The planet's climate is a complex system, the state of which cannot be neatly summarized by any one statistic. I mean, there's a reputable school of thought pr

The planet's climate is a complex system, the state of which cannot be neatly summarized by any one statistic. I mean, there's a reputable school of thought predicting that global warming will lead to another ice age, because higher temperatures disrupt ocean currents -- particularly the Gulf Stream, which redistributes warm water from the Gulf of Mexico to northern Europe. As the Gulf Stream makes its deposits of warm water along the coasts of Great Britain and northwest Europe, it keeps the temperatures in northwest Europe warmer than in eastern Canada, even though they both are roughly the same distance from the equator. The prediction is that, if Arctic ice melts as a result of global warming, huge amounts of fresh water will pour into the North Atlantic and slow down the Gulf Stream, cooling Europe, and triggering a feedback loop with colder and longer European winters, and more and more ice on the planet's surface.[a][b] [a] The book "Ice Age" by Cambridge-trained astrophysicist John Gribbin and his wife Mary has a good high-level overview of this school of thought: https://reanimus.com/store/?item=1420 https://reanimus.com/store/?item=1420 [b] Recent studies of circulation in the North Atlantic already show a significant reduction in currents flowing north from the Gulf Stream: https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/09/new-studies-confirm-weakening-of-the-gulf-stream-circulation-amoc/ https://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2020/09/new-s...