A vital system of Atlantic Ocean currents that influences weather across the world could collapse as soon as the late 2030s, scientists have suggested in a new study — a planetary-scale disaster that would transform weather and climate.
Several studies in recent years have suggested the crucial system — the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC — could be on course for collapse, weakened by warmer ocean temperatures and disrupted saltiness caused by human-induced climate change.
But the new research, which is being peer-reviewed and hasn’t yet been published in a journal, uses a state-of-the-art model to estimate when it could collapse, suggesting a shutdown could happen between 2037 and 2064.
This research suggests it’s more likely than not to collapse by 2050.
“This is really worrying,” said René van Westen, a marine and atmospheric researcher at the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands and study co-author.
“All the negative side effects of anthropogenic climate change, they will still continue to go on, like more heat waves, more droughts, more flooding,” he told CNN. “Then if you also have on top of that an AMOC collapse … the climate will become even more distorted.”
AMOC destroying Global Civilisation
Comrades, I think climate change is an existential threat to our species, because, well, because it’s a fucking existential threat to our species.
In the last 72 hours one of the most consequential environmental reports ever has been released.
The increasing heat trapped by man made pollution will lift temperatures to the point frozen methane on the ocean floor alongside thawing permafrost will generate an enormous burp of Methane in the gigatonne which in turn melts all the Greenland ice shelf which desalinates the oceanic pump in the Labrador Sea and shuts down the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC which in turn will start a new ice age in the Northern Hemisphere.
We are talking billions dead, cultures obliterated and global capitalism having a bad day.
It will be like the Apocalypse but on ice.
The research released over the last 72 hours has studied the AMOC and have terrifyingly estimated that it is more likely than not that the AMOC will completely collapse before 2050.
That’s 26 years away.
If this research is peer reviewed and still makes that claim, the level of adaptation necessary will demand a new means of capitalism that would make the Kmere Rouge look urban.
Societal Backlash Purges
If we want to build the social and physical infrastructure we need to radically adapt to the realities of catastrophic climate change, we need to tax the rich!
I’m not looking for socialism here folks, just basic garden variety regulated capitalism!
There are 14 Billionaires in NZ + 3118 ultra-high net worth individuals, let’s start with them, then move onto the Banks, then the Property Speculators, the Climate Change polluters and big industry.
You should be angry, NZ Capitalism is a rigged trick for the rich and powerful. The real demarcation line of power in a western democracy is the 1% + their 9% enablers vs the 90% rest of us!
Do not allow their smears of ‘Envy’ dilute the righteous rage you should all be feeling!
There’s no point making workers pay more to rebuild our resilience, tax the rich!
-Sugar Tax
-Inheritance Tax
-Wealth Tax
-Financial Transactions Tax
-New top tax rate on people earning over $300 000 per year.
-Capital Gains Tax
-Windfall profit taxes
-First $10 000 tax free
Lift the tax yoke from the workers and the people and place it on the mega wealthy and have them pay their fair share for once!
In 2010, the 388 richest individuals owned more wealth than half of the entire human population on Earth
By 2015, this number was reduced to only 62 individuals
In 2018, it was 42
In 2019, it was down to only 26 individuals who own more wealth than 3.8 billion people.
And now in 2021, 20 people own more than 50% of the entire planet.
This isn’t democracy, this is a feudal plutocracy on a burning Earth
The Big Tech Tzars have manipulated our collective fear, ego, anger and insecurities through social media in a way that has led to the largest psychological civil war ever launched against one another.
We are but meat bags secreting hormones addicted to dopamine rewards for fat, sugar, salt and sex in a cultural landscape of individualism uber allas where we sing sweet secret lies to ourselves to make sense of a world around us that is frightening and in constant entropy.
Meanwhile, the planet burns and every aspect of our existence is monetarised for big data to sell us more stuff we can’t afford. We are alienated and anesthetized by a consumer culture that keeps us neurotic and disconnected. Our work, our existence, every move we make are all built to suck money to a minority class that sits above us while under neoliberalism, globalization, financialization, and automation, our existence as individuals has only become more disposable.
What happens when Eco Terrorism becomes justifiable?
There is a tipping point for activists watching the science that direct action against polluter infrastructure that damages the ability to pollute will become philosophically justifiable and Fonterra’s appalling secret agenda is marking them out a s legitimate target…
Fonterra exposed as major player in global attempts to undermine climate action
Greenpeace Aotearoa is raising the alarm about Fonterra’s role in derailing international climate action. A new investigation has uncovered that globally, large agribusiness corporations are deploying the same playbook used by Big Tobacco and Big Oil to thwart regulations meant to protect the public interest.
The new report, entitled The New Merchants of Doubt, was released by Changing Markets Foundation today. It analyses the actions of 22 of the biggest meat and dairy companies across four different continents, and it specifically highlights Fonterra and the New Zealand livestock industry as key players in an industry-wide strategy to delay regulation of emissions from animal agriculture.
Nusa Urbancic, CEO of the Changing Markets Foundation stated: “This report exposes the blatant hypocrisy of Big Meat and Dairy, which claim to be committed to climate solutions while employing deceptive tactics to distract, delay and derail meaningful action. These tactics mirror those of Big Oil and Big Tobacco, allowing them to continue their harmful practices unchecked.”
Greenpeace Aotearoa spokesperson Amanda Larsson says, “Big Dairy is New Zealand’s worst climate polluter, and now the New Merchants of Doubt report exposes Fonterra’s leading role in work to undermine climate action and avoid accountability for their climate pollution both here and overseas.”
Agricultural emissions, primarily from intensive dairy, made up more than half of New Zealand’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2022. Animal agriculture is the single largest source of human-made methane emissions, which are 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide.
The New Merchants of Doubt report exposes how, rather than acting to meaningfully reduce livestock emissions, Big Meat and Dairy use a smokescreen of weak voluntary targets, green marketing and promises of future technological fixes that rarely materialise, while mobilising significant lobbying resources behind the scenes to delay and derail progressive legislation.
“The report highlights years of predatory denial and delay by New Zealand’s intensive dairy industry, spearheaded by Fonterra,” says Larsson.
“Not only are they lobbying the Government here in New Zealand to delay climate action, they’ve also spent millions of dollars in the last decade on lobbyists and political donations in the European Union and the United States.”
Fonterra also faces accusations of greenwashing, as the report reveals they spend more than five times their yearly research and development budget on marketing and PR, which often portrays New Zealand dairy as natural and environmentally-friendly.
“It has now been more than 20 years since the first attempt to put a price on and reduce New Zealand’s outsized agricultural emissions,” says Larsson. “The Luxon-led Government has delayed this yet again, by scrapping He Waka Eke Noa, removing requirements for agriculture to enter the Emissions Trading Scheme, and failing to address dairying – the biggest source of climate pollution – in the draft Emissions Reductions Plan.”
“We all pay the price for the dairy industry’s failure to take responsibility for their pollution. The climate crisis is here and now. In New Zealand, communities are still recovering from extreme weather events, from Cyclone Gabrielle to the recent Wairoa floods.
“As the New Zealand Government once again backtracks on its responsibility to hold a polluting industry accountable for the damage it is causing, the report makes it clear that overseas customers are wising up to agri-industry greenwash and expect real action. Fonterra and the Luxon Government are doing farmers here in Aotearoa a disservice by trying to deny and delay the inevitable.”
…ACT, NZF and National are Climate Fascists who have done everything to bend over backwards for the interests of the polluters at a time when global warming can no longer be portrayed as a socialist hoax.
The disconnect between the bribed Political class and their polluter donors vs the people living with the realities of climate change is beyond the current political spectrum and I can only see more mass civil disobedience or the rise of eco terrorism.
As the speed of climate change hits us, as the true cost of our denial is realised – protestors will get angrier and angrier at the inaction.
Sometimes the machine is so hateful and evil you have to throw yourself onto the gears to stop it.
Many more activists prepared to step over the laws that protect the polluters will be needed before this country is awake to the existential threat that is climate change caused by man made pollution…
…the recent report on sea warming is so fucking grim and I think pretending shit is going to get better if we recycle, ride a bike and become carbon neutral by 2050 is nothing more than vacant optimism…
I just don’t think the vast majority of Kiwis have any comprehension yet just how bad things are going to get from a purely scientific point of view.
National’s attempt to gloss over the fact they are making climate change far more dangerous was beneath the country’s mana…
Opposition MPs have slammed the Government’s climate change strategy, released today, arguing Climate Change Minister Simon Watts has essentially published a “pamphlet” on climate change to disguise the fact most of the Government’s actions have done little to reduce emissions and many will increase emissions.
The three-page strategy was released the same day the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) published 49 pages of advice on the Government’s decision to reverse the offshore oil and gas exploration ban, which showed the impact of reversing the ban will be an additional 51 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent emissions pumped into the atmosphere in the years to 2050.
For comparison, in the years 2026 to 2030 New Zealand’s net annual emissions are meant to be about 61 megatonnes a year.
Labour’s climate change spokeswoman Megan Woods argued the Government appeared to be getting in ahead of the Climate Change Commission delivering its “monitoring report” – a semi-regular assessment of the Government’s progress towards its multiple climate goals. That report is due to be handed to Watts next week and will be made public no more than 10 days after that.
The Green Party’s climate change spokeswoman Chlöe Swarbrick described the three-page strategy as a “pamphlet” of “pretty pictures” and “some bullet points” that was disconnected from reality.
She noted the irony the Government released the strategy the day the oil and gas ban advice was released.
“Maybe they’ve been embarrassed into releasing this,” Swarbrick said.
Swarbrick said it was rich of Watts to cite market functioning in the plan, given that the Government had only added to uncertainty around the way the ETS functioned. Watts said earlier this year he was not planning any “major or significant” reforms of the ETS, but was “looking at doing some policy changes in regard to where trees can be planted”.
…even though Farmer’s are being warned our international clients are prepared to pay higher prices for environmental products…
ETS exemption: Farmers warned customers’ ‘voices getting louder’ for action
…watching National, ACT and Corporate Farmers use their economic and political muscle to avoid responsibility for what comes next can only be resolved by civil unrest and a campaign of civil disobedience against those interests.
Just consider how the Corporate Farming Lobby have managed to avoid any tax on their pollution since mid 2004!
They have pushed and pushed and pushed it off for 20 years!
National have already promised ANOTHER 5 year extension which will mean the agricultural industry have managed to stop any tax on their pollution for quarter of a century!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Claiming that NZs emissions mean nothing in comparison to China and India isn’t a justification to do nothing, it’s an acknowledgement that radical adaptation is the only move left because those Goliath economies have already doomed us to a dangerous climate change future!
The economic research tells us that our economic future is not more dairy and cheap exports to China and the environmental research tells us we are running out of time…
How climate change will make your life more expensive
The impacts of climate change extend beyond the environment – global warming is also hitting people in their wallets.
From rising insurance premiums to increased energy bills and grocery prices, the economic impacts are wide-ranging. The financial burden of climate change also has the potential to infiltrate our finances in other, more subtle ways.
Here’s how the warming planet could significantly drive up day-to-day costs.
…the vested interests of the polluter class dictate National, NZF and ACT policy. Working within that system will do nothing.
Only mass civil disobedience will revoke the polluters influence.
We are running out of time, the planet is burning and Fonterra’s actions are making them a legitimate starting point for a new radical eco activism.
How the Rapidly Approaching AMOC Shutdown will Completely Change our Lives
Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation system.
The primary reason the northern hemisphere average temperature is 1.4C warmer than the southern hemisphere is the AMOC.
The primary reason the “thermal equator” is at 10 N latitude and not at the geographic equator is the AMOC.
When the AMOC shuts down, everything changes. It becomes very difficult to grow food.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qs2raUqUmsQ&t=281s
@miapdx503
1 month ago
People are sleepwalking. The world is changing rapidly and they’re on Tik Tok, doing silly stuff. Most will be gobsmacked when it hits.
@punditgi
1 month ago
We are doomed. But at least we have Paul Beckwith to show us the way. As the French say: Bon courage!
@bgebbq314
1 month ago
So the Holocene stability, the emergence of agriculture and modern civilization depended on the Northern heat transfer from the AMOC.
Gee, what could go wrong?
The military industrial complex is the biggest global polluter and so America by extension is the greatest ecological threat (as well as the biggest terrorist threat as murder inc.). If the eco warriors are spoiling for a fight then don’t disrupt the lives of innocent people and ruin their property and culture (they are on your side you idiots), go after imperialism and these disgusting pigs who are actually the biggest direct threat to people around the world. You get a two for one deal, ridding the world of these smirking child killers while reducing pollution and resource wasting.
Martyn – Eco-terrorism is not the answer, nor are hyper-media stories on weather records being broken in remote areas.