Gulf Stream 'is not slowing down'

More news from the Climate Scientists -- this time to debunk a Hollywood movie, "Day After Tomorrow" and tell the people the truth. It is pretty bad when Hollywood can make a movie and have any credibility. The only explanation we can come up with for this whole debacle was that it was a way to control the world's economy and make some people very rich in the process. If we didn't know better (actually we don't), we would say this plot on Global Warming and now the Ice Age was hatched from George Soros using Al Gore as his puppet.


If there is anyone in this Country, in addition to Joe Biden, who would be duped into being a puppet it would be Al Gore. Gore has made millions, and flies around in his own jet leaving 'carbon prints' everywhere but that is okay because it is Al Gore, the Nobel prize winner, and expert on 'Global Warming.' Gore is clueless which is beginning to look like the criteria from some of the Nobel Prize winners who are politicians. Just look at the latest Nobel Prize Winner Obama who received the prize for what he was going to do after he took office not what he had done.

All this hype about the Gulf Stream slowing down and an 'Ice Age' coming has turned out not to be true. These environmentalist wackos (Rush was right) cannot make up their mind -- one day it is Global Warming and the next day it is an Ice Age is coming. Reminds me of the children's book 'Chicken Little' and the 'Sky is Falling' except that is a book you read to children and these are grown men acting like 'Chicken Little' which is stunning. Makes you shake your head that someone like Gore was the VP and came within votes of being President in 2000! Thank you Florida!

Slowly sanity is being returned to the discussion of climate as more and more of the 'sky is falling' group of climatology scientist's theories have been debunked because they used flawed data or tweaked the data so it would fit their political agenda. Either way in the words of Senator Jim Inhofe (R-OK), it was 'Junk Science.' The findings on the Gulf Stream is just one more strike against the Al Gore and his 'Sky is Falling' scientists who put politics ahead of facts.

Gulf Stream 'is not slowing down'
By Richard Black Environment correspondent, BBC News
March 29, 2010

Data came from the global network of Argo floats in the oceans (see picture at right)

The Gulf Stream does not appear to be slowing down, say US scientists who have used satellites to monitor tell-tale changes in the height of the sea.

Confirming work by other scientists using different methodologies, they found dramatic short-term variability but no longer-term trend.

A slow-down - dramatised in the movie The Day After Tomorrow - is projected by some models of climate change.

The research is published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The stream is a key process in the climate of western Europe, bringing heat northwards from the tropics and keeping countries such as the UK 4-6C warmer than they would otherwise be.

It forms part of a larger movement of water, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, which is itself one component of the global thermohaline system of currents.

Between 2002 and 2009, the team says, there was no trend discernible - just a lot of variability on short timescales.

The satellite record going back to 1993 did suggest a small increase in flow, although the researchers cannot be sure it is significant.

"The changes we're seeing in overturning strength are probably part of a natural cycle," said Josh Willis from Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California.
"The slight increase in overturning since 1993 coincides with a decades-long natural pattern of Atlantic heating and cooling."

Short measures

The first observations suggesting the circulation was slowing down emerged in 2005, in research from the UK's National Oceanography Centre (NOC).

Using an array of detectors across the Atlantic and comparing its readings against historical records, scientists suggested the volume of cold water returning southwards could have fallen by as much as 30% in half a century - a significant decline.

The warm surface water sinks in the Arctic and flows back southwards at the bottom of the ocean, driving the circulation.

However, later observations by the same team showed that the strength of the flow varied hugely on short timescales - from one season to the next, or even shorter.
But they have not found any clear trend since 2004.

(snip)

Fantasy and reality

Driven by Hollywood, a popular image of a Gulf Stream slowdown shows a sudden catastrophic event driving snowstorms across the temperate lands of western Europe and eastern North America.

That has always been fantasy - as, said Josh Willis, is the idea that a slow-down would trigger another ice age.

"But the Atlantic overturning circulation is still an important player in today's climate," he added.

"Some have suggested cyclic changes in the overturning may be warming and cooling the whole North Atlantic over the course of several decades and affecting rainfall patterns across the US and Africa, and even the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic."

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Excerpt: Read More at BBC