Thursday, August 12, 2021

The Gulf Stream shutting down

So, the most alarming story I've seen in a long time appeared in THE GUARDIAN last week: The Gulf Stream is becoming unstable --slowing down, cooling down.

This wd bring, in the words of their reporter,  "catastrophic consequences around the world".

I think its importance is shown by the immediate response it got from the first three people I shared it with: 

            Oh my God.


Here's the link:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-crisis-scientists-spot-warning-signs-of-gulf-stream-collapse 


--John R.

current reading: 

THE WORM OUROBOROS (1922)

 Eaves & Kimpel's Introduction to Richardson's PAMELA (1741)

and (taking lots of notes) the preview of Carl's new book THE NATURE OF MIDDLE-EARTH (2021)

2 comments:

Matt Fisher said...

I saw this article in Nature, and while the data don't allow the authors to come to a definite conclusion ("yes, the Gulf Stream is shutting down") they clearly see indicators of that being a possibility.

One of the things that really concerns me about this work is that, if we do reach a tipping point and the circulation that drives the Gulf Stream reaches a tipping point and the Gulf Stream collapses...there is no way for us to reset that. So that's a very different issue than some of the other projected impacts of climate change that could be reset by processes such as sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.

Jeff_Grubb said...

Here's something from 1989 on the Atlantic Conveyor and several future predictions - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfE8wBReIxw