Among the dire warnings about sea level rise and permafrost thawing due to increasing global temperatures in the new “State of The Cryosphere 2024” report that dropped on Tuesday from the International Cryosphere Climate Initiative is one extremely unwelcome side effect that will no doubt actually help perpetuate climate change denialism given its counterintuitive nature.
The “Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) may be en route to collapse due to a combination of ice sheet and sea ice melt and warmer waters. Once at the point of collapse, the AMOC would likely not recover for thousands of years. AMOC collapse would have far-reaching and dramatic impacts, including rapid cooling of Northern Europe by more than 3°C per decade, with no realistic means of adaptation. As a result of growing evidence of such collapse, a group of 40 leading ocean and climate scientists warned leaders of the urgent need to cut emissions,” and yeah you don’t need a crystal ball to foresee how the weather in Europe abruptly – the report elsewhere says the collapse is likely already underway and take as little as a decade – turning colder would be received by the MAGA kids who claim every blizzard means global warming is a hoax.
However, as this is the plot of the 2004 disaster film The Day After Tomorrow the fanboys might actually be more accepting of the idea, even if the timeline of the rapid cooling event is obviously compressed in the movie. Can’t hurt that lead Dennis Quaid is now MAGA, having starred in that Reagan biopic and endorsed their Orange God Emperor at that rally in Coachella last month.