The Humpty Dance, is your chance, to do the hump!

Water flows through the oceans in steady recycling patterns, determined by the Coriolis force and the particular positions of the continents in our time. Surface currents can move in the opposite direction to bottom currents below them, and often do, forming systems like giant conveyor belts of water. The largest one is already famour, at least in part; the Gulf Stream is a segment of a warm surface current that flows north up the entire length of the Atlantic, all the way to Norway and Greenland. There the water cools and sinks, and begins a long journey south on the Atlantic Ocean floor, to the Cape of Good Hope and then east toward Australia, and even into the Pacific, where the water upwells and rejoins the surface flow, west to the Atlantic for the long haul north again. The round trip for any given water molecule takes about a thousand years.

Cooling salty water sinks more easily than cooling fresh water. Trade winds sweep clouds generated in the Gulf of Mexico west over Central America to dump their rain in the Pacific, leaving the remaining water in the Atlantic that much salties. So the cooling water in the North Atlantic sinks well, aiding the power of the Gulf Stream. If the surface of the North Atlantic were to become rapidly fresher, it would not sink so well when it cooled, and that could stall the conveyor belt. The Gulf Stream would have nowhere to go, and would slow down, and sink farther south. Weather everywhere would change, becoming windier and drier in the Northern Hemisphere, and colder in places, especially in Europe.

The sudden desalination of the North Atlantic might seem an unlikely occurrence, but it has happened before. At the end of the last Ice Age, for instance, vast shallow lakes were created by the melting of the polar ice cap. Eventually these lakes broke through their ice damns and poured off into the oceans. The Canadian shield still sports the scars from three or four of these cataclysmic floods; one flowed down the Mississippi, one the Hundson, one the St. Lawrence.

These flows apparently stalled the world ocean conveyor belt current, and the climate of the whole world changed as a result, sometimes in as little as three years.

Now, would the Arctic sea ice, breaking into bergs and flowing south past Greenland, dump enough fresh water into the North Atlantic to stall the Gulf Stream again?

I got off the Skytrain at the usual stop at about 0130. I walked the length of the platform to The World's Slowest Elevator (tm) past a host of transit cops, some of which were talking to the only other passenger on the train with me. She was laughing and chatting, so all was well.

I pushed the button and composed myself to wait. The woman came over to wait too. She wanted to talk.

"This elevator is probably the grossest one on the entire line," she says. I agreed, and noted that I hoped the usual pool of late-night urine in it didn't cover the entire floor.

"So," she says looking up at me, "are you just getting off work?"

"I am," I reply wittily.

Her: "What do you do?"

Me: "Security."

Her: "Ah. So do you think you could restrain me?"

Interesting.

Me: "Do you want me to put you up against the wall with your arm twisted behind your back?"

Her: "Absolutely!"

Me: "But not in this elevator."

Her: "No, definitely not."

At that moment, the elevator arrived and the doors slowly opened. There were a few whistles from across the tracks on the far side of the platform. We both turned and there was a guy whistling. She said "Oh" and laughed a bit.

I said, "Friend of yours?"

Her: "No, I think he was just checking out my ass."

Me: "How do you know it was your ass and not mine that he was checking out?"

The doors on the elevator closed. Two minute ride ensues.

Her: "You've got a point, but I can't see what you're packing under that jacket there."

At which point she investigates, sliding a hand up the side of my leg and firmly groping my ass.

"Yup, you've got a little something something there." she slurps in my ear.

For a change, I'm at a bit of a loss for a reply. Which is okay, because she continues the conversation.

Her: "I'm going out for a bit of fun tonight. Only for an hour or so though."

Me: "You can have fun and be home in an hour?"

Her: "Oh sure!"

Me: "Going out for a drink?"

"No, I've already had a few drinks." Then she nods her head in a way meant to indicate herself and says "Nympho."

The doors open, and with a final squeeze she headed out into the rain. I followed, but not her. I was heading to my bus stop.

I saw her heading off to a hotel/bar/lounge a block away, and looking back a few times. Was she inviting me, or just making sure I wasn't following her?

She was attractive enough, although not exactly pretty, but it was almost two in the morning and all I wanted to do was crash for a few hours. Either I'm getting old, or I'm recognising that my judgement isn't awesome late at night and shouldn't be acted on.