As per my last shortform, over the next couple of weeks I will be moving my brief profiles for different catastrophes from my draft existential risk frameworks post into shortform posts to make the existential risk frameworks post lighter and more simple.
In my last shortform, I included the profile for the use of nuclear weapons and today I will include the profile for climate change.
Thoughts and Notes: October 5th 0012022 (1)
As per my last shortform, over the next couple of weeks I will be moving my brief profiles for different catastrophes from my draft existential risk frameworks post into shortform posts to make the existential risk frameworks post lighter and more simple.
In my last shortform, I included the profile for the use of nuclear weapons and today I will include the profile for climate change.
Climate change
Risk: (sections from the well written Wikipedia page on Climate Change): “Contemporary climate change includes both global warming and its impacts on Earth’s weather patterns. There have been previous periods of climate change, but the current rise in global average temperature is more rapid and is primarily caused by humans.[2][3] Burning fossil fuels adds greenhouse gases to the atmosphere, most importantly carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane. Greenhouse gases warm the air by absorbing heat radiated by the Earth, trapping the heat near the surface. Greenhouse gas emissions amplify this effect, causing the Earth to take in more energy from sunlight than it can radiate back into space.” In general, the risk from climate change mostly comes from the destabilizing downstream effects it has on civilization, rather than from its direct effects, such as the ice caps melting or increased weather severity. One severe climate change catastrophe is the runaway greenhouse effect, but this seems unlikely to occur, as the present humans activities and natural processes contributing to global warming don’t appear capable of engendering such a catastrophe anytime soon.
Links: EAF Wiki; LW Wiki; Climate Change (Wikipedia); IPCC Report 2022; NOAA Climate Q & A; OWID Carbon Dioxide and Emissions (2020); UN Reports on CC; CC and Longtermism (2022); NASA Evidence of CC (2022)
Forecasts: If climate catastrophe by 2100, human population falls by >= 95%? − 1%; If global catastrophe by 2100, due to climate change or geoengineering? − 10%; How much warming by 2100? - (1.8, 2.6, 3.5) degrees; When fossil fuels < 50% of global energy? - (2038, 2044, 2056)