Posted On: Friday - November 14th 2025 5:18PM MST
In Topics: University Global Climate Stupidity Artificial Stupidity Science
Just when we thought the 4-decade-running Climate Calamity™, greatest con job of all time!, had run its course, there's been a new twist. It's that damn AMOC (no kin to AOC), aka the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. I would say "just call it the Gulf Stream, already.", but though the Gulf Stream is a big part of it, the AMOC is more than that.
ZeroHedge reported today Key Ocean Current Faltering, Raising Risk Of "Ice Age"-Like Cooling, noting first thing:
And just like that we're free from climate hysteria and worried about a new "ice age"...Funny how that works, isn't it?First, though we might think of ocean currents as being 2-dimensional, with, say, that Pacific Current sweeping around up from Japan, south of the Aleutians or what-have-you, and back down the British Columbia, Washington, Oregon, and California coastlines (wet suits required in Los Angeles even till freaking August!), but no.
(If those are your coronary arteries, you're doing A-OK!)
The circulation has a depth dimension too. When it comes to modeling climates, though, it's the surface temperature that directly effects air temperatures. The Gulf Stream matters A LOT. From ZH:
The Post writes that the study argues that warming temperatures are melting the Greenland ice sheet, sending freshwater into the North Atlantic and slowing the AMOC. Researchers say they’ve detected a related “distinctive temperature fingerprint” several thousand feet below the surface.[Our bolding, per Peak Stupidity style sheet. REALLY stupid stuff is to be in bold typeface.]
“Here we identify a distinctive temperature fingerprint in the equatorial Atlantic that signals the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation change,” they wrote, adding that its “robust physical mechanism and reliable detection make [this fingerprint] a valuable metric for AMOC monitoring in a warming climate.”
Using the MITgcm climate model and ocean data back to 1960, the team concludes the AMOC has been weakening since the late 20th century and could collapse before 2100. If that happened, Europe could face drastic cooling — possibly nearly 60 degrees — and drier conditions. As Jonathan Bamber told the Daily Mail, “Winters would be more typical of Arctic Canada and precipitation would decrease, also.”
Before I get to discussing the idiotic -60F* ΔT, let me proudly inform the reader that after I went to The NY Post article I then skimmed and partially read the original paper in the journal Nature. What you're gonna read next should remind you of a 7 month-old post of ours, Peak Stupidity Geophysical Research Letter - Sea Ice Albedo. That is due to our having perused others of these Climate modeling papers before and now again seen the overall BIG FLAW.
Were there any, I wouldn't have caught errors in the calculus, bad numbers, erroneous specific modeling techniques - I don't read that deeply, and I am not a Climatologist. What I do know is what mathematical modeling is all about. Again, here too, I see a lot of modeling and the putting parts of various models together. What I don't see is very specific testing of every part of the model. In the case of the whole World's climate, that would have to be observational rather than some test in a lab. I'll refer the reader to the series of short posts entitled There is no working mathematical model of the world's climate, dammit!: Part 1 - - Part 2 - - Part 3 - - Part 4 and Part 5. The gist of it is that not only does every single process have to be modeled very accurately as compared to observation, no process can be left out, and when you put them all together, sorry, a complex model like that will STILL be wrong, that is, until a whole lot of corrections are done, also based on observation and physical understanding thereof, not fudging with the math factors.
Here's the abstract of that paper:
Climate models project an Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation slowdown under anthropogenic greenhouse warming. Despite a ~1.5 °C increase in the global mean surface temperature, debate remains on whether and when this circulation has slowed. Here we identify a distinctive temperature fingerprint in the equatorial Atlantic that signals the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation change through numerical ocean model experiments. The equatorial Atlantic is a crucial crossroads for the circulation anomalies to propagate to other oceans. A slowdown drives a mid-depth (1000–2000 m) warming in the equatorial Atlantic in a decade via baroclinic Kelvin waves. Analysis of climate models shows that this mid-depth temperature change is a better indicator for Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation change on decadal and longer timescales than other surface proxies. Observations reveal a robust mid-depth warming since 1960 that emerged from natural variability in the early 2000s, suggesting a slowdown that already started in the late 20th century.In other words, lets play with the different models and find some quantities that work to get the best matches for our observations. Now, I like this following explanation - only a small part of the matter - of WHAT they are attempting to accurately model:
The Atlantic warming pattern driven by the subpolar buoyancy forcing change is linked to the coherent circulation changes through the thermal-wind relationship, manifested as basin-scale weakening of meridional overturning circulation. Changes in circulation reduce the northward warm-water transport of the upper-limb AMOC and the southward cold-water transport of the deep-limb AMOC, resulting in heat convergence near the western coasts in the mid and low latitudes. These rapid adjustments of subsurface temperature and circulation are through Kelvin waves excited by subpolar buoyancy forcing.Fine. Then it goes this way, and this is just one example of many:
In addition, the equatorward heat transport by the climatological deep western boundary current (DWBC) also contributes to the mid-depth equatorial warming. We perform a BUOY-NA-passive experiment, which is the same as BUOY-NA but with the fixed ocean circulation. In BUOY-NA-passive, the perturbed ocean temperature change in the North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans travels as passive tracers via the mean ocean circulation (see Methods). The results of BUOY-NA-passive suggest that the mean DWBC leads to a weak deep-layer warming in the western equatorial Atlantic after about half a century, and has minimal contribution to the quick mid-depth warming.Let's try different models and put in buoyancy effects, or maybe not, whatever works. There is NO BASIC UNDERSTANDING down to the level of WHY one model has matched reality better than another.
Oh, and we do get to the Global Warming now:
Transient greenhouse warmingYeah, wax on, wax off, you're bound to get a decent curve one day ...
We further examine the statistical relationship between changes in the equatorial Atlantic temperature and AMOC intensity of the North Atlantic using the 50-member Large Ensemble of the Community Earth System Model version 2 (CESM2-LENS) under the historical and Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSP) 3–7.0 scenarios (Fig. 3). Temperature in the equatorial Atlantic shows pronounced multi-decadal fluctuations during the historical period and has warmed up in the upper 3000 m since the 1990s (Fig. 3a). Like BUOY-NA, there is a vertical minimum in warming albeit at ~500 m in CESM2-LENS. This could be due to forcing difference; forcing is abruptly switched on in BUOY-NA, while CESM2-LENS uses slowly evolving radiative forcing that includes both anthropogenic greenhouse gases and aerosols.
Short digression for ZH humor:
There's nothing like some good ZeroHedge commenters to tell it like it is, or at least lighten the mood. First one:
Vampire Teabag:The banter on there is simply stellar:
9 out of 10 scientists agree with whomever funds them.
Gregga777:OK, wait, now what about that 60F fall predicted for temperatures in Europe in 3/4 of a century from now due to Global Warning? I'm guessing that, of the 5 authors of the paper, Qiuping Ren, Shang-Ping Xie, Qihua Peng, Yuanlong Li, and Fan Wang, not a one of them was ever taught DIMS?, Does It Make Sense? You've got cold Pacific Current water flowing south off the west coast of our continent, yet the climate as far up as Vancouver Island can be described as "Temperate". Colder water would mean colder air flowing off it (but, yea, no hurricanes!), but the nearby ocean moderates the climate with westerly winds. Deepest eastern Montana, Saskatchewan, Poland, freaking Siberia, that's where it gets cold.... but ... still not by a difference of 60 degrees Fahrenheit!!
Western Universities have been grossly overproducing unemployable overeducated graduates for decades. These scary Anthropogenic Global Warming / Anthropogenic Global Cooling articles by “Climate Scientists” are all part of government-funded make work programs for otherwise unemployable university graduates. It’s just another form of Universal Basic Income.
Wegee:
Sure hope you're here for the transition.
Auslinmilbarge:
From a democratic Republic to Communist?
Samuel Vimes:
Caucasian to Eskimo.
But, hell, since the last Ice Age was mentioned, it was a lot colder then... How cold WAS it?! That was not Ed McMahon, that was me, asking AI:
Aaaahhh, geeze... first we run into Human stupidity, and then we run into the artificial stupidity.
Yes, this post is getting long, about 10 x longer than we'd modeled it to be when reading the ZH article this morning. However, let's get non-technical here and imagine how this news that Global Warming will cause Global Freezing story will play in Peoria, well, anywhere but in the offices of the Chinese Professors at Bradley University. This is really bad for the narrative. Some people still remember that in the late 1970's Star Trek's America's Science Officer Dr. Spock told us the world was in for Global Cooling. Well, OK, he's not a real Science Officer - just plays one on TV, so one little mistake - that it's the other way around - was forgiven and forgotten by
It doesn't play on Peak Stupidity, and it doesn't on ZeroHedge, as that same "Vampire Teabag" noted:
We went from Spock, have you lost your Vulcan Mind, to Leonard Nimoy was right.
PS: What ABOUT authors Qiuping Ren, Shang-Ping Xie, Qihua Peng, Yuanlong Li, and Fan Wang (goes by Wang Fan on the web) anyway? Well, 2 of the 3 guys - what do you mean, "Which are the guys?", you cretin - OK, the 2nd and 3rd authors, are at UC-San Diego, while the 2 women and Mr. Li are at the Insititute [sic] of Oceanography, Chinese Academy of Sciense [sic]. I kind of wonder whether they and their grant-givers have a vested interest in this whole Climate Calamity™ continuing to waste Americans' time and money. Then, we hear lately the President is really not joking about letting 600,000 more of them in to do this sort of modeling that Americans can't do.
PPS: Here's what the artificial stupidity did by the way: It converted a Temperature in F to a Temperature in C, but that's not at all the same simple calculation as converting a Temperature difference in F to one in C. The first, conversion of values, is TC = (TF - 32F) x 5/9. The second, conversion of a ΔT, is simply ΔTC = 5/9 ΔTF. The Celsius temperature unit is 1.8x (9/5) bigger than the Fahrenheit unit. The 5/9 is approximate. And people want AI to run the world??
* ZeroHedge didn't give the units, but the NY Post and (of course) original paper did. Whether Fahrenheit or Celcius, this does not diminish the stupidity.
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[UPDATED 11/15:] Added PPS.
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Comments:
SafeNow
Saturday - November 15th 2025 3:03AM MST
PS
“model like that will STILL be wrong, that is, until a whole lot of corrections are done, also based on observation and physical understanding thereof” - Mr. Moderator
My old-psych-major analogy follows. Which means going off-topic - - my apologies - - but heck, I really can’t offer a direct contribution to the coverage of this detailed essay. Shrink Erich Fromm, back in 1956, wrote his famous “The Art of Loving,” in which he promulgated the idea that proper loving must necessarily be an ONGOING ACTIVITY that requires observations and corrections, so as to understand what should be done in terms of his big-four…care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. Love, he says, is not just “a feeling” you fall into, trusting that your current feeling comes close to sufficing.
“model like that will STILL be wrong, that is, until a whole lot of corrections are done, also based on observation and physical understanding thereof” - Mr. Moderator
My old-psych-major analogy follows. Which means going off-topic - - my apologies - - but heck, I really can’t offer a direct contribution to the coverage of this detailed essay. Shrink Erich Fromm, back in 1956, wrote his famous “The Art of Loving,” in which he promulgated the idea that proper loving must necessarily be an ONGOING ACTIVITY that requires observations and corrections, so as to understand what should be done in terms of his big-four…care, respect, responsibility, and knowledge. Love, he says, is not just “a feeling” you fall into, trusting that your current feeling comes close to sufficing.
I respect the field of Climatology, at least those in it who don't sell out their integrity for fleeting fame and money. Just don't claim to be much better than the Farmer's Almanac, at this point, in predicting the "what the weather might do" (GD lyrics again popping into my head - very obscure - "Saint of Circumstance" from their album "Go to Heaven".