Last year, Georgina Rannard of the BBC reported that “scientists say” a weakening Gulf Stream could collapse as early as this year, a dire process that would bring catastrophic changes in the weather in the northern hemisphere. Routine fear mongering, of course, from the Net Zero promoting BBC and this ‘tipping point’ scare is common among alarmists. After all, everyone knows about the 2004 dystopian Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow. ‘Most of us are going to die’ is a great scoop, it is just a shame about the facts. Ground-breaking new work from scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has discovered that the huge flow of tropical water through the Florida Straits has remained “remarkably stable” for over 40 years.
The Florida current is a key component of the Gulf Stream, which is an important part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). This current flows north, raising temperatures in the higher latitudes by up to 10°C. Warm tropical water flows between the Florida Peninsula, Cuba and the Bahamas at speeds up to seven kilometres per hour and provides most of the heat taken north by the AMOC. The paper notes that several recent studies have used a possible flow decline to speculate about a collapse in the Gulf Stream and the AMOC. Thus, clickbait science papers using computer models have been picked up by mainstream media and politicians to provoke fear of a Gulf Stream catastrophe.
Using data derived from motion-induced change in submarine cable voltages, and adjusting for errors caused by past geomagnetic data processing, the NOAA scientists state that their new 40-year record “challenges” the previously made assertions on the statistically significant decline of the Florida current. The respected climate scientist Judith Curry has hailed the new paper from the U.S. weather service as “important” and notes that the AMOC is not weakening despite it being touted as a climate tipping point.
It is unlikely that mainstream media will touch this paper since it kicks much of their fear mongering on the Gulf Stream into touch. Last year’s excitement suggesting imminent collapse was caused by a paper written by Peter Ditlevsen from the University of Copenhagen, who told the constantly worried Guardian that “we should be very worried”. The alarmists’ alarmist Professor Stefan Rahmstorf of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact and Research said the Ditlevsen paper added to the “evidence” that the AMOC collapse “is much nearer than we thought”. We can’t rule out crossing the tipping point in the next decade or two, he added.
The NOAA scientists note that most climate models suggest a 34-45% decline in the present strength of the AMOC within less than 80 years. A number of ‘proxy’ records are said to indicate that the AMOC may already be slowing down on a centennial scale. There has been criticism of the Ditlevsen findings, with a subsequent paper observing that the uncertainties, mostly around sea surface temperature data, were too large to predict a tipping point for the AMOC. Such is the unreliability of climate computer models that the tipping point could occur anywhere between now and infinity. It all depends, it would seem, what is loaded into the model in the first place. But whatever is loaded, there appears to be a near guarantee that unquestioning activists in mainstream media will report any fear-packed message to a wider public.
Referring to the recent controversy, the NOAA scientists state that the ability of temperature based indices to represent the AMOC has been questioned. The recent reductions of sea surface temperatures in the subpolar North Atlantic is often assumed to be an indication of an AMOC slowdown. But the scientists suggest it could “largely be driven by the atmosphere alone without any changes in ocean circulation”. Further up the Gulf Stream, between New Jersey and Bermuda, the NOAAS authors go on to note that direct measurements from 1992 do not support suggestions that the AMOC has started to substantially slow down. Hydrographic data are said to be sparse, but “no significant weakening of the AMOC has been detected”.
The variations of the AMOC are being hotly disputed in scientific circles. Much of the research into this important ocean circulation is recent and a great deal needs to be learnt. The NOAA authors point out that investigating the variability of the Florida current “is of particular importance for detecting and better understanding changes in the Earth’s climate system, as well as for interpreting regional variations in weather, sea level and eco-systems”.
But all too often we see how ‘settled’ science – a harmful unwillingness to consider all climate variation other than those assumed to be caused by humans – debases much of the effort. ‘Blacklists’ of climate sceptics are compiled, academics lose their careers and fines and imprisonment are demanded for those who fail to toe the authorised line. Mainstream media only seem interested in silly sci-fi predictions of the imminent demise of the Gulf Stream. It grabs the headlines, is easy work if you can get it and plays out to an agreed political narrative. Like the multi-year record growth of coral at the Great Barrier Reef, the cyclical Arctic sea ice, the obvious corruptions in many temperature measurements and the astonishing CO2 ‘greening’ of the planet, the lies are all told by omitting obvious, easily obtainable and important facts.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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Thanks Chris for continuing to be our eyes & ears on this topic. Keep unsettling the “science”.
“Myth—As with all religious symbolism, there is no attempt to justify mythic narratives or even to render them plausible. Every myth presents itself as an authoritative, factual account, no matter how much the narrated events are at variance with natural law or ordinary experience.”—–I copied that from the Britannica Online Dictionary. But it explains the Climate Change issue perfectly. –A Myth
—–Increasing and more intense storms are a myth. Increased flooding is a myth. Increased droughts are a myth. Increase in the rate of sea level rise is a myth. Increase in the amount of wild fires is a myth. The gulf Stram crap is a myth. The Great Barrier Reef crap is a myth. —-Infact the entire thing is a tiny smidgeon of the truth elevated into a planetary emergency for political purposes with not a shred of evidence. —A Myth.
I agree, but would want to question the BOD’s apparently simplistic defintion of “myth.” For example, you’d be amazed at how formative and prevalent the Prometheus myth has been, since Renaissance times, in the European world view, from the Decameron to Frankenstein (subtitle The Modern Prometheus) and even Kafka. Yet nobody in modern times has even believed it to be factual.
All societies have myths, and often they are basically true, if simplified and idealised (like Britain standing alone against Hitler with a few Spitfires, or the Pilgrim Fathers standing for the whole spirit of the United Sates).
In this case, though, the truth element is minimal… perhaps the false prophets of Baal are a better analogy.
We had increased flooding on the local water meadows over the last Autumn/Winter/Spring. Nothing at all to do with the HS2 works buggering up the drainage, of course.
When you have a large cadre of mostly mediocre scientists paid to discover this nonsense, a supine lazy and stupid media class who fail apply critical thinking to their press releases, a political class who sees potential for control and corruption beyond the dreams of avarice, and a population battered by years of propaganda- that’s a pretty toxic brew.
Well, blow me down with a named bit of normal windy weather.
Perhaps the paper [Volkov et al] will be buried by the editorial peer-review procedure, or simply phoning newspaper editors, which is traditional practice in handling facts that do not comply with The Warming Narrative.
“On 8th June 2004, [Phil Jones of the UEA/CRU] sent an email to Mann: “The other paper by MM (McKitrick & Michaels, 2004) is just garbage. … I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth, the other coordinating lead author for Chapter. 3 in the IPCC First Assessment Report] and I will keep them out somehow – even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” This paper argued that a large proportion of the measured recent warming was a consequence of increased economic activity and changes in land use.
More tedious debunking of the CO2 lie which we are all aware of and the the fact that the Earth is not warming but once again nothing about what is coming which is terrifying. The Earth is cooling and the magnetic poles are shifting which will prove catastrophic in the next 1 or 2 decades. See Ben Davidson’s Suspicious Observers channel on YT and https://open.substack.com/pub/electroverse?r=jx6c3&utm_medium=ios
The magnetic poles have always shifted. Either we survive or we go extinct. Many animals before the human race arrived,and many after we inevitably become extinct will go the same way. Geology has a great way of putting this planet and the human race into clear perspective. We’ve only been around at 59.59.9 minutes to midnight on a 12 hour clock compared to the earth’s existence.
Yes the magnetic poles flip every 6,000 years and every 6,000 years huge proportions of people and animals are wiped out in catastrophic floods, earth quakes and volcanic eruptions. All these cyclical 6,000 year events have been identified and named – the last one is known as the Noah event q.e.d.
So the next one is the Tribulation….get ready folks, repent now and put your faith in the Lord
Indeed. Until recently I used to think Old Testament stuff was balderdash and piffle and yeay, verrily, behind all these myths is a reality not unique to the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Many other ancient religions and cultures have the same catastrophe narrative from thousands of years ago. Earth’s magnetic pole shift weakens the protective shield and ozone layer allowing much bigger amounts UV light to hit the surface causing great loss of plant and animal life. Also another Carrington event will become much more likely in the next 10-20 years before the final flip thereby destroying much of civilisation’s electricity grid.
I am strangely comforted by the fact that God’s Great Reset as I like to call it, will knock Klaus’s reset right out of the park.
Where do I begin…the last flip was 780,000 years ago. So no they don’t flip every 6,000 years. Definitely not QED…
Take your argument to Ben Davidson at Suspicious Observers channel – he is the expert on this subject.
97% of climate scientists would be unemployed if there was no climate crisis.
Exactly! Follow the money.