Climate Endgame Paper - PNAS
webCredibility Rating
Gold standard. Rigorous peer review, high editorial standards, and strong institutional reputation.
Rating inherited from publication venue: PNAS
Though focused on climate rather than AI, this paper is relevant to AI safety researchers interested in existential risk frameworks, catastrophic tail-risk analysis, and multi-domain civilizational threats that could interact with or complicate AI governance efforts.
Metadata
Summary
This PNAS paper examines severely underexplored catastrophic and existential risks from climate change, arguing that worst-case scenarios including societal collapse and human extinction deserve serious scientific attention. The authors call for a dedicated research agenda on 'Climate Endgame' scenarios involving 3°C or more of warming, cascading risks, and interactions with other global stressors. It parallels existential risk frameworks common in AI safety discourse.
Key Points
- •Argues that catastrophic climate scenarios (>3°C warming) are neglected in mainstream research despite potentially civilization-ending consequences
- •Introduces concept of 'Climate Endgame' to capture tail risks including societal collapse and potential human extinction from climate change
- •Identifies four key risk factors: food system shocks, extreme weather, conflict, and vector-borne diseases interacting in cascading ways
- •Calls for a formal research agenda on catastrophic climate risk analogous to existential risk research in other fields
- •Relevant to AI safety community as a model for tail-risk analysis and cross-domain catastrophic risk thinking
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| CSER (Centre for the Study of Existential Risk) | Organization | 58.0 |
Cached Content Preview
# Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios Authors: Luke Kemp, Chi Xu, Joanna Depledge, Kristie L. Ebi, Goodwin Gibbins, Timothy A. Kohler, Johan Rockström, Marten Scheffer, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Will Steffen, Timothy M. Lenton Journal: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Published: 2022-08-23 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2108146119 ## Abstract Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad-to-worst-case scenarios. Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including emergency responses. We outline current knowledge about the likelihood of extreme climate change, discuss why understanding bad-to-worst cases is vital, articulate reasons for concern about catastrophic outcomes, define key terms, and put forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda covers four main questions: 1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human societies' vulnerabilities to climate-triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global dangers—be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe assessment”? It is time for the scientific community to grapple with the challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change.
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