New Research Debunks Gulf Stream ‘Tipping Point’ Climate Scare

Written by Chris Morrison on August 22, 2024. Posted in Current News

Last year the mainstream public prints were full of ‘Net Zero’-inspired nonsense claiming that the Gulf Stream could collapse by 2025

Classic ‘green’ fear-mongering of course inspired by the 2004 Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow with its harrowing portrayal of weather-related natural disasters.

The overturning of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) could plunge the North Atlantic into a new ice age and have dire weather impacts across the globe, according to a new study.

The author, Peter Ditlevsen of the University of Copenhagen, told the constantly-alarmed Guardian: “I think we should be very worried.” But this was a scare story too far and even some scientists expressed doubt about it last year.

Now, a new study has been published that points out this alarm about 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”.

Pick your data and the AMOC collapses tomorrow or the day after never. The new study is important since it effectively debunks much of the climate ‘tipping point’ alarm that is commonly used to scare humanity to adopt the insane requirements of ‘Net Zero’.

The paper is mainly concerned with the AMOC and the Gulf Stream but also refers to the Amazon rainforest and the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets. It will be very difficult to dismiss or get retracted since the four authors are connected to the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, a noted activist operation.

Last year, for instance, when the AMOC scare was raging through mainstream media, Potsdam Professor Stefan Rahmstorf said the Ditlevsen study added to the evidence that the AMOC collapse “is much nearer than we thought”. We can’t even rule out crossing the tipping point in the next decade or two, he added.

The authors warn that “uncertainties” arise from models and mechanistic methods along with historical data. These all need to be taken into account and propagated thoroughly “before attempting to estimate a future tipping time of any potential Earth system”.

In plainer language this can be read as a need to check the ‘garbage in’ before notifying the BBC and the Guardian of their ‘garbage out’.

The big problem lies in the “multiple levels of uncertainty” inherent in extrapolating from historical data. Referring to the Ditlevsen paper that caused such a stink last year, the authors say they show that the uncertainties, mostly around sea surface temperature data, were too large to predict a tipping point for the AMOC.

Climate tipping points have proven to be the go-to scare for eco-extremists of late. In 2022, the BBC’s chief ‘green’ activist Justin Rowlatt presented a series of five radio programmes in which he “discovers” how global warming may trigger irreversible changes to our planet.

Needless to say, the word ‘may’ did a lot of heavy lifting. Tipping points provide maximum alarm with minimal need for hard evidence. For instance, Rowlatt asked if “Antarctica changes will flood coastal cities for centuries to come?”

No mention of course that the entire continent of Antarctica has shown little actual warming over the last 70 years at least. Rowlatt also “discovers” how global warming in the Arctic “may” trigger irreversible changes to our planet.

Again no mention that Arctic sea ice has shown a small cyclical recovery over the last decade. Or that the Arctic was much warmer just a few thousand years ago. Rowlatt signs off on a cheery note asking if human society itself “could be on the cusp of its own tipping point?”

King Charles is supposed to be a constitutional monarch above political promotion and decision making in the U.K. But this hereditary monarch is an eco-warrior of long standing and he looks forward to the day when the world rids itself of hydrocarbon use – his own massive footprint being no doubt granted a necessary exception.

At last year’s COP meeting in Dubai he flew by private jet to wear his eco Crown and launch into the ‘Net Zero’ political fight. The world was said to be “dreadfully off track in addressing climate change”, whatever that meant, and he warned that “we are seeing tipping points being reached”.

A lifetime of deference and not having to explain himself meant, well, that he didn’t explain himself. No evidence to back up his contentious political messages was provided.

Nearly 40 years ago extreme environmentalists joined force with hard Left collectivists to whip up the mother of all existential scares around natural cyclical variations in temperature.

The notion that humans affect the global climate via hydrocarbons is heaven sent to those who seek global social and economic control. Hydrocarbons are an essential component of modern industrial life – it would be easier to list those goods and processes where they are not present.

Those who control their use, and those who can mandate markedly inferior replacements, can determine every aspect of human life from diet to personal movement, living conditions and energy.

Over the last 40 years the scientific process has been traduced and something called “the Science” declared ‘settled’. As the noted atmospheric scientist Richard Lindzen says, “The climate narrative is absurd, but trillions of dollars says it is not absurd.”

All manner of fake weather statistics have been produced, oddballs claim to “attribute” extreme weather events to long-term changes in the climate, and computer models are somehow assumed to produce reasonable forecasts even though nearly all of their predictions have turned out to be wrong.

The sheer horror of ‘Net Zero’ is becoming more apparent by the day. Removing all hydrocarbon use will cause millions, if not hundreds of millions, of people to die across the planet.

The lessons of history teach us that when things get tight, people start to fight. Strong countries predate on the weaker ones, and nothing will weaken an economy more than an energy policy determined by the Mad Miliband in the U.K. or a President Giggles in the U.S.

But there are signs that some sanity is being restored in climate science circles. Not least because most of the evidence-free scares are too ludicrous for an intelligent person to keep believing in.

To paraphrase a famous British prime minister: You tip if you want to, we are not for tipping.

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