Gulf Stream will stop

[Celebration]

This was posted in GD earlier, but it gets lost there. This makes mainstream news--only in Europe, or CNN International. WTF? In honor of our alternative press, and because he wrote a book about it, here is a link to Whitley Strieber's website

http://www.unknowncountry.com/news/?id=4595

"Scientists from Cambridge University have confirmed that the Gulf Stream is weakening, and this is likely to bring much colder temperatures to Europe within a few years. The weakening is significant: the Gulf Stream is flowing at a quarter of the strength that was present five years ago.
This is happening because gigantic chimneys of cold water that were sinking from the surface to the sea bed off Greenland have disappeared. These chimneys are the key engine of world climate as we know it today, and their disappearance signals the beginning of a great catastrophe. There will be a special report about this important story on this week's Dreamland!

This is the first research to show unequivocal evidence of the phenomenon, which was originally predicted in the Coming Global Superstorm, published in 1999.

In Superstorm and in the film based on it, the Day After Tomorrow, the event unfolds over the course of a week. The Cambridge scientists are predicting now that there will be clear water at the North Pole as early as 2020, and that temperatures in Britain are likely to drop by 5-8 degrees Celsius, from an average of 22 at present to 14 to 17 in the future. An average as low as 17 (62 Fahrenheit) will mean that the summer growing season will be catastrophically curtailed in Europe, leading to huge declines in production from one of the world's primary surplus production zones."

[Dogmudgeon]

1. Original Times Article

Some people react violently when the demonic name of Whitley Strieber is invoked; so, here's the link to the original article in the Times:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1602579,00.html

The theoretical work goes back to the 1970s; the observations by Prof. Wadhams are the first of which I'm aware to actually confirm the theories through direct observation. (One-off observations have been accumulating for years, but have never been definitive.)

--p!

[Celebration]

2. you are right!!

I linked there to show the irony of it--we can't find this in the large mainstream press here, but have to depend on Whitley Strieber, who has been abducted and made money off it--who coauthors books with the likes of Art Bell. This is a very strange situation.

Also, I like a little violence--so my link was partially motivated by the passive aggressive portion of my personality. Hey, I like Whitley--he lived around the block from me growing up.

[Dogmudgeon]

3. I, too, like Whitley ...

I may not believe every word he sets to paper, but I think he's honest, even when he's writing about things that may not exist in consensus reality, like his UFO experiences.

"Violent" is a colorful description, but the Strieber-haters certainly do not actually beat up people. (OK, maybe Penn Jillette does.) But when The Day After Tomorrow hit the newswires, every other report on the movie used Skep rhetoric and dismissed "the Science".

As it turns out, "the Science" is pretty solid; the movie accelerated the scenario for dramatic effect, just like Superstorm did. Still, "abrupt climate change" means a period of about 5-20 years, which would be fast enough to put a major crimp in the Westminster Dog Show's scheduling.

I don't dislike Art Bell, either. He's a showman who's taken just a sip of his own Kool-Aid, which lends him an air of authenticity (or is that paranoia?). Speaking of culinary metaphors, it's like Ram Dass' first acid trip when he was still Dick Alpert, PhD. A bottle of vanilla extract smelled so good, he took a sip of it, and spat it out, learning the psychedelic lesson "just because it smells good doesn't mean you have to drink it".

--p!

[Pepperbelly]

4. actually ... things DO seem to be accelerating ...

at least in how quickly the stream is losing its punch.

[Celebration]

7. one supposed effect is

Hurricanes marching across the Atlantic, like a daisy chain. That is according to the interview with Strieber. I am giving him credit not for inventing the idea, but for being slightly ahead of the curve and popularizing it--also for forecasting the rapidity of the change. As far as I am concerned, the jury is still out as to whether we could have a sudden and unpredicted superstorm due to all this. The most that we can say is that it hasn't happened yet and that most scientists are highly skeptical. What seems certain is the eventual complete stopping of the Gulf Stream, as one consequence builds on another. I know this happened when the dinosaurs vanished. Does this happen with every ice age? We might as well ask these questions here and speculate-- apparently it is off topic for what is called "news" these days.

[Celebration]

6. Art Bell

GREAT show with Bruce Lipton (love that guy) last night if you have Streamlink. He also had Whitley on for the first hour which reminded me about the Gulf Stream (which was another reason for using that link).

[mcscajun]

5. "...react violently when the...name of Whitley Streiber is invoked..."

Yeah, I'm one of those. I read his book "Communion" when it first came out in paperback, and was prepared to believe his "true-life story". The writing was detailed and absorbing, until I got to the last part, when he basically turns everything you've read so far on its head. I felt taken, like a rube at the state fair arcade.

I will never, ever, EVER buy anything written by this guy or give credence to what he says unless three other reputable sources I trust are saying the exact same thing.

All that said, I do give credence to the original news article in the Times on the subject at hand.

[Pepperbelly]

8. check this out ...

before declaring yourself a rube.

http://www.unknowncountry.com/edge/articles/tests.phtml

[mcscajun]

14. Unknown Country is Streiber's own site...

...why should that provide any more credence to the man? I see the documents he provides, but they're all on his own site. I'd like to see some other skeptic or independent weigh in before I believe another word out of the man.

[Pepperbelly]

15. suit yourself ...

What you believe won't affect anyone but you. But at this point, the documents that I cited are the only ones that have been provided regarding his credibility.

[Dogmudgeon]

9. That's pretty intense for a book

My own approach is to accept people's stories but reserve judgement. I've had a few intense experiences that have defied easy explanation myself, but I've never really liked betting the farm on them.

I don't quite understand what that last part of Communion was, though. The part that had you feeling like a rube.

Dealing with paranormal experiences is difficult for anyone, though they have been part of life as long as people have been around. We're fortunate to live in an era where we are finally getting a few, tentative answers to a couple of our age-old questions. For example, Michael Persinger's work with geomagnetic activity on the brain as a cause of UFO experiences, especially group experiences (Fatima and other group BVM apparitions may also be part of this effect).

As to the climate thing, I was surprised, too, to see "Whit and Art" take the initiative to publicize it; but I was also hopeful, since the possible impending onset of the next ice age was largely being ignored.

The scientist who really did the first, major, groundbreaking (or is that icebreaking?) work on it is Wallace Broecker, from Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia. Broecker was the guy who also enlightened Al Gore on the problem of abrupt climate change. One of his granddaughters is a Democratic activist and posts here regularly.

Robert Gagosian, at Woods Hole, has also assembled an impressive team of scientists. It's not as if this is a recently discovered possibility. But, sadly, the Powers That Be are so concerned with their ability to have a free hand in the business world that it's a case of Planet Be Damned. Only in this case, it will be by ice, and not by fire.

--p!

[mcscajun]

13. It's been many long years since "Communion" came out...

...and I no longer have my copy. If you have yours, then just flip to the back of the book. You'll find the passage where he basically disclaims the 'true story' there, and leaves the whole question open of whether it happened or not.

[Celebration]

16. cognitive dissonance?

I am pretty sure the whole thing freaked him out and he was actually wanting a scientific explanation for it all. He has since embraced the experience he had as factual--he gave the reasons for that but I forget what they were at this point. Not saying he is correct about it, but his current take on his whole experience is that all this stuff happened to his physical body.

[gate of the sun]

10. I read Whitley Striber's book about the coming superstorm

about 5 years ago. I found it in a Moab Utah Library. I decided to read it and well, it freaked me out as impossible as the story sounded. Now it looks as though the possibility exists.......and the situation is lining up maybe not for the big disaster he wrote about but a scenario none of us are really looking forward to. It's kind of a waste of time to worry too much because at this point we can't stop whatever is going to happen slow or sudden. A drastic change in the weather is going to change the world. Maybe it needs to happen, I don't know but we (us humans) have had a big hand in whatever is coming our way.

[unhappycamper]

11. Three really good books on the subject:

Frozen Earth by Doug MacDougal
The Two-Mile Time Machine by Richard Alley
The Little Ice Age by Brian Fagan

These books put forth a pretty good argument that we've been in a warm spell for the last 14,000 years or so. The Gulf Stream mechanics are explained very well, as is the North Atlantic Oscillation.

[Pepperbelly]

12. It is NOW that this is occurring ... check out Howe's report ...

She interviews Peter Wadhams, Ph.D., Prof. of Ocean Physics and Head of Polar Ocean Physics Group (POPG), University of Cambridge, England.

http://www.earthfiles.com/news/news.cfm?ID=910&category=Environment

[BeFree]

17. Cool.. or maybe not so cool?

Another fine mess, eh? Good reading and fascinating theories going on here, thanks!

BTW: I used to be able to access this site that has great color graphics of Sea Temps around the world:
https://www.fnmoc.navy.mil/PUBLIC/OTIS/otis.html
but now all I get is CLASSIFIED, ya think the pentagon is hiding something from us?

[Media_Lies_Daily]

18. Here are some other sea temp links....

<http://www.maineharbors.com/weather/seatemp.htm>

<http://uk.weather.com/maps/lifestyles/intlboatingandbeach/europecurrentseasurfacetemps_large.html>

<http://marine.rutgers.edu/mrs/sat_data/?product=sst¬humbs=0>

<http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/meansst.shtml>

<http://www.oceanweather.com/data/Global/sst.html>