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