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Thom's blog
When is the next ice age?
Remember the blockbuster hit The Day After Tomorrow? Well, thanks to climate change, that doomsday scenario could become reality, albeit a bit more slowly than in the movie.
Back in 2004, I wrote a piece for Common Dreams, where I talked about the possibility of the Gulf Stream slowing or shutting down, and the resulting chaos that would cause.
The Gulf Stream is a very powerful and warm Ocean current that runs from the Pacific, around the coast of Africa, and all the way up the Atlantic to the region just off Greenland and northern Europe.
It influences the weather and climate all the way from Africa to North America to Europe.
Basically, if you look at a globe, you'll see that the latitude of much of Europe and Scandinavia is the same as that of Alaska and permafrost-locked parts of northern Canada and central Siberia.
But, Europe has a climate that's more similar to that of the central United States than northern Canada or Siberia. So why is that?
It's all because of the Gulf Stream.
The Gulf Stream brings warm surface ocean waters up from the Pacific, around Africa, and up through the equator into northern regions of the globe that otherwise would be so cold that even in the summer they'd be trapped in ice.
If it were to stop flowing - to stop bringing all that heat to the northern hemisphere, much of Europe would have the climate of Alaska.
And now, scientists are suggesting that because of climate change and global warming, the Gulf Stream is indeed slowing down.
What I hinted at back in 2004 may be becoming reality, and that's really bad news for our planet.
-Thom
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