Laura Paddison's recent CNN article titled “The critical system of ocean currents is slowing. It has risen in the U.S.,” referring to new research on the Atlantic Meridian Overturning Cycle (AMOC), claiming that current flows are slowing, causing oceans and expensive, deadly coastal flooding to rise. [emphasis, links added]
This false claim is based solely on a single, yet-to-be-published and unverified study that uses predictions from a single climate model.
Evidence, including other studies and historical reports on AMOC trends, suggests that there is no consensus on the status of AMOC.
Instead, scientists’ predictions and media reports on AMOC have been shifting for nearly two decades, and it is impossible to decide whether AMOC is accelerating, slowing down or staying stable.
AMOC has been the top bogey for climate alarms for years. There is even a science fiction movie about collapse. The next day of the dayamong which the collapse of AMOC led to a new Ice Age within a few days.
Whether this film makes good drama is worth discussing, but what is not worth discussing is the criticism of climate scientists against its portrayal of climate change.
According to some research, looking at the history of AMOC predictions, it is crashing. In other cases, it is strengthening. Sometimes research shows that in recent years, AMOC has not been measured at all.
The problem is that scientists do not have a reliable way to observe AMOCs long enough to make definitive statements. This has not stopped the press from pushing speculative, often contradictory, based on each new study.
Heartland President James Taylor documented this ever-changing narrative in his 2021 article on Climate Realism, highlighting how climate activists repeatedly contradict the AMOC trend.
One year, it is accelerating – exacerbating warming in Europe – another year is stagnating, threatening the new ice age. takeout? We just don't understand enough conclusions, let alone reorganize financial loans or credit scores based on these speculations.
In this case, CNN did not even cite published research, but relied on unpublished research that began in 2024, which was started by marine photographers (ocean photographers) from the Geophysical Dynamics Laboratory of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which could be weakened by coastal factors caused by climate reduction and could weaken the comprehensive factors caused by coastal factors caused by coastal factors caused by coastal factors.
Although Zhang's modeling work may indeed raise effective scientific questions, CNN does not mention the numerous warnings attached to this study: sparse observational data, high model uncertainty, and a lack of consensus in the scientific community.
If CNN even did a moderate fact check, it would find two published in peer-reviewed studies natureIt is the highest scientific journal, published in January and February 2025, which is totally the opposite conclusion as unpublished research “news” organizations are touting.
These studies looked at the data and models and concluded that AMOC showed no signs of decline, and it was unlikely to do so even in extreme climates.
Furthermore, CNN ignores the fact that in Chapter 12 of its sixth assessment report, Intergovernmental Climate Change (IPCC): The emergence of climate impact drivers has no correlation between current climate change and coastal flooding and predicts no correlation between future coastal flooding.
It is hard to believe that if glacier melting occurs quickly, there will be no coastal flooding, which is necessary for the sudden deceleration of AMOC.
Even though CNN acknowledges uncertainty about research claims by quoting oceanographer Gerard McCarthy of Maynooth University in Ireland, he frankly admits: “Science is still unclear,” Its article then immediately touches on speculative catastrophes, future foreclosures, economic losses and insurance shocks – allegedly based on the decline of AMOC.
That's not a report. That's the production of narrative.
Making things worse, CNN has been corrected on this issue before. In 2024, Climate Realism A comprehensive deletion of similar claims was published in an article titled “No, CNN and Other Media Media: Climate Change Does Not Cause the Ocean Cycle Collapse”. The article points out that the limited time frame of AMOC observations (only twenty years) has any long-term predictions that are highly speculative.
In short: If you haven't seen something in a long time, you won't know what it will do in the future. Again, climate model predictions do not help, as they are known to be flawed and depend on the quality of built-in assumptions.
If modelers assume that climate change causes AMOC to crash, then it will not be surprised when the model creates AMOCs that predict crashes.
CNN complicates its errors caused by suspicious use of science by predicting more irrational economic inferences. They compare AMOC-driven flooding with increased foreclosure, credit instability and higher insurance premiums. It's a hand: economic pressures caused by real estate inflation, zoning differences and coastal overdevelopment to attribute to the hypothetical ocean current changes.
The truth is Insurance losses and flood exposure are driven by places built by people and their constructionnot in slow motion thousands of miles offshore.
This is recently exposed Climate Realism In CNN's climate scam: Real estate, not storms, drives insurance costs.
The article cites NOAA's data, such as its multi-billion dollar weather and climate disaster database, which consistently suggest that the cost of disasters is due to increased development in high-risk areas, rather than increasing the frequency or intensity of disasters.
CNN's AMOC article is another example of how mainstream media misleads the public by dressing uncertain science as inevitable.
By relying on AMOC modeling that lacks a reliable basis for observation and directly contradicting other scientific research, then spinning speculative discoveries into warnings of financial collapse, CNN continues to have an unsettling trend: using unfounded climate narratives to generate fear and political action, and facts are facts.
Even if the experts quoted by CNN say, “Science is still unclear,” CNN failed to be cautious. Instead, CNN peddled the science on the already debunked AMOC, using it to support shocking narratives about the insurance market, lending and housing.
The result is a damage to science and the public, dismissing true science and reasonable economic and public policies in pursuit of progressive political purposes (such as greater government intervention in energy markets).
Read more in Climate Realism
