AIBU to feel frightened about the risk of AMOC collapse?

[rockinrobins]

The likelihood of an apocalyptic ice age scenario happening in our lifetimes is now higher than not.

Is no one else scared about this for themselves and their children? Why aren't we talking about it?

If the AMOC collapses, we will be living in temperatures of -20 to -30 degrees Celsius within our lifetime. There is nothing we can do, but it's terrifying, and no one is discussing it.

From Google:

Recent studies suggest a high likelihood of an Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) collapse, with some projections estimating a 42%–76% chance of collapse before 2050 or 50%–70% within this century. A 2026 study predicts a 42%-58% slowdown by 2100, which is likely to end in collapse. This is no longer seen as a low-likelihood event.

I agree with this. I was always surprised on here reading how everyone has teens who are so environmentally aware and cry if their mother dares to not recycle a half inch piece of cardboard etc. They all refuse to fly and only have second hand phones. Never drink or smoke or vape. They all admonish their parents for daring to do anything against the environment.

And then I walk out in the real world. Where teens are wearing endless disposable fashion, vaping constantly, eating fast food, throwing litter on the floor etc. While blaming “boomers” for using plastic milk bottles.

Yes my teens ask me constantly which recycling bin is which as they just cannot be bothered with any of it. I guess my generation were raised that the planet was in trouble but if we act we can save it, but the new generation are constantly told everything is fucked so what's the point. But then they talk about having children...

I am worried too but the research I’ve done suggests it won’t immediately cause ice age. The rest of the world is warming…what it will do is cause more extremes - extremes of low temperature, storms, changing the pattern and timing of monsoons in India…so potential for lots of social and political consequences. I honestly think a sudden ice age is the least and most extreme version of the problems with this. Civil unrest, fighting over resources, food insecurity, weather extremes.

So not that long ago London was in the minus 20s or lower for protracted periods

No, it wasn't. A major contributor to the the Thames freezing and the winter Frost Fairs was the old London Bridge. It had more arches, which were narrower, which partially dammed the river- before the Bridge, it's flow was very slow which gave the water the chance to freeze.

It also effectively created rapids past the arches which were dangerous to navigate.

The term "mini Ice Age" can be misleading too because it makes us think wlthe UK coped well - even thrived - under polar climate conditions. We didn't - we had glaciers last time we had those temperatures here, that was prehistory.

If you look at the data, the temperatures from those centuries when we had mini ice ages were much milder than you'd expect and much, much, better than those predicted in the climate crisis. Unfortunately, the two don't compare.

I’ve had debates with people on here before about this constant mentality of telling young people how “everything is fucked” will not help them actually ever do anything. But the response is always “well it is so why would we lie to them???”. So I can’t see this ever improving. It’s creating a weird victim mentality in young people as well. Everything is always the older people’s (boomers usually) fault so why should the young people do anything? The older people need to fix it for them because it was their fault to begin with! But the fact is in 30 years the “boomers” will all be dead and those young people now will be the ones in charge. And they’ll still be saying well yes everything is fucked but it wasn’t our fault!!! But that will be little help to the new generation of young people. They’ll just see the current older generation as not doing anything to help them. Again. Blaming a generation of dead boomers will mean nothing to young people in 2056. They’ll be looking to those older at that point to fix it.

Sorry I don't have time to rtft but you may interested in this coming webinar

https://www.rmets.org/event/rmetsweather-change-webinar-april

The Met Office have done some recent AMOC online events too. Won't be for everyone but I find that engaging with the scientific research often helps me keep my perspective.

This looks really good, thanks

I don't see any point in worrying about things that are completely out of our control, people's anxiety nowadays is bad enough.

Most of us have enough on our plates holding down, paying bills and raising kids.

Looking forward to some snow tbh.

There are places on earth already well below that where people live, as a species we would survive.
No kids, wouldn't care if i died tommorow tbh.

Oh well in that case as long as it doesn't happen in the next 25 years or so, I don't care.

Hopefully my care about the environment for the last 40 odd years will see me through, and if the disposable generation are affected, hey ho.

Are we not at the end of an ice age right now? It’s natural. It was always going to happen. We were just born at the wrong time

@MistressoftheDarkSide "and wonder why we're continually being loaded with information designed to apparently keep us in - well, a state of fear."

I do wonder if this is another example of the shock doctrine theory described by Naomi Klein. The idea is that keeping whole nations in a state of shock enables governments to conduct mass economic change whilst people's attention is elsewhere.

I agree but what is anyone expecting young people to actually do? I tell my children it is not their responsibility to save the planet. All this Mother Earth crap. The earth doesn’t care if it’s supporting life or not. There is no point in anthropomorphising some rock and water.

Of course it would be terribly sad to have helped turn a Goldilocks planet into a hostile place, but as others have said the earth has previously had cycles of climate change where it wipes out all land life, only for aquatic life to evolve and a new dominant species to walk the earth. I just can’t break my heart over it even though I of course hope this doesn’t happen for billions of years.

That’s fine as long as your children don’t start panicking and wondering why the planet is dying etc in 30-50 years and start trying to blame the generation or two before them. Technically it’s no one’s responsibility to save the planet. But then you can’t start blaming the previous generations either. Either it’s everyone’s or no one’s responsibility.

I’m still trying my best to do as much as I can to help the next generation. The AMOC collapse is truly terrifying. This year we will have another scorching year. It’s getting harder to grow food and I think prices will continue to rise. We need a WW2 level of fight against this. Sadly we have Trump, Putin and unspeakable morons like farage screwing everything up.
OP it’s worth looking at the Climate Change board - there are some very interesting posters.