SS: Obliteration of the entire human species is now a distinct possibility, according to the latest medical report card on our state of health worldwide.

A major new Lancet commission is the first international scientific study to project, based on current data, the likelihood of a human wipeout within the present century. Others, so far, have mainly treated it as a dangerous risk, though many scientists had sounded personal warnings based on their own research.

The threats referred to by the Lancet Commission include nuclear war, malicious use of AI and biological weapons, pandemics, obesity, child malnutrition, antimicrobial resistance, conflict, inequality, bad education and cuts to international health aid.

Can we just get this whole collapse thing over with finally? The suspense is driving me crazy! /s

Estimates of "equilibrium climate sensitivity", ie, the eventual global average surface temperature change expected to be produced by a sudden pulse of CO2 resulting in the doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels over the historic pre-industrial average that prevailed during the Holocene Epoch (ie, rising from approximately 250ppm to 500pm) have mostly been in the range of 1.5-4.5C. But our most current estimates for this range have increased the lower limit, but lowered the upper one. Hausfather et al estimate a lower limit of 2.6C, an upper limit slightly above 4C, and a most likely average around 3C. (See: https://www.carbonbrief.org/guest-post-why-low-end-climate-sensitivity-can-now-be-ruled-out)

The new ECS estimates also coincide with the IPCC withdrawing the previous "worst case scenario" of RCP8.5 ("Representative Climate Pathway 8.5"$, corresponding to an average increase of solar flux at Earth's surface of 8.5W/mˆ2), in favor of lower estimates for increased solar flux of around 4.5 - 6W/mˆ2 (RCP4.5 to RCP6).

Importantly, note that contrary to common, popularly held misconceptions about the matter, ECS specifically attempts to take into account ALL reasonably foreseeable climate FEEDBACKS, both positive and negative.

These are all technical details, and inferring deeper meanings to them is an exercise in human judgement and psychology, which are far harder if not impossible to objectively state.

At the very least, though, the withdrawal of the "worst case scenario" makes it less likely that we are contemplating the complete extinction of humanity or the complete collapse of human civilization, and more likely something that, while still possibly agonizing and catastrophic for most of humanity, does not exactly let most of us off the hook for figuring out what to do with the rest of our lives. And ironically, while that could be interpreted as a relief, as Substack writer Suzanne O'Brien points out, it also takes away a certain other form of "relief" that can be derived from a feeling of futility. Because futility has a consolation prize: if there's nothing we can do about our fate, then there's nothing we are obligated to do! So the removal of some of the "worst case scenarios" off the table could be interpreted by some of us as a new and more burdensome challenge! And by others, it will be interpreted as an even more acute challenge to the business-as-usual that they might prefer. See: https://substack.com/home/post/p-216535471

Postmodern philosopher and writer Marc Fisher famously declared that "it is easier to conceive of the end of world than the end of capitalism". And if (a certain scenario for) "the end of the world" has now suddenly been taken off the table, might that not have implications for how we conceive of the possibility of the latter? Even if only because we have routinely gotten into the habit of conceiving these two outcomes as the poles of some kind of dyad, we should ask more questions about the matter.

This "reprieve from doomsday" is surely relevant to any struggle for social change. Because to the extent that any definitive "doomsday" is seen as less plausible, it makes it a lot more plausible to contemplate generational change. For those of us inclined to such ideological commitments, this is surely good news! And yet, presumably, for those committed to the status quo, it may well come as a quite unwelcome challenge.* (But, actually, whether it does in fact or not is largely up to the actions of the former group! Put another way: "They want you feeling scared and helpless. Don't give them what they want!")

*Interestingly, the legal briefs submitted by the Trump (1.0) administration against high profile challenges to its climate policy by grassroots groups like "Our Children's Trust" have dispensed with crude "climate denialism" in favor a much more sophisticated line of argument, claiming that "it's too late", and that any of the mitigation suggested by plaintiffs would be futile, since the situation is already too far gone, and that the only hope is to keep marching forward "waist deep through the Big Muddy" of business-as-usual, in hopes of finding refuge in the dubious safety of supposed drier shoals built on the future prospects offered by "carbon capture and storage", "geoengineering", and other miraculous technofixes.

The very adoption of a language emphasizing words like "collapse" may say more about the speaker him or herself than the world whose future they are attempting to describe when they speak about it. And perhaps, ironically, the latest news also implies an even more important kernel of truth in the rhetoric of "denialists" who employ tropes like "climate's always changing!", etc. They are right in a certain sense. Change at different rates is ever present. It's only the rates of change that really should interest though. And the removal of certain completely "unmanageable" rates of change off the table could have potentially deep philosophical and psychological implications for us.

SS: From the article:

"As plastic fragments into smaller and smaller particles, its surface area increases enormously. Then microplastics change the water that surrounds them, generating high-energy, reactive radicals (reactive oxygen species, ROS) that very likely contribute to biological damage that we see in animals and potentially in humans as a result of microplastic exposure," said Wei Min, a Columbia professor of chemistry and biomedical engineering.

This is particularly noteworthy for human health because human blood is approximately 50% water, and individual human cells are generally 60% to 80% water. The new research suggests that microplastics that enter the bloodstream or cells could remain chemically active in this water-rich biological environment.

saw this research note from goldman's christian mueller-glissmann in ft today and it’s pretty wild.

almost 45% of s&p 500 stocks now have a negative beta. basically half the index is actively moving in the complete opposite direction of spy while headline numbers keep hitting aths.

the last time we saw a spike like this was literally at the peak of the dot-com bubble in 2000.

everyone is watching spy green days thinking the whole market is fine, but under the hood top 10 big tech are basically disguised as the entire economy while 200+ companies are slowly bleeding out.

feels like this divergence can’t go on forever. curious if anyone else is rebalancing into cash/equal-weight or just riding nvidia till it snaps?

The Limits to Growth is a 1972 report that discussed the possibility of exponential economic and population growth with a finite supply of resources, studied by computer simulation. The study used the World3 computer model to simulate the consequence of interactions between the Earth and human systems

(:

"We've caught terrorists seeking to exploit Al to improve their reconnaissance and attack methodologies, with Al-enabled drones adding a new twist."
The threat he was most worried about, Sir Ken told Thames House, was extremist groups harnessing AI to make bioweapons.
He said that threat was "not yet realised" but warned the technology has the "potential to change the stakes on existing or even new bioweapons".