Yes. I've read it in full. More than once. Huggal's work is a vital contribution to the definition and assessment of climate risk. I provided a range of material in the hope of promoting a broader discussion of risk, one that might take us away from a misplaced, binary, objectively-true-or-objectively-false squabble.
macdoc wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2023 4:40 pm
Global catastrophic risk
The research community on existential risks typically defines existential risks as threats that could cause the extinction of humanity or destroy the potential of intelligent life on Earth (Bostrom 2002). Scholars distinguish between natural existential risks, such as a large asteroid impact on earth or a supervolcanic eruption, and anthropogenic existential risks, including those related to nuclear war, artificial intelligence, pandemics, and climate change (Bostrom 2013). Existential risks can be seen either as a subset or a synonym for global catastrophic risks (GCR), which are defined as those risks that threaten the entirety of human population and civilization (Baum and Barrett 2018). The common and distinguishing scope of these existential and global catastrophic risks is the focus on events or scenarios that place a large proportion or the entirety of humans at risk of death (Ó hÉigeartaigh 2017), although it is often not detailed over which periods of times such catastrophes would unfold. In this logic, more local catastrophes, and even major disasters like Chernobyl in 1986, the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, or the Spanish influenza in 1918–1920, would not qualify as this kind of risk. Similarly, the COVID-19 pandemic, although with unprecedented global and probably long-lasting effects on people, society, and economy, would not qualify as an existential or global catastrophic risk because it is not considered a threat to the survival of humanity. Torres (2019) provides an analysis of five types of existential risks that encompass human extinction, civilizational collapse, permanent, drastic or significant losses of expected value or potential, and a pan-generational crushing catastrophe, which he compiles in a matrix of scope (from personal and local to pan-generational) and severity (from imperceptible to crushing).
Existential risk is not a narrative or term that has been widely adopted or further developed by the climate change research community. Neither the concept of existential risks nor the term “existential” was used in the IPCC 5th Assessment Report (AR5), nor in the IPCC Special Reports of the 6th Assessment Cycle,
The IPCC AR5 introduced the concept of key risks that can potentially have severe adverse consequences for humans and socio-ecological systems (Oppenheimer et al. 2014). Criteria for identifying key risks include probability, timing, magnitude, systems affected and irreversibility of corresponding risks, and limitations to reduce risks through mitigation and adaptation (O’Neill et al. 2017). Notably, none of these key risks reaches a level where human civilization would be threatened, as it would be by GCR. The key risks were also intended to inform the Reasons for Concern (RFC), which are probably the risks treated in current and past IPCC reports that have the strongest resemblance to (sensu GCR).
It does not help to overstate.
The changes induced by AGW will in many cases be catastrophic indeed .....but not existential.
Meh, definitional literalism aside, climate change presents an existential threat to billions of people globally. As I said, it depends on the scope and scale of one's focus.
How resilient our our societies currently to the IPCC projected increased risks borne of heightened resource pressures, mass migration, ecological tipping points, zoonotic diseases, social, economic and political turmoil, intra- and international conflict that could easily spiral out of control? How confident should we be that nukes would never be used in that kind of desperate and chaotic context? Am I wrong to use 'existential threat' because the focus of our scope should primarily be limited to the human-species wide level, or am I right because when the focus of our scope becomes the existence and resilience of those whose vulnerabilities and risks are highest then those same unaddressed issue will lead to untold suffering and death?
When campaigners say things like "There's no quarterly reports on a dead planet" some people are tempted to point out that they're technically incorrect because the planet will continue to exist even if humans wipe themselves out along with most of the biosphere. But all that kind of objection does is deflect from the real and pressing issues before us. It does the deniers work for them. Similarly it misses the broader point about the extreme seriousness of the climate and ecological emergency, and deflects from the issue at hand, if one's instinct is to chide because, say, in the event that a breeding population of humans survive a climate and ecological calamity that otherwise killed c.7 billion people then the use of a phrase such as 'existential threat' would have been proven to be technically incorrect.
So while you might feel that my use of 'existential threat' is factually incorrect, or hyperbole, with so much of an interconnected biosphere and our interconnected human societies increasingly vulnerable to climate risk is it really stretching things too far to say that global heating presents an existential threat to our way of life, or well-being, or to our continued personal existence - even to us in our hitherto relatively comfy Western societies?
You think I'm being alarmist, no? But could it be that you've just become deaf to the sound of alarm bells?
if COPs were any use, the Paris agreements from cop 21 would be in full swing and things would already be getting better
you do ).