Ocean current system could shut down as early as 2025, leading to climate disaster

[Admin]

This major system, which transport heat from the tropics to the north Atlantic, are now at high risk of collapse due to human-induced climate change.

Ocean current system could shut down as early as 2025, leading to climate disaster : Read more

 

[Jan Steinman]

Woa, this is huge!

Why haven't I seen anything in the mainstream press?

History will show — to the next sentient species — that Homo sapiens went extinct from apathy.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Well, it was covered to some extent several days ago. Here is one story, which has some nice links to interactive maps. See https://wgntv.com/news/map-shows-which-areas-of-illinois-indiana-will-be-underwater-in-2050/ .

But, the story typically goes quickly to propaganda about how we must change our ways to limit sea level rise. I say "propaganda" because the amount of sea level rise they are talking about in the next 20 - 30 years is pretty much locked in by the emissions and heating that we have already produced. We are not going to "stop sea level rise" in the next few decades, or probably even change it substantially. What we really need is articles that tell us that and we need to start working on how we are going to deal with it - because we will have to deal with it.

On the other hand, I look at some of these predictions for ocean circulation affecting continental weather patterns, and wonder what that means in terms of the the climate cycles that the Earth has been undergoing in the way of ice ages and short interglacial periods. If Europe gets colder, what does that do to Arctic ice accumulation? We don't yet seem to understand how the Earth's climate has managed to shift between glaciation and melt periods. Yes, we know the Milankovitch Cycles, but they don't give us a direct reaction to climate just by the insolation values in the northern and southern hemispheres - there apparently is a lot more to it than just average heat input from the Sun.

And, there are still geological surprises about climate changes in the past. For instance, it was recently determined that the Greenland ice sheet mostly or completely melted in the interglacial period about 416,000 years ago. See https://phys.org/news/2023-07-greenland-years-high-sea-today.html . That article states:

"{The location of the ice core samples} is 138 miles inland from the coast and only 800 miles from the North Pole; the new Science study shows that the region entirely melted and was covered with vegetation during Marine Isotope Stage 11, a long interglacial with temperatures similar to or slightly warmer than today. With this information, the team's models show that, during that period, the ice sheet melted enough to cause at least five feet, and perhaps as much as 20 feet, of sea-level rise."

And, that was without any human inputs to the warming processes. So, sea level is definitely coming up, and the question is not so much where it will stop as it is how fast will it rise and how do we cope with that on the time frame we are going to get?

But, it doesn't look like the climate is going to lead to extinction of all life on Earth, or even to the extinction of humans. However, I would not be surprised if climate change, coupled with the human overpopulation, leads to a collapse of our technological society as migrations lead to conflicts along with famines and pandemics. In previous climate cycles, humans were hunter-gatherers and likely migrated to suitable areas when the ones they were is became inhospitable. There was probably some conflict even then, as evidenced by modern humans completely replacing Neanderthals and Denisovans in Europe and Asia. But, the social systems in those days did not depend on the level of technology that we need to maintain today to support 9 billion humans. If our technological capabilities crash, so will human population. There would be plenty of misery and death, but probably not complete extinction. But, still something to avoid if at all possible.

 

[stigster]

If this is even remotely true, then we should obviously all quit the BS measures to stem climate change aka The 4 seasons that have occurred throughout entire history, since there is nothing we as humans can do to stop that from happening.
Live it up, we'll all be dead in 2 years.
Thank you !

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Humans seem to be making climate changes, and we could stop doing so much of that, but probably not all of it that is due to us.

But, we really do need to recognize and accept that there are climate cycles that we do not have the ability to control, and we need to learn to live with them. Human history is just a brief part of a long natural history, and a part that seems to have been pretty stable, compared to some of the past. We benefited from that stability as we developed a lot of technological infrastructure. But, much of that infrastructure would not survive even the natural cycles of Earth's climate - so we need to keep adapting to what we will get.

But that does not mean that we should not care how much of a mess we make of our planet. We can definitely make things worse for ourselves than the natural cycles would create if undisturbed.

 

[Climate Scientist]

Humans seem to be making climate changes, and we could stop doing so much of that, but probably not all of it that is due to us.

But, we really do need to recognize and accept that there are climate cycles that we do not have the ability to control, and we need to learn to live with them. Human history is just a brief part of a long natural history, and a part that seems to have been pretty stable, compared to some of the past. We benefited from that stability as we developed a lot of technological infrastructure. But, much of that infrastructure would not survive even the natural cycles of Earth's climate - so we need to keep adapting to what we will get.

But that does not mean that we should not care how much of a mess we make of our planet. We can definitely make things worse for ourselves than the natural cycles would create if undisturbed.

100% of the warming of the planet and all sea level rise today is caused by humans. We would be in a cooling period without human activity.

Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans - Carbon Brief

The science on the human contribution to modern warming is quite clear. Humans emissions and activities have caused around 100% of the warming observed.

www.carbonbrief.org

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-earths-climate-changes-naturally-and-why-things-are-different-now-20200721/

 

[Jan Steinman]

… we need to keep adapting to what we will get.

I've been working on that for seventeen years, and I'm getting tired.

Started an ecovillage. Then gave it up when my wife got cancer. Then she dumped me.

So who wants to pool their resources and create what Richard Heinberg called a "lifeboat community?"

 

[Unclear Engineer]

100% of the warming of the planet and all sea level rise today is caused by humans. We would be in a cooling period without human activity.

I am not buying that as a real fact. The models are not good enough to support that. And the best evidence is not so supportive.

Geological evidence clearly shows sea levels higher than today in previous interglacial periods, and we really don't have climate models that can "predict" (actually "backcast") those climate histories. Which is really good evidence that we really do not yet understand all of the circulation changes, etc. that are involved, and cannot predict them very well for long periods of time.

It is normal for modelers to have more confidence in the accuracy of their models than turns out to be warranted. Usually, models drastically underestimate the uncertainty for the accuracy of their model predictions.

But, that doesn't mean that things will necessarily be better, they can also be worse than predicted. However, the media tends to hype the worst case results, which, when sometimes they don't actually happen, leads a lot of the public to think that models are always too negative.

If you look at the current situation in the Milankovitch Cycles, yes, it looks like the heat input to the northern hemisphere should be decreasing from its maximum. But, that doesn't mean that the northern hemisphere should immediately get colder. Think about the analog of a yearly cycle. The heat input to the northern hemisphere peaks about June 21st, but the hottest days are usually in July and August, substantially after the peak heat input. In the Milankovitch cycle, the Earth is now closest to the sun about January 4th and very slowly getting later in the year. and the northern hemisphere is tipped most toward the Sun about December 21st. Would you expect the hottest days in a year to have already occurred by the first week in July? Of course not, and you should also not expect the peak temperatures and sea level rise to occur when the perihelion is on Dec 21st or within a couple weeks of that.

It is the modeling of the behaviors of circulation and thermal reservoirs (ice, deep oceans, etc.) that is needed to translate heat inputs to climate. We are still in the first iteration of doing that, and we need to learn by doing it and comparing our results to what happens. Remember how bad our weather models used to be, and how unreliable they still are today once we get out several days. Well, climate modeling has not yet had the opportunity to do the thousands of predictions and leaning from the errors that our weather models have benefited from. So, we really cannot expect, and certainly cannot prove that they are even as accurate (in their own way) as our weather models have become.

That does not mean that I think global climate models are useless. But, I wish modelers would stop making such strong statements about their conclusions, because those are the types of statements that can be proven wrong, and that leads to people disregarding the model predictions completely.

Anyway, my point still stands, that we are not going to be able to stop the sea level from rising another foot no matter whether "100% of the warming today is caused by humans." I doubt we can even slow it down very much if we all left the planet tomorrow. But, we can certainly make things worse if we keep doing what we have been doing.

 

[malcolm.mellon]

This is exaggerated. Ocean currents are a result of the rotation pf the earth. There are some thermohaline curculations that accompany these coriolis driven currents which may be affected by changes in temperature such as the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation but thus accompanies but does not drive the ocean circulations.

nice video by respected physicist:

View: https://youtu.be/tnVWUIhQ8dE

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Good video explanation.

But, with respect to sea level rise, the Milankovitch Cycle that has the northern hemisphere now heading for less solar energy input also has the southern hemisphere heading for more solar energy input. And, the ice in the Antarctic is much more extensive than the ice on Greenland. While totally melting Greenland's ice could raise ocean level by about 23 feet, melting all of Antarctica could raise sea level by more like 350 feet. So, slowing the melt at Greenland at the "expense" of increasing the melt in Antarctica isn't exactly great news.

But, things really aren't even that simple. If Europe gets 5 degrees C colder, would that start glacier and even ice sheet formation again in the northern hemisphere? Would that help stabilize ocean level? Would ocean level not rising as fast make the loss of shelf ice and thus the loss of continental ice in Antarctica slow down, compared to the models that assume continuously rising ocean levels? Could that be the way that interglacial periods have ended in the past? Could that still happen today, given human effects on atmospheric CO2 levels, continental vegetation and surface reflectivity, etc. etc. etc.?

I am also wondering if climate scientists have addressed the effects of ice sheet changes on the Milankovitch cycle periods. Taking 300 feet of water mostly from oceans at the equator and piling it as ice mostly near the poles probably has a measurable effect on both the speed of rotation of the earth (length of day) and the rate of precession (wobble like a spinning top) of the Earth's rotational axis, which is the main Milankovitch cycle. (However, the ice ages do not follow that cycle, which is about 24,000 years, but instead now last about 4 of those cycles, something around 100,000 years). But, wait, the earth is not a totally rigid piece of rock below the oceans. Ice accumulation actually changes the shape of the Earth, so that its rocky part bulged more at the equator when there was more ice near the poles. But it doesn't shift shape as rapidly as the ice accumulates and melts. Even today, the Earth is still sinking where the ice was not and rising where the ice was 25,000 years ago. Where I live, the ground has sunk about 3 ", and sea level has risen about 3", since my parents built this house in 1980.

Modeling all of this is not simple, at all.

 

[Ken Fabian]

100% of the warming of the planet and all sea level rise today is caused by humans. We would be in a cooling period without human activity.

Analysis: Why scientists think 100% of global warming is due to humans - Carbon Brief

The science on the human contribution to modern warming is quite clear. Humans emissions and activities have caused around 100% of the warming observed.

www.carbonbrief.org

https://www.quantamagazine.org/how-earths-climate-changes-naturally-and-why-things-are-different-now-20200721/

Yes, more than 100%. The modeling as well as pre-industrial trends show that without human influences there would be slow cooling. And there is the aerosol cooling effect - about 0.5 C - that has the unfortunate ability to mask the level of warming from enhanced greenhouse, that grows as fossil fuel use grows - with aerosol cooling dependent on the ongoing rate of dirty fuel burning whilst enhanced greenhouse depends on the accumulated total that has been burned. One starts high and stays that way as long as it continues, the other starts at zero and builds over time. One stops quickly when the causal source stops. The other continues long after the source stops.

"But climate models could be wrong" - in an absolute sense, yes, they are imperfect/wrong, but they not entirely wrong or even that wrong or necessarily wrong only in the direction of less damaging, but it is a convenient argument and justification for doubt, denial and delay.

And blaming the messenger - attributing their own freely made choice to doubt, deny and delay as an uncontrollable, reflexive reaction to scientists or more often to climate activists, without even bothering to check what scientists say. They were making a point of how bad as well as how likely the climate problem has the potential to be. Claiming "I wouldn't be a climate science denier or oppose climate policies or argue for the most unpopular and expensive options as first choice if they hadn't made so much fuss about it being bad" - neatly squares the circle - it is ALL down to those who say it is real and serious, the existence of a climate problem and opposition to doing anything about it, all despite the modeling and the fundamental understandings they are built on showing that to be the case.

In my view it hasn't been climate scientists letting us down - or even environmentalists, for reacting to the science like it were true, ie that the problem is serious - it has been mainstream influential voices, by promoting distrust of science and prioritising obstruction of actions to address it, largely on behalf of large parts of commerce and industry that promoted alarmist fear of taking appropriate action. Interests that politicians and parties seek to defend and promote and avoid upsetting, that chose their political stance based on how they see actions to fix it would affect their near term costs, competitiveness and profitability - NOT on the validity of the science or the potential for longer term economic harms.

Deliberately undermining public trust in that science has been one of the most profoundly irresponsible and dangerous choices people with power, influence holding positions of trust and responsibility have ever made. Except doubling down.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Ken, the problem is not so much that people don't believe scientists - it is more that the solutions people are going to be expected to take are expensive and inconvenient. And, it really is not so much that "industry" doesn't want to change - it is more that it costs industry time and money to change, and they are in a competitive situation where they can go out of business if they just suddenly get more expensive and less convenient.

These changes are going to cost all of us real money, and make many people poor. Just gas prices and rent increases are already a serious problem for an increasing number of working people, right now. How do you expect them to go out and buy a new electric car, pay even more for food produced with lower CO2 emissions, put solar cells on their roofs, etc.?

And, the government can't subsidize the whole change for all of us. The governments could not get enough money by "taxing the rich" or even just outright confiscating all of their wealth. We the people are going to pay for all of these changes one way or the other, no matter what activists say to the contrary.

If there was a real economical solution that just about anybody could afford to implement. we would be seeing people eagerly adopt it. But, instead, we are seeing activists attempting to make current infrastructure illegal so that we will have to use something else, no matter how expensive it is or how poorly it works.

Demonstrate a solution, honestly, without subsidies that won't be available to anybody but the "early adopters", and then you can complain about people just not wanting to change, if they still won't do it.

 

[Jan Steinman]

Demonstrate a solution

There are no "solutions."

Only "problems" have "solutions." You can "fix" problems. You can't fix global warming!

This is a "dilemma," rather than a problem. Dilemmas don't have solutions; they have "coping strategies."

People better start working on their coping strategies!

 

[geemy]

If this is even remotely true, then we should obviously all quit the BS measures to stem climate change aka The 4 seasons that have occurred throughout entire history, since there is nothing we as humans can do to stop that from happening.
Live it up, we'll all be dead in 2 years.
Thank you !

wow, you are not that bright, aren't you...

 

[geemy]

Humans seem to be making climate changes, and we could stop doing so much of that, but probably not all of it that is due to us.

But, we really do need to recognize and accept that there are climate cycles that we do not have the ability to control, and we need to learn to live with them. Human history is just a brief part of a long natural history, and a part that seems to have been pretty stable, compared to some of the past. We benefited from that stability as we developed a lot of technological infrastructure. But, much of that infrastructure would not survive even the natural cycles of Earth's climate - so we need to keep adapting to what we will get.

But that does not mean that we should not care how much of a mess we make of our planet. We can definitely make things worse for ourselves than thea natural cycles would create if undisturbed.

it's not cycles because even if we stop all c02 emissions it would take thousands of year to revert back to pre industrial revolution levels. it's a rapid change with a lot of momentum that cant be stopped but could at least be slowed down.
burning fossil fuel increases C02, C02 is greenhouse gas, do temperature rises. this is very basic science. the complex science is all the feedback or amplification loops, like higher temperatures melts ice caps, which do reflect less heat back into space thus increasing temperature even more. this is just one example.
temperature increase also creates more wildfire, so even more C02. but there are stabilization mechanisms for C02 that happen over hundreds of thousands of years, explaining why earth climate doesn't diverge but goes into circles. but 100000 years is a long time

 

[Atlan0001]

If that ocean current were to shut down, we'd be in for the next Ice Age. It was one of the things I read a long time ago involving the onslaught of Ice Age was a description of this particular type of change in Atlantic oceanic flow pattern that slows, if not stops (the article said "stopping"), the transfer of heat from the equatorial region around to the North Atlantic.

While I'm at it, I've read that climatic data collected over the last century and more points out that the overall heat index was four times greater during the hotter climatic period of the 1930s than it is now, and that though the regions closer to the equator are warmer at this time the regions away from it are actually cooler than normal, which jives with the average summer temperatures around here where I live being cooler than usual for the summer so far.

That heat dome being screamed about from the environmentalist Fascists appears to be concentrated rather than over the whole of the world. If the ocean current situation does prove out, along with the general trend, it points in a direction of cresting opposed to the one Fascist Socialist Environmentalism is trying to blame on Mankind so to take absolute power over it to total quality control it.

We have Earth subsurface heat domes also at work now (oddly enough in keeping with an odd flexing pattern of solar activity and a noted slight speed up in Earth's rotation), having risen over the last centuries, and if per chance they subside rather than go super volcanic, or even if one or two do go super volcanic, that will also be in line with a due pattern of the Earth falling off a cliff (of about two centuries or less) into onset of the next due norm of Ice Age.

That possible change in sea pattern fills one of the last voids to be filled on the way to it.

 

[Atlan0001]

I can hardly believe it. I describe it's, Ice Age's, norm of conditional onset and how it works from different articles I've read over the decades and as I'm on my MSN homepage about to shutdown for the night, here it is all of sudden in front of me pointing toward just about what I described from my own reading and study:

This Is What Would Happen To Earth If The Ocean Currents Collapsed - Grunge

New research found that due to climate change, the Atlantic Ocean's currents are at risk. This is what would happen to Earth if the ocean currents collapsed.

www.grunge.com

My quick read of this article did not show the author pointing out the normality of the conditions of Ice Age onset. If it had, totalitarian Environmentalism (totalitarian Socialism) could not blame Mankind for the certain, the due, onset of Ice Age. The original article cited by this thread flat refused to inform people that the conditions are historically normal to an onset of Ice Age . . . and that the next one is due . . . even overdue!!!!

 

[Jan Steinman]

… it points in a direction of cresting opposed to the one Fascist Socialist Environmentalism is trying to blame on Mankind so to take absolute power over it to total quality control it.

What a unique perspective!

I bet you're against vaccines, too!

Watch Alex Jones much?

Ever hear of "Occam's Razor?" In your case, apply it to the throat. Deeply.

 

[Jan Steinman]

… totalitarian Environmentalism (totalitarian Socialism) could not blame Mankind for the certain, the due, onset of Ice Age. . . . even overdue!!!!

Remember, when you point a finger at someone, there's three fingers pointed back at 'cha.

Doesn't it all come down to there being over 8,000,000,000 of us? Don't you think the weight of all that humanity, consuming more energy than that collected by all photosynthesizing plants on the planet, could have something to do with things?

I have seen the future, and it is powered by current photosynthesis. I'm just not sure I see any humans in that future.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

geemy, I did not say that human CO2 emissions (and other environmental perturbations) are "cycles". What I said is that, even without those human effects, we live in an environment that has natural cycles that will mess with our infrastructure that was built during a short period of rather stable (but not typical) environmental conditions.

So, my point is mainly to the people who think that we somehow must control our environment to our liking, and who think that the way to do that is to simply control our own perturbations on the environment. The real issue is that we need to both control our effects on the environment and prepare to deal with the effects that we cannot control, whether they are natural cycle effects of perturbation effects. Using sea level rise to scare people into trying to control our disruptions to Earth's systems is going to be counter-productive from a propaganda perspective, because we really do not have any hope of stopping sea level rise that is large enough to alarm people. But, sea level rise we can deal with - other effects are really more important to our well being.

Looking at it logically, our perturbations may have already had the effect of stopping the next ice age from occurring, or maybe delaying that for some multiple of the Earth axis wobble + Earth perihelion precession cycle. That might actually be a good thing. But, now, we may also be getting "too much of a good thing" that will lead to bad things. Frankly, the climate models are just not good enough to tell us how we are changing the cyclic nature of the Earth's climate as it appears in the geological records. We still have a lot to learn about the feedback mechanisms dynamics.

That does not mean that I think we need to disregard the models implications. I do believe that adding a lot of CO2 to the atmosphere will change climate, mainly because there is plenty of geological evidence about that. There was more CO2 in the atmosphere a few million years ago, and the temperatures were warmer then, until the CO2 seems to have (naturally) been reduced (apparently by rock weathering) and some ocean and atmospheric circulation was changed (apparently by the rise of Central America above sea level), after which the Earth began its latest cycles ice ages with short warm periods, which started at intervals of 50,000 years, but changed to intervals of 100,000 years about 900,000 years ago.

So, yes, we think it will take a long time for CO2 levels to get back to where they would naturally be if we had emitted none, once we stop emitting much. But, so far at least, we don't seem to be getting to the point where CO2 levels are beyond anything that the Earth has already experienced, during which life flourished. What we do seem to be doing is emitting CO2 faster than natural process did in the past. So, the real question is how fast things in the environment will change, and how well will humans and other life forms be able to cope with the rapid changes.

Climate change is just one of the many deleterious effects that 9 billion humans are causing on Earth's ecosystems. We are also rapidly killing off species by eating them or destroying their habitats. And, we are polluting our entire biome with unnatural chemicals that may or may not alter our physical health.

Essentially, we need to learn to control ourselves as a species, not just try to control our environment to keep it just like it has been for the last few thousand years. Geology tells us that what has been our experience for the last few thousand years (all of recorded history) is not the usual state of the environment over the last few million years.

 

[Atlan0001]

Remember, when you point a finger at someone, there's three fingers pointed back at 'cha.

Doesn't it all come down to there being over 8,000,000,000 of us? Don't you think the weight of all that humanity, consuming more energy than that collected by all photosynthesizing plants on the planet, could have something to do with things?

I have seen the future, and it is powered by current photosynthesis. I'm just not sure I see any humans in that future.

Your kind has never stood for breakaway (for Biblical-like 'Exodus' in a future of Space Colony PC Noah's-like Space Colony Arks and networks of -- local and wide area networks of-- other stations, ships, and facilitations) to an Age of Space Frontier; never standing for "freedom" of any kind in any way! Always standing for a total quality control of -- a totalitarian quality control over -- Mankind everywhere Mankind is and would be! What you will get is war either as opening frontier system or as closed Earth system! You have only two choices, one the more benign (many worlds Frontier (Space)), the other the more malignant (one world Utopia (Dystopia))! There is no third choice!

 

[Buckman]

So can someone please explain how the sea levels differ on one coast and not the other? I thought the sea levels were due to tides not to ocean currents. You always have the same amount of water in a glass no matter where you are in the world.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

Buckman, to answer your question, the annual average level of the water in a specific place in an ocean depends on a lot of dynamic conditions - it is not just sitting there like water in a glass.

Some of those conditions are wind forces, such a the the "trade winds" which blow mostly in the same direction all of the time. As an example, the winds blowing across the Atlantic from the east shove water into the Caribbean Sea and then the Gulf of Mexico, where it is heated by the Sun before it sort of squirts out of the Gulf between Cuba and Florida. So, water levels in the Gulf depend on how hard the trade winds are blowing, on average. Also, when the water comes out of the Gulf and turns north, it is moving pretty fast, and, because the Earth is rotating, that water is affected by what is commonly known as the Coriolis Force, which, if I remember my college coursework properly, makes the east side of the Gulf Stream about 4' higher than the west side of the stream between Florida and the Bahamas. Change the trade wind speeds or the water current speeds, and the water heights change.

Because the "sea level" is an average, the frequency of storms can also change the average. If a lot more or a lot less storms form in a region where they tend to push water towards or away from land, then the average depth of the water by the land will change.

Those are the things I have time to type out right now, but there is a lot involved in predicting sea levels, including things like land subsidence and land-raising plate tectonics, too.

 

[bwana4swahili]

"Finding that direct measurements of the AMOC's strength have only been made for the past 15 years, Ditlevsen's team applied sophisticated statistical tools to ocean temperature data going all the way back to the 1870s for an enhanced dataset. "
In other words they guessed!

 

[ryankm]

Yes, more than 100%. The modeling as well as pre-industrial trends show that without human influences there would be slow cooling. And there is the aerosol cooling effect - about 0.5 C - that has the unfortunate ability to mask the level of warming from enhanced greenhouse, that grows as fossil fuel use grows - with aerosol cooling dependent on the ongoing rate of dirty fuel burning whilst enhanced greenhouse depends on the accumulated total that has been burned. One starts high and stays that way as long as it continues, the other starts at zero and builds over time. One stops quickly when the causal source stops. The other continues long after the source stops.

"But climate models could be wrong" - in an absolute sense, yes, they are imperfect/wrong, but they not entirely wrong or even that wrong or necessarily wrong only in the direction of less damaging, but it is a convenient argument and justification for doubt, denial and delay.

And blaming the messenger - attributing their own freely made choice to doubt, deny and delay as an uncontrollable, reflexive reaction to scientists or more often to climate activists, without even bothering to check what scientists say. They were making a point of how bad as well as how likely the climate problem has the potential to be. Claiming "I wouldn't be a climate science denier or oppose climate policies or argue for the most unpopular and expensive options as first choice if they hadn't made so much fuss about it being bad" - neatly squares the circle - it is ALL down to those who say it is real and serious, the existence of a climate problem and opposition to doing anything about it, all despite the modeling and the fundamental understandings they are built on showing that to be the case.

In my view it hasn't been climate scientists letting us down - or even environmentalists, for reacting to the science like it were true, ie that the problem is serious - it has been mainstream influential voices, by promoting distrust of science and prioritising obstruction of actions to address it, largely on behalf of large parts of commerce and industry that promoted alarmist fear of taking appropriate action. Interests that politicians and parties seek to defend and promote and avoid upsetting, that chose their political stance based on how they see actions to fix it would affect their near term costs, competitiveness and profitability - NOT on the validity of the science or the potential for longer term economic harms.

Deliberately undermining public trust in that science has been one of the most profoundly irresponsible and dangerous choices people with power, influence holding positions of trust and responsibility have ever made. Except doubling down.

I would put Climate Scientists post in the category of 'troll post'. Anyway in order for the gulf stream to totally shut down than thebpolar ice caps would have totally melt. A lot of what drives the Gulf Current is convection from melting ice sheets. No where in this article that I saw did it explain how this would occur or evan. As if to say... By 2057 the polar ice caps will be totally gone.