Vasco—thanks for a fascinating, illuminating, and skeptical review of the nuclear winter literature.
It seems like about 1000x as much effort has gone into modeling global warming as into modeling nuclear winter. Yet this kind of nuclear winter modelling seems very important—it’s large scope, neglected, and tractable—perfect for EA funding.
Given the extremely high stakes for understanding whether nuclear war is likely to be a ‘moderately bad global catastrophe’ (e.g. ‘only’ a few hundred million dead, civilization set back by decades or centuries, but eventual recovery possible), or an extinction-level event for humanity (i.e. everybody dies forever), clarifying the likely effects of ‘nuclear winter’ seem like a really good use of EA talent and money.
Thanks, Geoffrey! Credits go to Bean, the author of the post I shared!
I should note Open Phil and FLI have funded nuclear winter modelling:
Open Phil recommended a grant of 2.98 M$ in 2017, and 3 M$ in 2020 to support Alan Robock’s and Brian Toon’s research.
FLI has made a series of grants in 2022 funding nuclear war research totalling 3.563 M$, of which 1 M$ to support Alan Robock’s and Brian Toon’s research.
So it looks like EA-aligned organisations have directed 9.543 M$ to nuclear war research between 2017 and 2022 (1.59 M$/year), of which 6.98 M$ (73.1 %) to support Alan Robock’s and Brian Toon’s research. Someone worried about how truth-seeking their past research was may have preferred more funding going to other groups.
I think funding of the Robock, Toon Turco research group was a mistake and little was gained from the research outputs of the funding, which was more of the same. I think it would be good if someone funded a physicist not associated with them to do an in-depth review of the topic.
It remains a really puzzling choice on the part of OP as well given the concerns around Robock are very easy to find and, indeed, have been well-known in the EA community by 2020.
I think funding of the Robock, Toon Turco research group was a mistake and little was gained from the research outputs of the funding, which was more of the same.
Do you have any guesses for why Open Phil and FLI funded Alan Robock’s and Brian Toon’s teams despite concerns around their past research?
I think it would be good if someone funded a physicist not associated with them to do an in-depth review of the topic.
For reference, a team of physicists (Wagman 2020) found a significantly shorter soot lifetime (BC below stands for black carbon, i.e. soot):
Vasco—thanks for a fascinating, illuminating, and skeptical review of the nuclear winter literature.
It seems like about 1000x as much effort has gone into modeling global warming as into modeling nuclear winter. Yet this kind of nuclear winter modelling seems very important—it’s large scope, neglected, and tractable—perfect for EA funding.
Given the extremely high stakes for understanding whether nuclear war is likely to be a ‘moderately bad global catastrophe’ (e.g. ‘only’ a few hundred million dead, civilization set back by decades or centuries, but eventual recovery possible), or an extinction-level event for humanity (i.e. everybody dies forever), clarifying the likely effects of ‘nuclear winter’ seem like a really good use of EA talent and money.
Thanks, Geoffrey! Credits go to Bean, the author of the post I shared!
I should note Open Phil and FLI have funded nuclear winter modelling:
Open Phil recommended a grant of 2.98 M$ in 2017, and 3 M$ in 2020 to support Alan Robock’s and Brian Toon’s research.
FLI has made a series of grants in 2022 funding nuclear war research totalling 3.563 M$, of which 1 M$ to support Alan Robock’s and Brian Toon’s research.
So it looks like EA-aligned organisations have directed 9.543 M$ to nuclear war research between 2017 and 2022 (1.59 M$/year), of which 6.98 M$ (73.1 %) to support Alan Robock’s and Brian Toon’s research. Someone worried about how truth-seeking their past research was may have preferred more funding going to other groups.
I think funding of the Robock, Toon Turco research group was a mistake and little was gained from the research outputs of the funding, which was more of the same. I think it would be good if someone funded a physicist not associated with them to do an in-depth review of the topic.
It remains a really puzzling choice on the part of OP as well given the concerns around Robock are very easy to find and, indeed, have been well-known in the EA community by 2020.
Thanks for sharing your view on this, John!
Do you have any guesses for why Open Phil and FLI funded Alan Robock’s and Brian Toon’s teams despite concerns around their past research?
For reference, a team of physicists (Wagman 2020) found a significantly shorter soot lifetime (BC below stands for black carbon, i.e. soot):