The catastrophic harms are those studied by people interested in climate change as a GCR/Xrisk. The research is limited (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7), but for now, the basic picture seems to be of some chance of climate change contributing to global/existential catastrophe. The size of the effect is a point of debate. My sense is that it’s being underestimated, but it’s difficult to pin down.
That paragraph tells me nothing about what order of magnitude of chance we are speaking about. If you want to draw any conclusions then it’s important to talk about the likelihood or at least the ballpark of it.
A point that I hope comes across in that section and throughout the post is that a lot of decisions on what to do on climate change do not depend on how large the catastrophic risk is. There is a role for analysis of the risk, and I have linked to studies doing that analysis. However, for purposes of this post, my interest is in discussing the details of the constructive actions that can be taken to address the risk instead of getting bogged down in analysis of the risk itself.
A more detailed catastrophic risk analysis could be useful for things like evaluating decisions on how much to prioritize climate change relative to other issues. However, even then the risk analysis would only be one component of the decision analysis, alongside a comparison of the quality of the opportunities to address climate change vs. the opportunities for other issues. Some analysis along those lines is in the section “Climate change warrants massive investment—but not necessarily ours”.
That paragraph tells me nothing about what order of magnitude of chance we are speaking about. If you want to draw any conclusions then it’s important to talk about the likelihood or at least the ballpark of it.
Being too vague to be wrong is bad.
A point that I hope comes across in that section and throughout the post is that a lot of decisions on what to do on climate change do not depend on how large the catastrophic risk is. There is a role for analysis of the risk, and I have linked to studies doing that analysis. However, for purposes of this post, my interest is in discussing the details of the constructive actions that can be taken to address the risk instead of getting bogged down in analysis of the risk itself.
A more detailed catastrophic risk analysis could be useful for things like evaluating decisions on how much to prioritize climate change relative to other issues. However, even then the risk analysis would only be one component of the decision analysis, alongside a comparison of the quality of the opportunities to address climate change vs. the opportunities for other issues. Some analysis along those lines is in the section “Climate change warrants massive investment—but not necessarily ours”.