The Benefits and Harm of Transmitting Into Space

Post Date February 12, 2013
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Category publications

View the paper “The Benefits and Harm of Transmitting Into Space”

Deliberate and unintended radio transmissions from Earth propagate into space. Deliberate transmissions, such as the Arecibo message pictured above, are intended as attempts to send messages to potential extraterrestrial watchers (METI). Unintended radio leakage includes television and radio broadcasts, cell phone networks, and high-power military and astronomical radars. This radiation gives evidence of our technological civilization to any extraterrestrial watchers. This paper asks: do radio transmissions pose a risk and should they continue? The value …

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Updated Donate Page: 3 Reasons To Support GCRI

Post Date February 11, 2013
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Category announcement, outreach

To help you decide whether to donate to GCRI, we have updated our donate page with three reasons why GCRI is an excellent organization to support:

1. Global catastrophic risk is an important cause. Global catastrophes can affect everyone around the world. Preventing global catastrophes is an efficient way to help a lot of people. Humanity today faces some worrisome threats, making global catastrophic risk an urgent issue to address.

2. GCRI does important work on global catastrophic risk. We help society figure out how it can …

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Double Catastrophe Article At Scientific American

Post Date February 06, 2013
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Category articles, emerging technologies, environmental change

Another quick FYI: I have a new article up at Scientific American blogs, When global catastrophes collide: The climate engineering double catastrophe. This article summarizes my recent journal article with Tim Maher and Jacob Haqq-Misra, Double catastrophe: Intermittent stratospheric geoengineering induced by societal collapse.

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Teaching Astrobiology In A Sustainability Course

Post Date February 05, 2013
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Category astrobiology

View the paper “Teaching Astrobiology In A Sustainability Course”

Sustainability commonly refers to the ability for human and/or ecological systems to be sustained on Earth in the face of natural resource depletion, environmental degradation, and other stressors. Astrobiology is the study of life in the universe, including Earth-life colonizing space and life that originates elsewhere. Both are interdisciplinary fields asking big-picture questions about humanity and its surroundings. While sustainability almost always focuses on life on Earth, much about sustainability can be learned from astrobiology. This paper …

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Emerging Tech Governance Article At IEET

Post Date January 23, 2013
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Category articles, emerging technologies, law & policy

Quick FYI: I have a new article at IEET, Seven Reasons For Integrated Emerging Technologies Governance. The article discusses advantages of handling all emerging technologies within one governance regime instead of treating each technology in separate piecemeal fashion. The seven reasons are forecasting, politics, relationships, dual-use technology, risk driven by research and development, lab transparency, and whistleblowing.

Not all emerging technologies pose risk of global catastrophe. An integrated governance regime would help with the global catastrophic risks from emerging technologies, but it would help with the …

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January 2013 Newsletter

Post Date January 10, 2013
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Category newsletter

Dear friends,

Happy new year. 2012 was GCRI’s first full year in existence. It was a great year for us. We grew from three people to ten, launched a new website, publications, resources for the GCR community, and more. Now, having survived the December 2012 apocalypse, we look forward to an even better 2013.

We’re sending out the January newsletter a few days late because we wanted to include two new papers that were recently accepted for publication – one on geoengineering and one on nuclear war. Each paper demonstrates a key theme that …

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New Paper: Inadvertent Nuclear War

Post Date January 09, 2013
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Category nuclear war, publications

GCRI has another new academic paper out. Analyzing and reducing the risks of inadvertent nuclear war between the United States and Russia, by Tony Barrett, Seth Baum, and Kelly Hostetler, has been accepted for publication in Science and Global Security.

The paper discusses the possibility of US-Russia nuclear war occurring when one country mistakenly concludes that a false alarm is real and launches nuclear weapons in what it believes is a counterattack. Inadvertent US-Russia nuclear war has come close to happening before, even since the end …

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New Paper: Geoengineering Double Catastrophe

Post Date January 04, 2013
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Category emerging technologies, environmental change, publications

GCRI has a new academic paper out. Double catastrophe: Intermittent stratospheric geoengineering induced by societal collapse, by Seth Baum, Timothy Maher, and Jacob Haqq-Misra, has been accepted for publication in Environment, Systems and Decisions.

The paper discusses a global catastrophe scenario involving climate change, geoengineering, and a separate catastrophe. In the scenario, stratospheric geoengineering is conducted to cool the warming temperatures associated with climate change. Then, an initial catastrophe separate from climate change prevents humanity from continuing the geoengineering, causing a rapid temperature increase. The initial …

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Nuclear War Group Discusses Ongoing Risk Of US-Russia Nuclear War

Post Date December 30, 2012
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Category discussion groups, nuclear war

On Thursday 29 November, GCRI hosted the fourth of a series of discussions among a group of nuclear war scholars. This discussion focused on the ongoing risk of an all-out nuclear war between the United States and Russia.

Meeting participants included Martin Hellman of Stanford, Benoit Pelopidas of Bristol, James Scouras of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and Tony Barret, Seth Baum, Jacob Haqq-Misra, and Tim Maher, all of GCRI.

The reason for focusing on US-Russia nuclear war is simple: the US and Russia still …

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Grant Wilson On Emerging Tech Treaties At IEET

Post Date December 30, 2012
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Category articles, emerging technologies, law & policy

Quick FYI: Grant Wilson has a new article at IEET: Emerging Technologies: Should They Be Internationally Regulated? The article discusses existing and possible treaties for a range of emerging technologies, including bioengineering, geoengineering, and artificial intelligence. The article summarizes Grant’s recent law paper Minimizing global catastrophic and existential risks from emerging technologies through international law.

Note that the IEET article lists me as an author on this. My name is only listed because I was the one with existing IEET status. Grant wrote the article. I …

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