Euro-cicle

The other day I was watching on show on how the planet was made or something like that and they talked about something of particular interest to me: the next ice age. Scientist agree that the atmosphere is heating up and that the ice caps are melting. It's not debatable, but there is question as to why and what part of the warming is due to human actions and specifically burning fossil fuels. The why is what it is. The result however, means some very specific things.

In very simplified terms, here's what happens: first, the melting of the ice cap causes the water in the northern Atlantic ocean, off the coast of Europe, to be become less salty as more water dilutes the vast ocean. The resulting desalination causes the North Atlantic current, which brings warm water from the equator to the North Atlantic, to slow down. As less warm water is brought north, less heat is released into the North Atlantic region which would normally regulate the temperatures in the region. What should happen is that the slowing will actually cause another ice age in Europe! A good chunk of the region would actually become like mid to northern Canada. Here's an article that I found which also talks about the "conveyor" that is the North Atlantic current. It mentions that it would take 20 years of fresh water runoff to stop the conveyor, so the assumption is that a slowing down could happen much faster and result in the start of an ice age relatively quickly.

So maybe real estate in Europe is going to get a lot cheaper in our lifetime.