sharks and teapots

Before the first world war, virtually no American woman shaved her legs. By 1964, 98% of women under the age of 44 did so. Before that war, underarm hair was not a cosmetic consideration. Fashions up to that point, while often clingy and form revealing, covered up most of a woman’s skin. But female fashions became ostensibly freer, and Gillette’s first razor for women came out in 1915, triggering aggressive advertising campaigns on behalf of more than a dozen “beauty” companies. Female body hair was suddenly deemed unsightly.

The capitalist drive to convince us that female body hair is unnatural and unclean has been alarmingly successful. The removal industry is worth millions, and uncountable women are ashamed of and distressed by their post-pubescent hair. But the industry is greedy. It must now convince the world that female pubic hair is dirty too. It must now convince people that male body hair is equally unacceptable.

But the Reading University scientists have discovered a hitherto unsuspected side-effect of this kind of geo-engineering. The sulphur dioxide particles don’t just reflect back a portion of the incoming sunlight from above. They also reflect a portion of the long-wave radiation (heat) coming back up from the surface, and that heats the top of the troposphere.

The troposphere is the lower part of the atmosphere, where all the weather happens. If you heat the top of the troposphere, you reduce the temperature difference between there and the surface, so the tropical overturning circulation weakens. That means less water vapour is carried up, and less rain falls back down. Result: drought and famine.