The collapse of the Gulf Stream would give Britain the same climate as Manitoba (the two are equally close to the north pole roughly.) London weather is miserable already, but a few Winnipeg winters would make it intolerable.
Perhaps good old fashioned colonialism (e.g. actually taking over small tropical countries) might make a comeback. South African weather starts to look pretty good when you're in Winnipeg in February. Or maybe Northern Europeans would just move to Orlando and LA, the way Canadians do.
The source is an article avaiable via _Science_ <http://www.sciencemag.com>. The researchers used (according to the abstract) old data from ocean temperature measurements dating back decades. This lends credibility to the notion that oceans are warming, but it's not a problem-free method. Since it's hard to be exactly sure how the measurements were made this long after the fact, it's hard to estimate the amount of error in their results.
Alas, I no longer have full access to _Science_ so I can't read the article.
_Science_ is a better place to go for global warming coverage. The abstracts (which you can read for free) alone tell a more freightening story than the press usually can, all the more freightening for the calm, reasoned way it's told. An example:
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Science, 1998 July 10: Warming's Unpleasant Surprise: Shivering in the Greenhouse?
At a conference last month in Snowbird, Utah, researchers heard overwhelming evidence that the so-called "conveyor belt" current that warms northern Europe and adjacent Asia has repeatedly slackened and at times even shut off during the past 100,000 years, in concert with dramatic climate shifts around the hemisphere. And computer models suggest that, ironically, the greenhouse's moister air could also squelch the conveyor belt--with potentially alarming repercussions.
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"Potentially alarming repercussions" means a northern Europe with Canada's weather. Perhaps the 21st century will finally be Canada's century. ;^P
Scott Martens
---- Début du message original ---- De:Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Envoyé:Sat, 25 Mar 2000 13:16:57 -0500 A:lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Sujet:warming ocean
Ocean is warming, study finds
The world ocean has experienced a net warming of 0.11 degrees Fahrenheit from the sea surface through about 10,000 feet of depth over the past 35-45 years. The upper 1,000 feet has warmed by 0.56 degrees Fahrenheit. "Although these may seem like small changes, it represents a large change in the heat content of the ocean," said Sydney Levitus, an oceanographer with the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. "Water is very effective at absorbing heat without undergoing much of a temperature change."
Full Story: <http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2000/03/03242000/wrldoc_11332.asp>http://www.enn.com/news/enn-stories/2000/03/03242000/wrldoc_11332.asp
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