Summary: An assessment of the conditions under which civilizational collapse may occur due to climate change would greatly improve the ability of the public and policymakers to address the threats from climate change, according to academic researchers Steela et al. in a PNAS opinion piece. While literature on climate change (e.g., reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) typically covers the deleterious effects that climate change is having or will have on human activities, there has been much less focus on exactly how climate change might factor into different scenarios for civilization collapse. Given the deficits in this research topic, Steela et al. outline three civilizational collapse scenarios that could stem from climate change—local collapse, broken world, and global collapse—and then discuss three groups of mechanisms—direct impacts, socio-climate feedbacks, and exogenous shock vulnerability—for how these scenarios might be realised. (6 October 2022)
Policy comment:Just as governments and policymakers have directed funding and taken action to mitigate the harmful, direct effects of climate change, it seems natural that they should take the next step and address making the aspects of civilization most vulnerable to climate change more robust. The recommendation in this paper for policymakers and researchers alike to promote more rigorous scientific investigation of the mechanisms and factors of civilizational collapse involving climate change seems keen. While this paper does not perform a detailed examination of the scenarios and mechanisms of civilizational collapse that it proposes, it is a call-to-action for more work to understand how climate change affects civilization stability and the role of climate change in civilization collapse.
2.
A condensed version of the summary and policy comment in (1)
Summary: Humanity must understand how climate change (CC) could engender civilizational collapse. Coverage of this topic is sparse relative coverage of CC’s direct effects. Steela et al.’s PNAS opinion piece is a call to action for more research on this topic; they contribute an outline of 3 collapse scenarios—local collapse, broken world, and global collapse—and 3 collapse mechanisms—direct impacts, socio-climate feedbacks, and exogenous shock vulnerability (6 October 2022).
Policy comment: Policymakers and researchers need to promote research on the effects of climate change on civilizational stability so that critical societal institutions and infrastructure are protected from collapse. Such research efforts would include further investigations of the many scenarios and mechanisms through which civilization may collapse due to climate change; Steela et al. lay some groundwork in this regard, but fail to provide a detailed examination.
3.
One issue I have is being concise with my writing. This was recently pointed out to me by my friend Evan, when I asked him to read (1), and I want to write some thoughts of mine that were evoked by the conversation.
My first thought: What do I want myself and others to get from my writing?
I want to learn, and writing helps with this. I want to generate novel and useful ideas and to share them with people. I want to show people what I’ve done or am doing. I want a record of my thinking on certain topics
I want my writing to help others learn efficiently and I want to tell people entertaining stories, ones that engender curiosity.
My next thought: How is my writing inadequate?
I aim for transparency, informativeness, clarity, and efficiency in my writing, but feel that my writing is much less transparent, informative, clear, and efficient than it could be.
W.r.t. transparency, my model is Reasoning Transparency. My writing sometimes includes answers to these questions[1] (this comment).
W.r.t. informativeness, I assume someone has already thought about or attempted what I am working on, so I try not to repeat (Don’t repeat yourself) and to synthesize works when synthesizing has not yet occurred or has occurred but inadequately.
W.r.t. clarity, I try to edit my work multiple times and make it clear what I want to be understood. I read my writing aloud to determine if hearing it is pleasurable.
W.r.t. efficiency, my sense of where to allocate attention across my writing is fuzzy. I use editing and footnotes to consolidate, but still have trouble.
I don’t have good ways to measure or assess these things in my writing, and I haven’t decided which hypothetical audiences to gear my writing towards; I believe this decision affects how much effort I expend optimizing at least transparency and efficiency.
I will address my writing again at some point, but think it best I read the advice of others first.
4.
My friend Evan on concision:
Yelling at people on the internet is a general waste of time, but it does teach concision. No matter how sound your argument, if you say something in eight paragraphs and then your opponent comes in and summarizes it perfectly in twenty words, you look like an idiot. Don’t look like an idiot in front of people! Be concise.
Coverage of this topic is sparse relative to coverage of CC’s direct effects.
The idea is that the corpus of work on how climate change is harmful to civilization includes few detailed analyses of the mechanisms through which climate change leads to civilizational collapse but does includes many works on the direct effects of climate change.
For the former comment, I am not sure what you mean w.r.t “engender”.
Glad I’ve helped with the part where I was not ignorant and confused myself, that is with not knowing the word engender and the use of it. Thanks for pointing it out clearly. By the way it seems “cause” would convey the same meaning and might be easier to congest in general.
Thoughts, Notes: 10/14/0012022 (1)
Contents:
Summary, comment: Climate change and the threat to civilization (10/06/2022)
Compression of (1)
Thoughts: writing and condensing information
Quote: my friend Evan on concision
To the reader: Please point out inadequacies in my writing.
1.
Article: Climate change and the threat to civilization (10/06/2022)
Context: My work for Rumtin Sempasspour (gcrpolicy.com) includes summarizing articles relevant to GCRs and GCR policy.
Summary: An assessment of the conditions under which civilizational collapse may occur due to climate change would greatly improve the ability of the public and policymakers to address the threats from climate change, according to academic researchers Steela et al. in a PNAS opinion piece. While literature on climate change (e.g., reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) typically covers the deleterious effects that climate change is having or will have on human activities, there has been much less focus on exactly how climate change might factor into different scenarios for civilization collapse. Given the deficits in this research topic, Steela et al. outline three civilizational collapse scenarios that could stem from climate change—local collapse, broken world, and global collapse—and then discuss three groups of mechanisms—direct impacts, socio-climate feedbacks, and exogenous shock vulnerability—for how these scenarios might be realised. (6 October 2022)
Policy comment: Just as governments and policymakers have directed funding and taken action to mitigate the harmful, direct effects of climate change, it seems natural that they should take the next step and address making the aspects of civilization most vulnerable to climate change more robust. The recommendation in this paper for policymakers and researchers alike to promote more rigorous scientific investigation of the mechanisms and factors of civilizational collapse involving climate change seems keen. While this paper does not perform a detailed examination of the scenarios and mechanisms of civilizational collapse that it proposes, it is a call-to-action for more work to understand how climate change affects civilization stability and the role of climate change in civilization collapse.
2.
A condensed version of the summary and policy comment in (1)
Summary: Humanity must understand how climate change (CC) could engender civilizational collapse. Coverage of this topic is sparse relative coverage of CC’s direct effects. Steela et al.’s PNAS opinion piece is a call to action for more research on this topic; they contribute an outline of 3 collapse scenarios—local collapse, broken world, and global collapse—and 3 collapse mechanisms—direct impacts, socio-climate feedbacks, and exogenous shock vulnerability (6 October 2022).
Policy comment: Policymakers and researchers need to promote research on the effects of climate change on civilizational stability so that critical societal institutions and infrastructure are protected from collapse. Such research efforts would include further investigations of the many scenarios and mechanisms through which civilization may collapse due to climate change; Steela et al. lay some groundwork in this regard, but fail to provide a detailed examination.
3.
One issue I have is being concise with my writing. This was recently pointed out to me by my friend Evan, when I asked him to read (1), and I want to write some thoughts of mine that were evoked by the conversation.
My first thought: What do I want myself and others to get from my writing?
I want to learn, and writing helps with this. I want to generate novel and useful ideas and to share them with people. I want to show people what I’ve done or am doing. I want a record of my thinking on certain topics
I want my writing to help others learn efficiently and I want to tell people entertaining stories, ones that engender curiosity.
My next thought: How is my writing inadequate?
I aim for transparency, informativeness, clarity, and efficiency in my writing, but feel that my writing is much less transparent, informative, clear, and efficient than it could be.
W.r.t. transparency, my model is Reasoning Transparency. My writing sometimes includes answers to these questions[1] (this comment).
W.r.t. informativeness, I assume someone has already thought about or attempted what I am working on, so I try not to repeat (Don’t repeat yourself) and to synthesize works when synthesizing has not yet occurred or has occurred but inadequately.
W.r.t. clarity, I try to edit my work multiple times and make it clear what I want to be understood. I read my writing aloud to determine if hearing it is pleasurable.
W.r.t. efficiency, my sense of where to allocate attention across my writing is fuzzy. I use editing and footnotes to consolidate, but still have trouble.
I don’t have good ways to measure or assess these things in my writing, and I haven’t decided which hypothetical audiences to gear my writing towards; I believe this decision affects how much effort I expend optimizing at least transparency and efficiency.
I will address my writing again at some point, but think it best I read the advice of others first.
4.
My friend Evan on concision:
Why does this writing exist?
Who is this writing for?
What does this content claim?
How good is this content?
Can you trust the author?
What are the author’s priors?
What beliefs ought to updated?
What has the author contributed here?
“engender”—funny typo!+)
This sentence seems hard to read, lacks coherency, IMO.
> Coverage of this topic is sparse relative coverage of CC’s direct effects.
Thank you for taking a look Martin Vlach.
For the latter comment, there is a typo. I meant:
The idea is that the corpus of work on how climate change is harmful to civilization includes few detailed analyses of the mechanisms through which climate change leads to civilizational collapse but does includes many works on the direct effects of climate change.
For the former comment, I am not sure what you mean w.r.t “engender”.
Glad I’ve helped with the part where I was not ignorant and confused myself, that is with not knowing the word engender and the use of it. Thanks for pointing it out clearly. By the way it seems “cause” would convey the same meaning and might be easier to congest in general.