The overturning circulations are already slowing down at a rate that some models didn't forecast would happen until the end of the century. So 2,175 years from now, we expected a slowdown of maybe 20% of the overturning circulations.

Greetings, Earthlings, and welcome back to Earthlings 2.0, the show where we imagine how we could be better versions of ourselves and build a collective future we actually want to live in. That's a show that looked at how average life might render in the future if nation states continue the status quo of doing, frankly, the bare minimum to mitigate the worst effects of climate change. Now, I know a lot of you have listened to this episode because it is our most listened to episode. So thank you for doom scrolling with us on that show. For those of you that haven't listened to that episode yet, the show took a brief look at a lot of things like climate changes that are expected to happen, the ecosystem collapse that would come from some of those changes, and the economic toll it could all take. You think the economy gives you anxiety now? So today our focus is on something that was the basis for the mildly entertaining movie The Day After Tomorrow, the slowing of the ocean overturning circulation. In the movie, many of the events scientists are warning us about now happen all at once, supercharged by Hollywood's imagination. the size of grapefruits in Tokyo, snow in New Delhi, and hurricanes in Hawaii. Well, that last one's not so far-fetched. There was a hurricane that came dangerously close a few years ago. And while these various extreme weather events are unlikely to happen within the span of a few days like in the movie we are melting the ice sheets and pouring a lot of fresh water into the oceans and as our guest today will explain that's one contributor of many to the slowing of the ocean overturning circulation now in the movie these systems all stop moving at once, and the world is plunged into a new ice age. I did do some geeking out on this movie, even though it was, like, barely tolerable to watch. If you haven't seen it, I say go watch it. It's a part of the climate change canon of movies. But I did find something notable in my research, which is that when the movie, Day After Tomorrow came out, way back in 2004, the absurdity of the movie was expressed by both sides, conservative think tanks and climate scientists, basically because they took way too much artistic license with the science. that one climate scientist said that we are quote extremely unlikely to see a major ocean circulation change in the next couple of decades and would only become a serious risk towards the end of the century however 20 years later climate scientists have already noted a 30 percent decrease in the atlantic overturning circulation system nearly a third that feels pretty significant to me now is it quote unquote major okay we can argue semantics but actually when you think about people average people are just now starting to recognize these quote early signs of climate change and we're already at 30% I mean that's a little concerning for me so before we beam up our guest to our proverbial spaceship, I'm your host, Lisa Ann Pinkerton. I'm the CEO of the award-winning PR firm, Technic Activations, and the founder of Women in Clean Tech and Sustainability. building those organizations, I was an award-winning environmental science reporter for NPR and PBS. And we are extremely happy to have you here with us today. Whether you are a new listener, welcome, or an existing listener, welcome back. Thank you for being a part of our Earthlanes community. We love hearing from you, so feel free to reach out to us at earthlanespodcast.com or give us a shout out on social media you can join our newsletter you can join patreon and be a supporter of the show financially all of these things you're welcome to do or none of them it's up to you but if there's one thing that i ask of you is to share this podcast with a friend that's going to help us grow this community and get this information out to more people now as i'm sure you know our oceans are our planet's life support system they regulate temperatures absorb carbon dioxide and drive weather patterns across the globe and the reason it seems like hurricanes are transforming from a category one to a category five a lot faster is because of our warming oceans. They have a slew of implications for earthlings living on land, and we will cover a lot of them with our guest today. His name is Professor Matthew England, and he is a professor of ocean and climate dynamics at the University of New South Wales Center for Marine Science and Innovation. He's also a deputy director of the Australian Center for Excellence in Antarctic Science and the global academic lead of the International University's Climate Alliance.