AMOC - why is no one taking notice?

In a world of acronyms, this is one that we all depend on but few, especially in the tourism and hospitality sector, have heard of. It stands for the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), the main current system in the South and North Atlantic Oceans, which is linked to circulation in the Southern Ocean.?

I actually remember learning about this in an early geography lesson some 60 years ago. (As you get older you remember stuff like that because it fills the void created by forgetting what you read 60 seconds ago!) In the UK, we know it by name as the benign Gulf Stream that ensures we have four seasons and a climate that enables us to generate a diversity of food crops. After this summer in the West Midlands of exceptionally grey, angry skies, cool temperatures, + lots of rain resulting in plants that won’t grow, slugs that do, and crops that don’t ripen, I began to wonder whether the unthinkable was happening. Turns out AMOC might just be weakening and, IF that’s true then the tourism sector can ditch all its pointless discussions on sustainability vs regeneration, overtourism, SAFs, tourists’ bad behaviours etc.and focus on preparing for a world when one of the primary conditions that support travel growth will cease to exist. I was jolted out apathy this morning by a posting on X whose author asked, in desperation, why are we not taking notice of this most powerful climate-related tipping point? The paragraphs that follow in italics are the author’s comments and scientists’ quotes:

“There are now five papers, basically, that suggested it could well happen in this century, or even before the middle of the century,” Rahmstorf said. “My overall assessment is now that the risk of us passing the tipping point in this century is probably even greater than 50%.” Prof S. Rahmstorf, world expert on AMOC, https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/02/climate/atlantic-circulation-collapse-timing/index.html 3 August 2024

https://climatecodered.org/2024/05/one-climate-event-could-wreak-global.html…

Consequences:??Modelling by Prof. Peter Ditlevsen of the University of Copenhagen?shows?that AMOC slowdown would cool London by an average of 10°C and Bergen, Norway by 15°C.?

A breakdown of this system could plunge the UK and large parts of the Northern Hemisphere into a new ice age ... "

Global food and water security crisis:?Ditlevsen and his co-authors?conclude?that a collapse of the AMOC heat-transporting circulation would be a going-out-of-business scenario for European agriculture: “You cannot adapt to this”.? ?

In addition, writes Prof. Tim Lenton, the director of the Global Systems Institute at the University of Exeter, the monsoons that typically deliver rain to West Africa and South Asia would become unreliable, and huge swathes of Europe and Russia would be devastated by drought.

As much as half of the world’s viable area for growing corn and wheat could dry out. He?says that “in simple terms [it] would be a combined food and water security crisis on a global scale.”

I’ve refrained from mentioning the source of the X post in case you turned off and read no more as he, Roger Hallam , founder of Just Stop Oil? is serving a five year jail sentence along with four very young people (one of whom lives in the same county as me). Their crime simply participating in a zoom call to simply discuss the potential for a protest action that would disrupt traffic.? For more on that see

https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/andrewthomasgriffiths_did-you-know-that-you-can-literally-get-jail-activity-7219745127198535681-Mblb?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

and for a more detailed explanation as to the circumstances whereby such a loss of freedom has occurred in the UK, read this article https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/protest-planet-x-christopher-caldwell-bjmhe/?trackingId=70VxoNGwRs6KvgJhu94tBg%3D%3D

While I remain confident that simply sharing a post of a climate terrorist and publicly thanking him for expressing his opinion won’t get me into trouble - yet - I do believe the only way we can prevent that is for more of us to share the science that is not getting coverage in the mainstream media, provoke uncomfortable questions about the future we take for granted, and do what it takes to keep AMOC on track.

I make no apology for raising this alarm. The best outcome would be for us to make Roger Hallam and his fellow conspirators have their sentences over turned and for the rest of us to do what we can to prevent this tipping point from tipping. That will involve addressing the tourism sector's collective refusal to question its dependence on volume growth (visits, trips, bed nights, profits, taxes) and starting to think creatively about ways of generating diverse, lasting, equitably distributed, meaningful value that creates the conditions for life to continue and thrive.

For those of interested in a better understanding of tipping points from an earth scientist who has already done so much to think through the pathways to regenerating whole bioregions, watch this presentation (https://vimeo.com/938098817) made by Joe Brewer in a webinar with Bill Baue and Ralph Thurm founders of r3.0 .