I agree with your characterization of the risks of global warming and nuclear war. I get the impression that people allow the reasonably high probability of a few degrees of warming or a few nuclear attacks to unduly influence their estimates of the probability of true existential risk from these sources.
In both cases I’m much more receptive to discussions of harm reduction than to scaremongering about ‘the end of the world as we know it’. The twentieth century has quite a few examples of events that caused 10s of millions of deaths and yet did not represent existential risks. Moderate global warming or a few nuclear detonations in or over major cities would be highly disruptive events and would have a high cost in human lives and are certainly legitimate concerns but they are not existential risks and talking of them as such is unhelpful in my opinion.
I agree with your characterization of the risks of global warming and nuclear war. I get the impression that people allow the reasonably high probability of a few degrees of warming or a few nuclear attacks to unduly influence their estimates of the probability of true existential risk from these sources.
In both cases I’m much more receptive to discussions of harm reduction than to scaremongering about ‘the end of the world as we know it’. The twentieth century has quite a few examples of events that caused 10s of millions of deaths and yet did not represent existential risks. Moderate global warming or a few nuclear detonations in or over major cities would be highly disruptive events and would have a high cost in human lives and are certainly legitimate concerns but they are not existential risks and talking of them as such is unhelpful in my opinion.