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To: blam
I first read of the scientific speculation that the Gulf Stream could shut down in the mid 1980’s when the first mumblings of Global warming began to circulate. The argument is that the thermocline which powers the down-welling of the current in the upper latitudes will be shut down by the lowered salinity of the Arctic Ocean from melting sea ice.

That was at least 24 years ago.

Now I will concede that there has been considerable Arctic ice melting in this time frame, yet we see no abatement of the Gulf Stream flow. Nor will we, given the current rate of melting, as it is all things considered, incremental, not catastrophic. A catastrophic event in the past, is not evidence of a catastrophic result from incremental events today.

13 posted on 12/07/2007 4:41:28 PM PST by mission9 (It ain't bragging if you can do it.)
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To: mission9

“Catastrophic” could also be an event such as a prolonged solar flare, quickly warming the Earth by seveal degrees, not, as we have today, by hundredths of a degree.

Or, there could be another volcano such as Krakatoa in the late 1800s...


15 posted on 12/07/2007 4:51:17 PM PST by Redbob
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To: mission9; Publius6961
I’ll grant the “accuracy” of the flood 8000 years ago (8000 BC probably - 10000 before present perhaps is what should have been written. Further, a sudden release of melt water from behind glacier-plugged regions is plausible, and does explain many features in the land. (Not ancient Flood legends though - that'd be more likely from tales about a comet strike off Madagascar about 12,000 year-ago.

The absolute error - the unpardonable error that exposes this story as a fraudulent exaggeration - is PROJECTING the sudden flood by melting ICE AGE glaciers to a future melting of today’s glaciers, thereby creating a second flood and a second stopping of the Gulf Stream.

The Ice Age “lake” impounded by glacier dams simply are NOT present right now. There is NO WAY to have that much water released, nor that much melted. It CANNOT happen -> The Gulf Stream CANNOT stop again.

Never mind that we have seen only a 1/2 of one degree rise over 27 years - and that supposed global warming itself has “stopped” from 1997 though 2007: there has been NO rise in temperature for 10 of the past 36 years!

So, even assuming that temps rise again, sudden melting is irrelevant to today’s political discussions about raising taxes on the US to fund corrupt dictators in the UN and socialist Europe (er, Russia.)

50 posted on 12/08/2007 7:59:40 PM PST by Robert A Cook PE (I can only donate monthly, but Hillary's ABBCNNBCBS continue to lie every day!)
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