h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

According to New Scientist magazine & the Southampton Oceanography Centre, the Gulf Stream that gives western Europe its relatively mild climate could be failing. A study of ocean circulation found a 30% reduction in the warm currents

Full Article: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8398

Global Warming really is a poor name - Climate change would be more accurate.

Thing is, the theory is that after a certain amount of 'drop off' in the flow, it'll just shut off completely.

All I can say is that at least we might get a proper winter out of it!

Although currently they are predicting a 1celsius change over about 20 yrs.

Hi Everyone!

Hope you don't mind if I contribute to your discussion.

I also read in the New Scientist some time ago that the melting Arctic ice-cap, resulting in large chunks of iceberg falling into the ocean from Greenland, and possibly also from Iceland, is cooling down the Gulf Stream and, as has been said, gradually 'closing it down'. The worst senario from this reduction in the ice-cap, for Britain and all places north to half way down the British Isles, is that we would have to cope with, and become used to another Ice Age! Glaciers down as far south as perhaps Birmingham / Gloucester. Someone said this could happen at any time, and could occur almost overnight, leaving us quite unprepared and utterly helpless, our infrastructure and supply routes entirely cut off!

Britain relies completely on the continuation of the Gulf Stream for its normal range of yearly temperatures, so isn't it time we all 'pulled our fingers out' and persuaded all world governments to 'toe the line' as far as measures to protect against global warming are concerned.

But then, I personally have little faith in any government in Britain, left or right, conservative, liberal or labour, to achieve anything in view of the 'choking off' of suggested legislation by an overbearing system of 'checks and balances' and the so-called 'separation of powers'. The former are too numerous and powerful to get even the most mild and ineffective of (any policy) measures through the legislative process and into the statute book, and the latter no longer applies, with the possible exception of the Monarch from the real powers in the legal process; her signature of approval being a mere formality.

Parliament/government is fast becoming an ineffective talking shop.

The switching off of the gulf stream could happen anytime. Thing is, they don't have any well documented comparable situation to compare to. They know it has turned off before, but conditions and timing and so forth are not good enough to predict from.

But the turning off of the gulf stream wouldn;t result in glaciers in brum in any quick sort of time. The most scary version I've heard is abo0ut 20 yrs and we'd be having winters of -20. More likely 50.

But because they don't exactly know, they hedge the bets and say 'anytime'.

Personally I like the cold, so I'm quite happy for England to get colder. Hopefully all the lagar louts will s*d off to southern spain since they idolize the place so much.

But aside from the flippancy, some contingency needs to be made as it does sound liek northern scotland, and western Ireland, will become uninhabitable in this eventuality.

Here are the results of a Pentagon-sponsored study on possible effects of sudden climate change. http://www.mindfully.org/Air/2003/Pentagon-Climate-Change1oct03.htm

It's interesting, extrapolates the ways populations and governments would react to a drastically altered global weather pattern. Funny thing is, the Bush administration tried to deny the existence of this report until they were thoroughly outed.

Couple of interesting things:

Does anyone know where the greatest prcentages of arable farm land are located in England? If the oceans rise by as much as precited, then what is currently above sea level may well go under it, feeding the nation will be rendered next-to-impossible, especially if any crops that are capable grown are decimated in heavy winters which last for longer than normal. That would affect the foodchain upwards.

As to the local cooling effect of climate change while paradoxically it would seem other parts of the world heat up, has any one every taken notice as I have how countires parrallel on a map can be so different?

Florida is parallel to the Western Sahara desert.

Pennsylvania where my finacee lives is parallel to central Spain.

The part of Britain where I live is parallel to Goose Bay in Northen Cananda!

The point is, that The UK local climate is not reprentative of our global position. I'm not sure of the science of it but I'd guess we're a several degrees out, and this is accounted for by the effect of the warm currents in the sea that draw in the warm and wet weather that ensures these islands don't simply freeze.

If the UK climate isn't being fed warm seas that generate the bands of rain from the west then that will fall as snow.

If the diruption of the past week is anything to go by we've seriously underestimated how much snow can dissrupted our lives, or more aptly how much we rely on the stable climate we have always enjoyed.

Hi Clive, and everyone!

There seems to be a fairly even spread of commercially viable acricultural land in Britain as a whole. Except for mountainous Wales; comparatively small proportion there, mostly hill farming of the livestock variety and light industry, including turism and cultural activities. The same can, perhaps, be said of Scotland. Although Scotland is famous for oats and barley; think porridge! Think single-malt whisky! (I don't mind if I do... Thanks!).
There is a significant arable cash-crop cultivation in south-west England, particularly Wiltshire, and in Dorset, Somerset and parts of Cornwall. In the lower lying East Anglia region and its bordering counties such as Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Sussex and up to Lincolnshire and beyond up the east coast one can find good stretches of fertile land; some, if not most of it reclaimed from the sea by our 'imported' Dutch experts in that activity. The sea is now encroaching on the land it had 'lost' in many parts of the east coast and elsewhere. In some cases by several yards per year; houses and hotels falling over the crumbling soft cliffs into the land hungry sea. These are the regions, the lower-lying ones, that could be subject to widespread flooding and perhaps permanent submersion in the not too distant future.

There is commercial farming in other parts of England. In our county of Cheshire, and our neighbours to the immediate south, Shropshire there is a significant degree of arable and livestock farming; then in Yorkshire, Lancashire and many other northern counties it is patchy, but reasonably significant.
All in all, we would need most of these counties to remain productive if we were to survive a 'big freeze' in the future.

But with permanent flooding in the east and south, and glaciers all the way down to 'Birmingham' (sorry, you Brumagers!), we would certainly be hard-pressed to survive as a prosperous country, and possibly even to survive as individuals!

And that assuming we have any farms left now that Tony is set to capitulate on Common Agriculural Policy reforms.

Really? Good for Tony!! Time to stop those expensive farm subsidies.

Capitulate - give in - he's going to let the French keep them.

oh. bummer.

Give the winter we've had/are having in Europe at the moment the article mentioned in the first post is probably worth reading again...

Well hopefully it will stop the Himalayas melting in the next 10 years.

Yeah that was kind of dumb. I am sensing a play the man not the ball strategy by the 'every-thing's fine carry on as normal'* lot; there've been a series of great blunders for the climate change science as of late, and sadly how it looks counts in so far as that's is what is reported and what people tend to take away and remember.

About the recent chill; I did read somewhere that was all down to a relatively rare (not implying anything) which functioned a little bit like a one-off el-nino; a massive intrusion of high pressure over the arctic that displaced all the cold air downwards which exacerbated seasonal climates in some regions. (Europe went from cold to very cold) but this role-reversal meant places that are usually very cold suddenly weren't and it mentioned several places in Canada (spelt it right this time!) which hover typically somewhere down in the minus teens normally, but this year, whose mercury didn't dip below 0.




*a general accusation, not directed at you Mckay.

Scepticism will continue until they make their models and figures available to everyone. Hockey-stick projections ?

Obviously we have to reduce our consumption and stop chopping down the rainforests, but are current gas and oil prices justified ?

Is the attack on the motorist reasonable - given that the revenue raised has not been spent on any alternative power sources ?

a minor quibble.

I think scepticism of the data is fine, indeed to be encouraged, my worry is we are entering now into a realm that borders on a smear campaign to discredit the enterprise of science thus far conducted by undermining the credibility of those doing it.

But moving on,

Prices of Oil and gas are fixed by the cartels, are they not?

The attack on the motorist and the shameful missappropraiation of resoucrces - that's politics.


I agree things to be concerned about and rightly at the sharp end of discussions about 'what are we going to do?' but at the same time they are issues that only indirectly related to whether human influenced climate change is well-evidenced which is what the current hoo-hah is all about.

Unfortunately its now become a political football.

Politicians only listen to scientists for their own purposes - take the decisions on cannabis for example.

That means that until the scientific community stop being so precious, stop discarding evidence that doesn't fit their version of events, and generally start behaving like scientists governments will continue to cherry pick what suits theior purpose.

China is not going to stop building coal powered plants, neither is India going to do anything about the huge fire that's burning through their coal, because politics is about the now, not the future.

>Scepticism will continue until they make their models and figures available to everyone

You think that's going to convince the "sceptics". It's a political issue, not a scientific one. All the evidence in the world won't make the vast majority of those people part with their precious worldview.

>Politicians only listen to scientists for their own purposes - take the decisions on cannabis for example.

That's not comparable with the climate change issue. With climate change, the scientists had to persuade the governments to see their point of view, not the other way around. It's taken them decades, including having to persuade some governments who were hostile for ideological reasons - the Bush administration for example.

This isn't comparable with Professor Nutt and cannabis. In that case the science was brushed aside for political reasons, in the case of climate change the politics were brushed-aside for scientific reasons.