Let's start with a sunflower - one that I grew myself. It's taller than me and an interesting colour. I have often played with the idea of writing something - doesn't everyone have a book inside them? Things often happen and then they are lost in the 'bustle' of everyday life. As I don't actually get the chance to talk to many people any more I thought that I would start writing things down for myself to look back at and remember what I was thinking at any one time.
What was interesting me this morning was the extent to which the Arctic sea ice has retreated this year. The details can be obtained here. It would seem that we have passed the smallest contraction point, and that is not quite the record that was reached in 2007. When graphed, it looks like this:
It can be seen from this that we didn't reach the 2007 level this year. It's still pretty low though, which means that there is definitely a North West Passage for traffic. See this BBC News report. There was some talk last year of a possibility that the Gulf Stream was beginning to fail - causing strange weather patterns here in the UK. We had the coldest winter for 30 years, and it would seem that another bad one is predicted for this year.
Some talk amongst the conspiratii of the BP disaster in the Gulf having a negative effect on the stream - or 'Thermohaline Circulation' - to give it it's proper name. If the Gulf Stream is failing then fresh water will continue downwards from the melting Arctic ice, causing the stream to drop down again sooner than it has in the past. This will open the UK to much more severe weather than it has been used to.
For much more detail on the possibilities of 'Abrupt Climate Change' see this NATO website. Although from 2005 it has a good diagram of the Thermohaline circulation. Rather worrying is paragraph 66:
"On June 16, 2005, the magazine Science published an original study funded by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Norwegian Research Council, confirming the aforementioned findings. 56 For the first time in the history of science, experts have estimated that an additional 19,000 km3 of freshwater flowed from the Arctic to the North Atlantic between 1960 and 1995, via deep currents located to the west and the east of Greenland. In a normal year, 5000 km3 of freshwater flows through these deep ocean currents. The study indicates that close to half of this additional flow occurred in the late 1960s, increasing the normal flow by over 40% to 7000 km3.57 Although there is some scientific uncertainty to be resolved in future research, the study's authors nevertheless assert that this worrisome process will likely continue. They also mentioned that, beyond a critical threshold that is difficult to identify and could be reached in the 21st century, this could disturb ocean circulation in the North Atlantic before 2200"
Later, paragraph 80 has a stark warning:
"..... the paper says that in North America, the need for better security could mean, by 2020, that the United States forms an integrated security alliance with Canada and Mexico in order to stop the flow of refugees coming from Caribbean Islands that were flooded and Europe. Finally, shortage of oil combined with decreasing temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere could trigger a military conflict in the Persian Gulf between China, India, Europe, and the United States."
The whole site has some interesting documents - not just about climate change, but also about much more diverse subjects suach as the report from this year entitled "183 PC 11 E - THE RISE OF CHINA AND POSSIBLE IMPLICATIONS FOR NATO" - that's not me shouting btw, it's them.
Enough meandering for now. Time to go and do 'stuff'.
