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- Hacker News
- This world, despite a century of warning, is truly not ready to pay the debt of industrialization
- This is the end of ice age, not the first time, not the last one. Industrialization helped to speed up warming, though.by ponector
- Generally don't do this but this is apropos my recent comment about externalities here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48527158by AdamN
- The Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) is the main ocean current system in the Atlantic Ocean.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...
by m463 - I'm interested in AMOC and other aspects of the problem, and this recent video by RealLifeLore was very informative for me, unlike other;s like this OP article and the like. I definitely recommend it if previously you saw only two extreme points of view about AMOC. Basically the current is weakening, yes, but it's shutdown will happen neither soon nor unexpected. In fact there are several ocean wide monitoring stations which don't rely on a guess work that much and there is a clear data trend about AMOC power and shutdown requirements.
If you really want to save time on watching the video, stations began monitoring in 2004 and in 20 years since the AMOC current calculated "bandwidth" dropped from 18 points to 16 points and physicists estimate that the drop is about 1 point per decade, and that AMOC will begin shutdown phase only after dropping to 6 points or less. In about 100 years if the trend holds. Even assuming gigantic errors or extreme climate change acceleration , it still won't decrease 100 year time by x10-x20 times less to make it happen in one decade.
So in short, it's all bad and the trend is always bad to worse, just like the real emissions (unlike estimated PR "emissions" which are usually discussed by politicians). But AMOC specifically almost certainly won't stop in our lifetime. Our kids, though, won't be as lucky.
by Yizahi - In fact there are several ocean wide monitoring stations which don't rely on a guess work that much and there is a clear data trend about AMOC power and shutdown requirements.
Trump Admin Just Rolled Back $368M Ocean Monitoring System https://www.newsweek.com/ocean-observatories-initiative-cut-...
by frm88 - Europe might have a hiccup until warming becomes more widespread and it goes back to 'normal'. The question is how long until Texas and Florida become uninhabitable because the heat isn't being shunted out to Europe, on top of the additional heat from global warming.by snovv_crash
- I really think people are sleeping on the AMOC. The first season there isn't European wine/cheese/olives because of climate change is the first season European farmers probably literally declare war on their governments, to say nothing of the fact that almost no European homes can handle this level of cold.
And for some perspective, this is only one of many other huge changes that huge populations will react violently to in the next 20-50 years. Good luck to us all.
by camgunz - "The first season there isn't European wine/cheese/olives because of climate change is the first season European farmers probably literally declare war on their governments,"
Unlikely. The government will be the only one who can bail them out.
by giantg2 - i get the sense that its probably overblown, sicne we've only got a couple years worth of measured data on it.
we're jumping to a catastrophe when it might just ring, and whatever the environmentalists who prioritize it qant to do about it might change something that doesnt need changing, and result in actual catastrophe when the ringing stops
by 8note - what is 'this level of cold' exactly?
- I do kinda wish the european farmers would "declare war on the governments" so the governments can win and end this way too powerful lobby once and for all.by Zababa
- I am interested in your implication that European farmers would have someone other than themselves to blame for this outcome. As a whole they are at least as backwards as American farmers. They are largely deniers of climate change either as a thing altogether or as something attributable to man, or are prone to believing it helps them with longer growing seasons, and their main political activity is protesting any changes in their diesel fuel subsidies.by jeffbee
- The farmers have generally opposed policies meant to address this.by CalRobert
- Hmm, Science just had a news article saying the AMOC was doing OK: https://www.science.org/content/article/ocean-current-warms-...by Metacelsus
- You see the words "suggest" and "may" in the subhead yeah?by padjo
- I believe the article says it is uncertain if climate change is responsible for the gradual weakening. It is gradually weakening though. This el nino should be a banger
- Put a massive underwater data center there. Free cooling for the computers. Free heating for Europe. Everyone wins.by NDlurker
- We aren't even remotely close to petawatt-scale datacenters fortunately.by Avamander
- But we can do jet engines in suburbia far more easily.by lostlogin
- HowTown has a pretty good video on the same subject: https://youtu.be/dqLM65HfVEw?is=avWFidbKxRvW3YUY
- > is=avWFidbKxRvW3YUY
PSA: the is (as well as pp) parameter is for tracking. If possible try to trim it.
by throw0101a - I don't know if it's too late to stop the worst case scenarios of global warming yet or if there's still time, but it doesn't seem to be happening anyway. The world can't deal with something that requires global concentrated efforts.
However, I do think we have time to prepare for the worst case scenarios, and individual countries and states can do that efficiently on their own.
Improve evacuation routines in floodable areas, build greenhouses to deal with cold snaps, ensure there are air conditioned buildings to deal with heatwaves, have distributed local production of electricity, keep strategic food reserves stocked, and so on.
Edit: Not saying that such efforts are the solution by any means, but they will help.
by Kon5ole - > world can't deal with something that requires global concentrated efforts
Saddest part is that it used to
The Ozone layer problem was exactly this: coordinated global concentrated effort.
I doubt we can do that again though.
by jitbit - Since covid I’ve actually become less convinced of this. Yes there were national interests at play and there was a lot of general chaos.
But. The level of international coordination with vaccine rollouts and agreements between countries was way more than I had initially expected. Of course this feeling depends on what your own baseline expectations are.
My takeaway was that if the conditions arise that we all decide to do something about climate change (because of political conditions or because of actual effects) we (humanity) are willing to make big sudden changes
by awongh - We've already stopped the "Worst case scenarios" by rapidly replacing Carbon-intensive energy with other sources over the past decade:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/26/climate/emissions-worst-c...
Still work to be done, and also plenty of reasons for optimism. Batteries, motors, and carbon free generation only get better.
by Lonestar1440 - > The world can't deal with something that requires global concentrated efforts
Historically, that's not correct. The Montreal Protocol to reduce CFCs in response to the hole in the ozone layer is a perfect example of us doing this.
I realize the world has changed and maybe it's not possible in our current political climate, but we have worked together as a planet to solve these type of global problems before.
by superfrank - Well its funny. I remember reading years ago that the big problems in Europe would start when the Greenland glaciers started melting, adding significant cold water to the Labrador Current, and pushing the AMOC to the south. Never mind the sea level rise, the temperature in Europe would drop significantly.
Now, looking at the image in the article, there is a massive cold blob right there where the Labrador Current joins the Atlantic, but no mention of the theories that I've read about years ago, just that it is mysterious
by clort - just an insufficiently researched article
- Has anyone seen the news in India (that the Indian media for some reason is not covering)
It was 48 C this week in some cities. The power grid was not ready for the amount of AC power needed, and it turned into blackouts. You're sitting in a dark cube that has been cooking for 12 hours, hoping something might happen. A healthy 25 year old would die in 6 hours.
Even if you do not want to accept climate change is a thing, you can accept the current state of the world is affecting people.
by ramon156