“Willy” refers to the shape of the lead bulb at the bottom of the keel fin.The boat had been making a fast 20 knots through the water and revealed no obvious damage. “I thought, ‘What the hell was that?’, slowed the boat and went into damage-control action,” he told the duty officer at race headquarters between Southampton and Portsmouth.
He then heard someone shout: “We have a Free Willy on our hands,” which meant that the six-tonne keel, usually held in place by hydraulic rams, was swinging out of control from side to side. A massive bang just after midnight yesterday signalled the end of any further serious competitive racing for Neal McDonald and the crew of Ericsson on the first leg of the Volvo Race from Vigo to Cape Town He is the fourth of seven starters to be hit by damage. It says Europe is devouring the world’s natural resources at twice the global rate. Climate change on a scale unseen on the European continent for 5,000 years is now under way, according to the report, which warned yesterday that at current rates three quarters of Switzerland’s glaciers will have melted by 2050..

It was the summer of 2003 that woke up many of us to what climate change really meant. Until then it was common to hear northern Europeans opining that global warming was something to be welcomed. It would mean balmy Mediterranean evenings, vineyards in Yorkshire and no need to go to Spain in summer.. Europe’s claim to the moral high ground over the environment has been comprehensively challenged in a devastating report on its failings in the battle against global warming and pollution.

This is the basic message of the European Environment Agency, whose latest report says that changes to the continent’s climate that have been experienced to date have not been matched in the past several thousand years. But none of us in this global village of the 21st century is going to be immune from the effects of climate change. It is indeed true that the richer developed nations of the North are not going to suffer in the same way as the poorer countries of the South, where drought, famine and severe coastal flooding are expected to cause incalculable damage and misery. “We don’t know – the climate model suggests that if you slow the circulation you can get a local cooling around the north Atlantic, but you’re not going to get another ice age,” he said.. Europeans can be forgiven for thinking they will be cushioned from the worst impacts of climate change. Dr Meric Srokosz, another member of the National Oceanography Centre team, said: “In terms of science, you can’t cool the whole of the upper hemisphere in 10 days and cause a new ice age.

That’s a physical impossibility.” He admitted it was harder to predict what might happen in the long term if the conveyor system broke down. Commenting on the findings, Dr Phil Newton from the Natural Environment Research Council, which is funding the work, said: “This paper shows really tantalising evidence that there may be a large change in the ocean oscillation under way which, paradoxically, could cause a cooling over Europe.” The researchers predict that if the 30% weakening persists, it may lead to a 1C fall in temperature over northern Europe in the next 20 years. But there was no chance of a sudden freeze, as portrayed in The Day After Tomorrow. Further disruption to the system could be expected to have greater effects. The scientists estimate a decrease in the conveyor’s “overturning” from 20 Sv recorded in earlier surveys to 14 Sv.