The British rather like the idea of a warmer climate but serious climate change may deny them. Ironically, global warming may cause the regional cooling of Europe in our lifetime.
Most scare stories relate to the south, like the 150 million environmental migrants that may be created in Asia by climate instability. It is ocean currents that might harm Europe.
Ocean currents have a critical impact on climate. The deep water of the 'Atlantic conveyor', which drives the Gulf Stream, takes about a thousand years to circulate at low level around the world, so it was assumed that these currents provide long-term stability. But recently this assumption has been put in doubt. The first shock came when currents in the Mediterranean went into reverse in just one year. Then the deep sea current between Greenland and Norway did the same. During part of the last interglacial period averagetemperatures in Greenland moved up and down by as much as 7°C in a decade, probably due to the switching on and off of Atlantic ocean currents.
