Global Catastrophic Risks [Paperback]

This is a relatively comprehensive collection of thoughtful essays about the risks of a major catastrophe (mainly those that would kill a billion or more people).
Probably the most important chapter is the one on risks associated with AI, since few people attempting to create an AI seem to understand the possibilities it describes. It makes some implausible claims about the speed with which an AI could take over the world, but the argument they are used to support only requires that a first-mover advantage be important, and that is only weakly dependent on assumptions about that speed with which AI will improve.
The risks of a large fraction of humanity being killed by a super-volcano is apparently higher than the risk from asteroids, but volcanoes have more of a limit on their maximum size, so they appear to pose less risk of human extinction.
The risks of asteroids and comets can't be handled as well as I thought by early detection, because some dark comets can't be detected with current technology until it's way too late. It seems we ought to start thinking about better detection systems, which would probably require large improvements in the cost-effectiveness of space-based telescopes or other sensors.
Many of the volcano and asteroid deaths would be due to crop failures from cold weather. Since mid-ocean temperatures are more stable that land temperatures, ocean based aquaculture would help mitigate this risk.
The climate change chapter seems much more objective and credible than what I've previously read on the subject, but is technical enough that it won't be widely read, and it won't satisfy anyone who is looking for arguments to justify their favorite policy. The best part is a list of possible instabilities which appear unlikely but which aren't understood well enough to evaluate with any confidence.
The chapter on plagues mentions one surprising risk - better sanitation made polio more dangerous by altering the age at which it infected people. If I'd written the chapter, I'd have mentioned Ewald's analysis of how human behavior influences the evolution of strains which are more or less virulent.
There's good news about nuclear proliferation which has been under-reported - a fair number of countries have abandoned nuclear weapons programs, and a few have given up nuclear weapons. So if there's any trend, it's toward fewer countries trying to build them, and a stable number of countries possessing them. The bad news is we don't know whether nanotechnology will change that by drastically reducing the effort needed to build them.
The chapter on totalitarianism discusses some uncomfortable tradeoffs between the benefits of some sort of world government and the harm that such government might cause. One interesting claim:
totalitarian regimes are less likely to foresee disasters, but are in some ways better-equipped to deal with disasters that they take seriously.

This is a most disappointing volume. I bought it expecting so much, from Oxford, that great source and fount, from supposed young intellectually virile editors located in supposedly buzz centres of excellence. Big flop. For me the best papers were the most irrelevant: the ones that dealt with what's going to happen to us on the billion year time scale or alternatively if the wildest space objects have a say in our future. Too many other papers seemed to say so much that was unsurprising, unhelpful and I have to say sadly, pretentious. Maths used to no good or insightful end in some of that latter group, presumably just to show off ( e.g the Drake equation in a context that just baffles me for relevance).

I may be wrong but as the volume proceeded I gained the growing impression there was an increase in lack of comprehension among authors about what meaningful they could actually say about the topics they'd been assigned. Perhaps I'm harsh, but I did not enjoy this read - or learn much from it. Final pedantic: for OUP, too many glitches and typos, obviously beneath the dignity of the young high flying editors to bother with.

Individual and government policy instigators everywhere, starting with voting citizens, must face the common problem of bringing expert knowledge to bear on globalized public policy-making. This book is rather like a "think tank" in and of itself and could serve such a purpose successfully! Campaigning in 1912, the intellectual and soon-to-be-US President Woodrow Wilson commented that "What I fear is a government of experts". Yet, in the 21st Century, the world-public has to have the best possible advice on macro-problems that can, may or certainly will impact human society. The Canadian scientist Vaclav Smil, in GLOBAL CATASTROPHES AND TRENDS: THE NEXT FIFTY YEARS (2008) has also foreseen, along with the stellar topic-centered name writers in this excellent revelatory text,the necessity of focused individuals, investigative panels and advisory bodies helping the world-public. None express a desire or need to "rule the world", the stealing of choices from the world-public, or the foreclosure of world-public options for future life-styles! However, they do a masterful job of explicating the macro-problems developing, impending or forecastable. The well-edited prose, informative diagrams and necessary illustrations are simply awe-inspiring! This demonstrative text--by no means to be considered a textbook--is fascinating, alarming, inspiring and just plain delicious reading. I reccommend it as a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10!!