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So you feel confident that Europe will be under a glacier in 50 years?
by ripper1138 5y ago
So you feel confident that Europe will be under a glacier in 50 years?
- hedora 5y agoI'm confident we'll get about 50 years warning when/if the current stops. It's currently weakening, and weather is a chaotic system. I'm also confident that the root cause of the crunching noise and vibrations from the front end of my car will eventually lead to a breakdown, but I don't have any idea if it'll happen tomorrow or in a year.
- ripper1138 5y agoI see. Of course the North Atlantic current will change/stop at some point regardless of any actions we take (assuming we don’t have technology to keep it going somehow). But delaying that as long as possible is a noble goal.
- hedora 5y agoThere's no reason to think it would shutdown in the absence of human intervention. It's extremely stable. Last time it shut down, it was due to elevated CO2 and temperatures, and the conditions that led to that won't naturally reoccur any time soon.
- Imnimo 5y agoI think you've misunderstood the claim - they're saying that once the currents shut down, it would take 50 years for glaciers to form. But the currents are obviously still flowing today, and my understanding is that a collapse is projected to take many decades.
- hedora 5y agoI get the impression they don't have any way to model the rate at which the currents will shut down, but that it was apparently quickly in the past. Either way, we're talking about either abandoning most of Europe in our (or our children's) lifetimes, or just using existing technologies to avoid that, along with many other disasters.