Global Warming's New Math

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I do like to think that in the final showdown, the dogs, at least, would give us a sympathy vote.  Sure, they put up with a lot of abuse from us, but we often rub their bellies, and we like to play throw-and-fetch.  They mostly seem to like us.

LK


-----Original Message-----
>From: David Morris <fqmorris at gmail.com>
>Sent: Jul 24, 2012 3:01 PM
>To: kelber at mindspring.com
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: Global Warming's New Math
>
>It is unlikely that we humans will extinct ourselves.  More likely
>human civilization will recede to remote pockets of the most habitable
>portions of the planet, but not before countless human deaths as well
>as countless extinctions of less adaptable/mobile species, a tragedy
>of great proportions.  For the future viability and evolution of
>Earth's non-human inhabitants, it would be better if humans did
>vanish.  Maybe another sentient species would arise, probably to F-up
>everything all over again.
>
>David Morris
>
>On Tue, Jul 24, 2012 at 12:05 PM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>
>> What you say makes a lot of sense, Ian.  I'll admit I'm an urbanist in
>> outlook and values.  I don't romanticize the wild - it scares the shit out
>> of me.  It's that place with animals that bite you and weird bugs and you
>> have to drive everywhere.  Seriously, I need to live in a city because I
>> never learned to drive, having always lived within several blocks of the
>> subway.  You're absolutely right in saying that our respective habitats
>> shape our views on this issue (issue?  debate?).  I think we can both agree
>> that we want something between the human-less world where plankton frolic,
>> but no human is there to right sonnets or haiku about it; and the foul
>> nuclear soup we're making of it, in which no one and nothing will frolic
>> ever again.  But as Joseph says, there's no easy route to the middle ground.
>>
>> Laura
>>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: Ian Livingston
>> Sent: Jul 23, 2012 9:30 PM
>> To: kelber at mindspring.com
>> Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>> Subject: Re: Global Warming's New Math
>>
>>> 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