Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

On Feb. 1, Watershed, a climate software company, raised $100 million from venture capitalists.  This was an all-equity round, i.e. none of the $100 million consists of lent money. Climate software, as you have probably already figured out by now. is software useful for such matters as tracking carbon emissions. An investor will put money into it only on the presumption that people and institutions are going to want to track emissions -- that THIS is a growth industry. It is, I think, good news for the planet that heavy-hitting VC investors like Sequioa and Kleiner Perkins do think so, and ponied up this money.  Watershed announced that the fund-raising valued the company at $1.8 billion.     What does that mean?  Well, it is an invitation to do a little arithmetic. If the new investors put in $100 million and this valued the whole company (100% of equity) at $1.8 billion the implication is that the new owners have taken roughly 5.5 percent of the whole....

  Most of us, and by "us" I mean everyone who entered the 21st century already an adult, and is still here: most of us have at some point heard a common explanation of the causes of climate change, in terms of a greenhouse. It is this:  CO2 in the atmosphere prevents infrared light from escaping into space. This means that, as in an artificial greenhouse, more light gets in than can get out, so over time the temperature rises.  To this, climate change skeptics often reply: the absorption of infrared light is saturated at carbon dioxide levels well below those of the earth's atmosphere. If the saturation point is X, then the move from an X +2 level to an X + 20 level can't increase the infrared light, and so can't increase the heat. So let's get busy digging up or drilling for more of those fossil fuels!  That is a fallacious argument.  But it can be difficult to see this because the metaphor is faulty. A greenhouse has a single surface that blocks the infrared...