Page 16 - Existential Risk News Today

In the face of environmental collapse, humanity may need to turn to artificial replacements for nature – how might we avoid the most dystopian of these futures?

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made us all more acutely aware of the dangers of nuclear conflict than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Now, with Russia losing ground against an entrenched Ukrainian resistance, the stakes are only going to get higher.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made us all more acutely aware of the dangers of nuclear conflict than at any time since the end of the Cold War. Now, with Russia losing ground against an entrenched Ukrainian resistance, the stakes are going to get higher.

Academic arguments about whether the past can predict the future are as cyclical as the so-called circles of history they debate. But what then is the value of history?

The agricultural sector may be at risk of cyberattacks from hackers and ransomware groups, a study from the University of Cambridge suggests.

Our modern civilisation may be the most advanced to ever exist on Earth, but around 100 generations ago, our ancestors had brains that were larger than our own.

Martin Rees, the United Kingdom’s Astronomer Royal, was previously Professor of Astronomy and Director of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge. A past president of the Royal Society, he has won numerous awards, including the Templeton Prize and the inaugural Fritz Zwicky Prize. The author of ten books and more than 500 research papers, he cofounded the Centre for the Study of Existential Risk at the University of Cambridge.

WILL birth rates doom humanity? Tech billionaire Elon Musk sounded an old alarm in December when he ...

Dr Matt Boyd & Prof Nick Wilson* (Syndicated from the Adapt Research Blog) Efforts to prevent nuclear war should be greatly intensified – but we must also consider what happens if prevention fails. NZ is often cited as somewhere most likely to preserve a thriving society through a nuclear aftermath. However, our society is a complex adaptive system heavily dependent on trade. Major perturbations triggered by nuclear war could shift the state of NZ society from one of flourishing to one of...

Summary: Climate change is a clear example of how decisions by small numbers of powerful humans, not population size, drive environmental degradation. The richest 1% of the world, about 63 million people, is responsible for more than twice as much greenhouse gas emissions as the 3.1 billion people who made up the poorest half of humanity. Just 20 fossil fuel companies can be directly linked to more than one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions in the modern era. Regulating population size, as s...