Blimey, it's Balmey. Or at least
Blarney [americanscientist.org].

One of the hallmarks of good science is knowing how to recognize "established truth" that is in fact unsupported.

"I took a temporary postdoctoral position at the University of Washington in Seattle, where I should have immediately realized that something was wrong with the Gulf Stream-European climate story."

The article is a bit too arrogant to be credible. He speaks as if his theory was already beyond doubt - I think it takes more than a half-narrative paper mixed with stuff about his own life to prove that an established theory is wrong. But I'm sure other people around here can say more about it - it's not my area of expertise.

To call a scientific theory a "myth" is disrespectful - this is what we know so far, until more evidence proves something else. His new theory sounds to me more like something that tries to tell us not to worry about global warming.

I thought that his article reasonably well established that the initial notion was not a theory, but rather was common wisdom that hadn't been vigorously proved. The author cites the original source - or the earliest source he could find - as a book written in 1855. There wasn't reliable data about climate in 1855. Now, maybe the author has skipped on the journal review a bit, and there have been other studies since then, but.

Also the tone of the article may have more to do with where it is published than with the credibility of the information it contains.

The articles at EurekAlert [eurekalert.org] and U.S. News & World Report [usnews.com] about Seager's work somewhat more informative than his meanderings in American Scientist.

What, you don't read the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society?

What, you don't read the Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society?

Er, I read it, but only for the articles. Really!

I read it about as often as I read Limnology and Oceanography.

Besides, we know where real science [improbable.com] is done. (It used to be here [jir.com], but that was long ago.)

For those of you a bit too lazy to read the report, they ran a computer model which found that removing the ocean current didn't affect overall temperatures that much, whereas removing the Rocky Mountains did. The theory is that wind basically moves north when it hits the Rockies from the west side, then goes south from Canada (and hence all the cold air) on the east side of the Rockies.

First, let me know if I got that much straight.

If so, then this poses two questions:

1. Does this mean Western USA is equally as temperate as the UK and Europe (I'm not sure that it is)
2. How does this make Europe *warmer*? Wouldn't it just make the East coast less cold?

Death*, returning from a long hiatus and way too lazy to login.

Too lazy to think things through, too.

Yes, the US News article was much better. I personally hope he's right and that my friends and family in Europe won't have to freeze at some point in the future.

Did I get it right that nobody tried to confirm/test/check this Gulf Stream theory since the 18 hundreds? Uhm *scratching head* why not? Or how come? (of course, it's a rhetorical question)