Talk:Global catastrophic risk

Distance Conversions: How many signifacant digits?

Converting 1, 3, 10 and 140 kilometres into miles: Since the kilometre figures are accurate to only one or two significant digits (not five or six), I have so rounded the converted miles. - Glenn L.

End of the Earth

http://www.washington.edu/newsroom/news/2003archive/01-03archive/k011303a.html

Self collapse

this user did not use original research for this " Self-collapse - - Permanent settlement must always end in a collapse. The idea depends on infinite resources, which we simply do not have. There is a great dependancy on future generations or scientists to overcome this, however reliance on this may not be the best idea. Civilizations have crashed over mere intervals of only hundreds of years throughout history, and the next one may be defined by running out of oil, or even water. Civiliation has expanded for 10,000 years since the neolithic revolution, and has been dependant on the expansion of agriculture. When there is not enough water to support more agriculture, or the larger populations that inevitably follow, there could indeed be a crash. 70% of the fresh water available today goes toward agriculture, with 17-20% more expected by 2020. <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/755497.stm>" but i will agree to have it removed until i add sources and wikfy it

-Ishmaelblues (—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ishmaelblues (talk • contribs) .

Merge Future scenarios with Possible scenarios section of Human extinction

The Future scenarios section should be merges with the Possible scenarios section of Human extinction. --Chealer (talk) 16:42, 30 July 2010 (UTC)

Some merger with human extinction seems called for. These articles are about very similar topics. K. the Surveyor (talk) 08:32, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

What is the focus of this article?

According to the into: "The risks discussed in this article are at least Global and Terminal in intensity." So why is there a section on "Climate change and global warming" and another section on "Climate change and ecology"? First why are there two, and second those are neither global nor terminal. (Just because some people die does not make it "terminal" by the usage in this article, otherwise old age should be listed.) This entire article is littered with minor threats and needs a large trimming. Ariel. (talk) 09:12, 24 January 2011 (UTC)

Global warming has global/terminal potential. Green Cardamom (talk) 07:52, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Global Warming, however, does not. The only actual extinction risks here are AI, Grey Goo, the cosmic risks and possibly Nuclear Winter. Civilization collapse is obviously easier (though most of these aren't even that). 82.11.1.60 (talk) 21:41, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Proposed article split

I think this article should be split into natural and artificial risks (to civilization, etc.). I think that areas like the possibility of humans knocking a meteor out of a collision course with Earth counts as a natural risk.--Meximore (talk) 09:03, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Good idea. 99.181.133.112 (talk) 21:32, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

Reorganize the articles?

I think this article try to put too many things together. It could get more manageable if was divided in:

• Existential risk - risks to civilization/end of civilization (human maybe still existing but non in a civilized society - à la Mad Max - but one could argue that this too is a type of civilization. Ok, maybe we need a definition)
• human extinction (no more human anywhere)
• end/destruction of planet Earth (humans on another planet/space station or extinct) [article to be created?]

...and I'm tempted to use Doomsday event as the main article. Has anyone got other suggestions? --Dia^ (talk) 20:46, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

The unsources section removed by Special:Contributions/Arthur_Rubin (see below) can have elements added ...

Escalating Societal Disparity

Right now we are witnessing a greater disparity than there has been for centuries. The ability for small financial elites to make themselves richer through access to expanding technologies is considerable. This danger has been well documented by Marshall Brain, Martin Ford, Jeremy Rifkin and Noam Chomsky. Noam Chomsky writes:

"In this possible terminal phase of human existence Democracy and Freedom are more than 'values to be treasured' - they may well be essential to survival"

The problem is not affluence - it is the ability of the few to acquire exclusive means of getting richer, or to consolidate this power, at the expensive of everyone else. A phenomenon very common in the third world is the very richest few percent of society buying all the agricultural land and using it to grow export crops, often being the root cause in these countries of widespread poverty and cyclical famines. It is very difficult to make this argument as it is constantly opposed to far right or pro market ideologues. Key technologies are likely to contribute to this escalation of wealth, namely 3D printing and nanoreplication, robotics, ubiquitous computing. The idea of a Singularity makes assumptions that are equally valid on what has become known as a 'disparity hockey stick'. While mass reproduced products benefit many, only a very small selection of humans has been enjoying the extreme riches that come with owning widespread automated infrastructure for production of goods or services. This point is emphasized by martin ford in the book the lights in the tunnel and has been touched upon by Jeremy Rifkin in the end of work. These two both argue strongly that in the next decade most paid labor will become automated or done by robots. This will end widespread societal access to jobs. That in itself creates a faster pace of irreversible unemployability or "jobless growth" that we will have ever seen before in human history. Already the middle class is evaporating in most western societies. In every society before in human history disparity and similar power asymmetry of the current epidemic has led to massive killings, or revolt. It is no surprise we have in fact been seeing some early types of revolts in the Arab world, and more recently in London.

In our currently prevailing macro-economic model there is no solution to such a hypothetical crisis, other than the masses realizing this would imply the cancellation of the social contract and engaging in open revolt against the state. The troubling question remains how easy it would be to force out a hyper-empowered elite, since they could use the same automated technologies to protect their property rights and interests in arguably ruthless ways.

99.35.12.88 (talk) 02:48, 27 August 2011 (UTC)