The last time the Gulf Stream went on holiday during the Ice Age, North America and northern Europe went under about a mile of ice. What is now Britain became uninhabitable even for Ice Age hunters for a while.
That’s the scenario for 2025 and beyond if the Gulf Stream goes.
Here you’ll find images and thermal mapping of the Gulf Stream collapse. You’ll note that some of these images are quite old. The data isn’t new or even particularly unusual. It’s just gruesome.
The idea that it could happen almost immediately is very new. It’s also a major professional scientific commitment that’s unusual given the state of the human race at the moment.
Climate scientists are typically wary of anything that could be called “alarmist”, with good reason. The most important of those reasons is peer review, not unqualified babble from PR firms. Off-the-wall predictions can get buried and careers destroyed in seconds by peer review. That’s not happening this time.
No less than 44 top scientists are calling for urgent action. In the current political global stupor, that’s asking a lot. It’s also taking a very high profile on a politically contentious issue. Thankless isn’t the word, but they’ve made their statements.
It’s reached the point where even the pessimists are worried. The question of a collapse of the Gulf Stream, which circulates warm water through the Atlantic, isn’t actually new. Now they’re saying it could happen as soon as next year. The Gulf Stream and its wider framework, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), look pretty grim.
Well, could it happen?
Maybe.
In recent years, the Gulf Stream has been looking more like a scrambled egg driving without a GPS. The thermodynamics of the northern Atlantic Ocean are complex and massive.
This is where warm southerly currents bump into the Arctic currents and the temperature differences cause major clashes seasonally. Hurricanes are the common events around this time of year.
What happens if the Gulf Stream stops isn’t under any sort of debate. The North freezes. Prehistory is unequivocal about that issue. A shutdown of the Gulf Stream is far more drastic and supposedly could last for centuries.
NOTE: There is still an “if and when” to this scenario.
The problem is that it’s looking far more likely. It has happened before. Greenland was ice-free in prehistory and then froze over. This is how.
The theory is that warming and cooling happen alternately and sometimes suddenly. There’s a reverse cycle to any climate cycle. The current situation is hardly encouraging in that regard. It means freezing or boiling at the extremes of temperature ranges.
Polar phenomena can also push the buttons for climate. The jet streams sometimes look more like pretzels than their usual patterns. If you remember the big ice storms of recent years, they’re a major factor. Add to that an “attempted Ice Age” due to the Gulf Stream going on leave, and you can see that extreme weather is not at all out of the ballpark.
Odd as it is for human reality to get any media coverage at all, this is big enough to rattle even the most apathetic media. It seems that even the Saints of Sycophancy pay attention to Ice Ages. Particularly if it could happen almost tomorrow.
Perhaps they’ll even grow vocabularies and spines and walk erect one day. Can’t wait to see the chat shows when that happens.
The bottom line here has nothing to do with selective ignorance, for a change. Anybody who’s ever used a coloring book or a crayon should be able to see the big thermal variations over time.
This is not an academic exercise.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
