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Here I am in Washington DC where the place for the polar vortex
has been particularly shocking I mean you know if you lived in both in vermont
cold winters I lived in Vermont for 5 for 10 years I lived in New Hampshire
for five years
I I grew up in Michigan cold winters are nothing shocking
in any of those places but in Washington DC
you know this is this is the the beginning a the
with is basically the mason-dixon line is beginning to the south and south of
here
its pretty shocking stuff so two things that I want to share with you one
comes out the other the first is
this from Jeff masters over the weather underground and
a its in the Atlantic and reprinted over Democratic Underground
by brooklynite temperatures 20 degrees below normal will likely invade the
upper midwest and Sunday that's
three days hence and gradually spread south eastwards during the week that's
next week
be called is predicted to occur late next week with temperatures 2235 below
normal
corinne the eastern two-thirds of the country as a result these new model runs
a natural gas market has been sorin
ever since early this morning is now persian five-year high of six dollars
so back to top 20 Wednesday afternoon with prices at 6:25 that was yesterday
afternoon
so the polar vortex is coming back now that's
okay your basic weather report
now we go to the Arctic news blog its Arctic dash news dot block spa dot com
and this is one of the most fascinating in science driven
blogs in fact Peter Wadhams is their lead contributor he's
one of the wanna most famous climate scientists in the world
and here's
I just wanna share with you ok couple paragraphs the doctor Malcolm white
wrote that was published
over on that blog that are checked his blog a couple days ago it should still
be up
on the on the part that's visible he talks about the Gulf Stream you know the
Gulf Stream that carries warm water from the pacific down around the southern tip
of South Africa
up along the east coast to the United States picks up a lot of heat along the
way
and then goes out to see over the North Atlantic in a couple hundred miles off
the coast of Greenland and and England
it basically settles to the bottom of the ocean at that point it has
lost enough salinity enough to tempt eat
that it a.m. settles to the bottom in
and then it good there's a reverse krenz a thousand-year
long cycle at this current makes and
the heat that it loses in the North Atlantic is what warms up europe it's
why Europe which is the latitude
not dissimilar to alaska has in several asking whether
has you know whether like the the middle west to the United States
essentially nurses which is a must spy much further south latitude so he writes
that the but the volume of water transported by the Gulf Stream of the
East Coast has tripled
as increased by three times since the nineteen forty's
because a massive increase in wind drag
now you say whether what's this got to do with anything with the bowler for
track
text the increase in the southwesterly wind drag is result up the continuously
increasing pressure difference
set up between the continental air mass over North America
heated by fossil-fuel generated carbon dioxide
and the marine air over the Atlantic
the increased energy entering the Gulf Stream is he'd
and its associated winds and storms Arden what are now pummeling Great
Britain and Europe
they're having record storms in England right now hundred-mile-an-hour winds
places that they've never had it before this heat is transferred in
party further north by branches all the Gulf Stream
into the Arctic Ocean self words destabilizing the subsea methane
hydrates
now those are you have been the last hours dot org and watch the the movie
that we put up there's all time in a video that
that I help you right I i'm I narrate
II know that when the methane hydrates the subsea methane hydrates get
destabilized it's time to
docking copper I mean is this serious at this is serious stuff
he continues destabilizing the subsea methane hit
hydrates really seen increasing volumes have methane into the Arctic
atmosphere in causing temperature anomalies this land last winter
up more than twenty degrees Celsius
yes at are latitudes it is one degree warmer
than it was fifty years ago in the Arctic it's 20 degrees warmer
not supposed to happen he continues doctor malcolm light
as a consequence to be extremely high arctic temperatures and pressures
the normal freezin Arctic air has been
displaced into Canada and the United States
causing catastrophic blizzards that have never been seen before
when the floating Arctic ice cap melts toward the end of next year
the Arctic Ocean will then become more aggressively heated by the Sun
and the northern offshoots the Gulf Stream
in other words this whole thing that's causing this is going to get worse
under these circumstances the rights the cold arctic air will be confined
over the Greenland ice cap in the Arctic atmosphere or rotate anti-clockwise
around Greenland
transfer in the fast increasing amount of its atmospheric methane
to Canada and the United States and causing a further increase in the energy
to Gulfstream
so here we're now to the consequence of all this is going back to feed the
source of all this
that's called a positive feedback loop
his last sentence there for the United Kingdom and Europe must brace themselves
for even more catastrophic weather systems
widespread flooding and massive wind damage from the start
have the last quarter up next year
in other words next fall
now by next year
I'm not sure exactly when he wrote this I think this was fairly recently so
presumably by next year
yeah he's talking about not 2015
but when you look at the methane concentrations just from the
February February 2013 or 2014 it is
absolutely startling to see all this methane being released
and you got the scientists sane you know we need me to come up with a plan
and not just a plan to slow down the rate at which were releasing carbon
dioxide
a plan to stop it plan to reverse it and
and beyond doubt you know is a time to start having conversation about
how to survive you know
we have these seem storage places maybe human storage place
note pretty pretty bizarre in the midst of all this
you're listening to the Thom Hartmann program call 866
987 thon weather is that but in the midst of this
also in the fossil fuel industry point hundreds of millions of dollars
to pretend in a design the site