“This is civilisation changing stuff”: Is AMOC the hardest climate story to tell?
Outrage + Optimism: The Climate Podcast
Persephonica
4.7 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 30 April 2026
⏱️ 46 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Europe plunged into a deep freeze. Life as we know it upended. The 2004 film ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ gave a generation of terrified journalists an impossible task: how do you communicate the counter intuitive threat of dramatically colder winters caused by global warming? David Shukman was one of them.
This week, Tom Rivett-Carnac is joined by the veteran BBC Science Editor and author of the upcoming ‘The Response’, to explore the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, or AMOC: the vast system of currents that helps regulate weather, rainfall and temperature across the Atlantic and far beyond. Recent research suggests it may be weakening faster than previously understood - with potentially profound consequences for food systems, ecosystems and global stability.
They speak with Dr Willem Huiskamp of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, who explains what AMOC does, and what a much weaker system could mean in practice. Then Tom and David reflect on the harder questions. How do we communicate a risk this vast and uncertain without paralysing people or losing them entirely? Are we socially and politically prepared for -50C winters in parts of Europe? And are we even capable of responding to a threat that may unfold over decades rather than across news cycles and political terms?
Learn More:
🌊 Discover more about the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation and why scientists are watching it closely
🔎 Read the latest paper referenced in this episode, which projects an approximate 50% weakening of AMOC by the end of the century
📘 Check out David’s book, The Response, which will be published by Witness Books on 7th May
🎤 Leave us your voice notes and questions for upcoming episodes on SpeakPipe
Join the conversation:
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Or get in touch with us via this form.
Producer: Ben Weaver-Hincks
Edited by: Miles Martignoni
Planning: Caitlin Hanrahan
Exec Producer: Ellie Clifford
This is a Persephonica production for Global Optimism and is part of the Acast Creator Network.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Outrage and Optimism. I'm Tom Rivikarnock. And I'm David Shruckman. |
| 0:05.3 | And we have come together to discuss the recent news that the Amok, the Atlantic meridional |
| 0:10.1 | overturning circuit. Can I jump in? It's circulation. It's circulation. Oh, it is. Okay. |
| 0:14.9 | Thank you. I've been calling the circuit for ages. Thank you. Yeah. And that's that the Atlantic |
| 0:19.0 | meridional overturning circulation may be weakening faster than previously thought. |
| 0:24.5 | It's horrible. |
| 0:25.7 | It's horrible. |
| 0:26.8 | It is horrible. |
| 0:27.8 | It's horrible. |
| 0:30.4 | David, this is a serious... |
| 0:31.7 | I've avoided saying it, actually. |
| 0:34.6 | And you're a science communicator. |
| 0:38.9 | This is a tough topic, but I'm glad to be here with you. |
| 0:42.5 | It's lovely to see you. |
| 0:43.4 | We've been friends for a long time, and great to have you on the show and talk about this. |
| 0:48.4 | Now, before we go any further, you have a book coming out, and people should know about the book because it's brilliant. |
| 0:52.5 | So I'm going to give you a moment, please, to tell the work very kind of you it's called the response a story of fire |
| 0:59.8 | and flood in britain's new world of extremes and it basically reflects how utterly shocked i am at how |
| 1:06.9 | totally unprepared the country is for extremes of weather we're seeing now, let alone |
| 1:12.0 | those to come. And I try to give boys to people who you don't normally hear from in relation |
| 1:17.2 | to climate change, firefighters, drainage experts, IT consultants, people, you know, as I say, |
| 1:23.4 | don't normally feature. And it's a way of trying to bring home to perhaps a different audience, the severity of climate impacts. Links are all in the show notes, encourage people to pick up the book or to listen to the audiobook, which is available as well. But David and I are going to do something, I mean, I don't know if we can quite scribe it as fun, because we're talking about Amok, but maybe we can because we're going to do this together, but something a little bit different, where in a minute I'm going to invite Dr. Willem |
... |
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