QUOTE(PLO @ Feb 1 2006, 12:03 AM) [snapback]1043196[/snapback]
no actually your right. i was gettin a bit carried away, electro magnetic field cancels itself out, aome madness invilivng positively charged such and such things, and negativley charges other thingy ma-doos. But then, what controls the currents, as the suns gravity still affects. If the moons controls the tides, the suns controls the currents....?
Not quite...in a roundabout way, I suppose one could say that gravity does indeed create the currents (although not control them).
Think of it this way: Gravity is pulling everything into the center of the Earth (or trying to, anyway). That means that the water on the surface of the planet has a downward tendency (which we call 'weight'). This tendencey, due to one of the laws of motion (That which is at rest will remain at rest until acted on by some outside force), causes water to stand still. The kicker, however, is the outside force: the Earth's rotation! The water may be trying to stand still, but the Earth is moving in circles, and so, the water is forced to move as well through the uneven surface it covers. This movement is refered to as the currents.
Now, currents, once in motion, contain a great deal of energy, and because of that, can be affected by (relatively) minor other energies. For instance, that rapid lowering of temperature, by, for instance, an Antartic ice shelf breaking off and melting into the Atlantic, might be enough to shift the current to a new direction; even though the ice itself wouldn't be able to create a current, it can modify an existing one.
Ultimately, water is the biggest heatsink on the planet, meaning it can absorb a lot of energy before responding, but the sun's radiation is, by and large, what it is absorbing, and asides from entire climate changes, individual events are unlikely to make long-term changes. The Butterfly Effect is a little bit exagerrated, in my opinion.