"The Great Global Warming Swindle"

Pete - a decrease of 30% of that current means little, its still flowing and warming our island - giving us Inverewe etc. Its if it goes in a different direction that we get colder.

Global warming as predicted will not have too catastrophic effect on the UK, we just become more mediterranean, though there will be some wildlife that will suffer - its worst effects are and will affect those less able to survive them.

I will do what I can to reduce my energy use, and my garden is full of trees. Irrespective of what others do, I will have tried. A drop in the ocean as to what is required, and as I said there is not the global, or even western will. But I will still try.

As for Y2000 possible problem, as the Y2000 co-ordinator for our local hospital, know that one only too well. It was not stated that there was a problem, just that there could be. Not quite the same - a possible IT glitch when the date rolled over - and climate change that has been monitored for years.

 

Fran. I understood that global warming could make the UK a lot colder, as a result of the ending of the gulf stream.

I was involved in the Y2000 problem, and a awful lot of work was done to make sure there were no problems. I suspect that a lot of this work would not have been done in time if such a fuss had not been made.

 

Your right, if the gulf stream goes, we cool down - however it is not predicted that it will as a result of climate change - but who knows.

Y200 -I'm sure your right and I am very glad there were in the event few problems.

A lot of the kit in hospitals is now electronic - besides the IT side - making contingency plans for each bit of electronic hardware in an acute general hospital was interesting. Fortunately there were still some of us around who remembered how to do things manually. Whilst we never had to use them - it was a good exercise to carry out at least demonstrating we could manage without for a time.

 

I understood that the Gulf Stream could fairly suddenly tip and veer away from us, because of the change in water temperature caused by arctic ice melting- which is caused by global warming whether natural or man-made. I find this more alarming than Global Warming for our island, I hate cold!
Green issues are important even if man-made global warming is exaggerated. Surely using as little energy as we can, insulating our houses, and saving water are all just good husbandry. With regard to the big 'oil is running out' scares in the 60s and 70s- is it not possible that making adjustments to our usage and being aware of the problem have made a difference?
There are so many people on the Earth now that it is important that each of us tread as softly as possible. Whose was that lovely photo called 'Leave no footprints'?

 

As I understand it, warm salt water from the tropics is pushed northwards by the heating effect of the tropics. This creates the "Gulf Stream" which flows at the surface of the ocean and brings warm water to the shores of Britain. This water cools in the Arctic and becomes denser which makes it sink to the ocean floor, where it is pushed back southwards by the pressure of the cooling water above it. This is called the "conveyor".

Fresh water melting from the polar ice-cap (happening very much faster now as temperatures rise) dilutes the salt water and makes it less dense - so it sinks more slowly. Add too much fresh water, and it'll stop altogether. So if the flow rate is already down by 30%, we should be worried.

To suggest that the British climate will simply become more Mediterranean only tells half the story. It may well be accompanied by more frequent "extreme climate events", so storms, floods and heatwaves will be more common. This already seems to be happening in the western Atlantic where the frequency of hurricanes has increased quite dramatically. And we all saw what Hurricane Katrina did...

And Geoff, I'm with you in your assessment of the programme-maker's reputation. The complaints about his last effort came from the scientists whose views he had misrepresented. Problem is, the good science is obscured by media hype with its screaming headlines, so it's easy for the extreme and one-sided views from both camps to make pretty doubtful claims. My own small opinion, for what it's worth, is that the "Great Swindle" falls into that category!

[ 25. March 2007, 01:12 PM: Message edited by: Hyla arborea ]

 

Thanks for that, I didn't know how it worked. I knew it was a current from the tropics but not why. A very clear explanation. I was concerned when I heard of the decrease, but I do not recall that it was linked to global warming. From memory, they reported it had reduced in the past, but were monitoring it.

They predict more extremes of weather globally and up and until last year, that was what was happening. However last year, the Hurrican Season was very quiet, and there appeared to be less extreme events.

I have a friend on the Gulf Coast, and she had a direct hit by Ivan and then another one 6 months later. She spent a happy year last year - after she had finished rebuilding :( .

Not so sure she will be as lucky this year.

[ 25. March 2007, 11:21 PM: Message edited by: Fran ]

 

I think your assertion about the Gulf Stream not stopping in the near future is correct, Fran - I believe other factors such as surface winds and other cooling mechanisms affect the Gulf Stream, so it's a complex equation. The current thinking seems to be that it won't stop this century.

But having said that, I read somewhere that if it does stop, human intervention wouldn't be enough to restart it, so we'd have to wait until it started again on its own. However many million years that took... So it seems to me that anything we can do to cut the risk of its stopping just has to be in our interests.

 

Glad to hear it - maybe if we can reduce our acceleration of climate change, just maybe it will be longer than the end of the century.

What I feel pessimistic about is not that people will not take action individually, but that there is no real will UK or globally to reduce our accelerating effect on climate change. Still every little helps, so I do my bit.