AIBU to feel frightened about the risk of AMOC collapse?

It's been on and off my mind for about 20 years. I'm hoping it won't happen for another 20.

I can’t get upset about any of this.

Sorry Op, whilst I found the topic interesting, I won't be worrying about it. It is outside my circle of control.

Life on earth has always been temporary though .

@MediumHigh it was the end of the Aztec/incan/some south/middle American calendar. Apparently the relevant culture had a calendar that we can read, and it ‘ran out’ in December 2012.

probably because they lived so long ago that there was no point in them writing more dates…

But the fact there were no more dates meant a theory spawned that the end of the calendar was because they had predicted the world would end.

The Millennium bug and ozone depletion were the two largest-ever global cooperative efforts to ensure that disaster didn't happen.

Ah well nevermind. We all die sometime.

My point was that the person I was replying to said that it was basically an internet thing (you can read the quote). That was what I was rebutting.

@Isekaied what was 2012?

Emphatically No. It will not be the end of the world. Yes, it might collapse, and yes that will cause weather changes in the British Isles. But it won''t lead to a global or even local extinction. What it might do is slow the effects of climate change in this part of the world. It would lead to worse winters - colder, lots more snow, more frequent storms, but it is considered likely to have much less affect on our summers. Without doxxing myself, I'm involved in looking at the effects of a collapse of the AMOC here, amongst other things, and the actual scientists that are working on this predict serious effects, but nowhere near as bad as the media presents it. There are too many other factors in play to say that it will lead to an apocalyptic situation. It will lead to changes, not human extinction.

YABU because pretty much the same thing was posted yesterday.

Here's some that I've lived through- World as we know it will end

Nuclear war.

Ice Age

Millennium bug

Ozone layer- we were all gonna die from skin cancer or something

2012

Asteroid- there's a new one in the news every few years.

Fossil fuels running out imminently

Global Warming- still ongoing

Brexit

Current ones-

Farage getting in

AI

Iran war- running out of fuel.

Bees disappearing

I'll add Amoc collapsing to the list.

I've prob missed a few.

No, it stands for Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. It's like a giant water conveyor belt bringing warmth from the tropics up to cooler regions. Further north, the top layers cool and sink, and then slowly slink back to the equator down in the depths.

The trouble is that if the upper water stays warmer (because of warmer air) and fresher (because of ice melting) it can't sink near to pole to follow the usual path back to the tropics. So that could lead to the usual turnover slowing or ceasing.

What do you propose that we should do about it op?

Next week it'll be something else that will cause the end of the World

Im all burned out from " The World is gonna end " news.

Agree.

Way too much hysteria in the news

Every 5 years there's a new thing in the news that is going to cause the end of the World.

I don't believe the AMOC collapse is going to happen in the near future.

And if it does I'll deal with it when it does.

Im not gonna live my life being anxious about everything. Then every few years a new threat is on the horizon.

Yes there are still people living in bunkers since the 1970s waiting for the nuclear strike that still hasn't happened. Totally wasted their lives, being prepared for nuclear war.

Now I take issue with the idea that we are parasites. I think this kind of thinking has contributed to our psychological decline alongside media etc. It is echoed in the growing suggestion that the materially poor are less worthy and a problem to be solved.

Bar any other solid evidence we evolved here in symbiosis with the planet and are of the planet. For millenia we took what pretty much just what we needed and had a better understanding of our relationship with our environment. In the last few hundred years our progress has warped and skewed that, and is now somewhat out of control, but I don't believe we are intrinsically wired that way, I think it's the by product of capitalism. We have to adapt to the systems we are confined by.

If you continually undermine people's sense of purpose and self worth, remove their agency, and dehumanise them they will often fall victim to self fulfilling prophecy., and the dog eat dog cycle perpetuates. The fact that we're not all slaughtering each other in the streets is a hopeful sign, although the bread and circuses trope may partly apply I suppose.

We have myths like Pandoras box for a reason. There is always hope. I hope....

Ooo - that remember the CERN panic. There’s even a really bad B movie about that.

Re the AMOC - not I’m not worried. We will adapt, as we have always done. The George Monbiot article goes off into supposition and hyperbole, which is a shame as he’s usually decent about raising agricultural issues, but I guess reasonable calm doesn’t sell.

Yes the AMOC could diminish. So we’d have to insulate houses and actually learn to handle the cold weather. We’d lose some farmland/capacity, but other areas would gain it. the conditions likely to result if it even happens, are conditions that people actually already survive in today.

They had bonfires on the Thames in Pepys's times 1600s, I think that was a mini Ice Age. So not that long ago London was in the minus 20s or lower for protracted periods. The predicted reversal of the magnetic poles, that has also happened in the past, would be pretty catastrophic.

I don't worry about it because there's no point in worrying about it. I can't do anything about it. I can't fix it. Worrying about it will bring precisely nothing to my life.

It'll either happen, or it won't. If it happens, then I'll likely be dead in fairly short order, in which case I won't be worrying about anything much any more. Or it won't happen, in which case worrying was for nothing.

Life is about making the most of what you can before the inevitable shit thing happens, whether that shit thing is old age, illness, AMOC collapse or a ruddy great rock hitting the planet. Stressing about all those things is just wasting the the time I do have.

Is this about the reversal of the poles? (I wish people would use words rather than abbreviations.) Or is this climate change? I mean we could get hit by a huge meteor any time like the one that caused the Gulf of Mexico. There really isn't any point worrying about things we have no control over. Or we could get blasted by big flares from the sun. Did you see the recent astronauts saying how fragile the earth looks from space? Can but hope scientists will find ways to prevent or mitigate all the potential natural disasters and that humans won't do it first with nuclear, biological or chemical weapons.

Yanbu, and I nearly started a thread on this topic but couldn’t face reading the replies. It’s devastating news as it means for example a massive loss in agricultural capacity. Recent studies use actual data rather than being fully reliant on models, unfortunately the modelling to date has under-reported the likelihood of amoc collapse. This has hit me pretty hard personally, you are not alone.

Meh, when I was young it was the fear of Nuclear War. We had Threads, The Day After and When the Wind Blows.

My parents' generation it was the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Remember a few years ago there was a fear that when they switched the LHC on at Cerne we'd all be sucked into a black hole of our own making?

If the world "ends" there's bugger all any of us can do so there's no point worrying about it.