Global Warming's New Math

[Ian Livingston]

My mate and I go around about this question some. Are all the wars, famine,
pestilences, murder, greed, etc., necessarily bad? There are too many of us
to be viable. The thing about life is its inclination to excess. It's not
just humans, every species expands in its niche to fill all the space it
can given the resources available to it. We have the creative and physical
ability to see our own destructiveness, so we experience guilt, shame at
our excesses, pride at our accomplishments, and we engage in denial when
what we see is just too much to acknowledge. At our worst we are selfish,
cruel, and stupid, our best is as Laura sees it. What defines us? All of
it. Excessively.

On Sun, Jul 22, 2012 at 8:38 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> You know,  a friend asked me that question once, in a slightly different
> form:  If you were giving the human race a grade, what would it be?  A
> month or so earlier,  I might have said D or F.  But I said "A."  Why?  I
> had just finished reading Gravity's Rainbow for the first time.  And it
> struck me what a wonderful thing human intelligence is, that it could
> create such a mind-expanding novel, filled with wit and morality and
> silliness and fascinating connections.  Why do we consider the Hitlers, the
> Monsantos, the sadists, the criminally greedy the ultimate shapers of the
> human legacy?  Why can't the essence of what it is to be human be defined
> by the Pynchons, the Oscar Wildes, the cruciverbalists, the non-stop party
> people, the beekeepers, the folklorists, the loving grandmas, and on and
> on?  Intelligence, even though it sometimes takes an evil turn, is a rarity
> worth preserving.  Nature, without humans, is cold and dispassionate, and
> just as likely to be ugly.  I vote for us.
>
> Laura
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Rich **
> Sent: Jul 22, 2012 10:02 PM
> To: David Morris **
> Cc: Monte Davis **, Dave Monroe **, pynchon -l **
> Subject: Re: Global Warming's New Math
>
> ********
> Is humanity even worth saving? I'm ever wavering
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Jul 22, 2012, at 9:40 PM, David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> We've (are) lost.  New Orleans and the rest of the world's coastal cities
> are Atlantas's.  And bye bye to countless species.
>
> The 20th/21st Centuries won't be fondly remembered.
>
> On Sunday, July 22, 2012, Monte Davis wrote:
>
>> The core argument, without caveats and qualifications:
>>
>> 1) From Kyoto through Copenhagen, a 2 degree C. global increase has been
>> widely accepted as a threshold we really don't wanna cross;
>> 2) We can calculate how much more fossil-fuel burning will get us there;
>> 3) Current proven reserves held by energy co's and nation/companies are
>> about *six times* that  amount;
>> 4) The stock price of energy companies (and the credit-worthiness of Saudi
>> Arabia, Venezuela, USA states fracking their shale, et al) is tightly
>> correlated with their reserves. Ergo, any combination of policies/actions
>> that would be effective in keeping the increase under 2 degrees would in
>> effect say to all those parties: "Five-sixths of that collective asset
>> just
>> became worthless." (Yeah, I know, coal & oil & gas are also feedstocks for
>> polymers, fertilizers etc, but at this level that's a detail. Yeah,  I
>> know,
>> CO2 capture & sequestration is possible -- but do the math, and it would
>> require infrastructure -- and expenditure -- on the same scale as all
>> today's pipelines and refineries and tankers and coal trains.)
>>
>> Some of you are no doubt saying "duhh," but it snapped my head around even
>> though I've been reading McKibben & co for a long time. It's the
>> difference
>> between a handwaved "the fossil-fuel industry can't keep growing in future
>> decades as it has for the last century or two"... and saying to that
>> industry, the world's largest: "five-sixths of the biggest asset investors
>> recognize in you *right now* is a mirage." That makes it much easier to
>> understand the fervor of denial.
>>
>>
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: owner-pynchon-l at waste.org [mailto:owner-pynchon-l at waste.org] On
>> Behalf
>> Of Dave Monroe
>> Sent: Saturday, July 21, 2012 9:35 PM
>> To: pynchon -l
>> Subject: Global Warming's New Math
>>
>>
>> http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-mat
>> h-20120719<http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/global-warmings-terrifying-new-math-20120719>
>>
>>  **************
>
>


-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all creeds
the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the trust in
reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments of darkness
groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates than the simplest
urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant
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