Earth refuses to follow plan.

[old.Tohtori]

but N Europe will not, it will either be under water or frozen over, which ever happens first! :S

So basically Finnish winter then?

 

[Tom]

Pissing down all day up in the civilised North man.

Nice warm rain though, I went out for my bike ride and got pissed wet through, but not cold.

 

[ford prefect]

Prove to me that over the last 100 years we have had an impact on global warming. You do know that there is an Ice Age coming, that's cold, not warm!

Way before we arrived on this planet the Earth has had regular cycles. Ice Ages come and go. The Earth heats up and cools down on a cycle.

Absolutely. My point is that the climate is counter-intuitive. Ice ages typically come when the average global climate is high, which causes these warm currents to flow towards the south. Warm can and does often mean a colder (what is currently) north in climate terms, it is very counter intuitive.

 

[ford prefect]

The Gulf stream myth is another one of the green 'knowledges', look it up properly and see how much it actually counts and how numbfuckingly unlikely it is to dissapear.

The gulf stream does appear to be cooling and becoming weaker. The amount of thermal energy the stream delivers to the North is huge as is it's impact on weather. Every mathematical model of the stream show one thing - flowing north, there is too much thermal energy to allow an ice age to take place and we know they periodically do - look around you. So it can and does stop flowing north.

 

[Krazeh]

Aren't we technically in the middle of an ice age at the moment anyway? We're in an interglacial period but still in an ice age.

 

[Job]

The gulf stream does appear to be cooling and becoming weaker. The amount of thermal energy the stream delivers to the North is huge as is it's impact on weather. Every mathematical model of the stream show one thing - flowing north, there is too much thermal energy to allow an ice age to take place and we know they periodically do - look around you. So it can and does stop flowing north.

Well yes they did say that after getting results from a load of monitoring stations across the Atlantic, then a few months later they said.
'Sorry, forget that..all's OK'
The warmer climate we experience in Europe at the same latitude a Nova Scotia
is actually a lot more to do with land masses than the gulf stream.
Losing the gulf stream wouldn't cause a European ice age, though we might lose a few palm trees in Scotland.

 

[rynnor]

Ice ages typically come when the average global climate is high, which causes these warm currents to flow towards the south. Warm can and does often mean a colder (what is currently) north in climate terms, it is very counter intuitive.

I think you are confusing Ice ages and normal climactic variation. Ice Ages occur on a fixed timetable that we can observe back for millions of years that we call Milankovitch cycles. As far as we can tell Ice ages are caused by a slight eccentricity in the earths orbit.

Ice ages occur regardless of the climate - they are divorced from it but climate does effect the impact of an Ice age.

For the majority of geological history the earth has had greenhouse conditions with higher sea-levels than today and higher average temperatures - during these conditions Ice ages had little impact.

If its hot and it gets a little cooler its still hot.

At the moment and for the last 20 million years or so we have moved into Icehouse conditions - believe it or not temperatures and sea-levels are below the long term averages.

In such conditions where the earth is cool an Ice age causes massive glaciation.

As was stated above we are still in an Ice age - the interglacial is a mere pause before the glaciers return. We still have Ice at the poles - for the vast majority of geological time the poles have been Ice free.

 

[ford prefect]

No, I'm not confusing anything. My point was simple, the gulf stream provides a lot of thermal energy and salt to the northern hemisphere. During an ice age it doesn't flow as far northward. It is part of a natural cycle - over all it occurs in the warmer part of that cycle where extra heat at the equator changes the flow of the gulf stream, while increasing amounts of ice reflect heat and cool the north further. As the equator and the south cool, the stream starts to flow northward again. It is actually the increase and decrease in the amount of ice that causes the slight inclination in the earths spin causing the south to cool and the stream to move.

 

[rynnor]

It is actually the increase and decrease in the amount of ice that causes the slight inclination in the earths spin causing the south to cool and the stream to move.

Lol - where did you get that from?

And yes you were confused because you said a warm gulf stream could prevent an Ice Age - it cant - we are in one.

 

[rynnor]

Ice ages typically come when the average global climate is high

Sorry but this is nonsense - Ice Ages occur regardless of climate.

 

[ford prefect]

The Milankovitch Theory which states that there are three solar factors which effect obliquity, as well as the contributing factor of the expansion and contraction of ice sheets.

 

[rynnor]

The Milankovitch Theory which states that there are three solar factors which effect obliquity, as well as the contributing factor of the expansion and contraction of ice sheets.

Obliquity is one of the three factors orginally identified by Milankovitch along with orbital eccentricity and precession. His work was actually preceded by a scottish scientist - James Croll I believe who first spotted the regular cycles of Ice ages and proposed they were caused by changes in the earths orbit but they ended up naming them after Milankovitch.

There's actually still a lot of discussion of exactly what factors are at work because the standard theory doesnt really explain why we see such strong cycles every hundred thousand years.

I have observed these cycles myself in the chalk - you get a harder layer with more clay minerals (what we term a marl) approximately every 2.5m which translates to approx 100,000 years. In some places on the south coast its even more obvious with chert layers at these points in the chalk that stick out like a sore thumb.

 

[Job]

I think the problem is measurement shock.
This is the phenomenon that occurs when scientists actually get to measure something they thought they had quite good handle on and then found out it was way out of their theories.

Some years ago they sent a probe, Ulysses I think, to measure the Suns various outputs, they turned it on and in a few days an immense solar storm rushed past the probe and it sent the data back faster than the wave, so they had time to react.
They fruckin sheet themselves and rushed out a warning that all the satellites were going to fry and power would collapse all over the world and the ozone layer would be blown away.
Of course nothing happened, it was a normal event.

 

[ford prefect]

Job, The earths reaction to solar storms and Coronal Mass Ejections is largely dependant on the earths magnetic field. In general it is extremely good at it's job, although it has been noted in the past decade or so that it has the odd hole in it and is getting slightly weaker, but that is a whole different cycle - still meaningful though, as when the earths magnetic field flips as it periodically does, it is thought that it causes a whole host of environmental events - including damage to the ozone layer as it has much more work to do during that event.

 

[Job]

Well yes, but that wasn't my point.
It seems the whole green movement is intent on keeping things as they are, re introducing the Ladybird spider just recently for one. Trying to keep a status quo on something that has been changed by man to it's 'natural' state over and over again.
The English countryside, which is totally produced by farmers and livestock, wheat, tomatoes, bananas, turnips, lettuce, cows, sheep, pigs..etc, all of them grossly distorted from their natural state by genetic engineering.
There is NOTHING organic you can buy that hasn't been totally morphed by man into a bulbous impractical freakshow of itself and we call them natural products.

 

[old.Tohtori]

Anyone who thinks little microbes cause one ball they sit on, in a HUGE space filled with radiations, ice clouds and water spurting black holes,to become XYZ, is a bit silly.