Gulf Stream Slowdown in Progress? 109
peacefinder writes "Researchers report that one process which drives the Gulf Stream is slowing down. As that current is part of the global oceanic heat conveyor which keeps parts of Europe and North America warmer than would be expected for their latitudes, such a slowdown might lead to abrupt climate change."
Let's not forget the advantages... (Score:2, Informative)
No more people moving from NY/VT/NH to Florida, etc., for the climate and ruining our tax base!
Re:So what do we do? (Score:5, Informative)
You sound like a typical American who is too busy whining and consuming to educate yourself and do something productive or beneficial.
So let me make a few corrections to your uneducated diatribe:
Wind farms don't really generate enough power to make the disruption to the local environs worth it, although there is work being done on high altitude wind generation strategies that are promising.
Nuke: Most people are so much Anti-Nuke as they are Anti-Huge Catastrophe or Anti-Waste that's dangerous for zillions of years. Maybe if someone actually ran a successful nuclear power generation site that both made money and did not generate waste capable of killing large numbers of people, attitudes would change. But the Americans, French and Japanese are still running ancient nukes at a loss, and the Germans gave up on the newest 7th generation because they couldn't make is safe enough (the Chinese are still trying though).
Oil: Man, where did you get the forest thing? There are so many things wrong with oil I don't know where to start, 1: to buy oil you must deal with Bad People (tm), 2: Oil will not last forever and when it does run out society is screwed. 3: Burning Oil causes air pollution 4: Burning Oil contributes to global climate change.
Coal: Burning coal is worse than oil in all cases, still there is work being done on coal gasification which is promising.
Most hydrogen does not come from electrolysis of water, it comes from cracking natural gas. Still that's just as useless as electrolysis, though lots of clever folks are working on other methods. The one I find most interesting is using microbes & biomass.
So your summary becomes "So there is no one answer, that meets the world's energy needs, that is known today. However there are many, many possibilities. However, none of those possibilities yield so much energy as to allow for the rampant consumerism and gluttony that we see today. So something must change; either the reduction of consumption, the invention of a new energy source (like cold fusion) or both"
Project Argo should confirm this (Score:2, Informative)
"The thermohaline circulation is a global ocean circulation. It is driven by differences in the density of the sea water which is controlled by temperature (thermal) and salinity (haline). In the North Atlantic it transports warm and salty water to the North."
Since the Argo [slashdot.org] project measures [ucsd.edu] these attributes along with current direction and possibly speed, it is the perfect way to either confirm or disconfirm this finding. If Dr. Wadhams is correct, in his prediction that the poler ice caps will melt by 2020 the earliest, then we can be in for a very wild ride as the climate changes.