History Forum / General / British History / January 2004

Interesting NYT Op-Ed piece....

BUT we need to hear reputable scientists confirm all this fellow Epstein
says here before we accept it as Ground Truth.

AND we need to hear it in something more solid than an Op-Ed article.

THEN the question becomes ---- what are the tradeoffs in various
scenarios AND what do we do?

D. Spencer Hines

Lux et Veritas et Libertas

Vires et Honor
---------------------

January 28, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
"Global Chilling"
By PAUL R. EPSTEIN
The New York Times

"BOSTON — It seemed incongruous when former Vice President Al Gore gave
a speech on global warming on a bitterly cold day in New York City this
month.  But in fact it was an appropriate topic: New Yorkers may be able
to blame the city's current cold spell — the most severe in nearly a
decade — on global warming.

Global warming doesn't mean that every place on the globe gets warmer.
The weather history that can be read in polar ice-core samples indicates
that previous periods of warming affected North America and Europe far
differently than they did the tropics — the Northern Hemisphere got a
lot colder.

It's far too early to say for sure, but the same processes may be at
work today.

The operative words there are "It's far too early to say for
sure..." ---- DSH

In the past 50 years, the top two miles of the world's oceans have
warmed significantly, and that warming is melting sea ice.  In just four
decades, the thickness of summer North Polar floating ice shrank 44
percent.  In addition, warming makes droughts drier and longer, and when
the evaporated water returns to earth it does so in heavier downpours.

Normally, water circulates in the North Atlantic like this: Cold, salty
water at the top sinks; that sinking water acts as a pump, pulling warm
Gulf Stream water north and thus moderating winter weather.  But now,
fresh water from the thawing ice and heavier rain is accumulating near
the ocean's surface; it's not sinking as quickly.  (The tropics are
faced with the opposite phenomenon.  According to Dr. Ruth Curry and her
colleagues at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the tropical
Atlantic is becoming saltier; as warming increases, so does evaporation,
which leaves behind salt.)

The "freshening" in the North Atlantic may be contributing to a
high-pressure system that is accelerating trans-Atlantic winds and
deflecting the jet stream — changes that may be driving frigid fronts
down the Eastern Seaboard. The ice-core records demonstrate that the
North Atlantic can freshen to a point where the deep-water pump fails,
warm water stops coming north, and the northern ocean suddenly freezes,
as it did in the last Ice Age.  No one can say if that is what will
happen next.  But since the 1950's, the best documented deep-water pump,
between Iceland and Scotland, has slowed 20 percent.

Why now?  After all, the planet's previous periods of global warming
resulted from changes in the earth's tilt toward the sun, and recent
calculations of these cycles indicate that our hospitable climate was
not due to have ended any time soon.  But because of the warming brought
by the buildup of carbon dioxide, mainly from the burning of fossil
fuels, the equations have changed.  We are entering uncharted waters.
It's something for New Yorkers to ponder as they bundle up."

"Paul R. Epstein is associate director of the Center for Health and the
Global Environment at Harvard Medical School."

DSH