Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Good news or not - you decide

Global Warming - North Atlantic Current - Scientists Back Off Theory of a Colder Europe in a Warming World - New York Times

The headline there says it all - but here's more detail from the article:

Mainstream climatologists who have feared that global warming could have the paradoxical effect of cooling northwestern Europe or even plunging it into a small ice age have stopped worrying about that particular disaster, although it retains a vivid hold on the public imagination...

Not only is northern Europe warming, but every major climate model produced by scientists worldwide in recent years has also shown that the warming will almost certainly continue.

“The concern had previously been that we were close to a threshold where the Atlantic circulation system would stop,” said Susan Solomon, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “We now believe we are much farther from that threshold, thanks to improved modeling and ocean measurements. The Gulf Stream and the North Atlantic Current are more stable than previously thought.”

I sort of liked the irony of global warming causing Europe to turn to ice. But now I will just have to settle for wine production in Scotland and Norway, or some such.

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