Originally published at: Ominous chart reveals alarming temperature spike in North Atlantic Ocean | Boing Boing
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One of the main fears, as well as the methane release, is that the huge oceanic currents will essentially stop…
Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current – of which the Gulf Stream is a part – could collapse around the middle of the century, or even as early as 2025
one source
This will likely, though no one is sure of the specifics, cause the gulf of Mexico area to fry and Britain to freeze. …prepare for disaster and try (oh try) to reduce emissions and joe manchins various -sigh-
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There are other, horrific implications…
If this happens the UK may end up with intolerably hot summers and intolerably cold winters.
ETA ninja’d by @theophrastus - but different article cited, so have some depressing reading on us.
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Too soon?
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No. A case where ‘better late than never’ does not apply.
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Obviously we have to stop burning fossil fuels and control other sources of carbon, but the only kind of immediate desperate ‘fix’ I can think of is actually just adding more pollution to the atmosphere in the form of particulate matter-- like the ash cloud from a volcano.
The problem is the naysayers don’t really see or feel the reality of what’s coming. If they could live a week of Cormac McCarthy’s “The Road” in a Holodeck perhaps they’d get it. Electric cars, mass transit, less meat production, less overall consumption, these are all preferable to famine and desertification.
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Temperature change discussions here in USA should be done in degrees Fahrenheit, not Centigrade. Few people here understand C, the numbers are half the size, and the use of C allows most Americans a blanket of comforting deniability. But in reality, 1.5C is 2.7F, almost three - much more real, and much (deservedly) scarier.
Tell your friends.
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Me, every time I read some of the climate change news: “Well, things couldn’t feel any more apocalyptic.”
Next bit of climate change news: “You think so, huh? That’s adorable.”
In the last year or so, I’ve gone from, “We still have a few decades to turn things around,” to “We still have at least a few decades before everything goes to total shit,” to “We’ve got at most a couple decades before everything goes to total shit.”
Lately I’ve been getting more and more angry at the right-wingers who have little melt-downs every time the idea of eating insects comes up, insisting that this is some evil librul plot that will be imposed on them. I want to scream, “No, you assholes, it’s because you’re rushing us towards a future where agriculture as we know it is going to collapse, and we’ll be eating bugs - if we’re lucky - because we have no fucking choice.”
I don’t think it helps at all, as the people in denial don’t understand at all what any of it means, and it’s still not scary to them. They think, “Oh, 3 degrees F isn’t a big deal, is it? It’ll just be a little bit warmer, that’s nice. Even in the summer, that won’t kill me.” It doesn’t describe the actual impacts of climate change and the extremes that happen as a result of those 3 degrees.
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There are so many problems with the idea of pumping pollution into the skies to ward off climate change.
Two in particular are that historic volcanic eruptions suggest large amounts of particles in the Northern Hemisphere stratosphere are probably linked to collapses in the African and South East Asian monsoon rains, and from there, about half of the World’s food supply.
The second is that whilst particles might block solar radiation, they do not stop the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - and from there into the ocean. Acidification of ocean waters is disastrous for the base of the marine food chain and for corals.
Tech fixes don’t get us out of this catastrophe.
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So, we don’t care about the rest of Europe?
(This isn’t directed at you, @anothernewbbaccount, but I’m so frustrated with the UK being the default of “across the pond”)
… chart for the BBS
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Yes?
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No?
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whatever, who cares, here you go
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In general I’d take your point. But this is very specific to the Gulf Stream so I only posted about UK because it’s where I live and because UK’s temperate climate is entirely due to the Gulf Stream. Central Europe regularly has much colder winters than us (well it used to) being part of a large land mass not right on the end of the Gulf Stream, and more exposed to weather from the north and east. Central Europe does not have the temperate climate UK has (used to have). Our winters being less cold than central Europe’s is entirely due to the Gulf Stream, as far as I understand it.
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Nobody’s talking about the Japanese Current; if it also collapses, British Columbia and Washington State with have the same scenario of frozen Winters and flaming hot (literally) Summers.
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Good points all around. Mine is how these are presented to an American audience, not the particular measurement being discussed. Most of the dialog happens with no graphics, using only “this many degrees.” You can’t pull up a chart in a bus-stop conversation, but bigger numbers are more impressive as well as being more accurate to Americans. Adding “Centigrade,” “Celsius,” and “degrees C” not only yields lower numbers but gives many of today’s Americans an excuse to zone out and lose the focus, for reasons I’m not getting into. This applies to every specific measurement, whether sea surface, Japanese current, average land temperature, Gulf Stream, subsurface ocean current temperatures or whatever. For the American audience we should call it 3 degrees. Not F, not C, but 3 degrees. If someone takes you on because it’s rounding the number and not an exact conversion to 2.7, they’re now playing on your turf and you have the lead. If some Americans want to be in denial, let them deny numbers that most Americans will understand.
The thing is, the gulf stream doesn’t just make UK winters pleasant, it also makes Scandinavia survivable. And all of Western and Central Europe is dependant on it. Germany will be just as impacted as the UK. You’re right that it has colder winters than the UK and hotter summers, but that just means that it will have even colder winters (5 to 10 degrees colder according to some article I’ve read). The Baltic and the North Sea might regularly freeze again. The gulf stream doesn’t just affect the immediate coastlines it touches, it affects the weather systems of whole continents.
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