We're living in a fake world and pretending everything is fine.
Adam Curtis made a movie HyperNormalisation and we're living it also today.
Adam Curtis:
“HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, know that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew that they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal. And this historian, Alexei Yurchak, coined the phrase “HyperNormalisation” to describe that feeling.
Well worth watching, Adam Curtis takes you on a wild ride around recent history and strings together an amazing viewpoint - intentionally fucking with how you emotionally understand the present, by showing how power, myth, and simplification interact over time.
The top politicians, academics, businessmen, can party with underage children and even torture them, or dicuss blatant undemocratic actions that impact billions, and it's business as usual.
You think they'd care for something as remote as the AMOC collapse?
It isn't actually all that scary; humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. If the change caught everyone by surprise it'd be a huge problem but it seems to be fairly well understood and there is lots of time to adjust.
Worst case scenario seems to be that people will stop migrating to Europe.
> Back in 2021, a study in Nature Geosciences showed that the AMOC was the weakest it’s been in more than 1,000 years.
Out of curiosity, what happened 1000 years ago to make it so weak? 1000 years ago is still human time scales - there were people living in europe and north america at the time. We have written records from the europeans at least. Its not like this was 100,000 years ago.
the further back you go, the less evidence we have. we don't know it was this week 1000 years ago, it's just that the error bars got big enough that we can't yet rule it out.
The title is egregiously exaggerated. It implies humanity will go extinct if this happens, when it obviously won't. The actual article doesn't even come anywhere close to making that claim.
I think the bigger concern is what sudden climate shifts might do to agriculture. If some farmland becomes much less viable on a wide basis, that might be much harder to adjust to on the short term.
I can't help but think of all the historical societies that collapsed due to even mild pressure on the food supply.
They were already excellent at survival, and they migrated, and many of them died young. Sure, _humanity_ will survive, but a large part of the population won't.
Yes, the title is exaggerated. But I think a lot of you are underestimating the societal impact of roughly half a billion climate refugees. That kind of destabilization could easily lead to societal collapse, world war, etc...
The Syrian refugee crisis meant something like a million people fleeing into Europe and it caused massive political upheavals.
The will-it-won’t-it collapse of the AMOC is something to keep an eye on. But there are other pressing climate change issues to address in the near term, such as food security, ecosystem degradation, and rising disease rates.
I bet this is the research cited here in the parent article[0]. While the title is totally bait the contents is far from engagement bait. It’s a very level headed piece about what might happen and the research around the AMOC.
„Under high-emission scenarios, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a key system of ocean currents that also includes the Gulf Stream, could shut down after the year 2100.“
75 years to work on a solution to a possible problem? I rate humanity’s chances. But Europe is responsible for a third of cumulative emissions. Once they undo that bit it should be okay. Negative emissions for 75 years will be hard but they can perhaps undo the damage they’ve done to the Earth.
But doesn’t that article say that it hasn’t weakened from “between 1963 and 2017” with the important caveat being that after 2017, maybe there’s been more acceleration? Some other commenter on this thread also posted a similar statement about how its collapse is unlikely before 2100, but that’s not very far away which should be very concerning.
>The AMOC will decline substantially, that’s virtually certain and the consequences will be extremely grave.
All serious experts (including the nature study you linked a popsci article about) agree this is a problem that will have a devastating impact on humanity in the future. We're just quibbling about how devastating and how soon.
If you read the article and that's the overall conclusion you came away with I'm not sure we read the same article. They're just pointing out that timing is uncertain, but the majority of diverse models show AMOC failure within a few generations and nearly all of them do if we extrapolate continued CO2 release growth.
“Our paper says that the Atlantic overturning has not declined yet. That doesn’t say anything about its future, but it doesn’t appear the anticipated changes have occurred yet.”
The study is a stark contrast to a 2018 study that said the AMOC had declined over the last 70 years."
...
“Our results imply that, rather than a substantial decline, the AMOC is more likely to experience a limited decline over the 21st century—still some weakening, but less drastic than previous projections suggest.”
"Climate disaster affecting a mechanism Europe depended for millenia to keep warm? No biggie, we are already have another climate disaster making Europe hotter, they'll just cancel each other out"
Not just second and third order effects, many can't even understand first level effects.
Where is the cope? I said things will suck. US gets hotter, Europe gets colder and there are cascading effects from those. Changed weather patterns and biodiversity loss as temperatures rapidly shift.
That said, a new ice age it will not be. If your local temperatures get closer to polar, and polar gets closer to tropic, I don't see the logic of it will cause an ice age. You can't have AMOC positive feedback loop from albedo if enough ice doesn't form.
And you didn't provide any mechanisms outside of ad hominems.
Not to mention past AMOC data is missing one key parameter - Humanity. On account of us not being there. What happens when humans are cold? They warm themselves usually with CO2 emitting heat sources. Last time AMOC was around only CO2 source was the volcano. They don't care about heat.
We know how to warm up the planet. It's cooling down without massive casualties that's hard.
This scary, yet almost nothing on the news.
We're living in a fake world and pretending everything is fine.
Adam Curtis made a movie HyperNormalisation and we're living it also today.
Adam Curtis:
“HyperNormalisation” is a word that was coined by a brilliant Russian historian who was writing about what it was like to live in the last years of the Soviet Union. What he said, which I thought was absolutely fascinating, was that in the 80s everyone from the top to the bottom of Soviet society knew that it wasn’t working, knew that it was corrupt, knew that the bosses were looting the system, know that the politicians had no alternative vision. And they knew that the bosses knew that they knew that. Everyone knew it was fake, but because no one had any alternative vision for a different kind of society, they just accepted this sense of total fakeness as normal. And this historian, Alexei Yurchak, coined the phrase “HyperNormalisation” to describe that feeling.
Well worth watching, Adam Curtis takes you on a wild ride around recent history and strings together an amazing viewpoint - intentionally fucking with how you emotionally understand the present, by showing how power, myth, and simplification interact over time.
Full film at https://youtu.be/to72IJzQT5k
The top politicians, academics, businessmen, can party with underage children and even torture them, or dicuss blatant undemocratic actions that impact billions, and it's business as usual.
You think they'd care for something as remote as the AMOC collapse?
Isn't this exactly the point the original post is making?
It isn't actually all that scary; humans cope pretty well over a wide variety of temperatures. If the change caught everyone by surprise it'd be a huge problem but it seems to be fairly well understood and there is lots of time to adjust.
Worst case scenario seems to be that people will stop migrating to Europe.
> Back in 2021, a study in Nature Geosciences showed that the AMOC was the weakest it’s been in more than 1,000 years.
Out of curiosity, what happened 1000 years ago to make it so weak? 1000 years ago is still human time scales - there were people living in europe and north america at the time. We have written records from the europeans at least. Its not like this was 100,000 years ago.
the further back you go, the less evidence we have. we don't know it was this week 1000 years ago, it's just that the error bars got big enough that we can't yet rule it out.
> Bye Bye Humanity: The Potential AMOC Collapse
The title is egregiously exaggerated. It implies humanity will go extinct if this happens, when it obviously won't. The actual article doesn't even come anywhere close to making that claim.
Somehow humanity survived 10,000 years of the last ice age. Without central heating. Of course, furs will be harder to come by.
Being cold doesn't seem that big a problem.
I think the bigger concern is what sudden climate shifts might do to agriculture. If some farmland becomes much less viable on a wide basis, that might be much harder to adjust to on the short term.
I can't help but think of all the historical societies that collapsed due to even mild pressure on the food supply.
They were already excellent at survival, and they migrated, and many of them died young. Sure, _humanity_ will survive, but a large part of the population won't.
Yeah but they didn’t have social media algorithms turning their brains into slush
They also didn't have nuclear weapons to use in global conflicts over resources.
Yes, the title is exaggerated. But I think a lot of you are underestimating the societal impact of roughly half a billion climate refugees. That kind of destabilization could easily lead to societal collapse, world war, etc...
The Syrian refugee crisis meant something like a million people fleeing into Europe and it caused massive political upheavals.
There was this movie, 'dont look up'
Is this real? https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/research-frontiers/how-a-swiss-... Says it’s not.
Seems like this kind of disaster engagement bait that’s super popular now
The last paragraph says this:
The will-it-won’t-it collapse of the AMOC is something to keep an eye on. But there are other pressing climate change issues to address in the near term, such as food security, ecosystem degradation, and rising disease rates.
I bet this is the research cited here in the parent article[0]. While the title is totally bait the contents is far from engagement bait. It’s a very level headed piece about what might happen and the research around the AMOC.
0: https://thatjoescott.com/2026/02/03/bye-bye-humanity-the-pot...
Here’s the science: https://www.pik-potsdam.de/en/news/latest-news/possible-nort...
„Under high-emission scenarios, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), a key system of ocean currents that also includes the Gulf Stream, could shut down after the year 2100.“
75 years to work on a solution to a possible problem? I rate humanity’s chances. But Europe is responsible for a third of cumulative emissions. Once they undo that bit it should be okay. Negative emissions for 75 years will be hard but they can perhaps undo the damage they’ve done to the Earth.
But doesn’t that article say that it hasn’t weakened from “between 1963 and 2017” with the important caveat being that after 2017, maybe there’s been more acceleration? Some other commenter on this thread also posted a similar statement about how its collapse is unlikely before 2100, but that’s not very far away which should be very concerning.
>The AMOC will decline substantially, that’s virtually certain and the consequences will be extremely grave.
All serious experts (including the nature study you linked a popsci article about) agree this is a problem that will have a devastating impact on humanity in the future. We're just quibbling about how devastating and how soon.
It's important, but if it happens, the main effects are expected to be after 2100. That seems pretty relevant for any plans you might make.
"Another study in 2024 showed that a collapse of the AMOC before the year 2100 was unlikely."
If you read the article and that's the overall conclusion you came away with I'm not sure we read the same article. They're just pointing out that timing is uncertain, but the majority of diverse models show AMOC failure within a few generations and nearly all of them do if we extrapolate continued CO2 release growth.
I hate endless catastrophism in the headlines.
Article contents doesn't reflect the alarmist statement in the header.
"The house will burn down"
"Don't be alarmist, it's just the curtains that are on fire. Besides, there's a good chance it might rain".
Literally in the article:
“Our paper says that the Atlantic overturning has not declined yet. That doesn’t say anything about its future, but it doesn’t appear the anticipated changes have occurred yet.”
The study is a stark contrast to a 2018 study that said the AMOC had declined over the last 70 years."
...
“Our results imply that, rather than a substantial decline, the AMOC is more likely to experience a limited decline over the 21st century—still some weakening, but less drastic than previous projections suggest.”
Am I the only person here who actually read it?
I saw this movie! It was awesome.
When that wave washed over New York, awesome! The freezing helicopter, woot!
I also liked the South Park parody.
Did Al Gore write this? Did the author also create a series of NGOs to monetise this new disaster? What's the equivalent of carbon credits for AMOC?
AMOC makes Europe hotter than expected, and US east coast colder.
Europe is already hotter than expected.
AMOC collapse in a heating world wouldn't mean much. It seems to me that whatever cooling from it will be offset by global warming.
AMOC could be a generally bad thing for biodiversity or crops, but it's not going to stop global warming.
That's some industrial level cope.
"Climate disaster affecting a mechanism Europe depended for millenia to keep warm? No biggie, we are already have another climate disaster making Europe hotter, they'll just cancel each other out"
Not just second and third order effects, many can't even understand first level effects.
Where is the cope? I said things will suck. US gets hotter, Europe gets colder and there are cascading effects from those. Changed weather patterns and biodiversity loss as temperatures rapidly shift.
That said, a new ice age it will not be. If your local temperatures get closer to polar, and polar gets closer to tropic, I don't see the logic of it will cause an ice age. You can't have AMOC positive feedback loop from albedo if enough ice doesn't form.
And you didn't provide any mechanisms outside of ad hominems.
Not to mention past AMOC data is missing one key parameter - Humanity. On account of us not being there. What happens when humans are cold? They warm themselves usually with CO2 emitting heat sources. Last time AMOC was around only CO2 source was the volcano. They don't care about heat.
We know how to warm up the planet. It's cooling down without massive casualties that's hard.