William Hall Human Extinction

Shaw Thacher in a comment to an earlier post of mine, "Why 'doomism' is part of the latest frontier in the climate wars"

"Please provide one scientific citation, peer reviewed of course, that suggests... that... human extinction is likely, and must be avoided. Just one, please. Thanks in advance. Waiting..."

Whether this was tongue-in-cheek or pure trolling, I don't know. Nevertheless the question is actually important and deserves an answer.

---

I have spent an hour or so on Google Scholar looking for papers on ["near term" "human extinction" "global warming"/"climate change"] and am actually surprised about how reticent the scientific community is to even consider the problem. The following references are the closest I have found to considering the possibility:
⦁ Steffen et al. 2018. Trajectories of the Earth System in the Anthropocene. PNAS 115, 8252-8259 - https://www.pnas.org/content/115/33/8252
⦁ Long-Term Trajectories of Human Civilization. Foresight 21(1):53-83 (2019) - http://gcrinstitute.org/papers/trajectories.pdf
⦁ Bendell, J. Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy. IFLAS Occasional Paper 2 2018 - http://insight.cumbria.ac.uk/id/eprint/4166/1/Bendell_DeepAdaptation.pdf?fbclid=IwAR0oE8UsfYaTFIfOOKIbi7SqlEqR9cYsgc0CFdCNk-F69B2-PyUsTVXeeUo
⦁ Trump, B. D., Florin, M.-V., & Linkov, I. (Eds.). (2018). IRGC resource guide on resilience (vol. 2): Domains of resilience for complex interconnected systems. Lausanne: EPFL International Risk Governance Center (IRGC). - https://infoscience.epfl.ch/record/262527/files/IRGC%20Resource%20guide%20on%20resilience%20%28Volume%202%29.pdf?fbclid=IwAR16rUo7bY6y-9pzTHlPRUsj7JAEKAvQqvVh50-24ZDKF2UXh447mXGXpM0#page=47
⦁ Matheny, J.G. Reducing the Risk of Human Extinction. Risk Analysis, Vol. 27,1335-1344 (2007) - http://wilsonweb.physics.harvard.edu/Mahoney_extinction.pdf
⦁ Tonn, B., Stiefel, D. 2014. Human extinction risk and uncertainty: Assessing conditions for action. Futures (63), 134-144 - https://www-sciencedirect-com.ezp.lib.unimelb.edu.au/science/article/pii/S0016328714001207/pdfft?md5=593878a2e630942451d9f3d92f5e2150&pid=1-s2.0-S0016328714001207-main.pdf&fbclid=IwAR0SzFbsZMJy6AnSFBHoAtFwyIL8WVG4UOw0nweQgrNAaOWrbLWu91h9YSA
⦁ Richard J. Epstein, Y. Zhao. The threat that dare not speak its name: Human extinction. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, Volume 52, 116-125 (2009) - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/23939261_The_Threat_That_Dare_Not_Speak_Its_Name_Human_Extinction

My observation is that irrespective of the fact that our future survival must be one of the most important concerns for humanity - this topic seems to be beyond the pale for genuine scientific or even rational consideration. Two papers in the list above confirm this observation: James Bendell's work on Deep Adaptation, where he describes how it was treated and rejected in the peer-review process; and Epstein and Zhao's paper, "The Threat that Dare Not Speak its Name".

Epstein and Zhao's abstract summarizes the problem:

==============================================
The end of the human race is not imminent [even they dread to consider the risk of near-term extinction], but it is both inevitable and important. Judging by the scarcity of relevant publications, however, there seems little public or professional concern about this prospect.We submit that this striking disinterest reflects a combination of ignorance and denial that is putting the long-term interests of society in jeopardy. With the pace of change now outstripping that of adaptation, it is no longer alarmist for academics to raise awareness about the approach of human extinction and to design strategies by which time to extinction might be prolonged. By making complacent and anthropocentric thinking less politically correct than it is at present, such awareness could motivate the world community to reformulate social norms in a way that benefits our descendants as much as possible for as long as possible.
==============================================

Studies of Earth history have very clearly identified several cases of mass extinction, where the majority of species of higher organisms have disappeared from the fossil record over a geological instant. Two of these definitely (and possibly others I have not researched in detail) involve spikes of global warming that was associated with the die-offs: The End Permian, caused by the intrusion of volcanism associated with the Siberian Traps into massive coal measures; and the End Cretaceous meteor meteorite strike on what is now the Yucatan Peninsula that vaporized a vast amount of limestone (calcium carbonate), that have also been associated with the Deccan Traps in India. In both cases global warming due to increased CO₂ may have triggered even more rapid emissions of methane from permafrost, making the planet too hot for the survival of most species.

I could go into much more detail, but the bottom line is that rapid extinction as a consequence of catastrophic climate change is a real possibility for any species with a limited thermal tolerance.

The fact that the issue has not been adequately canvassed in the peer-reviewed scientific literature is not due to the fact that extinction is impossible, but rather reflects on the politics and social aspects of "normal science" as discussed by Thomas Kuhn in "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions" and his later papers refining his concepts. Shaw Thatcher's trollish statement above simply reflects this denialist fear of future catastrophe that prevents us from working effectively to ensure that the catastrophe does not happen.

Clearly one of the aspects of our so-far abject failure to begin dealing effectively with the threat of global warming to humanity is that no one dares to name or even think about its likely consequence if we don't stop it. This is a seriously big issue, and the Extinction Rebellion is taking the issue seriously!

======Facebook Reply in Comments=====

 Evan Hadkins Scientists tend to specialise, planetary survival is a generalist question.

William Hall Evan Hadkins. Exactly ---- Thomas Kuhn (especially in his follow up works on The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, provides quite a comprehensive explanation of why this is so. One that I have certainly validated in my own career trying to be a generalist evolutionary biologist crossing between definitions of life and epistemology. I gave up trying to publish my theoretical works in peer reviewed journals. The following papers are the capstone summaries for four threads in my generalist approach to developing a theory of living (human) systems, and provide a strong theoretical foundation for my unfinished book on the co-evolution of human biology and technology ("Application Holy Wars or a New Reformation - A Fugue on the Theory of Knowledge" as summarized in 25 presentations: http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net/Index/Essays/HOCTF/Master%20Schedule.html?fbclid=IwAR2Fp05x0PmvLLodtsE5y2fLyb672UjewY175f226C-k2tmTkvNTaP9DoFM
Hall, W.P. 2011. Physical basis for the emergence of autopoiesis, cognition and knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 2: 1-63.- http://kororoit.org/PDFs/WorkingPapers/Hall-Working0002.pdf
Hall, W.P., Else, S., Martin, C., Philp, W. 2011. Time-based frameworks for valuing knowledge: maintaining strategic knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 1: 1-28. http://kororoit.org/.../WorkingP.../HallEtAl-Working0001.pdf
Vines, R., Hall, W.P. 2011. Exploring the foundations of organizational knowledge. Kororoit Institute Working Papers No. 3: 1-39 - http://kororoit.org/.../Working.../VinesHall-Working0003.pdf
Hall, W.P., Nousala, S., Best, R., Nair, S. 2012. Social networking tools for knowledge-based action groups. (in) Computational Social Networks - Part 2: Tools, Perspectives and Applications, (eds) Abraham, A., Hassanien, A.-E. Springer-Verlag, London, pp. 227-255, DOI: 10.1007/978-1-4471-4048-1_9. - http://www.orgs-evolution-knowledge.net/Index/DocumentKMOrgTheoryPapers/HallEtAl2012SocialNetworkingToolsKnowledgeBasedActionGroups.pdf?fbclid=IwAR1_Wj3zyPW6SGJfHxcvLgaO8v0Fe0sURaLdRbYM1fMDEOTZ1VZMOphoYzs
Given that the works cross too many narrow disciplinary boundaries, no reviewer immersed in a single discipline (i.e., ones who have survived the administrative winnowing of academia) is qualified to provide a fair review, readers are welcome to draw your own conclusions as to the validity of my methods and arguments.