AMOC running amok may cause havoc

Hooray for physics! It keeps the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC) churning.

The AMOC is the product of a gigantic, ocean-wide balancing act. It starts in the tropics, where high temperatures not only warm up the seawater but also increase its proportion of salt by boosting evaporation. This warm, salty water flows northeast from the U.S. coastline toward Europe — creating the current we know as the Gulf Stream.

But as the current gains latitude it cools, adding density to waters already laden with salt. By the time it hits Greenland, it is dense enough to sink deep beneath the surface. It pushes other submerged water south toward Antarctica, where it mixes with other ocean currents as part of a global system known as the “thermohaline circulation.”

This circulation is at the heart of Earth’s climate system, playing a critical role in redistributing heat and regulating weather patterns around the world.

As long as the necessary temperature and salinity gradients exist, AMOC is self-sustaining, Boers explained. The predictable physics that make dense water sink and lighter water “upwell” keep the circulation churning in an endless loop.

The AMOC moderates our climate and is also essential for things humans like, like the North Atlantic fisheries and the pleasant beaches of the Atlantic coast of the US. You want the AMOC to keep whirling. Seriously, don’t fuck with the AMOC. The bad news, though, is that we fucked with the AMOC.

Human-caused warming has led to an “almost complete loss of stability” in the system that drives Atlantic Ocean currents, a new study has found — raising the worrying prospect that this critical aquatic “conveyor belt” could be close to collapse.

In recent years, scientists have warned about a weakening of the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC), which transports warm, salty water from the tropics to northern Europe and then sends colder water back south along the ocean floor. Researchers who study ancient climate change have also uncovered evidence that the AMOC can turn off abruptly, causing wild temperature swings and other dramatic shifts in global weather systems.

We know very well the consequences of disrupting the AMOC. The last time it happened was caused by the abrupt draining of Lake Agassiz into the Atlantic

It’s happened before. Studies suggest that toward the end of the last ice age, a massive glacial lake burst through a declining North American ice sheet. The flood of freshwater spilled into the Atlantic, halting the AMOC and plunging much of the Northern Hemisphere — especially Europe — into deep cold. Gas bubbles trapped in polar ice indicate the cold spell lasted 1,000 years. Analyses of plant fossils and ancient artifacts suggest that the climate shift transformed ecosystems and threw human societies into upheaval.

The Polar Vortex was bad, but you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

If this critical part of ocean circulation collapses in our lifetime, then can we drag out all the climate-denying Republicans and hang them? It would be more helpful to do it before, but I guess we have to wait until they complete the destruction of human civilization before taking action.

Work stoppage? What work stoppage? I haven’t heard anything about a work stoppage

How odd that I have to get info about university policy from a TV news site rather than from our administration.

University of Minnesota professors are mulling a work stoppage if the university refuses to impose a COVID-19 vaccine mandate, according to American Association of University Professors meeting minutes and documents obtained by 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS. More than 500 faculty and students have signed on to a letter endorsing a vaccine requirement.

Hang on there. I haven’t heard even a whisper of a threat of a work stoppage from my colleagues or the university listserv. One way to look at it is that we are generally obliging sheep who will march to our doom without hesitation. A better way to look at it is that we take our responsibilities very seriously — our students are making a 4 year commitment to a structured, cumulative program of instruction, and we don’t want to compromise their advancement at all. A year and a half ago, we shut down classes on campus and scrambled to keep the students going with online instruction, at great personal cost, and we’d do it again. A work stoppage isn’t in the cards, a workload increase is.

I also expect that the prospect of students dying on campus is a more potent incentive to impose a vaccine mandate than the idea that professors might walk out. I hope. You never know with university administrators. My university doesn’t employ many adjuncts, so the idea of using adjuncts as front-line cannon fodder is off the table, anyway.

At least this part of the story is accurate.

AAUP members say they are frustrated by governing bodies of the university making decisions without consulting affected faculty and staff, who came to the following agreement:

“The consensus emerged that we should bring pressure for a vaccination mandate to bear through the media as well as through organizations like Council of Graduate Students, Minnesota Student Association, and college and university governance. Public pressure could give the administration cover to alter the present policies. Our targets and objectives are twofold: the U president, for mandating vaccinations; the U provost, for mandating versatility in instructional modality.”

Frustrated is right. The faculty as a whole have not been consulted on pandemic policy. We just get messages from on high. “No vaccine or mask mandate!” Then, “OK, mask mandate! But you’ll be teaching in a classroom!” Or, “Get tested!” But then, “we’re shutting down testing facilities! And the campus vaccination service!” We’re not asked, we’re told.

But there aren’t even rumors of work stoppages. At least, not until our classes are drained by the death or quarantining of mass numbers of students. I draw the line at asking students to die for their biology degree.

Drug war, or moral crusade? Either one is repugnant

Well, this story was quite informative. Today I learned all about “poppers”, or alkyl nitrites, and it tells you everything you need to know about me that I’m so straight that I had no idea that they were popular in the gay community. I never saw ads like this, or they made no impression on me at all.

I have heard of Tom of Finland, however, I’m not totally clueless.

Strangely, the leading manufacturer of poppers in the US is another straight guy, like me.

Everett Farr, 65, is not the person you might expect when you think of nitrites and queer history. For one thing, he says he’s never tried poppers. For another, he’s straight, married, and has two adult children. He lives in a big home in a ritzy Pennsylvania county and owns a few cars, including a Corvette the same yellow as a bottle of Rush. But he’s not exactly flashy. When he met me at the train station near Philadelphia to drive me over to his plant in the last week of June, he was wearing shorts and sneakers and driving a modest, cluttered blue passenger van. The Corvette was parked inside the factory, covered in a layer of dust.

Except I don’t own a yellow Corvette or live in a ritzy place in the country. But like him, I’m not going to try alkyl nitrites — people with heart disease probably should avoid potent vasodilators. I see no problem in making them available to healthy people who want to experiment, though. I agree with this fellow:

Canada has required prescriptions for alkyl nitrites since 2013, and both the UK and Australia have come close to doing the same in recent years — moves that prompted backlash in those countries’ gay communities. One conservative British MP, Crispin Blunt (uncle to actor Emily Blunt), gave a speech in Westminster “outing” himself as a poppers user and calling a potential ban a “fantastically stupid” idea that would only fuel the black market. In Australia, the LGBTQ media dubbed it “an attack on gay and bisexual men” and a “war on bottoms.”

Zmith, the British writer, doesn’t believe the regulations governing poppers are motivated by anti-gay sentiment, but instead by “the complete madness” with which Western governments approach drugs — tolerating some dangerous substances, such as alcohol and tobacco, but cracking down on others.

Complete madness is right. You know that bans on these drugs are motivated solely by the fact that gay folk use them, not about health or safety — it’s all about Puritan hypocrisy.

Cuomo put in charge of the Department of Not Getting It

Governor Andrew Cuomo might not be governor for long. The New York state attorney general has determined that he was guilty of sexual harassment and creating a hostile workplace for women. Biden has called on him to resign.

Investigators laid out a devastating portrait of Cuomo’s behavior and extensive examples of unwanted touching, including an incident last November in which Cuomo allegedly embraced an executive assistant and reached under her blouse to grab her breast. Witnesses also described an environment in the governor’s office that was abusive and vindictive, with one of the women who came forward targeted for retaliation through the release of her personnel file, investigators said.

In all, the independent probe found that Cuomo harassed 11 women, including a state trooper whom the governor arranged to be put on his detail.

Cuomo has made an absolutely mad rebuttal. He posted a document that includes 8 pages of photographs of Cuomo kissing and hugging various people, including his mother, and 15 pages of photos of other politicians kissing and hugging people (see, they do it too!). It’s embarrassingly irrelevant, and shows that he doesn’t understand the problem at all.

No one thinks it is wrong to hug your mother, as long as she consents. No one thinks public displays of affection are a crime. Were you abusive and vindictive to your mom? Did you create a hostile work environment for your mom growing up? There are specific, verified accusations of vindictive behavior in the New York governor’s office, and that is the problem.

Uh-oh. We’ve only got a week left, atheists!

The moment we dreaded has arrived. The believers have suddenly realized that they have a fully operational super-being at their beck and call, and all they have to do is ask their Supreme Creator of the Universe to eradicate us. All they needed to do is take advantage of the organizational efficiency of Facebook to gather their hordes and tell God what to do with a global prayer to end atheism. They finally figured it out. Next Thursday, 12 August 2021, this will be us.

Yeah, every atheist has been quaking in terror, dreading that moment when Christians finally realized the unstoppable power of prayer.

What are you all planning for next Friday? I guess I don’t have to worry about what to wear, since we’re all scheduled to have a grand naked orgy in Hell.

Administrators are the enemy, you know

The president of Columbia University made it crystal clear. The administration is wrestling with the idea of in-person classes, which is telling in itself — the administration doesn’t give a good damn about the health and safety of faculty, staff, and students or they wouldn’t be debating how to shove their employees into milling crowds of unvaccinated students. But President Bollinger admitted something heinous in a memo to other administrators. First, though, he said this in public.

Faculty response to new models of teaching necessitated by the pandemic has been tremendous. We want to support faculty in every way we can…the University will not prescribe an approach for individual faculty members. Faculty will have leeway to teach in person, online, or some combination of the two, in consultation with their schools.

Great! That’s what I want to hear! Except…

…the instructional faculty for the Core is largely composed of non-tenure-track individuals, which means we should have greater leeway to expect in-person instruction, if that’s what we deem best.

Hey, you know that huge swarm of underpaid, untenured adjuncts we have teaching the core courses of the university? They’re expendable, they have to do what we say, we’ll just make them take all the risks! After all, we know what’s best for them.

I call on my fellow tenured faculty to show solidarity with the scholars and scientists who work side-by-side with us, with far more job insecurity and with the contempt of the administration. They are not serfs. They deserve equal respect…which, given that university administrators don’t have all that much respect for their tenured faculty, isn’t asking a lot.

The right attitude

This is a sweet story. Fiona Grayson saw a big funnel web spider taking up residence on her porch, and decided to make the spider welcome by decorating her place. So she made a tiny welcome mat, and put out little vases of flowers, and talked to the spider, who she named Cordelia.

“It was simply fun and wholesome, and in the process, I became very fond of her and excited to see her when she’d reveal herself at night,” Grayson said. “I tell her she’s beautiful and loved and thank her for her diligent pest control work. Any less would be just kinda rude and unneighborly.”

For the record, I like spiders, but I don’t quite go this far in appreciating them — I suspect the spider just sees the clutter as convenient anchor points for silk.

It’s still a nice idea.

[Read more…]

You’re telling me police officers are people, too?

There is no denying that there are bad apples in the bunch, and that police culture favors bad actors, but we also have to acknowledge that there are many police officers who actually are there to “protect and serve”. It’s those officers who are made to suffer.

The District of Columbia’s police department on Monday said two more police officers who responded to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol have died by suicide, bringing to four the number of known suicides by officers who guarded the building that day.

Add to the tally the Capitol Police officer who was killed in the line of duty, and the 100 who were injured, and it’s clear that the 6 January Insurrection was more than a few tourists getting rowdy. This was a terrorist action. Those rioters were not good people.

During emotional testimony last week, four police officers told a House of Representatives special committee that they were beaten, threatened, taunted with racial insults, and thought they might die as they struggled to defend the Capitol against the mob.

Meanwhile, Republicans are squirming and lying and trying to pin the blame on anyone other than Trump supporters.

[Wisconsin Senator Ron] Johnson, one of Trump’s most fervent congressional supporters, has for months raised numerous questions about the circumstances surrounding the attack, including the security failures and the nature of the events. He has taken exception, for instance, with describing the attack as an “armed insurrection.”

In the recording captured Saturday, Johnson explained his view that “by and large those folks were peaceful protesters” and that the news media and Democrats are “painting 75 million Americans who voted for Trump as attached with domestic terrorists.”

It’s amazing. A nest of traitors is probably going to walk away scot-free from their actions.