The Train You Probably Couldn't Stop.

Climate change catastrophe took just months

Six months is all it took to flip Europe’s climate from warm and sunny into the last ice age, researchers have found.

They have discovered that the northern hemisphere was plunged into a big freeze 12,800 years ago by a sudden slowdown of the Gulf Stream that allowed ice to spread hundreds of miles southwards from the Arctic.

Previous research had suggested the change might have taken place over a longer period — perhaps about 10 years.

The article continues:

“It would have been very sudden for those alive at the time,” said William Patterson, a geological sciences professor at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, who carried out the research. “It would be the equivalent of taking Britain and moving it to the Arctic over the space of a few months.”

His findings, published at a recent conference, reinforce a series of studies suggesting that the earth’s climate is highly unstable and can flip between warm and cold very rapidly with the right trigger.

Six months is pretty amazing.

It really means that such events are difficult, if not impossible, to prepare for.

i wonder how intense the rapid ice age was?
did it go gradually or did it go from driving on pavement to driving on permanent ice roads within that 6 months?
very interesting.

talk about change.

Now that is very interesting. Why would the jet stream suddenly slow down?

My far out supposition...Perhaps a huge planet sized mother ship UFO entered into the Earths lower stratosphere and blocked the jet stream.

Far fethched you say...maybe not considering how huge those mother ships are that we have seen in those STS videos.

Maybe planet X is really a huge planet sized ship that suddenly appeared over Earth and causing the little ice age.



[edit on 16-11-2009 by skepticantiseptic]

Six months!?! That's amazing! Maybe it was all that 'blooming algae' that we keep seeing/hearing so much about. Maybe something like that slowed down the jet stream, or maybe blooming algae was a sign or precurser before the event. I'm just talking out of my butt right now, but you never know. Nobody really knows until it happens. Great thread.

It's all just opinions...

I think he said Gulf Stream, not Jet Stream, water not air. In order to slow down or change the Gulf Stream, all you have to do is increase the amount of cold fresh water flowing into the northern Atlantic ocean. The cold fresh water being denser could produce a moving wall of very deep water, thereby deflecting the Gulf Stream. All you have to do is quickly melt the caps, and walah, they freeze up again starting a 1000 miles south in Europe.

I wonder what the price of land is going to be like, South of the Tropic of Cancer in a few years?

Cheers - Dave

PS. Gazerstar, nothing disintegrates into nothing, since it was nothing to begin with. Something cannot disintegrate into nothing as at least one of the laws of conservation would have to be violated. You might want to change that sig, it's worded rather oddly.

[edit on 11/16.2009 by bobs_uruncle]

[edit on 11/16.2009 by bobs_uruncle]

Yaaa it's justa= a freight train comin your wayyy hey hey.
You think about it, and six months to deep freeze? I agree with the analogy.
SnF
The image is gripping.

[edit on 16-11-2009 by randyvs]

reply to post by bobs_uruncle

Originally posted by bobs_uruncle
It's all just opinions...

Actually, this conclusion is based on some pretty sound science.

The new description, reminiscent of the Hollywood blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, emerged from one of the most painstaking studies of past climate changes yet attempted.

...

Most such research is based on analysing cores drilled from ice or from the sediment found at the bottom of oceans or lakes. In such cores the ice or sediment is found in layers whose composition shows what the climate was like at the time they were laid down.

Ice cores drilled from the Greenland ice cap have already shown that the big freeze of 12,800 years ago — known as the Younger Dryas mini-ice age — happened fast but lacked the detail to pin it down precisely.

Patterson, however, obtained mud deposits from Lough Monreagh, a lake in western Ireland, a region he says has “the best mud in the world in scientific terms”.

Patterson used a precision robotic scalpel to scrape off layers of mud just 0.5mm thick.Each layer represented three months of sediment deposition, so variations between them could be used to measure changes in temperature over very short periods.

Patterson found that temperatures had plummeted, with the lake’s plants and animals rapidly dying over just a few months. The subsequent mini-ice age lasted for 1,300 years.

ppl pleaSE ALEST reaD the post befor u type its says quot un quote THE GULF STREAM Slowed down ) Gulf stream is an ocean current and is falling apart now because of the massive influx of freash water from the none excistance green house effect thats not melting all the ice.
the jet stream is (the is the wromng word here theres more then 1 jet tsream )
a air current that circels the planet moving at 200 mph pluse .