In the Telegraph, Zia Weise writes about “a colder-than-usual patch of water just south of Greenland, nicknamed the ‘cold blob’”. This, claims Weis “has some scientists worried that this slowdown in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) is already well under way”. But whatever this blue blob signifies, what this story emerging in the Telegraph reveals is the hands of its new owners.
The hypothesised weakening and perhaps eventual collapse of the Gulf Stream have been haunting alarmist climate prognostications for years. Adherents claim that, as the rest of the world roasts, northwest Europe will be plunged into a frozen hell as the melting of the Arctic ice deprives the oceans of a conveyor that brings warmer waters and winds to the north Atlantic from the southwest.
The claim is a mainstay of those who require stories about ‘tipping points’ to drive a political agenda. Consequently, the hypothesis is vastly more famous than the science underpinning it merits – as is indeed the case with ‘tipping point’ hypotheses in general. And furthermore, such hypotheses therefore generate much greater interest from funding sources, in order to defend narratives from being debunked by, well, science.
In 2024, Denis L. Volkov et al. revealed that observations of the Gulf Stream in Florida, once corrected, revealed that the current “has remained remarkably stable”. An article in Science earlier this year shed light on unequivocal and partial – i.e., cherry-picked – scientific reporting. “Most climate researchers think the AMOC is more resilient than these worst case scenarios make it seem,” explained Paul Voosen, the journal’s earth and planetary science reporter. “Emerging evidence suggests the AMOC may not have actually collapsed in the warm climates following ice ages.” And “More detailed climate models suggest it could weaken but not collapse in the current surge of warming.”
