Global Warming's Terrifying New Math

BigHOOS, I've been pushing that Gwynne Dyer book here [since 2012](Global Warming's Terrifying New Math).

Now, that's a guy with contacts. All I bring to the table is a facility with Google Scholar.

seriously though if we're talking post-apocalyptic fantasy i really don't see "a boot stomping on a human face forever" as a practical or viable future. some period of tyranny is extremely likely, simply because it'll provide the only viable alternative to chaos, but once the neo-malthusian collapse has finished all number of things shall become possible.

because neo-malthusianism, unlike malthusianism, doesn't necessarily imply a perpetual cycle of collapse. what's going to happen in the next century is going to happen for the first time and very likely the last time, as i have a hard time seeing earth getting up to a population of eight billion again. the underlying problem driving both malthusianism and neo-malthusianism - humanity's unstoppable drive to consume all available resources in order to grow - isn't something i see changing anytime soon, but at the same time i'm limited in my understanding and just can't envision how we will be changed by witnessing the catastrophic death of seven billion humans.

> happen for the first time and very likely the last time

I'm not so sure about that.

Most developed world history since the 17th century has reflected a historically unusual state of plenty, as first New World resources, and then exploitation of nonrenewable geological resources (petroleum, phosphate, etc.) temporarily inflated human carrying capacity.

All that we've assumed as the natural end state for developed humanity (democracy, social welfare, tolerance of minority groups, progress in knowledge and technology), may be artifacts of our politics of plenty. The politics of scarcity and ecological panic are very different.

Realizing this gives our generation a rather critical responsiblity for erecting firmer foundations for inclusion and tolerance, during this interval while they're self-evidently obvious, rather than self-evidently absurd.

can't envision how we will be changed by witnessing the catastrophic death of seven billion humans.

Successful societies, even those which seem repressive by the standards of the liberal democratic nation-state, extend some measure of benefits to every member. The very fact that humans must organize socially to thrive in any meaningful way means that any form of organization and stability is more favorable than the war of all against all.

I expect the main effect on the survivors of any apocalyptic breakdown of social order would be to return to very strong social structures that absolutely subordinate the individual to the good of a larger social entity, such as one's blood relatives or tribe, with some leeway for individuality, but no leeway at all in meeting communal needs. The larger the social entity which claims highest sovereignty, the more rigid its demands will be.

But social order is remarkably resilient. It will try to maintain itself in the face of extremely destructive pressures. A slow motion failure would differ quite markedly from a fairly swift one.

I forget if others have already suggested Capitalism in the Web of Life itt but it's cleared much of the fog I've had around the post-feudal/pre-industrial centuries and contextualized them for me in the narrative of land use and resource capture that Sanpaku's talking about. Recommended.

I stopped reading Anthropocene or Capitalocene. :(

The ponderous Haraway essay really slowed me down but I devoured the Moore essay which sent me straight to his book for more

so what did moore have to say?

in his essay in capitalism in the web of life, i mean. was it made up of the same arguments as anthropocene or capitalocene, or was it something different?

Realizing this gives our generation a rather critical responsiblity for erecting firmer foundations for inclusion and tolerance, during this interval while they're self-evidently obvious, rather than self-evidently absurd.

― nonderepressible (Sanpaku)

there are a lot of people to whom inclusion and tolerance _aren't_ self-evidently obvious, even in this interval. i'd settle for the absence of global thermonuclear war during the collapse, and frankly even that one's a stretch.

so what did moore have to say?

― Karl Malone, Thursday, August 30, 2018 11:22 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

so just to clarify, Anthropocene or Capitalocene is the anthology Moore edited with an essay of his in it, Capitalism in the Web of Life is Moore's book-length exposition of the same argument he makes in his essay in the anthology. here is pretty good hour-lecture of his on the book!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E92w0WczYUw

here's a quote from the intro to the book:

Like many readers, I suspect, I have little patience with grand theory. No one theory can answer the questions I pose in this book. Only a relational method and made of theorizing will suffice. My intention is to elaborate a method that carries the core insights of Marxism and environmental historiography into a new synthesis. This synthesis says that environment-making is much more than a story of environmental consequences. It is a story of how power and re/production in its quotidian, civilizational, and commercial forms are, already, environmental history. Power and production-and so much more-are "environmental.' This allows us to move from environmental histories of modernity to modernity's projects and processes as environmental history-as environment-making processes. My point of departure therefore privileges the patterned and the specific. Specificities emerge within world-historical patterns, what I call historical natures'3-even and especially when the topic seems removed from these concerns (e.g. labor, financialization).

We can begin to reconstruct narratives of two simultaneous movements. The first is capitalism's internalization of planetary life and processes, through which new life activity is continually brought into the orbit of capital and capitalist power. The second is the biosphere's internalization of capitalism, through which human-initiated projects and processes influence and shape the web of life. This guiding thread-framed as a double internality-allows us to move beyond a kind of "soft" dualism that re-presents the dialectic of human and extra-human natures as an alternative to Nature/Society.

My focus in this book is capitalism as project and process: the logic of capital and the history of capitalism. This capitalism is not, as we have seen, a narrow set of economic or social relations, since these categories are part of the problem. Capitalism is, rather, best understood as a world-ecology of capital, power, and re/production in the web oflife. The point of view of capitalism as a whole-and the decisive conditions and contradictions of the accumulation process-is but one possible vantage point. Without a world-historical reconstruction, however, the critique of Nature/Society dualism will remain theoretical when it needs to be methodological and historical. My central thesis is that capitalism is historically coherent-if "vast but weak"-from the long sixteenth century; co-produced by human and extra-human natures in the web of life; and cohered by a "law of value" that is a "law" of Cheap Nature. At the core of this law is the ongoing, radically expansive, and relentlessly innovative quest to turn the work/energy of the biosphere into capital
(value-in-motion).

so just to clarify, Anthropocene or Capitalocene is the anthology Moore edited with an essay of his in it, Capitalism in the Web of Life is Moore's book-length exposition of the same argument he makes in his essay in the anthology.

welp, i think i had that exactly backwards, thanks!

thanks for typing that out as, well. i'm definitely unfamiliar with some of the terms (curious about the laws of Cheap Nature) ,but it's interesting to to focus on internalizations since so much of environmental literature is focused on externalities.

I've skipped Haraway (40 pages of wordplay, ok) and am resuming Anthropocene or Capitalocene with Moore's essay. (I didn't like the Crist essay, if anyone was keeping score.)

@thenation and I are proud of this joint investigation of a grave but little recognized climate science findings: tropical forests are flipping to release rather than store carbon. That must be reversed, soon. Here's our version of @eatonsam's report: https://t.co/AmauUQvVa5 https://t.co/7dacCgUU2y

— Mark Hertsgaard (@markhertsgaard) September 14, 2018

Countdown to fuckwits levelling all remaining rainforests...

find Kevin Anderson's take on flying inspirational
https://youtu.be/wcobuqiSo8I

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/10/plane_carbon_footprint_i_went_a_year_without_flying_to_fight_climate_change.html
this article is nice, too

i luv eric holthaus

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/trump-administration-sees-a-7-degree-rise-in-global-temperatures-by-2100/2018/09/27/b9c6fada-bb45-11e8-bdc0-90f81cc58c5d_story.html?utm_term=.60492852926e

WOW. hope no one minds if i excerpt (i tend to think most people don't click links, even on ILX)

Last month, deep in a 500-page environmental impact statement, the Trump administration made a startling assumption: On its current course, the planet will warm a disastrous seven degrees by the end of this century.

A rise of seven degrees Fahrenheit, or about four degrees Celsius, compared with preindustrial levels would be catastrophic, according to scientists. Many coral reefs would dissolve in increasingly acidic oceans. Parts of Manhattan and Miami would be underwater without costly coastal defenses. Extreme heat waves would routinely smother large parts of the globe.

But the administration did not offer this dire forecast, premised on the idea that the world will fail to cut its greenhouse gas emissions, as part of an argument to combat climate change. Just the opposite: The analysis assumes the planet’s fate is already sealed.

The draft statement, issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), was written to justify President Trump’s decision to freeze federal fuel-efficiency standards for cars and light trucks built after 2020. While the proposal would increase greenhouse gas emissions, the impact statement says, that policy would add just a very small drop to a very big, hot bucket.

“The amazing thing they’re saying is human activities are going to lead to this rise of carbon dioxide that is disastrous for the environment and society. And then they’re saying they’re not going to do anything about it,” said Michael MacCracken, who served as a senior scientist at the U.S. Global Change Research Program from 1993 to 2002.

i don't know how that one slipped through the cracks at the white house, other than the ongoing chaos and general incompetence.

it seems like they've skipped to the final stage of climate denial

1) climate change is a hoax
2) some warming may exist, but humans have nothing to do with it
3) humans have something to do with it, but climate change is not a problem, and in fact it might be a good thing
4) we can't solve climate change. are we really so vain to think that we can affect an entire earth's climate?
5) it's too late to do anything about it

lol nothing matters as policy

we're already up 1°F on the 1986-2005 average. 7° is unfathomable

This is a bad headline. They mean a 4 degree rise. (Which could still spell the end of civilization.) https://t.co/SwCY0csCZl

— Jonathan M. Katz✍🏻 (@KatzOnEarth) September 28, 2018

Jonathan M. Katz, Defender of Celsius

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/01/cities-sink-sea-first-earth-submerge-coastline

All futures are fathomable. +7° F (3.89° C) is a world that's been seen and surpassed before in the geological record. I think in our future context, its one where current breadbaskets are scrubland, carrying capacity is reduced by perhaps 4 billion, majorities support killing migrants at the border, and coastal cities are replaced by aggregations of houseboats.

But that's not the future I'm scared about. 2.9-3.5° C is the current Paris Accords commitments future, 3.9° C is a Black Death scale calamity, but the business as usual future is 5-6° C by 2100, maybe pushing 8° C after ocean equilibration and carbon feedbacks, assuming most of humanity starves and can't burn the deep coal. A world that supports a few hundred million in current Arctic/Antarctic basins.

It's decades too late in any plausible politics to avoid catastrophe, but there remains a chance to prevent the human carrying capacity from plummeting from a future 4-5 billion on more prudent paths to < 500 million. That 3-5° C margin between Paris Accords and business as usual runaway is the margin between *Homo sapiens* and Earth being a failed project, never again advancing beyond Renaissance technology (fossil fuels are a single-chance bootstrap), and our descendants becoming our universe's self-awareness and cosmologically significant.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figure_of_speech

Well that explains a lot about you xp

It's decades too late in any plausible politics to avoid catastrophe, but there remains a chance to prevent the human carrying capacity from plummeting from a future 4-5 billion on more prudent paths to < 500 million. That 3-5° C margin between Paris Accords and business as usual runaway is the margin between *Homo sapiens* and Earth being a failed project, never again advancing beyond Renaissance technology (fossil fuels are a single-chance bootstrap), and our descendants becoming our universe's self-awareness and cosmologically significant.

― godless hippie skank (Sanpaku)

oh, you're talking about hope, aren't you? i remember that stuff. didn't we use up the last of it in 2008, though? maybe there's an additional source of it under the arctic ice.

That hope was converted to methane a long time ago

twbb_drainage.gif

our descendants becoming our universe's self-awareness

to be accurate, as self-aware constituent parts of the universe, we are already the universe's self-awareness

Above, I was probably just channeling a memory of this quote by UC Santa Cruz cosmologist Anthony Aguirre, from Peter Brannen's Ends of the World: Volcanic Apocalypses, Lethal Oceans, and Our Quest to Understand Earth's Past Mass Extinctions:

Even though Aguirre works with scales and time spans that reinforce the astronomical insignificance of our species, he nevertheless thinks that our stewardship of the planet in the coming years is existentially, even cosmologically, consequential.

“I think we’re at the point where essentially—depending on what happens in the next 100 years—I think it’s likely that either civilization and potentially all life on earth is going to self-destruct, or if it doesn’t, I think the likelihood is we will manage to get to nearby planets, then faraway planets, and sort of spread throughout the galaxy,” he said. “And so, if you compare those futures, one of them has basically zero interesting conscious stuff going on in it—depending on where you count animals and things—and one of them has an exponentially growing supply of interesting conscious experience. That’s a big deal. If we were just one species among many throughout the galaxy, it would kind of be like, ‘Well, if we do ourselves in, we had it coming. We got what we deserve.’ But if we’re kind of the only one in the galaxy—or one of very few—that’s a huge future that we’ve extinguished. And it’s all just because we’re being stupid now.”

just because we’re being stupid now

Stupidity isn't a temporary aberration, but the shadow side of our "interesting" consciousness. It's a package deal; you can't separate them.

how dare u suggest there’s anything interesting about my consciousness

Climate Change Will Get Worse. These Investors Are Betting on It

Investors focused on climate change have traditionally bet on fixes, such as renewable power and electric vehicles. Mitigation and adaptation is a grimmer project. But Jay Koh, co-founder and managing director of the Lightsmith Group, a private equity firm focused on climate adaptation, says it's necessary to acknowledge that things could get worse. “There is a requirement for some kind of psychological journey that people have to go through,” Koh says. “I’d rather have a strategy designed for the set of circumstances where we might not 100 percent win.”

also known as sets of circumstances where we lose

we should really just get plans in place for an orderly wind-down at this point

invest in a chain of assisted suicide centers and sterilization clinics

get a Junior Anti-Sex League up and running

maybe just kick off some wars now so we can spread it out a bit, not have to eradicate too many populations at once

this is good. it's about a week-long workshop in sweden for people overwhelmed by the world, run by one of the Dark Mountain guys (i had forgotten about them). somehow it's both exactly and not at all what you'd expect

Group Therapy for the End of the World

hmm i’m no sanpaku for sure (i mean that in the informational sense) but i rather think the progression will shake out as a series of eruptive, economically extrinsic events, possibly geopolitical ones, which are so difficult to monetize reliably that theyre (we’re?) just burning money to stay fed, ultimately. I guess itll be rather long way down tho.

silby otm re: the assisted suicide centers and sterilization clinics

"i'm not only the president, i'm also a member"

er, a "client"

https://i.imgur.com/IJNAHQm.png?1

FEMA’s public assistance program has provided at least $81 billion in this manner to state, territorial and local governments in response to disasters declared since 1992, according to a New York Times analysis of federal data. But an examination of projects across the country’s ever-expanding flood zones reveals that decisions to rebuild in place, often made seemingly in defiance of climate change, have at times left structures just as defenseless against the next storm.

hm yep that'll definitely be above water for at least eight more weeks

Have I posted about the little group meetings I've been running, that could fairly be characterised as group therapy about climate change? It's been good.