Climate Collapse Confusion? The Brutal Truth About What Barbie Gets Wrong. How to Get Into Harvard – plus more! #172
Grüezi! I’m Adrian Monck – welcome!
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1️⃣ The Gulf Stream Could Collapse!
Day After Tomorrow apocalypse time?
Nearly twenty years ago, schlocky sci-fi movie The Day After Tomorrow dramatised the effect of the collapse of the warm water systems that act as central heating for bits of the northern hemisphere we like to call ‘land’.
TL;DR? The world floods and freezes.
Now a study in Nature says one of those warm water pipes – the snappily named ‘Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation’ (AMOC) – is in danger of shutting down in decades.
This is BAD NEWS.
As the Britain’s national weather service says:
An AMOC shutdown would cause cooling of the northern hemisphere, sea level rise in the Atlantic, an overall decrease in precipitation over Europe and North America, and a southwards shift in monsoons in South America and Africa.
But Jon Foley says The Guardian headline is confusing the Gulf Stream with the AMOC.
“90% of the Gulf Stream has nothing to do with the AMOC. And they are only connected by the North Atlantic Drift.
“And the Gulf Stream itself WILL NOT “COLLAPSE”.
“The Gulf Stream is going to continue as long as the wind blows and the Earth rotates.”
The Guardian and its environment editor Damian Carrington (no scientific slouch witha PhD in geology) do a lot of good climate reporting. But adding layers of confusion to an already tough-to-understand topic? Not helpful.
So is the AMOC about to shutdown? Here’s Stefan Rahmstorf – TL;DR? It’s getting ever likelier and it won’t be pretty.
⏭ Sadly young Americans are caring less about climate change.
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2️⃣ What Barbie Gets Wrong
*Spoiler alert*
Academic Alice Evans writes about gender. This week she turned – like seemingly everyone – to Barbie.
Here’s her punch-to-the-gut take on why – spoiler alert – Greta Gerwig‘s feel-good ‘girls together’ ending wouldn’t work. At the finale:
“The Barbies ignite men’s sexual jealousy, cause men to fight against each other, and then reclaim their homes. In actually existing patriarchies, this would never work.
Possessive men would just beat Barbies to a pulp.
“A woman is at highest risk of violence from a man she has jilted.
“Kens would then leverage their institutional dominance to exonerate all such criminality.
“In Russia and China (both governed by men), wife-beating is not a criminal offence.
“Greta Gerwig’s vision of patriarchy is far too benign. It underestimates violent patriarchal backlash.”
Evans’s depressing realism about the ugliness and pervasiveness of violence by men is something we all gloss over at our peril.
⏭ Barbie is very accurate on how ‘men’s rights activists’ are radicalised.
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3️⃣ Feel the Burn
Holidays in hell are the new holidays.
Tom Rachman’s vacation on Rhodes turned into an existential crisis:
“Our flight wasn’t for four days. Should we ditch everything and flee, wasting our vacation time and our money too?
“Perhaps we were overreacting. Perhaps we were underreacting.
“We spent the subsequent days vacillating this way, acting as if things were normal before our boy, visiting archeological sites, fanning ourselves desperately under the suffocating 40°C heat, hiding under beach umbrellas – all while wondering if we were insane.
“In other words, we faced the climate dilemma in distilled form.
“Should you deny what you know, and distract yourself with pleasures, hoping someone else will sort out the disaster? Or should you act somehow and face the emergency before it engulfs you?”
Satellites could see the fires from space. Rachman sweated it out until escaping. Not an option available to all of us.
As climate scientist Bill Hare put it:
“It’s as if the human race has received a terminal medical diagnosis and knows there is a cure, but has consciously decided not to save itself.”
Calm down, you might be thinking – global temperatures have only gone up 1.25°C. Right?
FT data whizz John Burn-Murdoch explains it in terms anyone can understand:
“What matters is that when you push up an average, you push out the extremes.
“Today, Phoenix experiences four times as many days of searing heat as in the 1950s, Paris eight times as many, and London 10 times.”
⏭ We can’t afford to be climate doomers.
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4️⃣ Inside Tip on How to Get to Harvard!
Have rich parents! It works!
According to a study by Harvard economists:
Children from the top 1% income bracket are over twice as likely to attend an Ivy-Plus college compared to middle-class children with similar SAT/ACT scores.
Does this just mean you get to wear a fancy sweatshirt?
“Attending an Ivy-Plus college boosts a student’s likelihood of reaching the top 1% of the earnings distribution by 60%.
“It also nearly doubles their chances of attending an elite graduate school and triples their chances of working at a prestigious firm.”
It’s called elite credentialing, and it’s more aristocratic than meritocratic.
⏭ Harvard’s admissions that favour alum’s kids, are under investigation.
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5️⃣ Make Your Fan Go Backwards
And other strange tips for coping with heat.
⏭ Aussie advice on keeping cool.
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6️⃣ Turn Off Your Phone
Book a holiday to non-flaming Finland.
⏭ Is digital detox-ing possible anymore?
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7️⃣ Get a Classical Music Education in Minutes
Thanks to ... yes, it’s Barbie again.
Josep Castanyer Alonso is a cellist with the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic. But he’s no slouch on the piano.
⏭ Non-Mattel-related reading on Bea’s book club podcast.
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If you enjoy this newsletter – please recommend it!
Best,
Adrian
