Global Warming's New Math

[Joseph Tracy]

GAIA IS NOT THE HYPOTHESIS; WE ARE.
On Jul 23, 2012, at 9:30 PM, Ian Livingston wrote:

> > I'm amazed at how many people fall for this easy notion that "we" are destroying what would otherwise be a 
> > "beautiful" and, somehow, moral planet by our evil human machinations.  The tragedy of global warming is that
> > we're fucking ourselves over, not that we're destroying a planet that would have no  attributes, positive or
> > negative, if we attribute-applying humans weren't here.
> 
> Well, this may be where I part tracks with you on this topic, Laura. I don't do Gaian, know nothing or next to nothing about Gaia, except as one name of a pagan goddess of primitive tribes. I have, however, lived a significant portion of my life studying and living in wilderness and / or working in the interface between humans and non-humans, primarily as a miner, forester, logger, and arborist. My years living in wild places have seen me in camps in Alaska, Wyoming, and Washington, and living in remote places off the grid in Wisconsin, Washington, and California. I have spent very few of my years within the city limits, and I do not incline to see the world through the anthropocentric perspective without considering other possible perspectives. I have witnessed the intelligence of wild animals. They can exhibit crafty, playful, curious, gentle, fierce, voracious, and a whole slew of other qualified attributes. We humans, in this case we English-speaking humans, apply those labels, but the behaviors just are evident in the animal world. Good and evil are irrelevant, but good and bad are not. Most wild animals know good from bad, only not in human terms. Some things produce happiness, others do not, and still others cause weakness, pain, sickness, or death.
> 
> Although I apply the label, the world remains beautiful without me. And the tragedy, qua tragedy, in the human decimation of the what is pristine in the world is that we in our hubris are destroying not only ourselves and our future, but that we are, in fact, destroying scores of species every year. It is impossible to know the long-term effects of the human plunder of the planet. Hell, there could be some less than devastating results of our craving for safety, comfort, and esteemed status, I don't know. But from my first-hand observations, we aren't doing the biosphere many favors. 
> 
> It's a question of values. Do we value humans more than the biosphere? Is our comfort more important than the survival of plankton in the Pacific Ocean? For my part, because they contribute to the continued diversity and health of life on Earth, I think the plankton have a much greater value than do humans. We *can* live harmoniously in the biosphere, we have done in the past, and there may come a time when humans are able to apply their technological genius to harboring rather than harming other species, as we do on small scales already, but for that to happen on a large scale will require a significant shift in values. Capitalist economics be damned, we need restraint, not oil, not fracking, not coal, uranium, or any of the other toxins we so eagerly unearth or enearth, to coin a term. City folk have a remarkable talent for distancing themselves from these truths, but city folk have only romantic associations with the wild, derived from media, a few camping or backpacking trips, or a season on somebody's farm.
> 
> 
> On Mon, Jul 23, 2012 at 3:27 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
> Exactly.  Those judgments don't exist.  I emphasized the negative attributes just to counter the beatific Gaian view of a pristine, human-free Earth.   I'm amazed at how many people fall for this easy notion that "we" are destroying what would otherwise be a "beautiful" and, somehow, moral planet by our evil human machinations.  The tragedy of global warming is that we're fucking ourselves over, not that we're destroying a planet that would have no  attributes, positive or negative, if we attribute-applying humans weren't here.
> 
> Laura
> -----Original Message----- 
> From: malignd at aol.com 
> Sent: Jul 23, 2012 6:17 PM 
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org 
> Subject: Re: Global Warming's New Math 
> 
> Without us "cold" and "dispassionate" and "ugly" don't exist.  We created the context for understanding those judgements.  Not that I'm voting for my own obliteration ...
> Nature, without humans, is cold and dispassionate, and just as likely to be ugly.  I vote for us.
> 
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: kelber <kelber at mindspring.com>
> To: pynchon-l <pynchon-l at waste.org>
> Sent: Sun, Jul 22, 2012 11:38 pm
> Subject: Re: Global Warming's New Math
> 
> 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
>> 
> 
> 
> 
> -- 
> "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