News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early as 2025. Parent comment

Re:Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early... by XorNot on Sunday April 21, 2024 @08:15PM (#40110389)
The Gulf Stream is responsible for the temperate climate of Europe which enables the swathe of farmland that it has.

A slowdown is expected to lead to a temperature drop from artic air being able to circulate further down, which would shorten growing seasons and probably change farmland distribution.

The effect of this happening over individual human generations in an environment where established farmland is hundreds to thousands of years old would be considerably expensive to adapt to.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early... by non-chalad on Sunday April 21, 2024 @08:27PM (#40110455)
How did humanity respond the last time this happened?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early... by VelesDude on Sunday April 21, 2024 @09:09PM (#40110664)
There is no history of this happening before, at least not on the time frames we are talking about here. This is thousands of years of change in decades. It isn't so much just the change but the pace that is the issue. Like how jumping off a building and taking the elevator achieve the same amount of change but on a very different time frame and thus very different results.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early... by non-chalad on Sunday April 21, 2024 @09:25PM (#40110731)
Do we know how the Gulf Stream worked during the last ice age maximum, when the Rhine river still flowed over land-locked British Channel (1)?

1. https://www.arcgis.com/home/item.html?id=f1e7378b962d42168fd...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early... by VelesDude on Sunday April 21, 2024 @09:54PM (#40110846)
That is a good question but I suspect we wouldn't know. Just educated guesses and I cannot find those at the moment.

I think the other big issue is that back then we didn't have industrial civilization and high level agriculture dependent on specific environmental factors.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:Scientists Warn Gulf Stream Slowdown Could Begin as Early... by ang_cire on Monday April 22, 2024 @02:18PM (#40117129)
We weren't agrarian back then, we were still hunting stuff with sticks and simple stone tools (12,000 years ago/ 10,000 BCE).
[ Parent | on HN ]