Open Veils · Answer
Possibility of AMOC collapse in near future
The suppressed story is not whether AMOC collapses but that the risk has been systematically underplayed in every national climate adaptation plan. Per Global Government Forum (Nov 2026), the collapse risk is 'missing from almost all national climate plans.' Independent researchers and paleoclimatologists argue the geological record — particularly the near-complete AMOC shutdown ~17,500 years ago — proves the system is far less stable than mainstream modelling admits.
Evidence
- Paul LaViolette and Randall Carlson have long argued that abrupt oceanic circulation reversals are cyclical, not anomalous — encoded in the geological stratigraphy of Younger Dryas-era sediments.
- Annual Reviews (Jan 2026) published a direct challenge to the reliability of Earth system models, questioning whether they are 'fit for purpose to capture present-day AMOC stability' — meaning the probability estimates fed to policymakers rest on tools that may fundamentally misrepresent the system's tipping dynamics.
- New Scientist (Sep 2026) acknowledged the timeline debate spans centuries to 'already crossed' — a range so wide it functionally renders official risk assessments useless for planning.
- CBS Chicago (Nov 2026) reported one researcher's projection that collapse is 'no longer a low-probability event,' with downstream effects persisting 1,000 years.