To Survive The Ice Age

A small but rising number of people from the UK and NW Europe are coming here because they're worried about a new Ice-Age hitting these regions. Yes, it sounded unbelievable to me too but, having done a little research of my own, it seems that there are sound scientific reasons to be concerned about what will happen in the western Atlantic.

As a perverse result of global warming, North Western Europe could suffer a dramatic fall in temperature.

Mass Starvation

I had an interesting conversation with John Rogers, who recently arrived in Christchurch from Edinburgh. John told me of his concerns, which I've summarised:

"North Western Europe is much warmer than Northern Canada and Siberia, which are on similar latitudes. The UK owes its relatively mild climate to the Gulf Stream which carries a huge amount of warm water from the seas around Florida across the Atlantic Ocean to the seas around the UK and Norway. If the Gulf Stream were to be interrupted, temperatures in the UK and Europe would drop by several degrees Centigrade. This would have a catastrophic affect on agriculture and there would be severe hardship and mass starvation."

What worries John is the emerging evidence that there may be problems with the Gulf Stream. Scientists have studied geological records and found that these problems have happened before, plunging North Western Europe into Ice Ages.

The Conveyer-Belt Delivers Warm Water To Europe

We can think of the Gulf Stream as the upper part of a giant, watery conveyer-belt that carries warm water northwards from Florida, eventually reaching the UK. In the Arctic, cold, salty water sinks and spreads over the ocean bottom. This is the lower part of the conveyor-belt. The lower part, which flows near the sea bed, eventually delivers cold water back to the planet's warm regions where it is warmed again and the cycle repeats.

A Broken Conveyer-Belt?

Global warming threatens to interrupt this convenient arrangement, because it's melting the Arctic ice-caps. These ice-caps are made up of fresh water and their melting makes the Arctic waters consistently less salty. The lower the saltiness, the less well the water sinks and the less well the conveyor-belt works.

History shows that melt-water has caused reduced saltiness in the past and this has caused the conveyor-belt and the Gulf Stream to shut down within a matter of a few years. The result in the past has been a dramatic cooling of the UK and North Western Europe.

I Will Survive

John told me that he thinks the risks of Britain being plunged into a new Ice Age are low. On the other hand, even though he thinks the risks are low, the consequences of it happening are so appalling that he thought it would be sensible to migrate to New Zealand for reasons of survival. If he doesn't like New Zealand, he will stay here long enough to get citizenship and a passport.

He will also buy a very cheap acre of land somewhere in rural New Zealand or perhaps a cheap house and rent it out. Then if the UK really does freeze over at some time in the future, he will be able to travel back to New Zealand on a New Zealand passport and at least have somewhere to live. Whatever property he had in Britain would have become virtually worthless.

"I think it's important to have a passport out of the UK," John told me. If the Gulf Stream is interrupted, you'll suddenly have 60 million people wanting out - not to mention over 100 million from other parts of Northern Europe. I suppose the member states of the EU from around the Mediterranean might take some people but the overall situation will be chaos and I can see borders being shut pretty quickly. Having a passport to a pleasant, English speaking country on the other side of the world will do for me."

Further Reading

You'll have to make up your own mind about the risks of a big chill happening in North Western Europe. It's certainly not something we at Emigrate NZ are in any way qualified to offer advice about.

If you do want to learn more about this rather alarming "weather forecast" we've provided links to four of the most informative articles available.

First of all, the money men have a look at the financial consequences of interruption of the Gulf Stream.

And from a more scientific angle: