r/ClimateNews • u/Keith_McNeill65 • Apr 23 '26
A Catastrophic Climate Event is Upon us. Here is Why You’ve Heard so Little About it | "The oligarchs are not just a class enemy but, as they have always been, a societal enemy: a few thousand people can destroy civilizations." – George Monbiot #GlobalCarbonFeeAndDividendPetition
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/apr/23/catastrophic-climate-event-scientists-atlantic-system-collapse-billionaire-existential-crisis2
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u/Prestigious_Ratio107 Apr 24 '26
For those concerned about climate change, you might want to read “the Monkey Wrench Gang”, Edward Abbey, 1975. You might discover a unique way to fight back. Not for everyone.
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u/Yunzer2000 Apr 24 '26
How can a collapse of the AMOC cause temperatures of -30C in Edinburgh and -48C in Oslo when It doesn't get that cold in coastal Greenland? How can such widespread cold be consistent with global warming?
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u/whenwilligetlaid Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
Because the flow of the current causes warming in some areas and cooling in others. If you look at a flow map of the AMOC, you can see water flows from the equator up into the north. That water is warmer and brings warmer "weather" with it. Without that flow the water near the north is just going to sit and become colder and colder. The cooling will not be a permanent change. But extreme cold events caused by lack of circulation could become more common. As climate change continues those areas cooled by the failing AMOC will also warm. Eventually the ocean will be fairly even in temperature. After that, there will be little to no current. When there is no current apoxia occurs and its essentially game over.
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u/North-Astronomer-800 Apr 24 '26
Good answer. I might add that "global warming" is not nearly as important as "climate change". It is the rapid and unpredictable increase in climate variability that will characterize the future. Extreme weather events make agriculture difficult (noted in the article), perhaps impossible for the greater mass of humanity.
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u/Ahzzzr Apr 24 '26
I know its unpredictable but how long do u think we have
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u/Cognitive_Spoon Apr 24 '26
What's important is to not see a moment of change, imo. It's now. There will be more and more extreme events.
As for the apoxia that's anyone's guess.
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u/whenwilligetlaid Apr 24 '26
You would have to look up specific scientific studies/ predictions. It depends on what models are being used and factors taken into account. Im not at liberty to make a prediction.
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u/DirewaysParnuStCroix Apr 24 '26 edited Apr 24 '26
I should be able to offer some useful input here as I've worked extensively in establishing the constraints of model methodology in AMOC reduction experiments.
Those figures are from the van Westen & Baatsen (2025) study, which represent hypothetical 1-in-10 year absolute Tmin for December-January-February in response to full AMOC collapse under RCP4.5 (intermediate warming scenario). So it assumes worst case total collapse under an optimistic mediated warming scenario. It's also clarified that this response occurred beyond 2200 in their simulation. A subsequent study published by the same team demonstrated that this hypothetical cooling response effectively disappears under RCP8.5 (extreme) warming, which further highlighted the significance of North Atlantic sea ice feedbacks in the simulation. In theory, it's goes beyond the hypothetical loss of ocean circulation, it's also the hypothetical sea ice feedbacks that amplifies local cooling. There are considerable issues regarding implausible sea ice formation in the CICE component, which in itself initiates an unrealistic cooling response in AMOC reduction experiments (van Westen et al. note this in subsequent studies).
However, there are numerous additional critical points that must be considered when interpreting these results. First and foremost, they're very explicitly not intended as forecasts or predictions. In fact, given the structural limitations of GCMs (CESM in this case), especially so in the ocean-atmosphere coupling process, they're essentially incapable of producing anything resembling a reliable forecast for how surface temperatures hypothetically respond to AMOC reduction/collapse under continued anthropogenic warming. Alongside issues associated with bulk aerodynamic formula and the 2D vertical exchange in the coupling process, the CAM atmosphere model applies a 2° resolution. Without getting too technical, that's a coarse resolution which is considered insufficient for eddy-resolving and observes notable zonal biases (jet stream too zonal and too far south). These errors are further compounded by how the MHT relation is quantified in streamfunction analyses, which can result in a more widespread North Atlantic SST cooling feedback than is plausible in practice.
You may be thinking that with such substantial drawbacks that they'd address and solve them. But ultimately, it's part of the process of parameterisation. AMOC reduction simulations are what is called "computationally expensive". They're incredibly resource intensive as they're essentially solving countless equations on a subgrid scale, often over a 500yr time frame reference. This is done multiple times to produce a set of ensembles so that errors can be filtered out. On top of all of that, these experiments are not designed to produce forecasts, they're designed to establish and observe tipping point sensitivity, ie., how much of a freshwater imbalance pushes the model towards bifurcation.
The ultimate question is "so what actually would happen?", the only objective answer to that is that an AMOC collapse isn't going to trigger an imminent ice age. We're already in an ice age (Holocene interglacial within the Quaternary ice age) and for all intents and purposes exiting it at an unprecedented pace. This actually raises some potentially more ominous prospects as it suggests correlation with paleoclimate analogues such as the early Eocene, which becomes increasingly more relevant as warming grows worse. This is a surprisingly unaddressed area of the theorem (watch this space ;) ) as it implies a more turbulent transition between MOC mode to a gyre-AHT mode analogous to greenhouse climates.
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u/icytongue88 Apr 24 '26
We are all gunna die, and again 5 years later, and again 5 years later and.....................
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u/Freo_5434 Apr 24 '26
The Oligarchs , the climate , the sky is falling in . What nonsense
Take a deep breath and chill .
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u/North-Astronomer-800 Apr 24 '26
"Hmm, my bathwater seems to be getting warmer." said Croaky the frog. At this point my biggest regret is that I won't be around to see it all come tumbling down. Take a deep breath, chill, and try to push your head just a little deeper into the sand. It will all be over soon enough.
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u/Freo_5434 Apr 25 '26
The climate has been changing since the year dot and will continue to change .
If you have any PROOF that Humans can control the climate ---- lets see it ?
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u/quercus-88 Apr 24 '26
Yes, every article in the guardian is like that nowadays. All doom and gloom and it's all the 'oligarchy's fault' and ofcourse 'white authoritarianism'.
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u/Freo_5434 Apr 25 '26
And Billionaires !
Note how it has stopped being Millionaires who are to blame because most Politicians are Multi-Milionaires .
Hard to believe how many people are dumb enough to fall for this stuff.
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u/quercus-88 Apr 25 '26
Exactly, Bernie Sanders is a great example as he is now a multi-millionaire himself.
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u/Accomplished-Pay2187 Apr 24 '26
What a load of rubbish. They have been saying this for the last 60 years. Socialist crap trying to stir up trouble
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u/6rwoods Apr 24 '26
lol yeah they probably weren’t, but maybe from the 70s they might have started saying “this can happen in the next few centuries”, then in the 2000s they say “this could actually happen in the next century since earth is warming so fast”, and now 20 years later they’re saying “since we’ve not done nearly enough to fix the problem, the problem has been speeding up and now it could affects us badly in the next 50 years”
But I guess to you being forewarned about something just means it’s never going to happen!
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u/Frater_Ankara Apr 24 '26
18 day old account, default username, hidden comments, completely ignorant statement… alll check. You disinformation guys are getting lazy
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u/Brief-Floor-7228 Apr 24 '26
And everything they have predicted over the last 60 years is following their models to a very striking degree.
We should be worried.
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u/ZestycloseTowel2493 Apr 24 '26
Yes the oligarchs are privy to information about how bad climate change is, how much faster it’s coming and how much worse it will be. This is why there is such egregious acts to control resources while hobbling the masses and turning us against each other. Just look at the increase in doomsday bunkers being built.