What is the deal with the north Atlantic drift?

User45701

Ok ive always assumed that glacier melting was causing a slowing down or else change in temperature of the drift?

i have 2 different reports here that conflict even tho they are a mere 2 months apart.

What is actually the story (sorry if this is the wrong forum)

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climatechange/story/0,,1959556,00.html

http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=20505 (Article to be released on the 1st feb)

Cheers

mike65

Heartland.org is clearly a conservative organisation (check other stories and the slant they give), I ran the story through google to see what others
were saying about this research not much can back except for this from finfacts.ie

Dr Tony Haymet, chief of Australia's CSIRO Marine Research, says most computer models show the warm currents such as the Gulf Stream weaken by 2100, but do not shut down. However, beyond 2100, the models show the the ocean conveyors could completely shut down — if warming is large enough for long enough — possibly irreversibly, in both southern and northern either hemispheres.

Abrupt climate change triggered by a Gulf Stream shutdown may seem like an issue best reserved for Hollywood, however, the scenario has been recently analysed by the US Pentagon. Analysts took a worst-case-scenario modelled on an event 8200 years ago, when the conveyor belt of deep ocean currents collapsed, causing abrupt cooling.

The report, Imagining the Unthinkable, says such an event is not likely to happen, but is nonetheless plausible. The report's authors, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, from the California-based consulting firm Global Business Network, recommended that the risk of abrupt climate change be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern.

The climate change scenario outlined in the report is modeled on a century-long climate event that records from an ice core in Greenland indicate occurred 8,200 years ago. Immediately following an extended period of warming, much like the phase we appear to be in today, there was a sudden cooling . Average annual temperatures in Greenland dropped by roughly 5° Fahrenheit (-2.8° Celsius), and temperature decreases nearly this large are likely to have occurred throughout the North Atlantic region. During the 8,200 event severe winters in Europe and some other areas caused glaciers to advance, rivers to freeze, and agricultural lands to be less productive. Scientific evidence suggests that this event was associated with, and perhaps caused by, a collapse of the ocean’s conveyor following a period of gradual warming.

Longer ice core and oceanic records suggest that there may have been as many as eight rapid cooling episodes in the past 730,000 years, and sharp reductions in the ocean conveyer--a phenomenon that may well be on the horizon – are a likely suspect in causing such shifts in climate.

Mike.