The establishment New York Times has a beautifully produced article about the collapse of the Gulf Stream. [nyt]

It’s got some great graphics and takes advantage of overlays and scroll position to control animated backgrounds of ocean currents and thermal exchange in the oceans. It’s really pretty. I recommend taking a look at it.

“We’re all wishing it’s not true,” Peter de Menocal, a paleoceanographer and president and director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, said of the changing ocean currents. “Because if that happens, it’s just a monstrous change.”

Subtly downplaying the significance of what’s going on with the climate has been NYT’s beat for a while. “No, no, no, let’s not induce a sense of panic!” – is something nobody has ever said in a crowded theater during a fire. But it’s fascinating to me how the article’s authors couch certain facts in terms of “if …” – you know, as if people were standing in a crowded theater, watching the drapes burn merrily, and some asshat is saying, “if – mind you, that’s a hypothetical – but if the drapes were to catch fire, we’d smother fairly quickly.” So, if the Gulf Stream loses energy or changes its path because of a massive amount of colder water that’s coming off of what used to be Greenland’s glaciers – if (and we are observing that’s what’s happening) – then it might de-stabilize climate in Europe and everywhere else on the globe, for that matter. You know, like the boffins predicted when they said that some parts of the planet may experience unexpected droughts or extended rainy seasons and flooding? “If the drapes catch fire, we’re fucked.”

The consequences could include faster sea level rise along parts of the Eastern United States and parts of Europe, stronger hurricanes barreling into the Southeastern United States, and perhaps most ominously, reduced rainfall across the Sahel, a semi-arid swath of land running the width of Africa that is already a geopolitical tinderbox.

The consequences could include ${consequences} but we’re not going to state that as a certainty. I mean, we have to maintain a healthy scientific skepticism here, amirite? If you jump off a tall building you could make a splat-mark on the concrete. Can’t the NYT bear to say you will make a splat-mark? I don’t want to induce a sense of panic, but we’re on the 21st floor, we’ve fallen 4 floors since we jumped, and there’s nothing between us and the concrete. Don’t scream or thrash about or anything, it might be OK.

The scientists’ concern stems from their understanding of thousands of years of the prehistoric climate record. In the past, a great weakening or even shutdown of this arm of the Gulf Stream seems to have triggered rapid changes in temperatures and precipitation patterns around the North Atlantic and beyond.

That guy who’s saying “if the drapes catch fire…” is not expressing “concern” they are predicting the future by projecting analysis of past facts against well-established models that predict future outcomes.

Some fear that meltwater from Greenland is already inhibiting the northward flow of the Gulf Stream.

“Hey, look at those curtains go!”