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Failing Ocean Current Raises Fears of Mini Ice Age
Designadrug writes "This article from Newscientist paints a picture of a major climate control mechanism teetering on the brink:
"The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age. The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream.""
If the current is pulling all that energy from the warm waters up north and dissipating it in the process, what will happen to all the excess warmth if the current stops? Will it find another way to go? Maybe create a new current or even restart the same current again? That heat has to go somewhere, it is water after all.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
I am curious if there is a technological solution to the problem. Granted, mucking around in big natural system is always more then a little risky, but if there is a serious problem, I couldn't think of a better place for it then the North Atlantic. Surrounding the North Atlantic are the richest and most technologically advanced nations in the world. If anyone can scrape up some money for some grand technological solution, I imagine the US and EU are the two entities to do it.
Certainly it would be nice to simply halt climate change by altering the amount of green house gases being released, but there is no guarantee that we can change fast enough to have any noticeable effect. There also isn't any guarantee that we haven't already slipped over some equilibrium point and are accelerating to a new one regardless of green house gas levels.
Personally, I am curious why we don't look for more grand scale technological solutions to environmental problems. We have certainly proven that we can very effectively destroy the ozone with just a little CFCs. We know how to increase global warming. Why in the hell hasn't anyone found a chemical that promotes ozone expansion or reduces global warming?
Personally, I am curious why we don't look for more grand scale technological solutions to environmental problems. We have certainly proven that we can very effectively destroy the ozone with just a little CFCs. We know how to increase global warming. Why in the hell hasn't anyone found a chemical that promotes ozone expansion or reduces global warming?
Well there is plenty of work being done, you just have to know what to look for. Here's some Wikipedia information on various schemes at artificial carbon sequestration - basically just getting the carbon out of the atmosphere and locking it up somewhere.
As to mitigation with regard to a stalling north Atlantic conveyor - the cause, according to the models that predict such a thing, is lowered salinity of water in the north Atlantic, which means lowered density which means it doesn't sink when it should, and hence the system stalls. The obvious ways to "correct" that are to increase the salinity by removing fresh water, or by adding salt, or some combination thereof. Doing such a thing would be a huge and expensive exercise, but depending on how badly tthings stall and how bad the weather gets, it may well be worthwhile. I expect that there are people working the numbers for various schemes along those lines.
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The article went on to describe the states plans to back exploration of a "Northwest Passage" across the Arctic, in cooperation with a Finnish company. Apparently other countries are also working on plans to exploit the route.
i've seen that website before and i decided to run a few calculations on it. now while you might think that that is a miniscule mean temperature change in the atmosphere, when one multiplies that 0.001227436 C by the ~725(depends on exact density, doesn't vary much) joules needed to raise the temperature of mixed air by one degree centigrade and the 5.1*10^18 kilograms of air in the lower atmosphere one gets the net energy "loss"(this being entropic and useless energy that we don't want, and can do almost nothing with) of 4538444610000000000 joules
that's 4538444610 gigajoules
for comparison that's about the same as a gigaton nuclear bomb(heat and blast)
It's all pointless at this point anyway. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen. Anything any set of countries tries at this point is going to be pathetically too little, too late.
Consider that the third world and much of asia is desperate to ramp up industrial production to help their economies grow. The way they look at it, they can either worry about global warming or the bigger fish they have to fry, i.e. poverty and catching up to the rest of the world. Are they going to spend huge amounts of money trying to clean up their industries? No. They're going to pollute the fuck out of everything while they manufacture all the disposable crap they'll be selling to the rest of us. Crap we ASKED them to produce, of course.
Consider that the first world has already shifted most of its heavy industry to the third world. The only thing most of US can do to reduce global warming is stop driving cars and use clean energy generation methods. Is this going to happen? No. Not while our self-absorbed leaders are so fascinated with the oil economy they're willing to overthrow other countries to increase their supply.
Conclusion: The situation is completely and hopelessly fucked. Everyone is acting in their pathetic selfish self-interest, and nobody is willing to give anything up to change anything. Whatever's going to happen is going to happen.
It'll be an interesting few decades while things settle down. I'm betting on the following:
1. Mini ice age lasting two hundred years or so, sort of like the last one, in all nations bordering the North Atlantic. Actually I don't mind this, I hate hot weather and I've always loved snow. Here in New York, things should be pretty nice, if a bit chilly. And blizzards are fun as long as you don't have to travel. It's an excuse to stay home and play Halo II on XBox Live.
2. Very hot weather and major storms throughout equatorial regions. Florida and the other gulf states, for example, are going to get the shit beaten out of them every year. I expect most people to get fed up and move inland to get away from the hurricanes, and away from the plains states to get away from "Tornado Alley". Lots of migration will produce new ghost towns along the coasts, not due to disasters per se, but to people getting fed up with having their houses knocked down biannually. Actually I'm endlessly surprised this hasn't already started.
3. Ocean levels might rise a bit, but this might be offset by increased ocean ice due to the mini ice age, so the whole "waterworld" thing is going to be a non-starter. Of course we knew that.
4. Everyone is going to completely freak out and run around with their hair on fire for years and years. We on Slashdot will argue about it endlessly, never arriving at any conclusion, but it'll be interesting and take our minds off the fact that none of us have been laid recently.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
It's easier to solve a problem if you know what caused the problem.
True enough. Problem is that humanity is a long way off from being mature and intelligent enough to determine exactly what sort of climate change to expect, much less the root cause of that change. Does human activity cause climate change? Absolutely. How much and in what way? We have no friggin clue and we wont in any of out lifetimes. This is for a couple of reasons:
1. Humanity's lack of maturity prevents us from putting aside politics and self-interest. We try but in the end out efforts are nearly futile. Our best effort to date many might say is the Kyoto accord and it is doomed to fail. And no, it isn't the fault of the Americans--even if the US signed on it would never work. Why? Because Kyoto is just another political/economic shell game. Developing nations are pretty much exempt from making an effort at reducing CO2 emissions (including 800-pound-gorilla China). I don't care what reasons are behind such exemptions--if we want to affect global change the whole globe must participate. Second of all, there is "selfishness" involved. It is easy enough for the likes of Germany and France to look down their noses at the US and trumpet their wonderful CO2 reductions: France just throws up more nuclear generation and Germany gets to count all those communist-era east-German soot-belching factories in their starting numbers. Then there are nations like Canada, where the infrastructure is already quite modern and efficient for the most part and the cold climate and sparse population make it more difficult to meet targets legitimately--most of those reductions will be met by playing the shell game and trading pollution credits. In the end it means no meaningful impact on climate change.
2. To paraphrase a favourite sci-fi author: "The universe is mind-bogglingly complex". Scientists know almost nothing about the direction of climate change. They have pretty little computer models that make predictions and they can make vague (and often conflicting) pronouncements about the earth heating up or more hurricanes or ice ages and whatnot. In the meantime the good people at Environment Canada cannot even predict the weather two days in advance with any reliability at all. How can we get the "immature public" to buy into a more climate-friendly lifestyle with that kind of track record? The weatherman tells them it'll snow in two days with the accuracy of a coin toss. Big, smart scientists with expensive supercomputers tell us the world is heating up...no wait we are going into an ice age (which was the prevailing theory in the 1970s)...no wait we are heating up (1980s to now)...no wait...the world will heat up a bit, but some places will be really dry and others really wet...no wait...we ARE going to have a sudden ice age...because of global warming melting ice and cooling the oceans....what the hell? Our smartest people cant quite wrap their brains around it much less the general public (I like most others are pretty much mentally retarded on the subject though most like to think theyknow something about it).
I'm sure someone will argue the merits of Kyoto (maybe there are some--I just don't see how it'll change the world meaningfully). Others will argue that science is proving itself now (gee, look at all the hurricanes we had this year--never mind the fact it was only one or two more than the previous record set many decades previously, before we had the technology to spot those that didn't make landfall near civilisation). Thing is, the pronouncements we make and the justifications for Kyotot-like manoeuvring are so vague it is like proving Nostradamus was right.
In the meantime, bandages and maybe a makeshift torniquet is all we have to keep us from bleeding to death in terms of climate change. I figure we should put more emphasis on more concrete, proven environmental factors--like living sustainably (use less energy--get rid of the big old SUVs. Get your lazy ass out of the captain's
for comparison that's about the same as a gigaton nuclear bomb(heat and blast)
/ maybert.htm
Which is nothing in the grand scheme of things. I quote from this website.
http://coop.co.pinellas.fl.us/TimeTweb/2001/may01
"While a hurricane lives, the transaction of energy within the storm's circulation is immense. The condensation heat energy released by a hurricane in one day can be the equivalent of energy released by fusion of four hundred, 20-megaton hydrogen bombs. One day's release energy, converted to electricity, could supply America's electrical needs for about six months. "
That's eight gigatons of energy released a day by a single hurricane. Now how many did we have this year alone? That's a lotta fucking energy by mother nature alone.
Life is not for the lazy.
"Some people say that the real "global warming" problem has to do with increased energy output from the sun. Good luck stoping that one."
Some people say the universe is three thousand years old. Some people say people from Pleadies visit the eath in their beamships. Some people say ancient warriors speak through them.
Some people say a lot of weird things. I don't listen to them. I listen to people who have spent their entire lives studying and methodically researching something using strict scientific methods and extensive peer review. Those people are more likely to be right.
evil is as evil does
It lead to global acid rain, and a hell of a lot of deaths. We could also skate on reiers in England in the winder, which we have not been able to do since.
It looks to me like the whole matter is a lot more complex than some people think.
Dont forget, the gulf stream, and its return path, don't only take heat from the carribean to the UK, removing it from hurricanes in New Orleans, but also return cold water at the bottom of the Atlantic, and ech of these effects is in its own positive feedback loop, so the combined effect is magnified many-fold.
While "the day after tomorrow" showed it happening much faster than it is likely to, the effects may well be as profound. Fortunately, I have some nice warm winder clothes for sale, see e-bay :-)
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In the meantime, China seems to be the only large country that's actually working on decreasing CO2 output. I don't believe the EU countries are going to make their targets, too much rhetoric and too little action.
In a few years, we'll be forced to switch to other energy sources anyway, because peak oil is more or less here. We'll see what happens then.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
The climatological community, you know, those guys whose field is climate (and consequently climate change) have no doubts as to global warming. Yes, they are not yet certain as to what extent non-human forces play into this, but the evidence is there that there has been a large increase in green house gasses in the last two centuries which corresponds to the recent warming trend. Furthermore, as we gain more knowledge of recent climate history, the more it looks like recent events are not simply some sort of natural fluctuations.
But even if, as the anti-global warming crowd essentially suggest, the vast majority of climate experts are a pack of morons or evil political operatives trying to destroy the economy, the fact is that global warming is happening and that with it will come some very important consequences.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.