September Newsletter: Planetary Defense & Violent Conflict

Post Date September 29, 2020
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Dear friends,

A primary reason GCRI works across the range of global catastrophic risks is to address the many important points of intersection between the risks. These points of intersection often are neglected by communities that focus on one risk at a time.

This month, we announce a paper on the intersection of planetary defense and violent conflict, especially nuclear war. Planetary defense refers to protection against asteroids, comets, and meteors. One point of intersection is the proposed use of nuclear explosives to target Earthbound asteroids …

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Accounting for Violent Conflict Risk in Planetary Defense Decisions

Post Date September 09, 2020
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Category asteroids, publications, risk analysis

View the paper “Accounting For Violent Conflict Risk In Planetary Defense Decisions”

Planetary defense is the defense of planet Earth against collisions with near-Earth objects (NEOs), which include asteroids, comets and meteoroids. A central objective of planetary defense is to reduce risks to Earth and its inhabitants. Whereas planetary defense is mainly focused on risks from NEO, this paper argues that planetary defense decisions should also account for other risks, especially risks from violent conflict. The paper is based on a talk I gave at the 2019 Planetary …

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July Newsletter: Asteroid-Nuclear Risk Analysis

Post Date July 16, 2019
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Dear friends,

One reason it is important to analyze the global catastrophic risks quantitatively is that some decisions involve tradeoffs between them. An action may reduce one risk while increasing another. It’s important to know whether the decrease in the one risk is large enough to offset the increase in the other.

This month, we announce a new paper that presents a detailed analysis of one such decision: the use of nuclear explosives to deflect Earthbound asteroids away. Nuclear deflection is an option under active consideration by …

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May Newsletter: Call For Advisees & Collaborators

Post Date May 30, 2019
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Dear friends,

I’m pleased to announce that GCRI has recently launched an open call for advisees and collaborators. If you are interested in working with GCRI, or if you would simply like some advice from us on how you can get involved in global catastrophic risk, then please don’t hesitate to reach out. We welcome inquiries from people at all career points, from students to senior scholars and professionals. Please see our blog post for details.

Sincerely,

Seth BaumExecutive Director

Planetary Defense

GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum gave a talk titled …

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Violent Conflict Risk in Planetary Defense Decisions

Post Date May 14, 2019
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GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum gave a talk titled “Accounting For Violent Conflict Risk In Planetary Defense Decisions” at the 2019 International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Planetary Defense Conference in Washington, D.C. Baum’s talk looked at the relationship between efforts to protect the Earth from the impact of near-Earth objects (NEOs) and the risk of violent conflict. Richard A. Lovett wrote about Baum’s talk and about the discussion of planetary defense decisions at the conference in Cosmos.

GCRI Executive Director Seth Baum gave a talk titled …

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GCR News Summary January 2016

Post Date February 03, 2016
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Aedes aegypti mosquito image courtesy of James Gathany/US Centers for Disease Control

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared the spread of the Zika virus in Latin America and the Caribbean a Public Health Emergency of International Concern. Zika is a virus primarily transmitted by mosquitos that was first identified in rhesus monkeys in Uganda in 1947. The most common symptoms of Zika virus disease are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis, although in rare cases it may cause Guillain-Barré syndrome, which can leave patients completely paralyzed. …

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GCR News Summary June 2015

Post Date June 29, 2015
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Solar flare image courtesy of NASA/SDO under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license (image has been cropped)

Pope Francis issued an encyclical saying the natural environment is “the patrimony of all humanity” and calling for a “new dialogue about how we are shaping the future of our planet”. Pope Francis warned that we are warming the planet, depleting its reserves of clean water, and destroying its biodiversity:

Doomsday predictions can no longer be met with irony or disdain. We may well be leaving to coming generations debris, desolation …

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GCR News Summary February 2015

Post Date March 05, 2015
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US Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Geneva image courtesy of the US Department of State

The Global Challenges Foundation published a report on the risks human civilization faces (GCRI’s Seth Baum and Robert de Neufville contributed content to the report). The report identified 12 different areas of risk “that for all practical purposes can be called infinite”. These are nuclear war, global pandemics, climate change, ecological catastrophe, asteroid impacts, super-volcano eruptions, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, synthetic biology, bad global governance, the …

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GCR News Summary February 2014

Post Date February 28, 2014
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Smiling camel image courtesy of Hendrik Dacquin under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic License (the image has been cropped)

Google Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil said at a CIO Network conference that we will develop “human-level” artificial intelligence by the year 2029. Kurzweil—who argued in his book The Singularity Is Near that advances in artificial intelligence will lead to runaway technological progress in the near future—predicted that artificial intelligence systems would also be used to enhance human intelligence. Kurzweil also suggested we …

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GCR News Summary March 2013

Post Date March 26, 2013
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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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