Eamon Ryan: If warnings about Atlantic ocean circulation are correct, Irish people could become climate migrants

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/2024/09/03/if-warnings-about-atlantic-ocean-circulation-are-correct-ireland-could-lose-its-benign-living-and-growing-conditions/

Posted by martinmarprelate

34 Comments

  1. So …. Climate migrants instead of Cost-of-Living/Housing-Crisis migrants. A turd by any other name …

  2. Potential-Drama-7455 on

    Can’t wait to go to all those countries that will take us in with open arms and give us free accommodation. Perfect solution to the housing crisis!

  3. Are Norwegians climate expats? Are Finns? Why should the Irish be different, apart from having inappropriate housing stock?

  4. Was the prediction not that we will be welcoming climate migrants ourselves? Becoming some weather heaven or something? Now it’s the opposite?

  5. If the Greens spent more time delivering on the things they control, instead of writing scary opinion pieces, they’d have more impact in my opinion. They have wasted a lot of the opportunity they had in government, burning money and influence on small changes, while larger changes have not made as much progress as they should have. We still do not have the promised huge amounts of offshore power, and what is planned is likely to be tied up in planning for years to come. We have spent huge amounts of money subsidising wealthy people to buy electric cars, and only recently we seem to be discussing a public charging network. Most apartment blocks do not have electric car charging, an obvious place for some targeted investment with big payoffs. Significant public transport initiatives are proceeding at a glacial pace, again, tied up in planning.

    I don’t hear anyone in Government calling for a major overhaul of our planning laws to speed up the delivery of major infrastructure, always pointing at this new planning bill which, again, is plodding along and I’m not sure delivers the kind of radical change we need.

  6. InevitableWishbone10 on

    Decades of ignoring the climate crisis that has already started (not “on it’s way “) now we’re complaining about the mass migration into Ireland, which is a joke because there’s a trickle of immigration at the moment. When the estimated one billion people have to leave home because greed and ignorance has destroyed their lives, THEN we will see what mass migration looks like, and for everyone who thinks we can push them back into the seas, there are not enough people in this country to stop 1% of them from landing and that’s if ONLY 1% of them try to come here.
    The effects on the land mass will be noticed long before that of the ocean. Also, the Atlantic ocean circulation is dictated by the rotation of the earth and the shape of the continents. The point at which the heavily salinated waters sink to the ocean floor may/will move south, but again, that will be after we have made massive tracts of now habitable lands unlivable. I know it’s pessimistic, but I don’t think we’ll avoid it because no one is ready (even those with the best intentions) to give up our convenience for the safety of unknown others, even if those others are our decendents. It’s just too much effort.

  7. I am a bit concerned that a minister says that the option is to become climate migrants instead of improving our infrastructure and housing stock to live with that.

    In general I would have expected someone in that position to say “we might have to spend x billions in new ditches, repavement many roads, improve the heat retention of our homes” not “we might have to flee to Spain”.

  8. Most houses would collapse as they don’t have deep enough foundations. Below ground freezing point. Also utilities as water gas would freezing and rapture good times.

  9. I saw a 5 minute long YouTube documentary that said climate change was invented by postmodern Marxist feminazi lizard people who want to steal my balls so I don’t believe in climate change

  10. Superbius_Occassius on

    Everyone having a snow shovel and some sand/salt doesn’t take that long to prepare. The pipes being outside of the house is something harder to sort out but can be wrapped with some insulation in a pinch. Most houses use solid fuel, oil and gas for heat so there should not be that much of an issue. Electric grid will be strained as the low temperatures can even warp and bring down transmission lines and people will use more electricity.

  11. That highly depends on what those warnings are.

    The AMOC is the main reason Ireland is warmer than the west coast of Canada. It is not the main reason Ireland is warmer than Labrador, Kamchtaka, or other places that are exceptionally cold for their laittude.

    On an unrelated note, it seeks like every fucking article on the IT is subscriber only now.

  12. Infamous-Detail-2732 on

    Of course he needs credibility, if Donald Trump said the same thing would you believe it ??

  13. A lot of people complained about the weather we had this summer, can you just be happy with what you have

  14. This is well know by now, the current will change. Probably not in our lifetimes but by the end of the century and next century. However, that’s just as estimate, it could happen sooner, or later. But it will happen.

  15. Willing_Cause_7461 on

    Gonna be real funny if in the future it’s Irish people showing up in other peoples countries with no passport looking for a better life… again.

  16. For anyone who is actually interested in learning about the AMOC and the risks of it shutting down, Stefan Rahmstorf has spent much of his career studying it and has some very good recent talks about it on YouTube. e.g. https://youtu.be/HX7wAsdSE60?si=YKGEeBehzg0Vokyd

    It’s a real possibility this century, and the consequences would be extremely severe for Ireland.