Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

BurnerAcc2020 t1_j3lirk6 wrote

Is 2300 your definition of "swiftly"? That's when their paper actually finds that the current collapses - and not even the Atlantic one but the one in the Southern Ocean, and only under very high warming. It's actually slower than some earlier papers which did project AMOC collapse - in 2200s or so, and again only under very high warming.

As for food security, there was an interesting paper on that earlier.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-15708-9

>Significant biomass changes are projected in 40%–57% of the global ocean, with 68%–84% of these areas exhibiting declining trends under low and high emission scenarios, respectively.
>
>...Climate change scenarios had a large effect on projected biomass trends. Under a worst-case scenario (RCP8.5, Fig. 2b), 84% of statistically significant trends (p < 0.05) projected a decline in animal biomass over the 21st century, with a global median change of −22%. Rapid biomass declines were projected across most ocean areas (60°S to 60°N) but were particularly pronounced in the North Atlantic Ocean. Under a strong mitigation scenario (RCP2.6, Fig. 2c), 68% of significant trends exhibited declining biomass, with a global median change of −4.8%. Despite the overall prevalence of negative trends, some large biomass increases (>75%) were projected, particularly in the high Arctic Oceans.
>
>Our analysis suggests that statistically significant biomass changes between 2006 and 2100 will occur in 40% (RCP2.6) or 57% (RCPc8.5) of the global ocean, respectively (Fig. 2b, c). For the remaining cells, the signal of biomass change was not separable from the background variability. > > ...Furthermore, under RCP8.5, consistent relationships were also observed between projected animal biomass changes and SES indicators (Fig. 3c, d), with more severe declines projected in regions with low SES. For example, Fig. 3c shows geographic patterns of projected biomass change and the human development index (HDI) within each EEZ (Fig. 3c, map), as well as the emergent relationship between them (Fig. 3c, right panel). The significant positive relationship between the HDI (Fig. 3c) and the mean rate of projected biomass change under RCP8.5 (p < 0.0001; r2 = 0.16) indicates that higher climate-driven biomass losses are projected to disproportionally occur within the EEZs of the least developed states. In addition to development status, states experiencing the greatest pressures such as high levels of undernourishment, food debt and insecurity, fishery dependency, and economic vulnerability to climate change are projected to experience the greatest losses of marine animal biomass over the coming century. These states also have the lowest ocean health scores, lowest wealth and adaptive capacity, and contribute the least to global CO2 emissions on a per capita (r2 = 0.13; p < 0.0001) and national basis (r2 = 0.1; p < 0.0001). The relationships between projected biomass and almost all SES indicators became weaker and often non-significant under a strong greenhouse gas mitigation scenario (RCP2.6; Fig. 3d). > > Under RCP8.5, states that currently have a higher proportion of undernourishment are projected to experience the largest climate-driven reductions in animal biomass. This relationship is troubling, given that seafood accounts for 14–17% of the global animal protein consumed by humans, but with much higher reliance in small island states, where it is vital to maintaining good nutrition and health43. Declining animal biomass within the EEZs of states that are already experiencing poor nutrition may further exacerbate these deficiencies, particularly as these states also tend to be more dependent on fisheries, have low food security and high food debts (Fig. 3d). Changes in nutrition related to declining fisheries productivity could potentially be offset by increased agricultural production, aquaculture, or modifying food distribution systems12. Yet, recent studies have also highlighted the importance of seafood as a critical source of essential micronutrients that are currently lacking in the diets of up to 2 billion people. These micronutrient deficiencies and their consequences are particularly severe in Asian and African countries, many of which are projected to experience severe reductions in marine animal biomass under RCP8.5 (Fig. 2b). > > To explicitly evaluate the effect of strong emission mitigation on future animal biomass, we calculated the difference in projected biomass with the strongest mitigation scenario (RCP2.6) relative to those under a worst-case scenario (RCP8.5) within each EEZ and by continent (Fig. 4). The relationship between projected biomass under RCPs 8.5 and 2.6 was positive (r = 0.53) but also suggested that the effects of strong mitigation on biomass were not purely additive: some states experienced disproportionate biomass gains (Fig. 4a, above diagonal line) or losses (Fig. 4a, below diagonal line) from strong, relative to weak mitigation. Although mitigation led to increased biomass relative to worst-case emissions within the EEZs of almost all states, it resulted in declines within the EEZs of Morocco (−1%), Chile (−10%), Spain (−12%), and Russia (−12%; Fig. 4a). Relative to a worst-case scenario, the largest biomass gains from mitigation were observed for African, Asian, and South American states, including Yemen (50%), Oman (49%), Cambodia (48%), Guinea Bissau (46%), Suriname (45%), and Pakistan (44%).

For the record, the two scenarios in that paper are "between 1.5 and 2 degrees" and "between 4 and 5 degrees" by the end of the century, and we are currently tracking for almost exactly in between the two, with a potential to get closer or even meet that former scenario.

−10

CornucopiaOfDystopia t1_j3lyhuj wrote

Their paper absolutely does not claim that, and your own excerpt from it shared elsewhere in this thread states it clearly:

>In the present study, the AMOC collapse reverses the warming seen in the smooth climate change scenarios, generating an average fall in temperature of 3.4 °C by 2080, accompanied by a substantial reduction in rainfall (−123 mm during the growing season.

2080 is quite a lot sooner than “2300.”

Why are you deliberately and confidently misrepresenting the science on this, in multiple parts of this thread?

6

BurnerAcc2020 t1_j3m4s77 wrote

That excerpt is from a study which is nearly three years old, genius. It has almost nothing to do with the study in the article, and it does not predict that there would be a collapse at that point, either, because it does not actually examine the current at all. What it does is examine the weather in the UK under the assumption it did collapse at that point. I even included the part where they say exactly that in the excerpt.

> This is a low-probability, fast and early collapse of the AMOC compared with current expectations, emphasising the idealized nature of our study and our focus on assessing impacts.

Still, next time actually click on the links. You'll learn a lot more that way.

−1

CornucopiaOfDystopia t1_j3m70z7 wrote

And yet you used it to imply that there was no reason for any concern whatsoever, even though conditions well before a complete collapse would still be disastrous and catastrophic. That is misleading at worst, and bad science at best.

Your attitude and tone in lines like this one,

>That excerpt is from a study which is nearly three years old, genius

Is not appropriate here. If your goal is to actually engage people in an educational and scientific manner, you are failing quite badly.

0

BurnerAcc2020 t1_j3mey0t wrote

My cornucopian, you have repeatedly made accusations against me in this thread which were entirely based on your inability to understand what I wrote and do even the most cursory research like the clicking the OOP article or my links. If you want to see better attitude from me, how about you delete all of those comments, or edit them to acknowledge what you got wrong?

> even though conditions well before a complete collapse would still be disastrous and catastrophic.

Depends on how you define these words, I guess. A rule of thumb, though: they wouldn't have led with an impact which occurs in 2300 in their headline if they were able to prove something truly dramatic in our lifetimes.

For the record, there actually was one relatively recent peer-reviewed paper which estimated that as long as the AMOC does not shut down entirely, its slowdown would be one of the few tipping points with a positive economic impact because it would help to cancel out the impacts of climate change, although those findings are far from universally accepted.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2103081118

> Slowdown of the AMOC reduces the expected SCC by 1.4% by reducing damaging warming in some countries.

> All AMOC slowdown scenarios result in a decrease in the expected SCC ranging from −0.7 to −5.7%, the latter in a scenario with a notably large two-thirds slowdown in the circulation.

(SCC stands for social cost of carbon and it's a bad thing, so it becoming lower is good.)

2

Kalapuya t1_j3mfx7x wrote

>nearly three years old

Things don’t change that quickly. That data is still perfectly relevant.

0

BurnerAcc2020 t1_j3mha38 wrote

Yes, which is why I brought it up in the first place. My point was that merely looking at the publication date would have shown that the link with the exceprt is too old to have anything to do with the OOP post outside of studying similar subject matter, yet the other commenter did not even do that and thought the excerpt was from the present study.

2

corgibutt19 t1_j3ma1bx wrote

2300 is not very far away, especially on the historical timeline or when you consider how hard it will be to decrease the human contributions to warming. If we only care about the warming that will affect the living population, we are stupid and shortsighted.

3

BurnerAcc2020 t1_j3mfuss wrote

If what that paper means by "worst-case" is the same as the standard definition in this literature (hard to tell because of the paywall), then it essentially assumes continual acceleration of human contributions to warming, which is extremely implausible. (There are even some papers which argue that there are not enough fossil fuels to enable those rates of warming in the first place.) The rate of warming which is actually projected nowadays (see the last link in that comment) is well below that which is considered in the paper, and was found by the other papers I linked to have limited effects on at least the Atlantic circulation.

3