2018 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #36

A chronological listing of news articles posted on the Skeptical Science Facebook Page during the past week.

Editor's Pick

A powerful current just miles from SC is changing. It could devastate the East Coast.

 Historical Map of Gulf Stream

Ben Franklin and Timothy Folger’s map of the Gulf Stream in 1768. Library of Congress

Off South Carolina, the ocean suddenly changes color, from green to deep blue. You’re in the Gulf Stream now, in warm and salty water from the tropics, with swordfish, tuna and squid, in a current so strong that it lowers our sea level.

Benjamin Franklin would learn about this current’s force. He was a Colonial postmaster before the American Revolution, and he’d noticed British mail ships were slow, much slower than other merchant ships. Why?

He mentioned this to his cousin, Timothy Folger, a ship captain who’d hunted whales off New England. Ah, yes, that current off the East Coast, Folger told Franklin. Any fishermen worth their nets cut in and out to make better time — the whalers had even warned the mail ships to steer clear. But the Brits “were too wise to be counseled by American fishermen.”

A map might help, and so they made a chart of this “Gulf Stream” from Florida toward Europe. It was one of the first maps to document its tremendous reach.

A powerful current just miles from SC is changing. It could devastate the East Coast. by Tony Bartelme, Special Reports, Charleston Post & Courier, Sep 5, 2018 


Links posted on Facebook

Sun Sep 2, 2018

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Wed Sep 5, 2018

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Fri Sep 7, 2018

Sat Sep 8, 2018

Posted by John Hartz on Saturday, 8 September, 2018


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