“The Day After Tomorrow” was a disaster film that depicted catastrophic climatic effects following the disruption of the North Atlantic Ocean circulation in a series of extreme weather events that usher in global cooling and lead to a new ice age. It was based on the book The Coming Global Superstorm by Art Bell and Whitley Strieber.

If you read our story today “Climate change: Climatologists warn of catastrophic Gulf Stream collapse” you could easily get the impression that “Tomorrow” really is tomorrow.

It seems not a day goes by when we hear scientists warning us of another impending doom to our humanity.

I have to admit that this latest one does make me feel very uneasy. The collapse of the Gulf Stream is an event with particularly ominous connotations.

There is some comfort. Dr David Thornalley, a climate scientist at University College London and co-author of one of the studies, told UK’s ‘The Independent’, “The Day After Tomorrow is clearly a very extreme version. The science behind it says that the shutdown – the severe weakening of the Atlantic circulation – has happened in the past and during the last ice age it happened a number of times.”

What wasn’t so comforting was his next statement:

““If the more extreme case happened with the shutdown of the circulation then yes it is the case that Britain could cool – and it could cool by quite a lot, maybe 5 degrees Celsius.

“The circulation is one of Earth’s tipping points, and it remains the case that it could suddenly collapse. That is scientifically accurate.”

Oh dear. Then:

“We just don’t think it’s that likely.”

However, we live in a very low lying country. One estimate shows that the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation could collapse in 2100 but only with a 5% chance of that happening.
For us, though, it means there is a one in twenty chance of the sea level rising high enough to flood most of our dwellings built by the sea.

Another sobering fact from Dr. Thornalley:

The fact that scientists did not predict the effects seen by the two research teams in their Nature studies suggests existing models need to be improved.

“They seem to be underestimating the changes in the past, so the concern is they may very well be underestimating future changes.”

There is nothing we can do about it here but if every country in the Caribbean goes along with the attitude shown by one of our prominent MLA’s here then we are asking for trouble a lot sooner than expected.

When asked if he thought we should do something about our fossil fuel and why he didn’t argue with CUC when they decided on using it when ordering new generators, he said something to the affect, our country is so small whatever we do wouldn’t make the slightest difference!

SOURCE: https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/gulf-stream-ice-age-collapse-climate-change-amoc-global-warming-a8301511.html