Coming Up On Jan 21 (Patreon)

Can the Gulf Stream collapse?

I stumbled onto this topic accidentally through my previous video on tipping points. I struggled a lot to get out "Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation" correctly and made a joke about my pronunciation trouble on twitter. In reply someone told me I could just have said "Gulf Stream"!

This confused me greatly because I was under the impression that those are two separate things. Oi, I thought, this is what happens if you read scientific literature in a field without having had the necessary basic education.

It then turned out that I was actually correct in thinking they were not the same thing, if somewhat accidentally so. But this just confused me even more because now the headlines were saying the Gulf Stream would collapse.

It's taken me a long time to sort this out, though in hindsight it's not so difficult after all. And that's why on Saturday I'll answer the question "Can the Gulf Stream Collapse?"