Colder Europe Due to Global Warming?

ScienceDaily has an article about recent findings from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, showing that the thermohaline circulation is slowing down, leading to an expectation of cooler weather for Europe -- likely resulting, at least in part, from global warming.

The article suggests that melting of Greenland's ice cap is a probable cause of the circulation slowdown. This idea is nothing new. Climate scientists have realized, for some time, that this is a possibility. Some believe that this has happened before, far distant geologic time.

It's called "thermohaline" because this circulation is driven by heat and by the salt content of the ocean. Salty water is denser than fresh water.  Greenland's ice melt, thus, floats on top of the saltier water coming northeast from the Gulf of Mexico. If enough fresh water invades the northern Atlantic, that northeastward flow is slowed or even halted. In what humans have come to think of as normal operation, this thermohaline circulation takes warm water far into the North Sea, warming Europe. Eventually, the increasingly salty water (because evaporation leaves the salt behind) is so dense that it has no choice but to sink to the depths of the sea and return southwestward. In the diagram above, we see that this circulation is worldwide. 

If the north Atlantic branch of the circulation shuts down, the result will be a colder Europe, thanks to global warming.