GCR News Summary March 2013

This post marks the first of what we hope will be an ongoing series of global catastrophic risk news summaries. You can help by posting any GCR news you see in the comment thread of this blog post, or send them via email to Grant Wilson (grant [at] gcrinstitute.org).

In Science, British Astronomer Royal Martin Rees argued that we need to take existential risk more seriously. Foreign Policy did a profile of the Cambridge Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, which Rees helped …

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GCR News Summary Trial Run

GCRI, in partnership with Robert de Neufville, is trying out a new project on global catastrophic risk news. The basic idea of the project is to compile various news items related to GCR, and then periodically (probably once or twice per month) summarize them on the GCRI blog. The aim is to help keep people informed with what’s going on in the GCR world. We’re using ‘news’ in the broadest sense of the word, to include anything new: current events, commentaries, announcements, etc, related to …

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March 2013 Newsletter

Dear friends,

A lot of the knowledge needed to address global catastrophic risk – and many other issues – is already out there somewhere in the world. But it’s spread across many different people. The challenge then is bringing people together to share and synthesize their knowledge. GCRI is dedicated to meeting this challenge. In this month’s newsletter, we announce three new initiatives on this front. First, we invite you to join us at the 2013 Society for Risk Analysis Annual Meeting, which will be December …

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February 2013 Newsletter

Note from the editor: GCRI forgot to post the February 2013 Newsletter on our blog last month, so here it is. Enjoy!

Dear friends,

It is always a bittersweet moment when a close colleague moves on with his career. For the last nine months, Tim Maher has been working as a Research Assistant for GCRI through the Bard College M.S. program in Climate Science and Policy. Now Tim is transitioning back to Bard to finish his degree. His presence will be greatly missed. Everywhere you look within …

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Double Catastrophe: Intermittent Stratospheric Geoengineering Induced By Societal Collapse

View the paper “Double Catastrophe: Intermittent Stratospheric Geoengineering Induced By Societal Collapse”

To date, most research on global catastrophes analyzes one risk at a time. A better approach uses systems analysis to capture the many important interactions between risks. This paper analyzes a global catastrophe scenario involving climate change, geoengineering, and another catastrophe. We call the scenario “double catastrophe”. 

Climate change and stratospheric geoengineering.The rising temperatures of global climate change pose great risks to humanity and ecosystems. Climate change can be slowed by reducing emissions of greenhouse …

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Join GCRI At SRA 2013, December 8-11, Baltimore

Every year, GCRI hosts sessions on global catastrophic risk at meetings of the Society for Risk Analysis, the leading professional society for all forms of risk. The call for presentations for the SRA 2013 Annual Meeting has recently been announced. The meeting will be December 8-11 in Baltimore.

We invite you to join us at this meeting. If you have something to present on any topic related to global catastrophic risk, we want to hear from you. Please send a short (1-5 sentence) speaker bio and …

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New Website Events Section

This website now has a new events section, featuring pages for discussion groups, online lectures, and Society for Risk Analysis meetings. We are actively planning new events. Please check back for updates.

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Grant Wilson Promoted To Deputy Director

I am delighted to announce that Grant Wilson has been promoted to Deputy Director of GCRI. He was previously a Professional Associate. The promotion acknowledges the growing leadership role that Grant has come to play for GCRI. Grant is now right there with Tony Barrett and myself in helping build the organization. His legal background and nonprofit experience have been especially valuable. He is also contributing to GCRI’s research, in particular his law article Minimizing global catastrophic and existential risks from emerging technologies through international …

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New IEET Article On International Treaties For Emerging Technologies

Quick FYI – Grant Wilson and I have a new article up at IEET: How to create an international treaty for emerging technologies. The article discusses several options for the institutions that can support such a treaty, mainly institutions within the United Nations. The article was produced for our crowdfunding campaign Preventing Technological Disaster Through International Treaties. We had hoped to raise $8000 and write a full academic journal article, but we only raised $300, so we wrote this instead. I still think it provides …

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New Conferences Directory Resource

GCRI is pleased to announce the launch of its newest resource for the global catastrophic risk community, a conferences directory. The directory features 66 conferences across 6 continents (all but Antarctica), each with a brief description, conference dates, and location.

The conferences directory covers a wide variety of GCR topics. Most of the conferences involve specific GCR topics like climate change, emerging technologies, infectious disease, and nuclear war. Other conferences cover cross-cutting issues like astrobiology and uncertainty. A few conferences are about GCR specifically.

Here are a few …

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