Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide

Through his worldwide industrial civilization, Man is unwittingly conducting a vast geophysical experiment. Within a few generations he is burning the fossil fuels that slowly accumulated in the earth over the past 500 million years. The CO₂ produced by this combustion is being injected into the atmosphere; about half of it remains there. The estimated recoverable reserves of fossil fuels are sufficient to produce nearly a 200% increase in the carbon dioxide content of the atmosphere. ...The climatic changes that may be produced by the increased CO₂ content could be deleterious from the point of view of human beings.

From Restoring the Quality of Our Environment: Report of the Environmental Pollution Panel, President's Advisory Committee, November 1965, Appendix Y4: Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (PDF). The authors credit T.C. Chamberlain and Svante Arrhenius with the first speculation about the phenomenon, in 1899 and 1903, respectively.

New Paper: Pornography and Accommodation

Abstract

In 'Scorekeeping in a Pornographic Language Game', Rae Langton and Caroline West borrow ideas from David Lewis to attempt to explain how pornography might subordinate and silence women. Pornography is supposed to express certain misogynistic claims implicitly, through presupposition, and to convey them indirectly, through accommodation. I argue that the appeal to accommodation cannot do the sort of work Langton and West want it to do: Their case rests upon an overly simpified model of that phenomenon. I argue further that, once we are clear about why Langton and West's account fails, a different and more plausible account of pornography's influence emerges.

Download it here.