Will the project "Quantifying the existential risk potential from large volcanic eruptions via climate, food and cascading risk modelling" receive any funding from the Clearer Thinking Regranting program run by ClearerThinking.org?
Remember, betting in this market is not the only way you can have a shot at winning part of the $13,000 in cash prizes! As explained here, you can also win money by sharing information or arguments that change our mind about which projects to fund or how much to fund them. If you have an argument or public information for or against this project, share it as a comment below. If you have private information or information that has the potential to harm anyone, please send it to clearerthinkingregrants@gmail.com instead.
Below, you can find some selected quotes from the public copy of the application. The text beneath each heading was written by the applicant. Alternatively, you can click here to see the entire public portion of their application.
Why the applicant thinks we should fund this project
In short, we don’t really know what the effect a large magnitude volcanic eruption will have on our modern world, this has received very little interest from disciplines outside volcano science. Climate perturbations could induce water, food and resource limitations on a hemispheric to global scale, with some initial estimates of food losses equivalent to the dietary intake of 2-3 billion people. The project will provide preliminary rationale and roadmap for mitigating the risk from large magnitude volcanic eruptions. It will provide an evidence base for ongoing conversations with policymakers (facilitated by Simon Institute), humanitarian organisations (Red Cross), funders, philanthropy and governments. The work will aim to engage the scientific community into the neglected field, creating a ‘multiplier effect’. It may (depending on outcomes) shift the ‘cause prioritisation’ in effective altruism compared to other catastrophic risks.
What are the activities that the project involves?
We propose to do cutting-edge research to do a ‘deep-dive’ exploring the following:
a) To use expert elicitation to establish reasonable worst-case eruption scenarios and combine these with climate modelling to assess cooling/hydrological cycle impacts resulting from a single volcanic eruption or multiple cumulative eruptions.
b) To identify the types of eruptions which pose the biggest threat to regions sensitive to food and water shortage e.g. shifts to tropical monsoons, which 70% of the global population rely on.
c) To run a horizon scan with the global volcano research community to identify the big questions remaining in the field, and to establish probabilities as to where the next eruptions identified in a) and b) might take place.
d) To conduct system modelling to determine the concentration of areas with globally important infrastructure and trade along with financial modelling to understand extent of potential damages.
e) To host interdisciplinary workshops to ascertain viable paths to societal collapse, bringing together experts in climate and food modelling, critical infrastructure, volcanology and civil protection to explore the potential risks, and cascading mechanisms linked to high impact volcanic eruptions.
f) To better constrain the potential loss of life due to all factors considered in the event of a large eruption
g) To use machine learning to identify volcanoes capable of large eruptions based on different attributes.
Figure 1: Theory of Change for this proposal
How much funding are they requesting?
$254,195
What would they do with the amount just specified?
Funding for this project in an ideal setting would cover a salary contribution towards both Mike Cassidy and Lara Mani and also for additional researchers to conduct climate and food modelling. Funding also covers the project activities as defined below:
1 year of funding:
Salary expenses: $175,078:
Other Expenses: $35,000:
Total funding requested: $231,086 + 10% buffer = $254,195
Here you can review the entire public portion of the application (which contains a lot more information about the applicant and their project):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n7g66SBlgZFPQPoBwe2CELETFCeXsvYQYvp-zahfJ1s/edit
Sep 20, 3:44pm:
1,000
3.00@v 5th on the leaderboard huh. You're picking up way too much of my alpha rn! One day I shall run an exploit to reclaim what is mine (plus a lot of err "interest").
No one wants this. I may however be more lenient if you add exceptions to your code regarding front-running me. You have been warned ;p
I think super volcanos are the most certain major risk we face long term, they are both inevitable and also likely unmitigable. I do believe we could eventually figure out how to predict them but much more money needs to be put toward that effort. This is also the only existential risk that is also a potential solution to an existential risk - global warming. A significant enough of an eruption will cool the planet MUCH faster than humans have warmed. We should be trying harder to understand these events.
@BTE hey one of the grant applicants here. Thanks for your comments, and I agree that much more money should be put towards monitoring and surveillance of volcanoes. If I can respond to a few of your other points... On the point that there is nothing we can do towards mitigation, I would add the caveat that that is only true right now. The same is true of planetary defence, yet just last night they successfully tested impactor technologies. Certainly we think there are things we can do about volcanic risk, such as sulphate aerosol removal or magma manipulations to help relieve build up of pressures - but of course, we're a long way off from reaching this. One of the reason these haven't been done to date is the risk is so poorly understood - hence our justification for this research, if we can actually understand what the risk is, we can begin to understand how to prioritise risk mitigation. You can read more on our thoughts on this in our recent publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-02177-x.
On your point on global warming - this unfortunately is not quite true. Yes volcanic eruptions have a overall surface cooling effect, but this is only short-term (~10 years) and certainly will not solve global warming. In fact, the cooling effect is very short and sharp - hence the vulnerability of the food sector - without adequate preparations for volcanic winter scenarios, such as food stockpiling, we could see global food shortages (e.g. the figure of 2-3 billion peoples' worth mentioned above). The recent Tonga eruption is actually thought to have had a warming effect through inputting of water into the upper atmosphere - a mechanism we didn't know previously. We still have a lot of work to do in this space!
@LaraMani That you for your thoughtful response!! Very glad I am betting on this proposal!! What do you think about the New Zealand super volcano that recently had its alert level raised, the first time since such ratings were instituted in 1995 I believe?
@BTE I don't think it's too much to worry about for now. Sometimes volcanoes have small earthquakes as fluids and gases move through their systems. Also, eruptions at suprevolcanoes are not always super-eruptions - they can be small. So even if activity heightens, it doesn't necessarily mean we need to worry about 'the big one'. Full details from the monitoring agency here: https://www.geonet.org.nz/vabs/6WkpJjHluMfBLGRAymIQjX
It is interesting to note that, at least according to Toby Ord's The Precipice, the existential risk from 2021 to 2120 from climate change is only 10 times (= 0.1 % / 0.01 %) as large as than of supervolcanic eruptions. However, efforts to reduce the damage of these are much more neglected, and do not seem clearly non-tractable, so they are arguably underrated.
It seems that Toby Ord considers the work that these applicants are doing important enough to explore further, so although I don't know what the outcome will be here, I do hope they get funded by someone. When the applicants posted on the EA Forum (here), Toby Ord commented and said: "Thanks so much for writing this. There are a lot of new leads on understanding the risks here, and it is great to see people working on what I think is the largest of all the natural risks.
I'd be very interested to see what estimates of the overall existential risk from supervolcanic eruptions you come up with. As direct extinction appears particularly difficult, much of the question comes down to estimates of the chance that an eruption of a given magnitude would cause the collapse of civilisation and the chance of recovering from that collapse. Factoring the risk in this way may be helpful for both showing where disagreements between researchers lie and for understanding where the current uncertainty is."
Note that
Factoring the risk in this way may be helpful for both showing where disagreements between researchers lie and for understanding where the current uncertainty is
And
Do a guesstimate and then gfy
might only differ in their level of politeness
@NuñoSempere One of the applicants here. If I may, the historical record certainly can help us to bound the risks, but I'd caution that it's overly optimistic to consider the record as complete. Further research exploring lake sediment and ice core records would help us bound that certainty much more, and until we have those puzzle pieces it has high uncertainty. I also think even with an incomplete record, current estimates of recurrence intervals of 1 eruption every 625 years is high, and warrants more investigation. Also, this project seeks a more holistic view of the risks, assessing the cascading consequences of the risk that could amplify the risks to global catastrophic and existential levels. Without further investigation, I find it difficult to say that we can bound the recurrence so easily.
Reminds me of this cool longform piece, detailing a Princeton geologist's work supporting the hypothesis that dinosaurs were wiped out by a series of collosal volcanic eruptions.
Volcanologists have raised the alert level on an ancient supervolcano in New Zealand to Level 2, the first time since the six stage alert system has ever been raised from baseline of 1 since it was instituted 30 years ago, due to hundreds of small earthquakes in the last 3-4 months all centered around what is believed to be the magmatic epicenter. Seems relevant, but idk, I am not a vulcanologist.
@ManifoldMarkets @SG I'm not sure participants should really be allowed to add subsidies during tournaments. One can do funny stuff to profit max fyi
@GeorgeVii Hrm, that's an interesting point and one I wasn't aware of. Could you describe like a sequence of actions that would artificially maximize profit using subsidies?
(If such an exploit exists, please don't use it for these tournaments y'all -- we'll have to do something like recalculate profits by hand and be very sad.)
@Austin @jack @GeorgeVii Fair point. I will say that IF the subsidy is not withdrawn until the market resolves then everybody can take advantage of it. I would actually like to add $500 to each of these markets just to market it more fun for everyone honestly, since I got mana burning a hole in my account...
Some existing work I didn't find in the application that I was able to dig up:
Global Volcano Model, looking to establish a model of volcano hazards and develop analysis and modelling tools, original project finished 2015 with Global Volcanic Hazard and Risk also originally prepared for the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (as this grant is aiming to submit a policy brief to as well!), they list they have ongoing work going into Global Assessment Report 2022 as an outcome too: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=NE%2FI030038%2F1
VOGRIPA which seems to have come out of that, https://www2.bgs.ac.uk/vogripa/view/controller.cfc?method=about, I've not been able to find any news from it more recent than the above though.
I think this project is aiming to focus more centrally on the civilisational risk (and maybe climate modelling?) aspects and it looks like the bulk of interest in this earlier work might have petered out by now(?) so running a new one makes sense to me. Knowing there have been existing projects along closely related lines makes me a little more pessimistic about larger results this time. It would be cool to know more about how they see this project having a greater impact and lifetime beyond its initial funded period.
@jbeshir Looking back on this, and also @EliLifland 's comment about whether to continue the project if quantifying the risk turns out low below, maybe it'd be worth getting hold of a copy of the 2015 Global Volcanic Hazard and Risk report ahead of funding this new report+project to see if the figures there are supportive of a case for risk comparable to other x-risks.
@jbeshir These are some really good sources! It does seem like this project is more about the associated climate modeling and downstream effects of an eruption. The linked article describing the 2015 GVM notes "the main hazards include: explosive eruptions, pyroclastic flows, lava domes, lava flows, lahars, tephra fall and ash dispersal, gas, flank collapse, debris flows and health hazards." If its similar to the earthquake models they cite then the scope should be fairly narrow.
The 2015 Global Volcanic Hazard and Risk report is also open access in the link you posted, though it is 400 pages long. At least going by the Table of Contents it doesn't look like it aims to address x-risk type questions either, most of the topics are case studies or are about the immediate effects of eruptions like eruptions and ash. So this proposal may have a decent niche imo
@EliLifland Thanks Eli, this is a great question. I think it's unlikely we'd find the risk 'extremely low' relative to other risks - enough literature exists to prove that this is an area that should warrant study, particularly from ice core records. It's more about the impact at the extent to which the impacts would be existential, or just global catastrophic. Either way, we think this risk could cause a high loss of life, and that would warrant some risk mitigation efforts. But certainly, by quantifying the risk with robust models to support the findings can only be a good step to assess a risk that currently feels uncertain, but also enables us to appropriately prioritise the mitigation approaches the risk might warrant.
@LaraMani Thanks for the reply Lara. Personally I place much more weight on preventing existential risks than catastrophic risks, due to arguments such as those in https://theprecipice.com/
@EliLifland It seems probably good for some more people in the world to be working on supervolcanic risks than there are currently, but a higher priority to get more people working on risks that seem to pose a much higher chance of existential catastrophe
@EliLifland Well, with figures out there like the immediate loss of food for 2-3 billion people doesn't fill me with confidence that as yet, we can say it isn't existential. I remain open-minded until the evidence tells me otherwise. I appreciate your viewpoint though, and I would argue this could be the case for many other risks too (including some that are also being presented in this funding round!).
@LaraMani Agree that it's not settled, though I think AI seems like a pretty clear first and engineered pandemics a pretty clear second in terms of x-risk levels. After that not sure, though nukes do seem likely third. In general anthropogenic stuff seems significantly more concerning.