We are on the disastrous point of no return and we must do something about it.

How many times have we heard this before?

We have had many points of no return with the climate lark, and each time we meet the point, the goal posts change and suddenly the point of no return shifts to a new date.

So now it’s the Gulf Stream, or as the nobs like to call it, The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. Apparently it is about to stutter to a halt [unless we do something, of course]. I seem to remember someone starting a panic about this not so long ago, but it was then quietly forgotten.

I’m not going to worry about this one. For one thing, something so vast as planetary fluid mechanics are a little bit too big for us to change. They are changing regardless of what we do and have been doing so for millions of years. Ice Ages are nothing new and in fact I can see the results of previous ice ages just by looking out the window. Wicklow was shaped by ice long before mankind came along and doubtless it will be shaped again. Within a few miles of here there are Glacial Spillways, Glaciated Valleys and Corries [or Cirques] galore. Wicklow is a geography teacher’s dream.

Anyway we are long overdue another ice age so maybe this is just the start of it?

So what happens if the Gulf Stream [sorry – The Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation] fails? I doubt anyone knows precisely but we can make some fairly accurate predictions.

For a start, we can forget our mild climate here in Ireland. Temperatures will plummet, unless of course there is Warble Gloaming in which case they won’t plummet so fast. We can expect a climate that is more akin to that of Norway I suppose. We’ll probably have fucking cold winters where snow becomes a regular feature and with a bit of luck, drier summers? I don’t know. Nobody knows for sure.

Things will definitely be different.

But there’s fuck all anyone can do about it anyway.