Associate Professor of Volcano and Earth Science at the University of Birmingham. Research affiliate at the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, and Earth Sciences, University of Oxford. Interested in global catastrophic risks, EA and broad longtermism.
Mike Cassidy
Karma: 481
Thanks for your input!
Yes we think there are tractable solutions to reduce the impact from these large eruptions, and we’re currently planning these behind the scenes. The reason for this in part is that there has been little done to model & understand consequences of such eruptions, most of the work in the disaster risk focuses on the more frequent volcanic risks. There’s no organisation that’s currently looking at these extreme hazards in a global sense, so work to coordinate and focus the volcano community (in a similar way to the asteroid community some decades back), could be really effective (again something we’re starting to think about). We’ll do some fuller cost-benefit analysis, but very little (if any) funds and time are being put into extreme volcanic risk reduction, yet the financial losses may be substantial (~trillions). Sorry if that’s a bit vague-we’re just starting to think about this.
Thanks for this- we’ll read this post with interest.
I think you’re right here (I was struggling with some of the definitions), so I’ve removed the bit about ‘s-risks’.
Thanks again!