Interesting, but I got a bit confused by the "it is nothing to do with the Gulf Stream". And I got even more confused by some of the comments. I think it's right to say that the temperate weather in western Europe isn't solely due to the Gulf Stream, but the Gulf Stream does contribute to the latent heat in the Atlantic ocean, and I'm not completely convinced that the Gulf Stream is solely wind-driven. The global ocean circulation pushes bodies of warmer and colder water around the various oceans, and that surely must have effects on local climate.
That's got me on to thinking what the effect would be if the oceanic circulation system shut down. There's one body of thinking that this might happen if the Arctic sea ice disappeared, because one possible driver of the circulation system is that the cold fresh water from the ice sheets dives down below the warmer, more saline oceanic water, and that acts kind of a like a pump. But there's something I've read very recently that another driver of the system is the disparity in salinity between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans . Apparently, the prevailing westerly winds over the Atlantic deposit fresh water over the western coasts of Europe and Africa and further inland, thereby increasing the salinity of the Atlantic; whereas the westerly winds over north and south America don't get so very far inland because they get blocked by the mountain ranges and a lot of that fresh water runs back into the Pacific, making it less saline than the Atlantic. The salinity difference between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans also acts like a pump, which could continue to push warmer water from the Gulf of Mexico northwards.
I also wonder what would happen if the Arctic sea ice were to disappear completely, though I guess it would take quite a long time for that to have an effect on the ocean circulation, and maybe not too much of an effect as the Arctic Ocean is relatively shallow.
Anyway, I've confused myself ? and probably everyone else ? with my somewhat off-topic ramblings, but that link was interesting enough to get me trying to write something. I take in a lot via various media, but I don't write it down very often, so it just kind of "swirples" around in my brain. I think I'll take this topic and run with it, and try to write an annotated essay as I used to do decades ago.