” kind of deal. Sure, we’ve finally done something to cut emissions, but it’s the slowest possible move they can make.
I have thought about this for a while now. it just seems that some countries have gamed this out and decided… “sure, ‘we’ all might die, but you’re gonna die first - so screw you!”
the maxim of “he who dies richest, wins” seems to be the only ideal at play here.