<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><p style="margin: 0px 0px 10px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(251, 251, 251); min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></p><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">“When I tell politicians to act now, the most common answer is that they <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 251, 0);" class="">can’t do anything drastic</span>, because that would be too unpopular among voters. </span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">“And they are right of course.”</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Greta Thunberg in speech to European Parliament</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Full text </span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><a href="https://www.europarl.europa.eu/resources/library/media/20190416RES41665/20190416RES41665.pdf" class="">https://www.europarl.europa.eu/resources/library/media/20190416RES41665/20190416RES41665.pdf</a></span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(251, 2, 7);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">———————————————————</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(251, 2, 7); min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffff0a" class="">“We know it might sound far-fetched that a changing climate could one day force California to abandon entire towns </span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">in high-risk fire zones in the mountains, the way a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-02-24/marina-sea-level-rise" class=""><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">handful of coastal communities</span></a> have reluctantly embraced a <a href="https://www.latimes.com/projects/la-me-sea-level-rise-california-coast/#nt=00000170-5f60-d233-a371-ffeb4632000f-showMedia-title-promoSmall-enhancement" class=""><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">“managed retreat” from rising sea levels</span></a>.</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">“But it’s really not. Not when <a href="http://www.lakecountyca.gov/Assets/Departments/Administration/Vision/CumulativeImpact.pdf" class=""><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">most of both rural Lake and Butte counties</span></a> have gone up in flames multiple times in the last few years, often displacing and <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-09-22/the-people-in-this-california-town-have-much-to-begin-with-fire-took-it-away" class=""><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">sometimes killing residents</span></a>. Not when eight of the 10 largest wildfires in the state’s history have occurred in the last five years, with <a href="https://www.fire.ca.gov/media/4jandlhh/top20_acres.pdf" class=""><span style="-webkit-font-kerning: none; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" class="">the top three in Northern California</span></a>.”</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-27/california-climate-change-stop-rebuilding-rural-towns-wildfire-greenville" class="">https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-09-27/california-climate-change-stop-rebuilding-rural-towns-wildfire-greenville</a></span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(251, 2, 7);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">———————————————————</span></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; color: rgb(251, 2, 7); min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">PNAS August 1, 2022</span></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><a href="https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108146119" class="">https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2108146119</a> </span></p><div style="margin: 0px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); min-height: 17px;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""></span><br class=""></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><b class="">Climate Endgame: Exploring catastrophic climate change scenarios </b></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Luke Kemp, Chi Xu,Joanna Depledge, Kristie L. Ebi, Goodwin Gibbins, Timothy A. Kohler, Johan Rockstro</span><span style="vertical-align: 1.0px; font-kerning: none" class="">m</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""> Marten Scheffer, Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, Will Steffen</span><span style="vertical-align: 5.0px; font-kerning: none" class=""> </span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">, and Timothy M. Lenton</span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><b class="">Abstract</b> </span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffff0a" class="">Prudent risk management requires consideration of bad- to-worst-case scenarios.</span><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""> Yet, for climate change, such potential futures are poorly understood. </span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffff0a" class="">Could anthropogenic climate change result in worldwide societal collapse or even eventual human extinction? At present, this is a dangerously underexplored topic. </span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">Yet there are ample reasons to suspect that climate change could result in a global catastrophe. Analyzing the mechanisms for these extreme consequences could help galvanize action, improve resilience, and inform policy, including emergency responses. </span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffff0a" class="">We outline current knowledge about the likelihood of extreme climate change, </span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">discuss why understanding bad-to-worst cases is vital, articulate reasons for concern about catastrophic outcomes, define key terms, and put forward a research agenda. The proposed agenda covers four main questions: </span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffff0a" class="">1) What is the potential for climate change to drive mass extinction events? 2) What are the mechanisms that could result in human mass mortality and morbidity? 3) What are human societies' vulnerabilities to climate- triggered risk cascades, such as from conflict, political instability, and systemic financial risk? 4) How can these multiple strands of evidence—together with other global dangers— be usefully synthesized into an “integrated catastrophe assessment”? </span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">It is time for the scientific community to grapple with the challenge of better understanding catastrophic climate change. </span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class=""><b class="">Excerpt from text of article </b></span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffff0a" class="">Why the focus on lower-end warming and simple risk analyses? </span><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">One reason is the benchmark of the international targets: the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to well below 2 °C, with an aspiration of 1.5 °C. Another reason is the culture of climate science to “err on the side of least drama” (7), to not to be alarmists, which can be compounded by the consensus processes of the IPCC (8). Complex risk assessments, while more realistic, are also more difficult to do. </span></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 12px; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal;" class=""><span style="font-kerning: none" class="">This caution is understandable, yet it is mismatched to the risks and potential damages posed by climate change. We know that temperature rise has “fat tails”: low-probability, high-impact extreme outcomes (9). Climate damages are likely to be nonlinear and result in an even larger tail (10). T</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffff0a" class="">oo much is at stake to </span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #21ffff" class="">refrain from examining</span><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffff0a" class=""> high-impact low-likelihood scenarios. </span></p><div class=""><span style="font-kerning: none; background-color: #ffff0a" class=""><br class=""></span></div><div class="">
<div dir="auto" style="caret-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); color: rgb(0, 0, 0); letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px; text-decoration: none; word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div dir="auto" style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class=""><div style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); font-family: Verdana; font-size: 14px; font-style: normal; font-variant-caps: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; text-align: start; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; word-spacing: 0px; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;"><br class="">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br class="">"The big challenge is still to deliver emissions reductions at the pace and scale needed, especially in a world where economies are driven by consumption.”<br class=""><br class="">Sonja van Renssen.The inconvenient truth of failed climate policies. Nature Climate Change MAY 2018<br class=""><br class="">Published online: 27 April 2018 <a href="https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0155-4" class="">https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-018-0155-4</a> <br class=""><br class="">~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~<br class="">“What we are witnessing is a temper tantrum against the mere suggestion that there are limits to what we can consume.” <br class=""><br class="">Naomi Klein<br class=""><a href="https://theintercept.com/2019/09/15/trump-straws-plastic/" class="">https://theintercept.com/2019/09/15/trump-straws-plastic/</a><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""><br class=""></div></div></div>
</div>
<br class=""></div></body></html>