The Atlantic Meridional Ocean Circulation (AMOC) works like a central heating system for western Europe. Europe therefore enjoys a relatively mild and stable climate. The amount of heat provided by the AMOC corresponds to around 50 times the entire energy consumption of humanity. Scientific reconstructions of the AMOC from paleoclimatic data show that after being stable for about the last millennium, the AMOC has weakened over the 20th and 21st centuries. It is now at the weakest it has been in at least a thousand years. Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, a climate scientist at the Potsdam Institute in Germany says: '...if we continue on a high-emission path we may run around a 70 per cent risk of the AMOC shutting down.’ He warns: ‘What Earth’s history tells us is that these are really dramatic events with big impacts on ecosystems. Surely in the modern world with 8 billion people on this planet, they would be devastating for the stability of our society.’ @rahmstorf What does it say about the new Prime Minister @andyburnham that climate barely merited a mention in an hour-long speech about his vision of the future? And what does it say about the ‘mainstream’ media that he was not lambasted for ignoring the severity of the threat hanging over all of us? From our latest media alert: medialens.substack.com/p/has…