Follow-up comment now that I’ve finished reading this post:
I found a few minor inaccuracies from spot-checking specific claims. My spot-checks found a pretty high error rate (about 50%), which unfortunately leads me to believe that that I shouldn’t update my beliefs based on this summary.
I like the genre of “summary of a very long article, written by a third party” and I’m glad you wrote it. My guess is you just rushed this post a bit and weren’t as careful as you should have been.
Forest cover has been increasing for decades.
From Figure 1 in the linked paper, it looks like the rate of deforestation has decreased since ~2000, but it’s still positive.
Climate change will likely cause a few hundred thousand extra people to relocate annually, by raising the frequency of extreme heat.
The linked paper is about sea level rise. From skimming, I don’t think it said anything about displacement due to extreme heat.
Halstead estimates that at the highest end, warming-related conflicts will cause roughly an extra 40,000 deaths by 2100.
Where are you getting this? The closest claim I see is page 389:
This suggests that battle deaths [in Africa] will increase to 40,000 by 2100, other things equal.
Oh and one point about the update: all of these errors came from me being a dumbass and misreading Halstead or posting the wrong link, so this shouldn’t affect your update from Halstead.
Would be true if I had read Halstead’s 437-page report, but I didn’t, I only read the intro + your summary. So if I don’t put high credence in your summary then I don’t know what Halstead’s findings were.
You can read a brief summary of his findings here—he also read my article and didn’t point out anything major, so it’s unlikely that I majorly distorted what he said.
Update: I spent some more time digging into this. The claim from the report that I care most about is the claim of a 1 in 100,000 existential risk due to climate change. This figure comes from a cost-effectiveness model that has since been deleted.
(I asked Forethought Institute if they have a backup and apparently they don’t.)
I suspect that I would’ve had issues with the model if I’d read it (specifically I would’ve thought the credence intervals were too narrow). From skimming the report, 1 in 100,000 seems overconfident based on the presented evidence, but I don’t actually know what went into the model.
Follow-up comment now that I’ve finished reading this post:
I found a few minor inaccuracies from spot-checking specific claims. My spot-checks found a pretty high error rate (about 50%), which unfortunately leads me to believe that that I shouldn’t update my beliefs based on this summary.
I like the genre of “summary of a very long article, written by a third party” and I’m glad you wrote it. My guess is you just rushed this post a bit and weren’t as careful as you should have been.
From Figure 1 in the linked paper, it looks like the rate of deforestation has decreased since ~2000, but it’s still positive.
The linked paper is about sea level rise. From skimming, I don’t think it said anything about displacement due to extreme heat.
Where are you getting this? The closest claim I see is page 389:
Which is a very different claim.
Oh and one point about the update: all of these errors came from me being a dumbass and misreading Halstead or posting the wrong link, so this shouldn’t affect your update from Halstead.
Would be true if I had read Halstead’s 437-page report, but I didn’t, I only read the intro + your summary. So if I don’t put high credence in your summary then I don’t know what Halstead’s findings were.
You can read a brief summary of his findings here—he also read my article and didn’t point out anything major, so it’s unlikely that I majorly distorted what he said.
https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/BvNxD66sLeAT8u9Lv/climate-change-and-longtermism-new-book-length-report
Okay yes you are totally right, these are embarrassing errors that I will now fix!
Update: I spent some more time digging into this. The claim from the report that I care most about is the claim of a 1 in 100,000 existential risk due to climate change. This figure comes from a cost-effectiveness model that has since been deleted.
(I asked Forethought Institute if they have a backup and apparently they don’t.)
I suspect that I would’ve had issues with the model if I’d read it (specifically I would’ve thought the credence intervals were too narrow). From skimming the report, 1 in 100,000 seems overconfident based on the presented evidence, but I don’t actually know what went into the model.
Sorry, just saw this, will double-check and then fix the various claims if you are right.