Almost on cue and in response to the Business Week story this week, the November 17 issue of Science magazine reports that the underlying premise of the "wild fix" to "salt the seas" was a "False Alarm: Atlantic Conveyor Belt Hasn't Slowed Down After All ." It turns out that the cooling of the Gulf Stream -- and consequent deposition of its salt-dense contents further to the southwest rather than between Norway and Greenland -- was just another blip on nature's uneven and imperfectly understood cycle. The concern had been that with the warmer Gulf Stream failing to go as far north, that Europe would suffer a disastrous Ice Age (all caused by global warming).
Many scientists had doubted the theory and it certainly throws cold brine on hopes raised by Business Week that a new market for salt would be to dump shiploads of salt into the North Atlantic. Oh, well...
