Markjbloggs
Registered User
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- 384
Looking at the weather patterns for a small island and then wondering where the "global" warming is, very funny!
The clue is in the title: GLOBAL!
It's not just Ireland...Ireland gets a rare cold blast with a little bit of snow THEREFORE global warming is not true
This hypothesis is still parked in the "maybe" pile. We just don't know what will happen and to be honest some of the propositions contradict each other.
This seems one of the estimates that has stuck, but outside the media, it really doesn't have strong support. There just isn't enough evidence to either say it can happen in the first place (it's unlikely there's enough fresh water ice to cause such a dilution) and if dilution can happen, how this can then effect the warm currents (it's strongly disputed as to whether the currents can actually be "turned off").
As with a lot of things to do with GW, it was one report that proposed this and even with numerous reports disputing the original, it's the original that's stuck.
I remember one episode of Horizon giving the "effects of GW" and pushing this theory. Ok, maybe for a discussion, but the programme presented it as fact. The funniest thing was that they had pictures of modern day London with a glacier bearing down on it, almost as if next year we'll have a new ice age.
Even if this hypothesis is correct, it'd take at least 5000 years for an ice sheet to even form let alone get all the way down to London. Ah well, some artistic licence I suppose.
My problem is that all these grand theories are of the Armageddon variety, we never get fixated with a Utopia prediction. From Nostradamus to the Population explosion to Aids to Y2K and now GW we have been obsessed that the end of the world is nigh.
So let's accept that temperatures are rising. I could just as easily construct a Utopia consequence as an Armageddon one, along the lines of the trillions of pounds we spend warming ourselves and sheltering ourselves and taking holidays in the sun - all soon to be a thing of the past as we saunter happily about our daily lives in loin cloths. But Utopia theories don't grip our imagination - we want Armageddon.
Watch out for the Madeleine d'Angevines on the south facing slopes+1 . Our winters are meant to be getting colder - great - skiiing on the Galtees anyone?
OK, maybe I was a bit too emphatic about the hypothesis - as strictly speaking, that's all it is of course.
But, Is it not a fact that:
Maybe I'm wrong?
- The ice caps are melting and therefore...
- ...are diluting/reducing the salt content in the Atlantic
- The Gulf Stream is dependent on a certain level of salt to function.
The only unknowns/variables as far as I can see are that we don't know exactly at what rate the ice is melting (and in what quantities) and also that we don't know at what 'dilution level' the movement of the Gulf Stream will be seriously affected.
So is it not simply a matter of time? Granted that 'time' may be anything from 20 to a couple of hundred years though...
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