Why Cities Make It Worse
Global warming is intensified by city life. It is a social construction nightmare for any number of reasons, but now we find out that it is a major contributory cause to increasing temperatures. The surprising thing perhaps is that is not just because of all man-made materials, but the materials making man also contribute:
“Asphalt and concrete and everything else that makes a city dense, including human flesh, absorb ambient heat, essentially storing it for a time like a slow-release poison pill.”
The Garp Principle?
The trailer for the film version of The World According to Garp famous features a scene where Garp decides to buy a house on the principle that because they just witnessed a small plane fly into it, it is almost statistically impossible that disaster will ever occur again. This kind of represents the way we are going about defending ourselves from natural disasters global warning intensifies:
“We are so far from investing in adequate defenses against these storms that we are still building out into their paths—as though we are homesteaders staking claim to land cleared each summer by tornadoes, committing ourselves blindly to generations being punished by natural disaster.”
The True Myth of Global Warming
Many people willingly and eagerly accept the lie that climate change is not real at all. That’s a stupidity issue and there’s not much that can be done. However, there is a very real myth associated with global warming accepted by twice as many people:
“It is worse, much worse, than you think. The slowness of climate change is a fairy tale”
The New Atlantis
The author uses the myth of the lost civilization of Atlantis as a metaphor for how populations in the distant future may come to view things and places actually existing today. If climate change goes unabated, among those things destined to become relics of a new underwater Atlantis lost to history are the headquarters of Facebook, St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice, the White House and, less tragically, an overpriced Florida resort called Mar-a-Lago.
Mammals
All mammals are dependent for life upon the temperature of earth remaining within a very narrow gap. If the temperature fluctuates just a few degrees one way or the other beyond that gap, it means global extinction:
“Humans, like all mammals, are heat engines; surviving means having to continually cool off, as panting dogs do.”
