Thanks for this. I think it could be made clearer here how seriously we are meant to take the possibility that climate change could directly make the Earth uninhabitable. Is the claim that this is possible just like the LHC causing a black hole, or is it that there is like a 1 in 100 or 1 in 1,000 chance? Having looked at the evidence, I find it very difficult to see how climate change could directly cause extinction. It is a very slow moving problem, and for the effects we could see over the course of centuries, I just don’t see any mechanism by which it could cause extinction.
The only plausible way extinction could happen is from moist greenhouse or runaway greenhouse, but the median view in the literature is that this is not physically possible. e.g. The Popp et al paper mentioned assumes that the Earth is entirely ocean.
Great question. I’m afraid I only have a vague answer: I would guess that the chance of climate change directly making Earth uninhabitable in the next few centuries is much smaller than 1 in 10,000. (That’s ignoring the contribution of climate change to other risks.) I don’t know how likely the LHC is to cause a black hole, but I would speculate with little knowledge that the climate habitability risk is greater than that.
As I mentioned in the talk, I think there are other emerging tech risks that are more likely and more pressing than this. But I would also encourage more folks with a background in climate science to focus on these tail risks if they were excited by questions in this space.
Thanks for this. I think it could be made clearer here how seriously we are meant to take the possibility that climate change could directly make the Earth uninhabitable. Is the claim that this is possible just like the LHC causing a black hole, or is it that there is like a 1 in 100 or 1 in 1,000 chance? Having looked at the evidence, I find it very difficult to see how climate change could directly cause extinction. It is a very slow moving problem, and for the effects we could see over the course of centuries, I just don’t see any mechanism by which it could cause extinction.
The only plausible way extinction could happen is from moist greenhouse or runaway greenhouse, but the median view in the literature is that this is not physically possible. e.g. The Popp et al paper mentioned assumes that the Earth is entirely ocean.
Great question. I’m afraid I only have a vague answer: I would guess that the chance of climate change directly making Earth uninhabitable in the next few centuries is much smaller than 1 in 10,000. (That’s ignoring the contribution of climate change to other risks.) I don’t know how likely the LHC is to cause a black hole, but I would speculate with little knowledge that the climate habitability risk is greater than that.
As I mentioned in the talk, I think there are other emerging tech risks that are more likely and more pressing than this. But I would also encourage more folks with a background in climate science to focus on these tail risks if they were excited by questions in this space.