Joachim Schellnhuber is one of the world’s foremost experts on global warming. He helped advise Pope Francis in the writing of the environmental encyclical, Laudato Si. At a recent meeting of the Club of Rome (scientists concerned about the planet), he delivered a startling warning. Quantum computing, artificial intelligence, and robots together may become more powerful than humans in at least this respect: They can easily survive global warming. Jeremy Legget wrote about Schellnhuber in his blog “Future Today,” where he reports regularly on world problems and possibilities.
Where we stand in regard to global warming
Schellnhuber repeats what we have learned from scientists about global warming. In another post I gave reasons for non-scientists like me to accept the overwhelming scientific consensus. That consensus was further corroborated in a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, approved on October 6. I include here some findings from the IPCC report before going on to Schellnhuber’s additional concerns:
- Human release of global-warming gases have caused a world-wide average of approximately 1.0 degrees Celsius warming already.
- Warming will persist for centuries to millennia, but past emissions alone probably won’t cause more than another .5 degree warming.
In other words, prompt, decisive action can save the world from more than 1.5 degrees of warming. That is the preferred, but not mandated, limit agreed at the 2015 Paris summit.
More global warming data
The IPCC report also relates:
- Impacts on natural and human systems from global warming have already been observed. [No kidding!]
- “Climate-related risks to health, livelihoods, food security, water supply, human security, and economic growth [will] increase with global warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius and increase further with 2 degrees.
- The risk of poverty for hundreds of millions of people will be less at the lower warming level.
- There will be smaller net reductions in crop yields with the lower warming scenario. Human risk from “water stress” will be up to 50% less.
- Limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will require “rapid and far-reaching transitions” in energy, land, transportation, and building-construction systems.
- Strict adherence to the Paris Agreement on climate change is not sufficient to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.
My comment: Americans need to wake up to the seriousness of global warming. Congress and federal agencies have been moving backward while many cities and businesses are trying to move ahead. Our government needs to start leading. President Trump needs to stop making up stories like the old Chinese hoax story (which he has now admitted isn’t true), the brand new “It will turn around and start cooling again” story, the popular “Other countries aren’t doing their share” story, and the truly amazing story “Global warming is real after all, but we can’t stop it so we might as well subsidize coal some more.”
Schellnhuber talks about feedback systems
Schellnhuber goes further than the IPCC report. He notes “the many amplifying feedbacks that so many climate scientists have worried about for so long.” These are “tipping points” that lead to abrupt changes when climate crosses certain thresholds. Some examples of these, which Schellnhuber lists in another paper, are:
- release of methane from permafrost thaw and the ocean floor,
- weakening land and ocean carbon sinks,
- increased bacterial respiration,
- Amazon rainforest and boreal forest dieback,
- reduction of snow cover,
- loss of Arctc Sea ice and Antarctic ice shelves.
What we don’t yet know, says Schellnhuber, is whether climate can be “parked” near 2 degrees Celsius of warming. “Or if it will, once pushed so far, slip down the slope towards a hothouse planet.” In a line that could have come from Pope Francis’ encyclical, Schellnhuber says:
Avoiding this scenario requires a redirection of human actions from exploitation to stewardship of the Earth system.
What we do know, Schellnhuber continues, is that we need more “biological carbon stores.” We need better management of forests, soil, and agriculture while conserving. We need new “technologies to remove carbon dioxide from the air and store it underground.” It’s no longer enough just to cut greenhouse gases, Schellnhuber’s paper says.
Scary technologies
Leggett’s summary of that talk before the Club of Rome includes another of Schellnhuber’s worries. He thinks it’s likely that in 10 years extremely powerful quantum computers will be online. “When quantum computers are married with AI [artificial intelligence], Man will have developed a truly God-like tool.”
Watchful control by global society can make sure that tool aids human development. It can help address climate change, feed the world, and eliminate poverty. Without such guidance “an awful prospect lurks around the corner…. Man will have created cyborgs of literally unimaginable power.”
At this point in Schellnhuber’s talk, the power-point screen carries an image of Michelangelo’s painting the “Creation of Adam.” (The Sistine Chapel, which bears this painting, is a few hundred yards from the Club of Rome meeting.) Added to Michelangelo’s work is a cyborg in the bottom left corner. It points a finger toward Adam’s right hand as God points to his left. Aware of a possible hothouse future in which machines can survive with or without human beings, Leggett comments on the scene:
It seems to me, as I look at the image, that Man gives the impression of extending his finger to the Cyborg carelessly. Certainly all his attention is on God, who[m] he is looking at with a devoted expression. What will God be making of the cyborg, I wonder? What is he making of Man’s failure, to date, to protect his wider creation, planet Earth, from the ravages of climate chaos?
Image credits: Joachim Schellnhuber via Jeremy Leggett, used with permission
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