Global Warming's New Math

Mon Jul 23 10:06:01 CDT 2012

Well, the thinking can go a lot of ways and riff endlessly. A brief inquiry
in less than 10 lines at the perimeter of a bustling house is certainly a
gross oversimplification. I dig the riffing without the substances that
screw the mind.

But seriously, unless we ascribe to divine creation or alien origin, the
human species is just another species on a planet with a history of going
overboard where living things are involved. Who's to say what pestilences
the current warming might spawn or awaken? Given the record, I'm not sure
the species' future is bankable. My recurring question is what do we want
to do with the time we have? I like Laura's implied answer.

On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 7:53 AM, Alex Colter <recoignishon at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>>>
>>
>>
>

-- 
"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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