I saw a note from an earlier year's discussion saying the css has been changed over the years. Perhaps it was easier then to discern fact or myth, truth or fiction.
> ... potential collapse of the Atlantic Gulf Stream, also known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation or AMOC.
The Gulf Stream is not also known as the AMOC. The nature of the Gulf Stream (intense surface current flowing off the eastern coast of North America) is largely driven by wind torque (westerlies in the mid-latitudes, easterlies in the tropics and polar regions) with the intensification due to Coriolis and coastal friction. What we're talking about collapsing is the overturning part largely driven by the differences in salt & temperature between the surface and the abyss. This overturning intensifies the heat transport from tropics to poles and pulls the Gulf Stream farther north:
All Ireland is washed by the Gulf Stream
-- Ulysses, James Joyce
The whispey ones are largely transparent to incoming shortwave radiation but largely opaque to outgoing longwave radiation. You just need to put on your ~10 micron wavelength goggles.
The pros for heat pumps are numerous. There is the issue of resilience to extreme weather. ASHRAE is funding a project, just getting underway, to create a map, first of the USA but anticipated to be expanded to worldwide, of heat pump resilience in the face of an expected change in the frequency of extreme events. Those wanting to learn more:
Clouds have two main impacts: reflect incoming, shortwave radiation back to space and absorb (and re-radiation up and down) outgoing, longwave radiation from the surface. The interplay and relative proportion between these two impacts has long been a challenge and depends upon the cloud altitude (low/high), composition (water,ice), and optical depth.
Units provided were power not energy. The number provided is just the product of the solar constant and the cross-sectional area of Earth [0], roughly.