Irish Examiner view: Real threat of Gulf Stream collapse

unless efforts to reduce carbon emissions are redoubled, then the fate the Gulf Stream is already set in stone

Waves crash onto Portmagee Harbour in Co Kerry during a massive sea swell following Storm Erin. An AMOC collapse would plunge Western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, as well as adding 50cm to sea levels. Picture: Don MacMonagle

The potential collapse of the Gulf Stream, an integral part of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation (AMOC) has put Ireland firmly in the crosshairs of destructive climate change.

Scientists have concluded that such a collapse can no longer be considered a low-likelihood event, particularly so as recent climate models indicated this was unlikely before 2100, but further studies indicate the tipping point that makes an AMOC shutdown inevitable will occur within decades.

Research has found that if carbon emissions continue to rise, 70% of the model runs led to collapse, while an intermediate level led to collapse in 37% of the models. Even in the case of low future carbon emissions, 25% of the models indicated an AMOC shutdown.

AMOC is a major part of the global climate system, bringing sun-warmed tropical water to Europe and the Arctic, where it cools and sinks to form a deep return current. An AMOC collapse would shift the tropical rainfall belt, upon which millions depend to grow their food, plunge Western Europe into extreme cold winters and summer droughts, as well as adding 50cm to already rising sea levels.

Scientists say the new results are “quite shocking” because they used to believe the chance of such a catastrophe was less than 10%. Even at that level, the dangers of an AMOC shutdown are far too high.

Were we to reach a tipping point which makes a shutdown inevitable within the next 10 to 20 years, the results for Western Europe — and Ireland in particular — will be appalling and, scientists say the risks are more serious than many realise.

It would appear that unless efforts to reduce carbon emissions are redoubled, then the fate of such vital climate actuators such as the Gulf Stream is already set in stone.

Election pushing Putin’s focus to former territory

While Russian president Valdimir Putin is in Hanjin, China, making jolly with host president Xi Jinping and India’s Narendra Modi, his minions are engaged in much less visible antics aimed at destabilising the democratic government of a neighbouring country.

On this occasion the subject of their attentions is Moldova — the small, landlocked, Eastern European country bordered by Romania and Ukraine, and formerly part of the Soviet Union.

Putin, of course, pays a lot of attention to former territories and, with forthcoming parliamentary elections looming at the end of this month, his focus is on Moldova.

These elections are being touted in the capital Chisinau as the “final battle” on the road to EU membership and, as
we have seen with Ukraine, this is not at all popular back in Moscow.

Last week, the German chancellor Friedrich Merz was joined in the Moldovan capital by French president Emanuel Macron and Polish prime minister Donald Tusk in a display of solidarity.

Merz said that no day passes in the country without “massive hybrid attacks” carried out by Russia.

The target: Moldovan democracy.

Standing alongside his EU comrades and the Moldovan president, Maia Sandu, Merz accused the Kremlin of using disinformation, cyberattacks, and other tools to try and boost the chances of pro-Moscow candidates.

He said that day in, day out Russia was relentlessly trying to undermine freedom, prosperity, and peace within Moldova’s borders.

Russia’s malevolence is not simply focused on Ukraine, a fact underlined yesterday by its jamming of the GPS systems on a plane carrying European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, forcing it to land in Bulgaria, but also on former vassal states such as Moldova.

EU support for Sandu and her people is going to be vital in the run-in to this month’s election, as she asserted last week when she stressed that, without the bloc’s support, Moldova “remains trapped in the past ” — a past its citizens feel with every attack on neighbouring Ukraine.

“Europe,” Sandu said, “means freedom and peace. Putin’s Russia means war and death.”

How true.

Threats to Harris

We are all too aware that keyboard warriors, bravely
anonymous behind the opacity of social media, are only too delighted to threaten, intimidate, and bully anyone who incurs their wrath.

In reality, they are nothing other than cowards who mask their bravado behind a curtain of namelessness and facelessness.

The threats made on social media over the weekend against Tánaiste Simon Harris, his wife, and young family, therefore come from a source which — were it not for the obscurity of social media — would not raise its head above any parapet.

As shocking as these threats were, and gardaí are rightly investigating them, they are also an indication of the fact that some people feel entitled to menace anyone in public life.

Threatening anyone, in any way, is a still crime in this country.

The perpetrators of this latest vile act should, and hopefully will, be brought to justice for acts which only undermine democracy in the most despicable way possible.

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