Global Warming's New Math

[Alex Colter]

Ian I dig thinking like that, especially with a nice spliff or glass of
beer, but ultimately is such thinking not a gross oversimplification?

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 2:18 AM, Erik T. Burns <eburns at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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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