Brrrr it's getting cold. The curious prediction of the effects of the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Disaster.



http://www.infiniteunknown.net/2010/09/1...urrent-is-gone/

Well, at least we don't have to worry about Global Warming.

HJ

You know, I'd be more concerned when this story hits more credible sources. Using "It is likely", "effectively means," "helped to effectively hide," and "my own anonymous whistleblowers" don't exactly fill me with confidence that this author is a well respected authority in the topic. And how is PHRASECENSOREDPOSTERSHOULDKNOWBETTER. responsible for this?

Granted, his arguments make a certain kind of sense. But, even if the current is truly destroyed, I doubt it'll stay that way. Given the amount of heat put into the carribean and tropics, the water will likely warm up, start moving, and maybe resume it's path, effectively recreating the current we all know and love (numerous vague phrases added for shock value)

Of course, if I'm wrong, it'll be interesting how this plays out against global warming!

I would feel better about any veracity this story might hold if it presented more data, instead of what are essentially conclusions - perhaps in a refereed journal (I can dream, can't I?). It would also help if the author would hold off on the overt politicization of the subject.

Not saying he might not be on to something - I am still skeptical. But if he is right, I won't have nearly as far to drive to encounter good skiing.

He lost credibility when he started talking about catechisms. (I think he means cataclysms). Although if he's right, maybe we'll all be down at the local church taking catechism.

HJ

There have been in the past periods of unexplained Abrupt Climate Shift. The only way to explain them was if there was a rapid change in the planetary thermohaline circulation. Perhaps there has always been a suspicion that earthquake induced releases of oil from sub sea oil bearing rocks in the right place could disrupt the circulation. Whether or not the jolt to the system results in a equilibrium state of a radically different state of circulation is of course conjecture, but the historical record does point to rapid temperature shifts in the time space of less than 10 years. Some have even speculated even a couple of weeks. i.e. it gets substantially hotter or colder and just remains that way for the next few thousand years. It is extremely difficult to model non linear and heterogeneous systems especially with regard to the interaction of the climate and the heat flows within the world oceans.

Lose the gulf stream and the east coast gets a lot colder, Greenland freezes up, England goes from rainy to frosty, Europe gets colder. It would be a serious disruption. But given the source there is little reason to think it has gone that far.

There are credible sources that are well documented, peer reviewed in established journals, that show the flow has been slowing for a long time. Many highlight the expected climatic changes such a loss would be caused by the Gulf stream stopping. Essentially the Gulf and areas near the equator get hotter and the North Atlantic gets colder.

The survival aspects of this comes down to the short term changes with the East coast being hotter in summer and colder in winter with more sudden ice storms and blizzards. The Gulf coast and a fair distance inland along the Mississippi watershed, might be hotter and dryer. Longer heatwaves and more droughts. If there is less rain in the Midwest barge traffic may not have enough water to move. Florida will be between the colder Atlantic and the hotter Gulf. I would suspect it would be hotter and wetter, more tropical. Long term the most practical way to cope will be to move.

Bottom line is that if climate change goes far enough we could lose the Gulf stream and see large shifts in climate that will prove inconvenient and disruptive. this wouldn't alter the degree of global warming. The total amount of energy remains the same, just redistributed differently.

That said, there is little credible evidence here that it has happened, or will happen any time soon.

I have a M.sci in Meteorology and I am working towards earning a Ph.D in Oceanography. My junk-o-meter was triggered after reading 3 lines. Reading 5 more lines confirmed that this is nothing but hysteria.

Right now it has been unusually cold in Europe, but it is still within the normal variations of the climate system. Did the North East Atlantic drift stop the last time we had such a cold spell? No.

And Europe is not the world. This cold spell does not cover the entire hemisphere. Au contraire, lots of places at the northern part of this globe have higher temperature than usual.

Last winter it was colder than usual in Northern Europe. Globally, it was warmer than usual.

Dr. Gianluigi Zangari also has a Phd and has produced this document;

http://www.associazionegeofisica.it/OilSpill.pdf

If I can ask, what set off your junk-o-meter?

The BP oil disaster certainly wasn't as initially disastrous as the Clovis comet, which has some substantial evidence to conclude resulted in the Younger Dryas i.e. speculated that this event contributed to the closing down of the North Atlantic Gulf Stream of the worlds Thermohaline Circulation System.

Claim 1: He claims a casual link between the oil disaster in the Gulf and the supposedly shutdown of one of this planets main heat redistribution mechanism.

He is rather vague when it comes to the detail of exactly HOW what in this context is an insignificant amount of oil in a huge ocean can impact the loop current and subsequently the Gulf Stream and NE Atlantic drift. Apart from a simple bath tub experiment - which absolutely does not scale to mesoscale or planetary scale dynamics - he offers no insight to WHY the presence of oil should affect ocean dynamics in any way at all.

In short, this claim seems like simple and plain bogus.


Claim 2: What HE and his friend proposes as a shutdown of those currents seems to me to be ordinary dynamics. Currents in the open ocean aren't steady rivers - they meander and create eddies that isolate themselves from the main current. The currents wary in strength and position from one week to the next, from one month to the next and from one year to the next. Exactly like his images show.

I am absolutely no expert on neither the Loop Current, the Gulf Stream nor the NE Atlantic drift - but I can tell you for a fact that the leading experts have been scrutinizing the Gulf area since April 2010. They are as interested as anyone else as to where this oil will go (Or what's left of it - most of it is probably broken down by now, although there is some uncertainty about the breakdown rate in deeper parts of the ocean) If what he has found really is so abnormal then that will surely be spotted and reported by every single expert on the Gulf stream / Loop current. So far, no one but him has reported anything out of the ordinary. At least I've not heard of any such studies. And neither has he - or he would refer to them, wouldn't he?


Further, he writes "since comparatively analysis with past satellite data didn't show relevant anomalies" . The "didn't show relevant anomalies"-filter seems rather vague and subjective. Frankly, I believe it means that he didn't immediately see anything he didn't want to see when quickly browsing through the pictures.


Third: Right now, the cold spell over Northern Europe is not linked to anything out of the ordinary in the ocean dynamics of the Atlantic ocean. Nor was the cold spell of last winter.


In summary: If something sounds too extraordinary to be true - it usually is bogus.

For honing your skills when it comes to separating bogus from real info I highly recommend "Bad Science" by Ben Goldacre. Google "bad science" and the first link is Goldacre's web site, the second to Amazon selling his book.