You are welcome. I recommended your diary, since attention to any kind of global threat is helpful. Hopefully global warming efforts can set the stage for more.

What is up with not being able to edit comments all of a sudden?

Anyway, I don’t mean climate change has been blown out of proportion in general, but just that “the fate of the species” is not at stake in the next century owing to it.

On one hand, climate change has been blown far out of proportion with what is actually predicted by serious studies. It certainly does not put “the fate of species” at stake in the next century. On the other hand, threats that really will emerge this century are almost totally unknown among the public. Biotechnology ranks [...]

Chomsky is a very intelligent person. But environmental catastrophe is not the most critical immediate problem we face.

http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html

Bostrom is trying to imagine scenarios where climate change could somehow lead to human extinction. But the idea that Earth could turn into a Venus is total speculation, as he notes here:

Even the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a report prepared for the British Government which has been criticized by some as [...]

Hopefully, however, we will have technological means of counteracting such a trend by the time it would start getting truly dangerous

Which looks a lot like nonsense to me.

Which part?

I do like this:

The apocalypse: Here’s the thing, though. It’s difficult to organize for or even against a future that you can’t imagine yourself and those children and future generations in. The thought of world-ending events may simply close down our operative imaginations. The end of the world may be popular in fiction, but in [...]

Even in its relatively early but visibly intensifying stages, it threatens to be the singular event in human history, because unlike every other disaster we can imagine (except a full-scale nuclear war or, as has happened in the planet’s past, a large meteorite or asteroid impact), it alone will alter the basis for life on this [...]

Good work. Recommended.

If it decreases the political power of biotechnology firms, it’s probably good. Petition signed. I believe however that much more drastic measures are called for–notably on experiments using human DNA. Imagine if we reach a point where we are not protesting the genetic modification of plants but the modification of human beings. I never want [...]

I think Gore deserves a tremendous amount of credit for putting the biotechnology issue front and center alongside the five other drivers of change he mentions. That’s true even if his actual stance needs work. The more people wake up to this the better.

The winners do seem to write history.

Nobody can argue with boosting IQ a few points or finding psychopaths. The problem is that limiting this technology to benign uses will be impossible in the long run and maybe the short. Before long we won’t be boosting IQ a few points, we’ll be boosting it 30 points. People who for some reason don’t [...]

When I was a kid, superconductivity was only possible near absolute zero. Top temprature is now 35c! Your computer will likely have heatstroke before then. Now, this material is not suitable for anything other than lab work being strongly hygroscopic. Which means it becomes worthless quickly just from the water in dry air.

I think this [...]

Well, you’re a bona fide Alaskan. I’m out of sorts here in Italy. Speaking Italian would probably help.

Being in Alaska no doubt raises the stakes on the climate change issue. Sometimes I wish I was born 30 years earlier. I don’t like where we are headed.

I miss SNL.

The threat of extinction does loom large but I don’t see how climate change could bring it about. Nick Bostrom explains:

Even the Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a report prepared for the British Government which has been criticized by some as overly pessimistic, estimates that under the assumption of business-as-usual with regard to [...]