Britain faces big chill as ocean current slows

The Sunday Times ^

[KamperKen]

The sky is falling!

C. Little

[Grampa Dave]

"It is folly to think that we control the climate. Never have, never will."

As the MSM loses its mind control over more Americans, we will see a lot of Americans waking up to your comment above.

We have had Global Warming and Cooling since the last ice age, thousands of years before I bought my OJ Simpson Bronco.

[Sir Gawain]

the bad news for conservatives is that there is at least some human role in global warming.

Source for this claim?

[Dog Gone]

It wasn't all that long ago that the Yosemite Valley was carved by massive glaciers. 15,000 years.

SUVs did not cause those glaciers to retreat and leave us with a gorgeous park.

I don't even know whether the earth is warming or cooling right now, but it doesn't matter. It's always doing one or the other. It doesn't stay the same.

[velyrorenry]

it would be easy to verify.
1) Identify the heat trapping gasses
2) Compare the percentages now with before those before the Industrial Revolution for example.

No need for spin, numbers are numbers.

[Grampa Dave]

"It wasn't all that long ago that the Yosemite Valley was carved by massive glaciers. 15,000 years.
SUVs did not cause those glaciers to retreat and leave us with a gorgeous park."

Actually, we evil conservatives who drive SUVs used our time machines to go back over 15,000 years ago to cause Global Warming. As some of the enviral whackos on this thread have noted, the evidence is solid that we caused this with our SUVs. According to them, their science is good, and due to Global Warming, the UK will turn in a frozen tundra.

"I don't even know whether the earth is warming or cooling right now, but it doesn't matter. It's always doing one or the other. It doesn't stay the same."

Regardless of what the earth is doing, cooling off or heating up. It is Bush's fault, ours and Halliburton's.

[razorback-bert]

On Boxing Day 250 years ago Londoners awoke astonished to find the Thames frozen over. Huge ice floes had jammed under the 25 narrow arches of old London Bridge on the ebb tide, and a severe frost had then locked the ice firmly together for miles. A remarkable fair was established on the ice and was to last for nine weeks.
City-dwellers were suddenly released from their cramped streets by the frozen river, which created an open vista in the capital. Regardless of the thickness of the ice, varying from 18ft to only 12in, a cheery devil-may-care attitude spread, and tens of thousands flocked on to the frozen river. Country squires travelled from afar to see the astonishing spectacle. Along parts of the river, mountains of ice resembled the face of a stone quarry.
A street of brightly coloured booths and tents, which grew in number each week, was soon constructed. Fairground attractions included swings, merry-go-rounds and puppet-shows. Ladies played skittles, and gentlemen the fashionable game of bowls. While cheering supporters warmed their hands with baked potatoes, teams of apprentices risked breaking legs at hockey and football. There were donkey, horse and wagon races. Coaches crunched over the ice between Blackfriars and Westminster.


See more http://www.dialogselect.com/intranet/samples/NewsUK.html

[razorback-bert]

I swear, I haven't touched the themostat!

[Dog Gone]

I can't decide whether I'm responsible for global warming or not. My primary vehicle is a Chevy truck, and I don't think pickups are lumped in with SUVs even though if it had a roof over the bed and a couple more seats, it'd be called a Suburban.

[Grampa Dave]

Actually most pickups without a camper shell get lower mileage than the SUV version with the same engine and transmission.

The tailgate is the culprit. Nothing like a 4-5' wide and 2' high wind blocker going down the road to whack your mileage.

[Dog Gone]

Dang, I thought it was a NASCAR spoiler.

[Grampa Dave]

It is a spoiler re gas mileage.

Doesn't some American car maker have a pickup out with a spoiler in the rear?

[Rockingham]

My opinion, based on quite a bit of reading. Most persuasively, to me at least, is "Skeptical Environmentalist" Bjorn Lomborg's view:

"Global warming is important, environmentally, politically and economically. There is no doubt that mankind has influenced and is still increasing atmospheric concentrations of CO2 and that this will increase temperature."

http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-files/Guardian/documents/2001/08/14/warming.pdf

As Lomborg demonstrates, most of the climate model predictions of global warming are computer aided storytelling cooked up in order to alarm the public and policymakers and extract maximum funding and attention. On the other hand, the changes in North Atlantic water temperatures and salinity are a matter of direct observation of the best understood sea system on the planet.

There is cause for watching and planning, but not for panic. Events may well prove fears of a cooling Europe wrong, and I suspect that increasing solar output may be a larger factor in global warming than CO2. If that is true, then even the most stringent CO2 reductions will not stop global warming and other remedies may have to be devised.

[Gritty]

Hmmmm. Then I guess I was right on my first impression.

We're doomed - but the European Islamic countries will die first, but not neccessarily because we're all driving SUVs!

[Dog Gone]

This Chevy does.

[riri]

So? Global Warming will offset the "chill" and keep them warm...right?

How the hell these people maintain any credibility is beyond me.

[sasportas]

Hmm. Might the gulf stream scenario's equivalent in the Pacific, the Japanese current, do the same? We here in Alaska will be first to find out. We are direct recipients of the Japanese current as the Brits are of the gulf stream.

[scouse]

Great Britain could increase by between 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius (3.6 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit) by the year 2080, at a rate of 0.3 - 0.5 degrees Celsius (0.5 to 0.9 Fahrenheit) each decade.

There's the problem, right there.They never had this problem when they were still using the term Centigrade.

[tortoise]

SUVs did not cause those glaciers to retreat and leave us with a gorgeous park.

More telling is the fact that some of the retreating glaciers and snowpack (though not in Yosemite) are exposing the remnants of civilizations that were originally buried under them. I'm sure those people back then had a different perspective on all this.

[BIGLOOK]

We try so hard to make sense of complex systems, weather patterns that defy prediction, plate tectonics that nothing can really be done to stop their movement and an on going ( not just in recent years but in all the years) polar shift. Ocean currents and wind patterns at altitude shift all the time. We watch, we record but our theories based on instantiations never prove a general rule. The "winds" may change again.