Most people have seen or are aware of the 2004 Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow and its story of disruption to the Atlantic Gulf Stream causing catastrophic weather in the Northern Hemisphere. Climate alarmists out to impoverish the world with their command-and-control Net Zero fantasies have been dining out on the scare ever since. In July 2023, Georgina Rannard of the BBC reported that “scientists say” a weakened Gulf Stream, which is a major part of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), could collapse by 2025. Such is the rush to induce mass climate psychosis, mainstream media might not find the time, or have the inclination, to report new findings from a group of scientists that found the overall strength of the AMOC has shown no decline since the 1960s.
Published by Nature this month, the scientists state they came to their conclusion after examining heat transfers between the sea and the atmosphere. Between 26.5°N and 50°N it was found that heat transfers over decadal and centennial timescales were “strongly linked” to AMOC-driven northward heat transfers. At 26.5°N the AMOC has not weakened from 1963 to 2017, “although substantial variability exists at all latitudes”. Most of the alarmist copy comes from examining proxies such as sea surface temperature anomalies, but the scientists note that these records “are not long enough to differentiate between low-frequency variability and long-term trends”. Alarmist copy is often little more than opinions based on short-term variability. Junk science, in other words, of the highest order.
This point is borne out by other scientific work that fails to get a mention in the legacy media. In August last year a group of scientists highlighted that alarm over the collapsing Gulf Stream was contingent on unreliable climate models, and any collapse could occur from now to infinity. In other words, nobody knows, not least because the uncertainties are too large “to predict tipping times of major Earth system components from historical data”. Meanwhile, a group of scientists working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration recently discovered that the huge flow of tropical water that powers through the Florida Straits and is a key component of the Gulf Stream has remained “remarkably stable” for over 40 years.
The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is all-in on the Gulf Stream scare forecasting claim that it is “very likely” that the entire AMOC will weaken in the near future. But this view was challenged in a 2023 paper published by the Royal Society. The authors found that climate models that are stuck with an assumption that humans can and do control the AMOC have been wrong for decades. Neither past nor current models are successful in representing actual AMOC observational data. They go on to add: “If it is not possible to reconcile climate models and observations of the AMOC in the historical period, then we believe the statement about future confidence about AMOC evolution should be revised. Low confidence in the past should mean lower confidence in the future.”
Much of the world’s climate is caused by a transfer of heat from the tropics towards the poles. The AMOC is thought to account for around 20-30% of the global meridional heat transfer to the higher latitudes in the atmosphere and the ocean. The evidence that the recent tiny increases in temperature that might or might not be attributed to humans will cause the huge AMOC to collapse is almost non-existent. Over the last 120,000 years we know there have been at least 24 times that temperatures in Greenland have suddenly risen by up to 15°C within a few decades. The natural forces of nature ensure the climate always changes and there is little humans can do to alter it.
Not that such thoughts would have troubled most of the British MPs that debated the insane – some might say evil – Climate and Nature Bill that failed to make progress last Friday in Parliament. This bill sought to reduce hydrocarbon use in the UK by about 90% in around a decade – a disaster that would have led to almost certain societal collapse and a return to brutal primitivism. In the line of duty, your correspondent was forced to watch over three hours of a ‘debate’ that would have shamed a sixth form full of Gretas. Almost every scare imaginable was on display without a scintilla of evidence presented to back them up. The entire clown show could keep any investigating and debunking journalist gainfully employed for months.
But of course to take the validity of these claims seriously is to slightly miss the point. They are the product of opinions and rigged climate models but it does not matter that they are mostly risible nonsense. The most important thing is that they are believed. They are broadcast to push a political agenda – to scare and brainwash. The science is ‘settled’ and beyond debate. Questioning the Ministry of Truth dogma is unacceptable because the future of the planet and generations to come poses an existential risk. That is why the BBC publishes rubbish ‘climate change’ stories about sightings of bumblebees in winter when the temperature in Scotland briefly rises to 10°C (popping out briefly for a wee, according to Britannica). That is why many people believe that the Gulf Stream will collapse the day after tomorrow.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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