You know, I have a VERY dear friend and former housemate who, at the age of 21, had a kidney transplant. He was more than half dead--about 75% dead, in fact--but now unless you read his medic alert bracelet you'd NEVER KNOW.
He has since gone on to work in private industry, teach me how to party, go back to finish his degree, and to be one of the most wonderful people I know. I still thank my lucky stars that he got a donor and a match.
Well, I have done some file sharing for music, and here's why.
Until a month ago I was living and working on a MS at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. There are some REALLY nice local bands, signed to local music companies. Mean Mr Mustard, Wonderboom, Benguela, Sons of Trout, Springbok Nude Girls, etc.
Ever heard of any of them? Didn't think so. Neither has Tower Records or Amazon. Since I was a student and poor, I didn't buy the CD's. Now, back in the USSA, I can't buy the CD's. Hence, I download. Now that I am gainfully employed I would LOVE to have a copy of the last Nude Girls album, or the new one by Perez. And legit, so that whatever pittance goes to the artist, well, gets to the artist.
What do these countries have in common?
1. A more populous immediate neighbor with a bigger economy and a bigger attitude
2. Lots of territory, but not a lot is useable
3. Friendly semi-rivalry with that neighbor: NZ/CA/NA have a friendly rivalry, but the neighbor is oblivious
4. 95% of foreign disputes relate to fish
I live in south africa right now, although I'm originally from Texas. The locals get all ready to pick a fight with me over George W., until I tell them that not only did I not vote for him, I personally think less than well of him. It's funny, watching them get all ready lecture me on the "evils of America" and then have me agree with them. And once that's out of their system, they're usually incredibly curious about the US.
So yeah, I can easily see how your friend saying she didn't vote for W. kept her from being harassed by the locals.
A mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and civil engineer were arguing over what kind of engineer God was. The mechanical engineer said, "God must be a mechanical engineer. Look at how the human body is put together! Joints, musculature, connective tissue--genius!" The electrical engineer sniffed and said "Yes, but consider the whole nervous system. God must be an electrical engineer, since all of those mechanical parts are controlled by electrical nerve impulses."
They argued back and forth a bit, when the civil engineer told them, "You're both wrong." The mech-e and ee stopped and looked at her, and the civ-e said "Come now, who but a civil engineer would put a toxic waste pipeline through the middle of a recreational area?"
There's a simple solution to not being disturbed by telemarketers at 8am saturday...don't have a phone in your bedroom.
I don't think outlawing telemarketing is the answer to the issue, but definitely coming down hard on a company that is playing both sides of the game would be useful. Especially if they could use existing law to do so.
FYI....Those "slaves" are mountain porters, and anybody climbing the mountain must have permits and porters. The permits are pricey, I think about $300-500 US and upwards, depending on how long you're going to be on the mountain. The porters are also required and climbing fees (not just permits) include their hire. Mostly to spread the wealth around a bit more.
I totally agree with you on the trashed out bit. The most common, 5-day route up the hill is called the "Coca Cola" route since it's gotten so trashed out.
For everybody who's head is spinning over the loss of tourist revenue bit... This is related more to the decrease in river runoff than the loss of the icecap.
Kili is in Africa and in Africa NOTHING is as simple as it seems. Aside from global climate change, there is some local climate change going on at the foot of the mountain. Specifically, a large rainforest is being clear-cut for timber. Loss of this forest is changing local rainfall patterns--i.e. the forest isn't "catching" the airborne moisture anymore, and so either the rain isn't falling or it's falling but not being absorbed by the forest and running off. Less rain, less water in the river, and also increased sedimentation of the riverbanks. After this, obviously the tourists don't want to see a clear-cut mountain, and the reduced rain and increased silting irritates the farmers who live at the base of the mountain.
So there's a fight going on between the loggers, farmers, and tourism people. Some of the farmers actually double as tour guides on the mountain; when I was in Tanzania a couple of years ago I took a guided tour from a farmer who earned some extra income (1 US$=750 Tanzanian shillings at the time) by hauling white folk around the mountain. And loss of tourism revenue in that area is a big deal. For a town where the richest man in town is the richest because he owns a truck and carries the farmers' bananas 6 hours by road to the capital Dar es Salaam, tourism and farming interests really, really, really want to keep their income flowing. At the same time the loggers want to keep their jobs. No easy answer here.
Having been one of those people that went into a military environment quasi-normal and coming out shattered...
This depends on you. Entirely on you, and on nobody else. If you thrive in a high-pressure environment, where rigid structure is present, good for you. If you are physically and mentally capable of joining the military, and accepting that when you joing the military you will not only give up substantial rights and freedoms but may be called to risk your own life or take another person's, then you might be a good fit. It is difficult, and anybody who has ever been there will agree, but you could get great things out of it.
If you are a free-spirit, and orders that you don't understand don't sit well with you, if you object to use of force, then don't go. If you know in your heart you won't fit in, don't go into the military.
I'm no geneticist, but it's not uncommon for "other stuff" to be associated with particular color hair in animals. I'm thinking of Lethal White Overo in horses (foal has lethal intestinal deformities, comes out ice white--but not albino), or how a white cat with blue eyes is usually deaf. So it would make sense to me if red hair in humans is associated with other stuff.
My mother used to work as a nurse in the delivery wards and every time they had a red-headed woman coming to deliver, they would put a hemorrhage watch on her. Seems that red-headed ladies were far likely to bleed during birth than ladies with other color hair. Anecdotal evidence, but useful still.
FYI she worked at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.
Texas A&M dept of oceanography has some good links on it, and a glossary of oceanography. You can access that here: http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/paleo/ocean/ocean.ht ml
Things to look up: thermohaline circulation, great salinity anomaly, labrador sea
The article didn't do a very good job of translating oceanographer into english. Using the term "fresh water" can be misleading, and if you look at my original post you'll notice that I said "fresher water." Kind of like saying that "there is no statistically significant difference" = "no difference."
Typical surface salinity in the Arctic Ocean is about 34.5 parts per thousand. If that surface salinity decreases to, say, 30 ppt, then it is (in oceanography) fresh water, but that is enough to stop deep convection. So yes, fresh water has a lower freezing point, but true fresh water (0-10 ppt salinity) would either form a very thin surface layer, or just be mixed in pretty quickly by the wind. So I don't think the negative feedback mechanism will work.
The other little bugaboo that the article doesn't really mention is atmospheric-ocean interaction. Water vapor is actually one of the strongest greenhouse gases out there. If you live in a cold climate, and you have stood outside in winter on a cloudy night and on a clear night, the clear night is almost always a LOT colder. It is theoretically possible to start a *positive* feedback loop: without a sea ice blanket, warmer water temperature => evaporation => greater insulation of surface heat in lower atmosphere => warmer air temperature => unstable atmosphere and more storms => strong winds => more turbulent heat flux into the atmosphere (e.g. evaporation), and so on and so forth.
The atmosphere might be getting warmer. It's the ocean they're talking about here. And yes, having the atmosphere get warmer can make the *subpolar north east atlantic ocean* get colder.
Go to Google and type in "thermohaline circulation."
The *atmosphere* in both north and south will get warmer. The atmosphere will get warmer in the north than in the south, since there is more ocean in the south that can absorb more of that heat without too much trouble. (the top 10m of the ocean have the same heat capacity as the entire atmosphere)
The *ocean* is a different story. The subpolar, northeast Atlantic ocean will quit being the freak and start being the same temperature as all the other polar regions.
...if you look at the Vostok ice core and greenland ice cores, even allowing for confidance intervals in the atmospheric CO2 indicated in the ice cores, there is more CO2 in the atmosphere than in the last several million years. And the rate of change of CO2 is higher than it has ever been, again allowing for confidence intervals.
Would this change happen in a decade? Probably not. Within the next century? That is what those supercomputers are testing, assuming that the rate of change of CO2 into the atmosphere is the same. And they're only looking at CO2, not methane or some of the other baddies out there (SF6 and CFC's, for example).
I am working on a master's degree in Oceanography...and I have studied the subject a little bit.
The global thermohaline circulation, better known as the great oceanic conveyor belt, transports warm, salty water from the equitorial pacific ocean to the far North Atlantic via the Agulhas Current (south Africa), North Brazil Current, and the Gulf Stream. In the southern hemisphere, water temperature at the surface is essentially 0 C at 60 S latitude. In the north pacific, the same is true at 60 N latitude. In the north Atlantic, at 60 N latitude, the water temperature west of Greenland is 0, and the water temperature east of Greenland is +10. This warm water is the reason that Norwegian fjords are ice free in winter, despite the fact that they are located far north of the arctic circle. It is also why Labrador, Canada and Iceland have wildly different climates, despite their being near the same latitude.
During the boreal spring through fall, the (relatively) warm, salty water enters the Norwegian, Greenland, and Labrador seas. When winter sets in, winter storms cause the surface waters to cool (through mixing and heat flux into the atmosphere) until the water is of constant density to depths of 1000m or more. Further winter storms cool the surface waters even further, making the surface waters more dense than the deeper waters. Under these conditions, oceanic deep convection occurs. Deep convection is a rare thing--it only occurs in 6 places worldwide. Most of those are in the northern North Atlantic (Labrador Sea, Greenland Sea, Irminger Sea, Norwegian Sea). One is in the Mediterranean (Gulf of Lyons) and one is in Antarctica (Weddell Sea).
Oceanic deep convection is a fragile thing. There are three conditions that must be met before it can occur: A closed, bounded circulation; weakly stratified or unstratified water to depth; and sudden density change (e.g. rapid cooling at the surface). If any of these conditions is absent, deep convection cannot occur. This is why global warming presents a problem to the conveyor belt--fresher water from melting glaciers, melting multi-year sea ice, and increased rain and snow sits on the surface, but even though it might be strongly cooled, the density will not change enough for this cooled water to sink to depth. If the surface mixed layer is only 50m deep, and the layer below the surface mixed layer is cooler saltier than the surface layer, then even if the surface layer is cooled to the same temperature as the next layer, *it will only sink to that same level*. That is, 50 m. Here, deep convection is not possible.
If the conveyor belt stops, then we have a thermohaline catastrophe. In thermohaline catastrophe, then certainly the climate of western Europe would change dramatically. A lot of models are being run on this. They are trying to couple the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice, and are running simulations such that 2x, 4x, and 8x the present level of CO2 is in the atmosphere. Thermohaline catastrophe occurs in a few of them, and doesn't occur in others. In some, the conveyor belt fails for a few years, but then starts up again as the a salinity gradient develops between the tropical oceans (where evaporation is high) and the subpolar oceans.
There is one other weak link in the conveyor belt--the Agulhas current. The Agulhas winds down the east coast of South Africa before leaving the coast, heading south, and then bending back east again. Occasionally the current sheds warm, salty Indian Ocean eddies into the south Atlantic before bending back on itself. These eddies, called Agulhas rings, transport heat and salt from the tropical pacific into the Atlantic basin. A Dutch-South African experiment (MARES) tracked a few of these rings for a while. The Dutch team came to the conclusion that if the Agulhas ring-shedding breaks down, that there is a risk of thermohaline catastrophe.
Here are some websites with a bit more info: *http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/schmit01/n ode8.ht ml (American Geophysical Union) *http://kellia.nioz.nl/mare (MARES experiment) *http://www.marine.csiro.au/seminars/ sem-abs95/ASc hiller.html (Aussie coupled ocean-atmosphere-ice model)
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You know, I have a VERY dear friend and former housemate who, at the age of 21, had a kidney transplant. He was more than half dead--about 75% dead, in fact--but now unless you read his medic alert bracelet you'd NEVER KNOW. He has since gone on to work in private industry, teach me how to party, go back to finish his degree, and to be one of the most wonderful people I know. I still thank my lucky stars that he got a donor and a match.
Well, I have done some file sharing for music, and here's why. Until a month ago I was living and working on a MS at the University of Cape Town, in South Africa. There are some REALLY nice local bands, signed to local music companies. Mean Mr Mustard, Wonderboom, Benguela, Sons of Trout, Springbok Nude Girls, etc. Ever heard of any of them? Didn't think so. Neither has Tower Records or Amazon. Since I was a student and poor, I didn't buy the CD's. Now, back in the USSA, I can't buy the CD's. Hence, I download. Now that I am gainfully employed I would LOVE to have a copy of the last Nude Girls album, or the new one by Perez. And legit, so that whatever pittance goes to the artist, well, gets to the artist.
I'm guessing only when the moon is full? Do you chase cars and howl at the moon at the same time?
What do these countries have in common? 1. A more populous immediate neighbor with a bigger economy and a bigger attitude 2. Lots of territory, but not a lot is useable 3. Friendly semi-rivalry with that neighbor: NZ/CA/NA have a friendly rivalry, but the neighbor is oblivious 4. 95% of foreign disputes relate to fish
I live in south africa right now, although I'm originally from Texas. The locals get all ready to pick a fight with me over George W., until I tell them that not only did I not vote for him, I personally think less than well of him. It's funny, watching them get all ready lecture me on the "evils of America" and then have me agree with them. And once that's out of their system, they're usually incredibly curious about the US. So yeah, I can easily see how your friend saying she didn't vote for W. kept her from being harassed by the locals.
"and I dont think ive ever seen a Garden underwater -- you silly head."
Of course you have. You just have to be under the sea in an Octopus' garden in the shade.
A mechanical engineer, electrical engineer, and civil engineer were arguing over what kind of engineer God was. The mechanical engineer said, "God must be a mechanical engineer. Look at how the human body is put together! Joints, musculature, connective tissue--genius!" The electrical engineer sniffed and said "Yes, but consider the whole nervous system. God must be an electrical engineer, since all of those mechanical parts are controlled by electrical nerve impulses."
They argued back and forth a bit, when the civil engineer told them, "You're both wrong." The mech-e and ee stopped and looked at her, and the civ-e said "Come now, who but a civil engineer would put a toxic waste pipeline through the middle of a recreational area?"
There's a simple solution to not being disturbed by telemarketers at 8am saturday...don't have a phone in your bedroom. I don't think outlawing telemarketing is the answer to the issue, but definitely coming down hard on a company that is playing both sides of the game would be useful. Especially if they could use existing law to do so.
FYI....Those "slaves" are mountain porters, and anybody climbing the mountain must have permits and porters. The permits are pricey, I think about $300-500 US and upwards, depending on how long you're going to be on the mountain. The porters are also required and climbing fees (not just permits) include their hire. Mostly to spread the wealth around a bit more. I totally agree with you on the trashed out bit. The most common, 5-day route up the hill is called the "Coca Cola" route since it's gotten so trashed out.
For everybody who's head is spinning over the loss of tourist revenue bit... This is related more to the decrease in river runoff than the loss of the icecap.
Kili is in Africa and in Africa NOTHING is as simple as it seems. Aside from global climate change, there is some local climate change going on at the foot of the mountain. Specifically, a large rainforest is being clear-cut for timber. Loss of this forest is changing local rainfall patterns--i.e. the forest isn't "catching" the airborne moisture anymore, and so either the rain isn't falling or it's falling but not being absorbed by the forest and running off. Less rain, less water in the river, and also increased sedimentation of the riverbanks. After this, obviously the tourists don't want to see a clear-cut mountain, and the reduced rain and increased silting irritates the farmers who live at the base of the mountain.
So there's a fight going on between the loggers, farmers, and tourism people. Some of the farmers actually double as tour guides on the mountain; when I was in Tanzania a couple of years ago I took a guided tour from a farmer who earned some extra income (1 US$=750 Tanzanian shillings at the time) by hauling white folk around the mountain. And loss of tourism revenue in that area is a big deal. For a town where the richest man in town is the richest because he owns a truck and carries the farmers' bananas 6 hours by road to the capital Dar es Salaam, tourism and farming interests really, really, really want to keep their income flowing. At the same time the loggers want to keep their jobs. No easy answer here.
Having been one of those people that went into a military environment quasi-normal and coming out shattered... This depends on you. Entirely on you, and on nobody else. If you thrive in a high-pressure environment, where rigid structure is present, good for you. If you are physically and mentally capable of joining the military, and accepting that when you joing the military you will not only give up substantial rights and freedoms but may be called to risk your own life or take another person's, then you might be a good fit. It is difficult, and anybody who has ever been there will agree, but you could get great things out of it. If you are a free-spirit, and orders that you don't understand don't sit well with you, if you object to use of force, then don't go. If you know in your heart you won't fit in, don't go into the military.
I'm no geneticist, but it's not uncommon for "other stuff" to be associated with particular color hair in animals. I'm thinking of Lethal White Overo in horses (foal has lethal intestinal deformities, comes out ice white--but not albino), or how a white cat with blue eyes is usually deaf. So it would make sense to me if red hair in humans is associated with other stuff.
My mother used to work as a nurse in the delivery wards and every time they had a red-headed woman coming to deliver, they would put a hemorrhage watch on her. Seems that red-headed ladies were far likely to bleed during birth than ladies with other color hair. Anecdotal evidence, but useful still.
FYI she worked at Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta, Georgia.
Lithium? The people at the space program needed massive quantities of Lithium?
Why am I not surprised by this?
Ready on the left, ready on the right, ready on the firing line... Targets!
Ons praat nie engels nie! Hierdie is suid-afrika! (translation: we don't speak english. This is south africa.) Stank vir dank.
Texas A&M dept of oceanography has some good links on it, and a glossary of oceanography. You can access that here: http://stommel.tamu.edu/~baum/paleo/ocean/ocean.ht ml
Things to look up: thermohaline circulation, great salinity anomaly, labrador sea
The article didn't do a very good job of translating oceanographer into english. Using the term "fresh water" can be misleading, and if you look at my original post you'll notice that I said "fresher water." Kind of like saying that "there is no statistically significant difference" = "no difference."
Typical surface salinity in the Arctic Ocean is about 34.5 parts per thousand. If that surface salinity decreases to, say, 30 ppt, then it is (in oceanography) fresh water, but that is enough to stop deep convection. So yes, fresh water has a lower freezing point, but true fresh water (0-10 ppt salinity) would either form a very thin surface layer, or just be mixed in pretty quickly by the wind. So I don't think the negative feedback mechanism will work.
The other little bugaboo that the article doesn't really mention is atmospheric-ocean interaction. Water vapor is actually one of the strongest greenhouse gases out there. If you live in a cold climate, and you have stood outside in winter on a cloudy night and on a clear night, the clear night is almost always a LOT colder. It is theoretically possible to start a *positive* feedback loop: without a sea ice blanket, warmer water temperature => evaporation => greater insulation of surface heat in lower atmosphere => warmer air temperature => unstable atmosphere and more storms => strong winds => more turbulent heat flux into the atmosphere (e.g. evaporation), and so on and so forth.
Hope this helps.
The atmosphere might be getting warmer. It's the ocean they're talking about here. And yes, having the atmosphere get warmer can make the *subpolar north east atlantic ocean* get colder. Go to Google and type in "thermohaline circulation."
The *atmosphere* in both north and south will get warmer. The atmosphere will get warmer in the north than in the south, since there is more ocean in the south that can absorb more of that heat without too much trouble. (the top 10m of the ocean have the same heat capacity as the entire atmosphere) The *ocean* is a different story. The subpolar, northeast Atlantic ocean will quit being the freak and start being the same temperature as all the other polar regions.
...if you look at the Vostok ice core and greenland ice cores, even allowing for confidance intervals in the atmospheric CO2 indicated in the ice cores, there is more CO2 in the atmosphere than in the last several million years. And the rate of change of CO2 is higher than it has ever been, again allowing for confidence intervals.
Would this change happen in a decade? Probably not. Within the next century? That is what those supercomputers are testing, assuming that the rate of change of CO2 into the atmosphere is the same. And they're only looking at CO2, not methane or some of the other baddies out there (SF6 and CFC's, for example).
I am working on a master's degree in Oceanography...and I have studied the subject a little bit.
n ode8.ht ml (American Geophysical Union)/ sem-abs95/ASc hiller.html (Aussie coupled ocean-atmosphere-ice model)
The global thermohaline circulation, better known as the great oceanic conveyor belt, transports warm, salty water from the equitorial pacific ocean to the far North Atlantic via the Agulhas Current (south Africa), North Brazil Current, and the Gulf Stream. In the southern hemisphere, water temperature at the surface is essentially 0 C at 60 S latitude. In the north pacific, the same is true at 60 N latitude. In the north Atlantic, at 60 N latitude, the water temperature west of Greenland is 0, and the water temperature east of Greenland is +10. This warm water is the reason that Norwegian fjords are ice free in winter, despite the fact that they are located far north of the arctic circle. It is also why Labrador, Canada and Iceland have wildly different climates, despite their being near the same latitude.
During the boreal spring through fall, the (relatively) warm, salty water enters the Norwegian, Greenland, and Labrador seas. When winter sets in, winter storms cause the surface waters to cool (through mixing and heat flux into the atmosphere) until the water is of constant density to depths of 1000m or more. Further winter storms cool the surface waters even further, making the surface waters more dense than the deeper waters. Under these conditions, oceanic deep convection occurs. Deep convection is a rare thing--it only occurs in 6 places worldwide. Most of those are in the northern North Atlantic (Labrador Sea, Greenland Sea, Irminger Sea, Norwegian Sea). One is in the Mediterranean (Gulf of Lyons) and one is in Antarctica (Weddell Sea).
Oceanic deep convection is a fragile thing. There are three conditions that must be met before it can occur: A closed, bounded circulation; weakly stratified or unstratified water to depth; and sudden density change (e.g. rapid cooling at the surface). If any of these conditions is absent, deep convection cannot occur. This is why global warming presents a problem to the conveyor belt--fresher water from melting glaciers, melting multi-year sea ice, and increased rain and snow sits on the surface, but even though it might be strongly cooled, the density will not change enough for this cooled water to sink to depth. If the surface mixed layer is only 50m deep, and the layer below the surface mixed layer is cooler saltier than the surface layer, then even if the surface layer is cooled to the same temperature as the next layer, *it will only sink to that same level*. That is, 50 m. Here, deep convection is not possible.
If the conveyor belt stops, then we have a thermohaline catastrophe. In thermohaline catastrophe, then certainly the climate of western Europe would change dramatically. A lot of models are being run on this. They are trying to couple the atmosphere, ocean, and sea ice, and are running simulations such that 2x, 4x, and 8x the present level of CO2 is in the atmosphere. Thermohaline catastrophe occurs in a few of them, and doesn't occur in others. In some, the conveyor belt fails for a few years, but then starts up again as the a salinity gradient develops between the tropical oceans (where evaporation is high) and the subpolar oceans.
There is one other weak link in the conveyor belt--the Agulhas current. The Agulhas winds down the east coast of South Africa before leaving the coast, heading south, and then bending back east again. Occasionally the current sheds warm, salty Indian Ocean eddies into the south Atlantic before bending back on itself. These eddies, called Agulhas rings, transport heat and salt from the tropical pacific into the Atlantic basin. A Dutch-South African experiment (MARES) tracked a few of these rings for a while. The Dutch team came to the conclusion that if the Agulhas ring-shedding breaks down, that there is a risk of thermohaline catastrophe.
Here are some websites with a bit more info:
*http://earth.agu.org/revgeophys/schmit01/
*http://kellia.nioz.nl/mare (MARES experiment)
*http://www.marine.csiro.au/seminars
----yellowcat >- ??