Items on the looming collapse of the AMOC, né “Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation” are typically consigned to our “Tidbits” section… or our virtual recycling bin. But we were struck by a New Scientist piece that said “Europe faces incredibly harsh winters and unrelenting droughts if the vital AMOC ocean current fails” and then immediately added “but when disaster will strike and how bad it will be remains uncertain. Now there is an ambitious plan to give us a warning”. Ambitious you see. Which is government-speak for, in this case, throwing £81 million overboard. What struck us was the notion that someone somewhere thinks they can overcome the problem that ocean currents are transcomputably complex, as though it were a typical linear algebra matter of getting more and more precise input data. But then, speaking of data, we discovered that they were making it up.

You see, it started with a research ship named for Sir David Attenborough of, um, plunging walrus fame. Well, OK, a long and distinguished career as a science popularizer tainted by joining the climate cult and starting to twist evidence out of shape as so many in it do. And it seems the ship:

“was working near the Sorgenfri glacier in south-eastern Greenland when a kilometre-long wall of craggy, bulging ice collapsed into the fjord. The scientists on deck watched in stunned silence as an estimated 18 million tonnes of ice slowly flipped over, sending up vast plumes of spray.”

Cool, huh? Wish you’d been there? Ah but nay. A harbinger of doom:

“Iceberg calving on this scale was once relatively rare – but it has become commonplace in recent years as Earth warms. And that acceleration could have catastrophic impacts that extend far beyond Greenland. It is weakening a system of ocean currents in the North Atlantic that is vital to societies in Europe and around the world.”

Bosh. Typical alarmist bosh. Three sentences, and three massive fatuities.

First, the ocean currents in the North Atlantic are not weakening. People thought they were until they discovered a flaw in the way it was measured… back in 2024. Second, it’s not news to say “could have” because, as we repeatedly retort, “unless it doesn’t”. (As we also complain that when drastic cooling is cited as an obvious consequence of drastic warming we are in the presence not of a scientific theory but of a cult.) Third, and most pertinent here, what possible data set could let them declare that “iceberg calving on this scale was once relatively rare”?

What do they know of iceberg calving off Greenland in 1700? In 1300? In 511 AD or 511 BC?

These questions, as so often in climate “journalism”, go unanswered because they go unasked. Instead we’re told of massive uncertainty that is secretly certainty, followed by:

“That is why an £81 million plan is now afoot to build an early warning system that could alert humanity if AMOC is nearing a dangerous tipping point. Data now being collected by the Attenborough research ship is core to that plan. ‘We might be committed to centuries of change without knowing it,’ said ocean scientist Paul Holland at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) as he prepared to set sail from the port of Harwich, UK, some weeks earlier. ‘We might be passing these tipping points without realising.’”

Again we are like someone beset by wasps, flapping and swiping as they swarm. For instance, if they don’t know they are committed to “centuries of change” they should swap their lab coats for dunce caps since climate has always changed, on a scale of centuries and longer, and fluctuated even over much shorter periods. Also this nonsense about “tipping points” because in the real world, a thing only tips once and then it has tipped over and is on its side. The whole metaphor is nonsense, and jump-scare nonsense.

As the actual plan-like object declares:

“A climate tipping point is a critical point in Earth’s climate system that, when crossed, can trigger large, irreversible changes. Major Earth systems risk crossing climate tipping points this century, potentially exposing half a billion people to flooding while threatening biodiversity and food security. Yet we have very little data on when, how, or whether these will happen.”

And again we might well contrast the constant yelling about hurtling toward tipping points, past them and so forth with this claim that we have “very little data” on when or how etc. Including such things as Scientific Alarmism’s “9 ‘boundaries’ keep Earth livable. We’ve breached 7 of them”. And of course if they still did real science, or just logic, you’d have to include that since neither they, their readers, the planet nor the audience are currently dead, the Earth must still be “livable” so those seven weren’t actually boundaries beyond which everything was laid waste.

In case you care, according to that story when the panic-mongers, sorry researchers in question at the “Planetary Boundaries Science Lab at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK) in Germany” had:

“published the first Planetary Health Check in 2023, they found that human actions, from fossil fuel burning to excess fertilizer use, had pushed Earth past six of the nine boundaries. Last year we breached a seventh – ocean acidification.”

So the Earth was already unlivable in 2023 and became mega-unlivable in 2025 due to the oceans becoming too acidic for life despite being (a) still alkaline and (b) full of life like that other bit of our planet, the land. Still:

“Surpassing one of these limits isn’t a recipe for automatic doom, like flipping a switch. Rather ‘it’s like blood pressure,’ said Katherine Richardson, an Earth systems scientist at the University of Copenhagen and lead author of the 2023 report, to Scientific American at the time of that report’s release.”

So it’s not a limit. Nobody with legitimate medical knowledge ever called blood pressure a limit nor will they. Which means the people calling these things boundaries are doing it for clickbait. And declaring us megadead on some and just recently deceased on others is pseudoscience.

Still, as we totter about like zombies still moving and even talking despite our recent demise or demises, and our looming ones, it’s worth pointing out that they’re digging in the wrong place. The “first 26 teams that will be funded within its five-year £81 million Forecasting Tipping Points programme” (and no, they don’t say what “it” refers to though it appears to be ARIA aka the British government Advanced Research and Invention Agency, or admit we deniers do not have all the money though they evidently have loads of it) have the job of looking for data. Whereas the problem is that they do not know what data would indicate that AMOC is about to join us in the rhetorical graveyard.

The press release explains that:

“The projects span three, deeply connected technical areas, united by a multiyear, coordinated field campaign across two parts of the Earth system that could cross tipping points in the next century: the Greenland Ice Sheet and Subpolar Gyre. The technical areas are:/ 1. The design and development of sensing systems in the ocean and cryosphere – for example Oshen, a UK-based startup, is trialling the deployment of hand-deployable, wind-propelled autonomous robots at sea to collect year-round data on critical ocean-atmosphere processes./ 2. The deployment of sensing systems in Greenland Ice Sheet and Subpolar Gyre – for example: Greenlandic research institute ASIAQ will deploy new robust climate monitoring stations in the previously inaccessible eastern coast of Greenland to help develop more comprehensive forecasting models./ 3. Unlocking the necessary computational methods to create and test early warning systems – for example: The University of Exeter is looking to improve early warning of tipping points, focusing on the subpolar gyre, by combining theoretical advances, AI, and a deeper understanding of the physical processes involved.”

And you might well ask how “new robust climate monitoring stations” in remote bits of Greenland will “help develop more comprehensive forecasting models”. Especially since the last bit is about “a deeper understanding of the physical processes involved” because at the moment they don’t understand currents so they don’t know what the data is telling them, if anything. Alas, they don’t know that they don’t know:

“‘In a similar way to how we use monitoring stations to detect and warn for tsunamis, we’re aiming to establish networks of climate monitoring systems to detect early signs of critical shifts in our climate.’ said Gemma Bale and Sarah Bohndiek, the Programme Directors co-leading the programme. ‘Through these systems, we can equip decision-makers with the data they need to confront the threat of abrupt climate change head on.’”

If only you knew what those early signs were this late in the day. And what would “data” do to help decision-makers “confront the threat of abrupt climate change head on” if anyone knew what that phrase meant either? They need information, a structuring of the bloomin’ buzzin’ confusion of data points, that relies on knowing what’s happening, why, how to stop it and what the climate “should” look like as opposed to the mess it currently is.

Seriously. The idea is to have politicians control ocean currents. On the plus side, they can’t. But it’s an amazing aspiration as well as a massive waste of time, money and brains. Especially as they’re going to try to collect more information about what’s happening now without having anything to compare it with, from how frequent iceberg calving has been in the last 12,000 years to why the AMOC shut down last time it didn’t.

As Wikipedia puts it about what appear to have been dramatic AMOC fluctuations during the last glaciation, “There is not yet a consensus explanation for why AMOC would have fluctuated so much, and only during this glacial period.” Nor are we certain it did, let alone why:

“The paleoclimate evidence is not currently strong enough to say whether the D-O events started with changes in the AMOC or whether the AMOC changed in response to another trigger”.

But it’s fun to watch an ice cliff go “Whoosh!” into the ocean and then read humanity’s obituary yet again. At least they seem to think so.