Global Warming's New Math

[Erik T. Burns]

you want to read The Lugano Report:
http://www.amazon.com/Lugano-Report-Preserving-Capitalism-Twenty-First/dp/0745322069


On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 7:58 AM, Ian Livingston <igrlivingston at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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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