AMOC shutdown likely within the next 20-30 years
22 comments
·February 7, 2025daedrdev
Reading the abstract it seems to support the idea of geoengineering if half the excess warming magnitude was from stopping ships Aerosolization of particles
netsharc
Curious that you're picking 1 aspect of the dire prediction of this climate scientist, which contains more things than just the AMOC. The "digested by journalists" summary of that paper: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/feb/04/climate-...
It also mentions some scientists who doubt the conclusion, that the 2 degree target is dead. As a doom-and-gloomer I'll buy what James Hansen is saying though, IMO the scientists are underestimating how quickly it'll get worse.
janice1999
I really hope they are wrong or I'll be underwater. AMOC models are based on close-to-surface temperatures so there is so some dissent about how accurate they are. It's probably just a matter of time though. Personally I think panic will eventually set in and we'll be forced to watch governments attempt geo-engineering. I am not optimistic.
netsharc
This paper's title is asking if the UN and public are well-informed enough. I wish there's a more "sociology/anthropoligical look at what happens when things break down" research. Yeah, panic is surely coming, although I feel like desperate attempts at geo-engineering are better than doing nothing, although I suppose a "That thing we did 20 years ago? If we hadn't done that we wouldn't have doomed the entire planet." would be a massive oops.
The worsening climate is already causing conflict and displacing people, e.g. in Syria [1] or North Africa in general [2], now they're in Europe and the Nazis don't like them, causing a drift rightwards (a sort of understandable one, from the point of selfishness, in times of trouble (be it real or perceived) you want to keep yourself safe, and then your family, and then your tribe).
[1] https://www.dw.com/en/how-climate-change-paved-the-way-to-wa... [2] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/climate-change-an...
api
James Hansen has been a very vocal Neo-malthusian doomer forever. Not saying this means he's wrong, just that he's got a clear point of view.
1970-01-01
It's probably less than this due to recent political reversals.
I think fusion is our last and only real chance at this point. Everything else is stuck in a political hellscape.
marssaxman
We're not likely to see large-scale fusion development even if it does become technically possible, because wind and solar are already so cheap that heat-engine-based power generation cannot compete. Even if we could build fusion power stations, investors would still get a better, safer, and quicker return via renewables, so that's where the money would go.
taylodl
We're not likely to have commercial fusion within 20 to 30 years. Even if we do, it won't be to scale. At this point, we can just assume the AMOC is shutting down as we've been doing very little to date to prevent that.
1970-01-01
If the ITER timelines stop slipping, we're generating electricity from fusion in 25 years.
If there is a major breakthrough, or one of the 'fusion startups' bears fruit, we're generating electricity in every major city within 10 years.
One must have some hope.
janice1999
Nuclear reactors connected to the grid in 2023 had a median construction time of 11 years. That's with proven technology. I doubt I will see commercial fusion in my lifetime.
hindsightbias
James Burke explains it to you 36 years ago:
rufus_foreman
Related:
"Atlantic overturning inferred from air-sea heat fluxes indicates no decline since the 1960s", https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-55297-5
"Florida Current transport observations reveal four decades of steady state", https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-51879-5
blain
For those like me that don't know what AMOC is [1]:
> The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is the main ocean current system in the Atlantic Ocean. It is a component of Earth's ocean circulation system and plays an important role in the climate system. The AMOC includes Atlantic currents at the surface and at great depths that are driven by changes in weather, temperature and salinity. Those currents comprise half of the global thermohaline circulation that includes the flow of major ocean currents, the other half being the Southern Ocean overturning circulation.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...
null
havesomewit
[dead]
null
null
thomascountz
[flagged]
qzw
It seems like we’re hitting all the projected points early. For example, aren’t we already at 1.5C of warming by some metrics, which was supposed to not happen for another decade or two? If anything, I think the scientific community has been too conservative in its predictions, which in turn has caused a massive under-reaction to climate change globally. Seems to me AMOC collapse is probably a foregone conclusion.
netsharc
I saw somewhere that a scientist explained it by saying "You don't want to appear like a kooky alarmist, so you report the numbers that you can be confident in, instead of the extreme numbers"...
As for the reaction, it's a tragedy of the commons, nobody wants to give up their fly-to-Europe-to-ski-because-it's-cheaper holidays/why do they have to give it up and see all those billionaire Instagram kids flaunting about doing that on Instagram?
null
I feel that it's kind of obvious by now that we, as humanity (ofc, in most cases passively), have resigned to not do anything big to prevent negative impact of climate change.
Which means several meters of rising sea level, loss of ecosystems etc. The timescale for these consequences is now (as opposed to 20-30 years ago) fairly close, in 20, 30, 50 years, so it seems significantly more inevitable and imminent. In my country (SE Europe), a hot summer day 20 years ago was 30 C. Now it's regularly 38-39 for days on end, some going to 40. I don't expect it to be 50 in another 20 years, but is it unreasonable to think so? Who would have thought 40 is expectable before?
Given the (even relatively) mild example we've had with Covid, of cascading supply chain issues and strained economies, I wonder what people think will happen when we start losing coastal cities, some of the big ports, crops, potable water etc, all combined, in different places in the world at once...Do we think that we'll somehow adapt quickly, overcome, is there a plan, or is it just a "future someone's" problem?