The North Atlantic Current Is Gone

[mesocyclone]

Every single video/article i have come across claiming the gulf stream has stopped/weakened significantly due to B.P is a repeat of one source. There is only one source i can find for this suggestion, about ten thousand websites carrying the same story though!

The source is

"Dr. Gianluigi Zangari of the Research Division of the National Institute of Nuclear Physics at Frascati National Laboratories in Italy"

Now when you Google this you will get all the same reports, if there is anything to this the authority of this scientist needs to be confirmed. Frascati National Laboratories exist however when i search the Dr's name it come up with no results.??

Dig deeper into who this scientist is before believing what he says. If anyone finds anything report it in this thread.

I would say there will be repercussions from the B.P disaster but what they are will take a lot longer to find out and most importantly prove.

It can't be forgotten the salinity tests done several years back which gave alarming results.

[WaitingForMackerel]

I could not agree more mesocyclone.

I have been digging for at least an hour trying to find anything about Tim Alexander "The Lord of Stirling". With statements like he made in that video i assumed he would be a reputable climate scientist.

I have found virtually nothing of real use about him. There are only a few references which are not links to articles from his website and most of them are forum posts much like here. One interesting hit was on a wikipedia disscusstion page which seems to be debateing weather he should be named as the current holders of the 20 or so titles he claims to hold. He has about 10 degrees in various disaplines none of which look like climate science.

I would treat everything he says with a bucket of salt.

He does seem to be a lover of the conspiracy theories, which worries me. I feel conspiracy theorists have made their mind up before they have seen all of the evidence and will point blank refute any evidence contrary to their belief.

Maybe some of the science he talks about is correct, but i always like the saying that even a broken clock is right twice a day.

My opinion , He is a Charlatan.

This link is worth a look at

My link

Edited December 28, 2010 by Treiagonaut

[mesocyclone]

Yes such a shame so many people fail to research the source of the information and take blindly what people say. I'm not saying this scientist isn't correct but if i was on a jury i know my decision so far.

A world full of deceit I find the conspiracy field which is such a shame a there is many truths to be told among it. Needle in a hay stack come to mind though.

We shall continue watching the SST and see if he was indeed onto something. I wish some of the sites putting this out would actually give some more information on sources, they are very wild claims, you need extra support for them in my mind.

[Alan Robinson]

Perhaps technology has changed, but I remember having a nasty spill of heavy fuel oil at the quayside of the shipyard where I worked some 25 years ago. We managed to contain much of it, but some was swept away by current. The local authorities went bananas, and a dispersant was used to deal with what we couldn't mop up. I was told that dispersants coagulate the oil so it sinks to the bottom, where it is thought to do less harm. Out of sight, out of mind i suppose. Over time, the heavy oil balls are thought to degrade and simply disappear somehow. Now of course, this is just a case of sweeping dirt under the carpet, and some oil will inevitably be released, and gently rise to the surface, though I can't say how much. In the BP Mexican Gulf case, I'd say there is every reason to believe that some oil residue is already in the Atlantic. On the other hand, though I haven't done Earl Stirling's "first year university physics" experiment, I very much doubt the presence of oil will have any significant effect on the boundary between warm and cold ocean currents. There is a huge scale difference between a glass tank in a schoolroom and the North Atlantic Ocean, and this scale difference is of tremendous importance. Small models behave quite differently to their full-sized counterparts. For example, a 1 metre long model of the largest tank ships is virtually useless for predicting the propulsive power required, and a six metre long model is of far greater use. Even then, it takes a long debated formula to make the six metre model data useful for a 350m long tank ship.

Incidentally, I am a great believer in evidence, and I have had interesting discussions with a keen student of philosophy about metaphysics versus logical positivism. Philosophy used to be the father of all science, but fortunately for us, the child has left home and become of age. Consequently, I am all for evidence and verification, and I have little patience with speculative baloney. This attempt to predict the future by subjective study of water and currents is the divination technique called bletonism. In this connection, let me quote from The Mariner's Handbook, sixth edition, which is the Admiralty's core volume of a collection of publications that describe both the world's oceans and coastal waters for the use of mariners. The information contained has been gathered over centuries by eye witnesses. Concerning ocean surface currents:

"4.20, it is emphasised that ocean currents undergo a continuous process of change throughout the year. .........Over by far the greater part of all oceans, the individual currents experienced in a given region are variable, in many cases so variable that on different occasions currents may be observed to set in most, or all directions................The constancy of the principal currents varies to some extent in different seasons and in different parts of the current. It is usually about 50 to 75 per cent, and rarely exceeds 85 per cent, and then only in limited areas. Current variability is mainly due to the variation of wind strength and direction."

I have misplaced my copy of Ocean Passages for the World, but that excellent companion to The Mariner's Handbook contains a very fine description of the Gulf Stream and North Atlantic currents, dating way back to the days of sailing ships trading with the Far East and Chile. The Gulf Stream is very variable, and people have known these things for donkey's years.

This media stir about the gulf Stream dying is nothing more than irresponsible scaremongering, unless accompanied by indisputable evidence that oil has broken down the boundary layer between warm and cool currents, thus significantly altering for a long period the natural flow of the ocean. I can put up with metaphysical speculation, but the cynic in me thinks this whole business is about $$$$$$$$$$$$.

Edited December 30, 2010 by Alan Robinson

[mesocyclone]

This media stir about the gulf Stream dying is nothing more than irresponsible scaremongering, unless accompanied by indisputable evidence that oil has broken down the boundary layer between warm and cool currents, thus significantly altering for a long period the natural flow of the ocean

Great post Alan.

Could not agree more with this part. I have also noticed the data being used showing the N.A.D have been different, one at the surface and one 200m deep. Obviously a big difference and a nice trick to convince people who will not dig further. I do believe there has been and will be many negative impacts from B.P's irresponsibility, but shutting down the N.A.D I am not convinced on.

However, back to the N.A.D, many papers where published regarding salinity testing a few years back. All pointed to a slowing in strength. Here's a link to the BBC Horizon program which is now in full text.

My link

[WaitingForMackerel]

Been doing some more reading on this.

Trying to get a handle on whether Lord Stirlings claims are possible.

First of all he should be banging on about the direct ecological impact of the dispersants. They sound nasty to say the least. It sounds like it is better if they are not used, we would have to put up with seeing the oil, but it would overall be less damaging.

I have read that numerous plumes of oil have been discovered, at a variety of depths, sizes and locations. Not all of these can be attributed to the BP oil spil, some are from from oil that naturally leaks out from the sea bed and i assuue other are from previous spills. Results from testing found a density of 0.5 ppm in the water column. Nowhere is their accurate data about the gulf current depths and speeds. As has been covered pretty well earlier, they vary and move.

The gulf current looks very unstable to my eyes, with the eddies forming and breaking off of the main current periodically. This is truly a dynamic system and is never in a fixed equilibrim state. With that i find it hard to belive that a plume of oil could dramatically effect the state of the current, especially plumes that could have been their for many years. There is a massive amount of water moving, with a huge amount of momentum, driven externally by the trade winds. The gulf loop is created as a result of water flowing in to the gulf of mexico, so to stop the current the energy source would have to be cut off. The breaking of the gulf loop in june probably served to actually reduce the amount of polluted water flowing into NAD, itslef being driven by the sinking of water off of Greenland.

From a different angle for the plumes to be suspended the dispersed tiny oil droplets have to be at the same density as the surrounding water , so no net change in the water density. I dont know how methane dissoved in the sea water could effect the density of the sea water. Viscosity could certainly be affected, but this would only have an impact if concentrations were significant. The oil is in the form of tiny discrete droplets, dispersed at a low concentration, for them to alter the viscosity they would have to come into physical contact with each other. I just dont think that the flowing water would really notice that the oil is there. Allthough i have read articles that quote scientists as saying that in places it could be the consistency of thin salad dressing. This sounds slightly more concentrated than the 0.5ppm.

I do think we will be feeling the reprucussions of the deepwater horizon oil spill for years, but it will not be in the form of the NAD ceasing,. It is the marine creatures of the gulf that i feel for most. One piece i read stated that in places as much as 2 inches of oil lay on the sea floor, thats not going to help life down there.

Edited December 31, 2010 by Treiagonaut

[Alan Robinson]

Been doing some more reading on this.

The gulf current looks very unstable to my eyes, with the eddies forming and breaking off of the main current periodically. This is truly a dynamic system and is never in a fixed equilibrim state. With that i find it hard to belive that a plume of oil could dramatically effect the state of the current, especially plumes that could have been their for many years. There is a massive amount of water moving, with a huge amount of momentum, driven externally by the trade winds. The gulf loop is created as a result of water flowing in to the gulf of mexico, so to stop the current the energy source would have to be cut off.

You are quite right about dispersants Treiagonaut, and the natural oil plumes don't surprise me at all. Regarding the animal life, you are quite right too, though I would point out that the inshore area there wasn't anything to crow about beforehand. I spent 18 months in Mobile, Alabama, some years ago, and while the beaches near Gulf Shores and Pensacola etc look very fine, there was a big question mark over people eating crabs caught in Mobile Bay - not that I personally eat meat, poultry or fish. The inshore waters already had their fair share of pollution.

I can't resist building upon your idea of cutting off the the energy source, because I am convinced this whole troposhere / stratosphere / solar irradiation business is not fully understood, yet lies essentially at the bottom of all our speculations. From this forum I have learned about the Quasi Biennial Oscillation, which appears to be factual, though not yet fully appreciated. The QBO could very well be part of the mechanism that causes the trade winds to fluctuate, which in turn would alter the Equatorial Current flow into the Caribbean Sea and through the Yucatan Channel. The second law of thermodynamics suggests that the QBO is also deeply involved in the whole Polar Vortex business, which in turn suggests Hadley cells and the position of jet streams are similarly involved. In other words, the global system that determines our weather and climate is enormously complex.

It struck me looking at the the way threads are arranged on this forum, that perhaps there is in general an inductive approach to understanding weather and climate. Perhaps someone can point me towards a deductive theory instead?