Iceland declares ocean-current instability a national security risk

That’s an overly optimistic way to look at it. The geological record shows there were glaciers in parts of France and Germany the last time th current shut down. (When it shut down due to CO2 induced global warming.)

Also, the temperature change was rapid: Somewhere between 50-100 years. If we’re in the same cycle, we’re more than a decade in already.

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All the news seems to be copy pasted and machine translated around. I think this is the original English language source: https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/cop/iceland-sees-secu...

Dang's since updated the story link, see: <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46090018>.

Convincing the world seem the hard part. 43% of the forcing greenhouse grasses are currently coming from non amicable regimes. 53% if you include USA, but there's a chance administration is going to change. Beyond declaring what are the small countries options?

> a world destroyed by generations

This hyperbole isn’t helpful. The world won’t be destroyed. (If you promise annihilation and are visited simply by devastation, it reduces credibility in an unnecessary way.)

> took this seriously

That assumes Iceland consider "National Security Risk" as politically charged as it is in other major countries.

> finally notice how we're destroying the planet and ourselves,

this might sound very pessimistic

but the world has noticed _very long ago_

the first calculations about the greenhouse effect where in 1896!

in the 50th/60th it increasingly more clear that there might be a huge problem

in the 70th it became clear that there might not just be a huge problem but most likely is one, even if there wasn't yet scientific consensus on it

in the 80th scientific consensus was formed that there is human accelerated climate change and that it's a huge problem

since then outside of a very small fraction (depending on year, but in general <10% of scientist) the question wasn't if it is happening or if it is quite bad, but how "exactly" it will play out and how bad exactly it will get with options ranging from quite bad, over parts of earth becomes inhabitable for human where currently up to ~1000000000 people lives, to risk of human extinction in the long run (indirectly by causing a mass extinction event from a combination of climate change being to fast in combination with other environmental damages done by humans). Sure there have been other effect overlying climate change and people have tried to use them to explain climate change away, but consistently fail, sadly only from a scientific POV and not from a convincing people they don't have to worry POV.

And now in 2025 we have on of the most powerful nations of the world deciding that climate change is a scam, not based on data or analysis but based on it benefiting companies owned by some of their most influential citizens. And started systematically removing access to all public data they had previously gathered about climate change basically trying to rewrite history. And that at a time where large part of the US are currently being severely affected by long term environmental abuse. And yes abusing the environment isn't the same as climate change, but we could take a hint that if something has pretty bad effect on a local scale that then something similar done globally will probably have pretty bad effect globally.

It's also not like we don't know that currently _already_ whole nations (e.g. Philippines) are in the process of sinking. Or the amount and level of extrema weather conditions has constantly increased. Or that heat related death are constantly increasing. Or that there are gigantic dead areas in the oceans (through likely not caused by climate change, but this other kind of environmental catastrophes overlap with it putting even more strain on nature).

And still overall the trend of the last few years is to do less about it, not more. Because it is seen as luxury counties can't afford in a very strained world economy.

And people very commonly speak about it's anyway to late why bother, when we are speaking about a gradual effect not a binary yes/no switch.

I honestly don't have optimism about it anymore, there is no indication for me to believe thinks will get better until it's way way to late to prevent a catastrophe.

And don't get me wrong, humanity will (probably) survive, we are quite good at that. And there most likely will be a future where children can have a nice happy live. But before that for reasons not limited to climate change things probably will go to shit for a few decades, maybe even a century. But don't worry as long as people still try to make things better, things will get better again, it just might take some time.

But if I where living close by the coast or close to the equator, or in a area which already has common extrema weather, I would make sure my children grow up somewhere else.

bah that was such a downer to write, but it is my take on the topic anyway

North of the Alps temperature would drop considerably. South of the Alps, probably fine due to the thermal mass of the mediterranean sea. However, for the whole Europe you would see a massive drop in rainfall, since basically all the humidity comes from the Atlantic's warm air that carries a lot of it.

Additionally, Carribeans, Mexico and South of the US would also be fucked since the energy wouldn't disperse and all the heat and humidity would stay there. Hurricanes would be much more violent, with way more rain, and likely more frequent.

Labrador current might become weaker though, but it is not a given. Currently, the waters from the gulf stream cool down and sink to the bottom of the ocean, so they don't displace the artic waters and hence are not likely the cause of how cold north eastern US is.

The IPCC has historically also underestimated the effect of climate change on the sea.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/7/4/044...

When was it updated? The newer research seems up the probability.

Eg https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2025/aug/28/collapse...

It's presumably worth it for Iceland to take seriously even if the probability is low.

I was curious about whether or not the IPCC associates numerical values to words like "unlikely" so I looked it up:

https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2017/08/AR5_Uncertai...

They seem to be giving the word unlikely a range from 0-33%. I'm not sure how to reason about that 0% given that they also used the phrase "not impossible."

AFAIK the IPCC are generally quite conservative on these matters. Newer research shows possible collapse occurring much sooner (Sometime between 2025-2095).

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See [amocscenarios.org](https://amocscenarios.org/) for various modeled scenarios on what the future could look like with a collapsed AMOC.

Sweden, Finland, Norway would not be hit too badly. Summers will still be warmer, but shorter. Winters longer but about as cold.

The worst effects will be for the UK and specifically Scotland. Their climate wil change to look more like Finlands or Swedens. I.e. proper winters with pretty deep cold spells. This will be a complete disaster as buildings and general infrastrucure will not be able to handle it. There'll be massive issues from frost heave, buildings that are not insulated enough, heating systems specced too small to properly heat houses and so forth.

An AMOC collapse will be very bad, but not quite the Day Afer Tomorrow as some think it would be.

The main factor reducing gulf stream is increase of fresh water runoff into Arctic ocean. So maybe we should invest into building Sibaral Canal diverting some of the water of northern rivers towards Aral sea, and by that saving both Nordic and Central Asian countries.

Beyond Florida, the entire east coast of the US will become not just drastically warmer if the AMOC collapses, but will experience dramatic local sea level rise (warm water is more voluminous than cold water). Think Boston with the climate of modern-day Alabama.

We're also well set up where a majority of the population is in just one city, meaning it would be pretty easy to do some centralized building. Swedish population is far more spread out than Iceland is

Europe will be thrown into chaos if the AMOC actually fully collapses. Minimum temperatures in the north and west dropping twenty degrees celcius will wreak havoc on harvests, put pressure on trade relations, and will probably drain several large cities. No doubt one asshole biding their time will take the chance to start a war in Europe amidst the chaos.

From what I've read, a full collapse is unlikely, though. Plus, preventing this from happening requires a concentrated worldwide effort, which seems unlikely with the leader of the leading greenhouse gas emission source per capita having gone on record saying climate change is a Chinese conspiracy.

At this point, I think a lot of governments are just hoping the best case scenario is right, because there's hardly anything we can do if the AMOC does indeed start collapsing fully, other than southbound mass emigration.

Step 2, higher taxes for you.

Is it the first time you hear about the risks of AMOC collapsing?

> A healthy, happy, productive populace can solve national security as a side effect.

I think many “healthy, happy, productive” societies that have been invaded by less happy and productive neighbors throughout all of recorded history would beg to disagree.

All it took was one irrational clown seizing power to erase twenty-five years of woefully inadequate progress.

Even the Green party is supporting this government.

If it wasn't clear before, it certainly is now; there is no political solution to the climate crisis.

When all that is left is direct action, the results aren't pretty.

Few politicians seem to want to think about what happens after their time in office. Quick, short term wins only.

Referring to Iceland

How would that work? AI cannot run if society collapses.

Maintaining all that infrastructure and supplying spare parts is not going to work.

Also AI cannot do anything on its own. Barely anything with support from humans.

This makes no sense. It takes a complex industrial society to keep that tech going. The supply chain to make GPUs would not survive even a modest disruption in the world economy. It's probably the most fragile thing we currently manufacture.

If there's an evil plot, it's goal must surely be to accelerate environmental degradation.

First we had the blockchain, now AI to consume enormous amounts of resources and distract us from what we should be investing in to make the environment healthier.

Concerted effort among the greediest people in the world all competing with each other? I find that very hard to imagine.

do you think it’s one person or a group of them that meets? design by committee? how are they getting it all done? let’s hear it!

I think in that article Gates does quite a disservice to the climate change dialogue because he does not even entertain the possibility that the most severe of the effects of climate change is going to be massive population migration due to extreme weather and agricultural failures. His comment that climate change is not going to lead to civilization collapse fails to elaborate for whom.

Maybe he’s hoping for sea level rise these days. Enough to submerge a particular island.

Bill Gates changed quickly when he realized the damage to the environment that AI will cause I guess.

Not how I understood it. It was about climate “vs” health not whether the climate is breaking down.

I think there's an "and" in that that article, not an exclusive "or".