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To: Little Pig
The basic premise of this idea is: Ice cap melts, dumping huge cap of fresh water into North Atlantic. Huge cap of fresh water doesn't sink like cold salt water does, and thus causes the gulf stream current to "shut down", as one of the major drivers of this current is the huge mass of cooled water which is constantly sinking off the coast of Britain.

This is total Barbra Striesand (BS)! Ice packs melt all the time and the fresh water mix's readily with salt water. The north pole would have to melt right away for it to be a fresh water cap. The heat would be so great it would have to be a huge solar nova or a volcano under the north pole. Besides the South pole is land so their cannot be a fresh water cap. Pure fiction for, as Fox admits, entertainment purposes.

20 posted on 04/28/2004 7:00:26 AM PDT by ItsTheMediaStupid
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To: ItsTheMediaStupid
Actually, the whole polar cap doesn't have to melt. Just enough to change the salinity in the region. I'm not sure what your reference to Antarctica means, since Antarctica still has an ice cap (nearly a mile thick in some places), as well as some major ice shelfs. I doubt you will find many scientists who will deny that climate change happens, nor all that many who will deny that we may be seeing such a change beginning. The gulfstream shutdown process has been validated by respectable scientists, as has fairly rapid climate change (indeed, the culf current shutdown has been identified specifically as the most likely way to have rapid climate change). Where you get into the Barbara Streisand is when you start claiming that any climate change MUST be the result of HUMAN action (which I studiously did not).
23 posted on 04/28/2004 7:11:12 AM PDT by Little Pig
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