It may be too late says Stefan Rahmstorf who studied this more than 30 years.
At 27:24 on the YouTube “Tipping risk of the Atlantic Ocean’s overturning circulation, AMOC. Keynote by Prof. Rahmstorf,” he says, “We could have even already passed [the AMOC tipping point] without noticing because nothing drastic happens at that point except that from now on there will be an unstoppable decline of the AMOC, and we will know that in a few decades whether this is really happening.”
At 12:54 he says, “Our conclusion in this study was that the AMOC is now weaker than any time in at least a millenium.”
Rahmstorf adds at 34:06, “If/when the AMOC is tipped, that’s it. It will stay off for probably a thousand years at least. “
If it happens, effects are huge. At 29:12 he says, “When you go over that [AMOC] tipping point in the following hundred years, [ . . . ] dark blue areas [in northern Europe . . .], cool actually by 40 degrees Celsius [according to Dutch climate researchers van Westen et. al I blogged about February 10, 2024] [ . . . . ].
Regarding my previous post about dangers of Earth over 3°C 1850 preindustrial baseline, I am grateful to Lisa Schipper, Professor for Development Geography at the University of Bonn for her DW interview May 9, 2024. She said about her prediction for year 2100, “I said 3 degrees [°C] [ . . . ] I said that because if you look at the policies, the pledges, and the action that governments are taking now we can see that we’re not moving very quickly and basically there are predictions that suggest that we’re are going to hit maybe even 3.4 [°C], looking at the kind of policies we have, and that is including policies, so I’m pessimistic.”
Later, in the YouTube Schipper added, “[Young people and students] see through a lot of the greenwashing/’blah blah’ that the politicians think we’re buying. But the students get it, and I’m optimistic in that way.”
Asked about the impacts of a 3 °C or higher world, Schipper said, “[ . . . .] studies [ . . .] are suggesting [ . . . .] we’re going to be looking at these sort of pockets of places where people simply can’t even live, and that [ . . . ] a third of the people around the world are going to be in those places so that, you know, suggests that we’re also possibly looking at a lot of migration and we need to think about what are the limits to how much we can actually adapt to that kind of change because we do have [limits to ecosystems and social systems] [ . . . ].
I am grateful the 2024 issue of Clackamas Literary Review published my poem below imagining humanity lacks the grit to change course at speed and scale required to avert distaster:
Prophecy Poem
At some point even banks
and cell towers died.
Grocery shelves
and gas pumps emptied.
We were hungry,
tired, and worried.
We met in makeshift
churches with candles.
Without street lights
constellations appeared,
starting conversations
and bringing joy.
Some talked about
Legend of Unmarked Snow
far up north
while bravest left to find it.
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