🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1991Jan8.021432.29602@amd.com>, phil@brahms.amd.com (Phil Ngai) writes:
%This is a good occasion for me to comment that James Burke (whom
%I used to respect) just did a show "After the Warming" where he
%basically assumes that global warming is a proven fact and
%extrapolates the results.

Actually, the show is a two-part show, with each part running one
hour.  The first part is purely historical.  Everything mentioned
in it did happen or is happening.  The second part is indeed an
extrapolation, assuming that mild global warming does occur.

%One of his claims is that right now the global ocean currents,
%of which the Gulf Stream is a part, has sea water evaporating
%in the Atlantic and sinking from getting much saltier and heavier
%and then traveling near the bottom for a while, during which
%time it deposits a lot of CO2 (presumably in the form of carbonates).

This claim is well-accepted today among scientists.  A recent
_Smithsonian_ had a diagram of the current in an article about
global warming.  The article, incidentally, presented both sides
of the picture.

The ocean can only pick up a certain amount of CO2 at the surface.
Because there is usually little mixing of top layer and bottom layer
water, the CO2 doesn't get to the bottom quickly unless there's
a current carrying it.  Thus, if you slow the current down, less
CO2 is dragged to the bottom.

%He says that global warming will melt the ice caps and make the
%sea water much less salty, preventing it from sinking and therefore
%make the CO2 disposal problem much worse.

And you don't believe that this will happen?  As another post mentions,
the Gulf Stream was slowed greatly near the end of the last ice age.
Lake Agassiz, a large lake in central North America, was rerouted
(by moving ice) to spill into the northern Gulf Stream.  Within 70
years, the climate had changed by about 10 degrees F because the
Gulf Stream was no longer warming the land masses around the North
Atlantic.  This is pretty good proof that diluting the Gulf Stream
with fresh water will decrease the amount of water moved in the
Gulf Stream.

ethan
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ethan miller--cs grad student   elm@sprite.berkeley.edu
#include <std/disclaimer.h>     {...}!ucbvax!sprite!elm
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