[ExI] Global catastrophic risk report

[spike]

On 2016-05-01 12:10, Rafal Smigrodzki wrote:



I came across the following: 

 

http://globalprioritiesproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Global-Catastr
ophic-Risk-Annual-Report-2016-FINAL.pdf


 

### It lists global warming (renamed "climate change") right at the top,
even ahead of nuclear war. Really? This is so ridiculous it beggars
imagination.





 
In the USA, we have what seems like a concerted effort on the part of public
elementary schools to instill in the students an awareness of climate
change.  If you talk to the students, they really really misunderstand the
risk, and I think teachers do as well.  But plenty of the students believe
the planet will be 10C warmer when they reach adulthood than it is now.
 
There must be ways to cash in on this belief by betting against it, by
betting on climate non-change.  But we must act quickly, for a generation
from now, I suspect plenty of these same students now grown will have an
inherent distrust of the process that led them to believe a falsehood.
Perhaps they will come to distrust any scientific research when politicians
take it up at any level.  Children's lives are filled with changes that are
big and fast.  We older ones realize that big changes happen very slowly if
they ever change at all.
 
If Science Inc. expects climate will change 1 degree C in 50 years, the
students come away with the notion that climate will change 10C in 5 years.
Otherwise, the grownups wouldn't make such a big deal over it.  10C in five
years will not happen.  We can bet on it.  We can cash in on it.
 
It feels like money is being tragically left unmade here.
 
spike
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