So anyway, I’ve been thinking about this:

An armada of robot submarines and marine sensors are to be deployed across the Atlantic, from Florida to the Canary Islands, to provide early warning that the Gulf Stream might be failing, an event that would trigger cataclysmic freezing in Britain for decades.

I’m not denying the technology isn’t clever and who can sniff at the amazingly cool idea of robot submarines patrolling the ocean floor? At least there’ll be someone left to tell visiting aliens what happened to our shagged-out planet.

Future generations will regard us as the selfish bastards who beat them to the bathroom and used all the hot water. The theory is O-Level Geography with a dash of eschatological sci-fi stirred in:

Without the Gulf Stream, the UK would be as cold as Canada in winter. Ports could freeze over and snowstorms and blizzards would paralyse the country. An extreme version of this meteorological mayhem provided the film The Day After Tomorrow with its plotline.

So far, so terrifying. I’m not looking forward to being chased to the library by a tidal wave, for starters. Although we might have end up being more competitive at the Winter Olympics.

But what’s the robot system’s practical application? The article doesn’t say if there are any plans to attempt to reverse any failure of the Gulf Stream that the system might flag up. No mention of asking Mexico to leave their hot taps running or anything.

It looks like Rapid Watch is going to be a warning system whose warnings we can’t or won’t act upon. Will there be a sliding scale of warnings, as the temperature plummets, like MI5’s terror alerts?

And like the terror alerts, just how useful to the general public will such information be? Maybe, unlike the terror alerts, the Rapid Watch alerts could offers practical advice as well as inform us how terrified we should be. How about…

Level 5: Put on a pullover
Level 4: Burn your furniture
Level 3: Watch the Kill it, Cook It, Eat It polar bear special
Level 2: Get your leaders to their helicopters
Level 1: Envy the dead

Wouldn’t the £16 million that Rapid Watch is going to cost be better spent on scotch and revolvers?