When the French feel that someone is looking for any reason to complain about something, the expression “Chercher la petite bête” is often used. Well, anyone anxiously awaiting the imminent demise of humanity at the hands of manmade climate change are constantly searching for the ‘little beast’. Niklas Boers at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany certainly found the little beast of little beasts in his latest study on the looming ‘shutdown’ of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC for short.
What is the AMOC I hear you ask? According to Boers and other climate scientists, the AMOC is one of the major ocean current systems transporting warm surface waters toward the northern Atlantic. Already alarmed at an unprecedented slowing of the AMOC, Boers went one better and excitedly announced that the whole system will imminently shut down. Of course, this will result in catastrophes so apocalyptic that any Hollywood screenwriter would be positively jealous that a scientist beat them to the punchline of the next manmade global warming blockbuster.
Some of the potential consequences and I do emphasise potential, of the collapse of the AMOC would be felt around the world, severely disrupting if not eliminating the rains billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa. Of course, we cannot have climate catastrophe without an increase and intensity in storms, especially hurricane type events, often referred to breathlessly as Superstorms. Boers does not disappoint in his continuing litany and certainly does not forget everyone’s favourite, rising sea levels, particularly in North America. Perhaps Washington truly would sink into a swamp. The destruction of the Amazon Rainforest and the Antarctic ice sheets would send freezing currents gushing towards Europe and plummet the Old World into another Ice Age. It would appear certain scientists truly can have their cake and eat it too. We now have a reason for global warming and global cooling nicely encapsulated in the demise of the AMOC.
The effects are not what really matter to Boers however; it is the cause and the only solution to the problem. It does not take a genius to know that he pins it squarely on the manmade emission of the bogeyman of greenhouse gases, CO2. “No one seems to know what level of CO2 would trigger an AMOC collapse”, said Boers, “so the only thing to do is keep emissions as low as possible. The likelihood of this extremely high-impact event happening increases with every gram of CO2 that we put into the atmosphere”. You heard correctly, every gram of CO2 could trigger the collapse of the AMOC. For what it is worth, the average human emits 900g of CO2 per day just breathing!
Sadly, Boers’ PR and marketing team, feeding a media hungry for the apocalyptic, have more success in the public eye than other scientists, including eminent Oceanographer Emma Worthington, who with her co-authors, contest the notion of an imminent collapse of the AMOC. Professor Carl Wunsch of MIT goes even further and challenges its very existence; ‘the Gulf Stream is safe as long as the wind blows and the Earth keeps turning’. As for me, I will take my chances that the wind will keep on a blowing and Mother Earth will keep on spinning.
