- Feb 2024
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www.derstandard.de www.derstandard.de
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Langes Interview mit Hans Joachim Schellnhuber im Standard, under anderem zu Kipppunkten und der Möglichkeit, dass wir uns schon auf dem Weg in ein „neues Klimaregime“ befinden. Schellnhuber geht davon aus, dass auch das 2°-Ziel überschritten werden wird. Der „Königsweg“, um der Atmosphäre danach wieder CO<sub>2</sub> zu entziehen, sei der weltweite Ersatz von Zement durch Holz beim Bauen, den er als Direktor des IIASA vor allem erforschen wolle. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit dafür, dass „noch alles gutgehen" werde, sei gering. https://www.derstandard.at/story/3000000204635/klimaforscher-schellnhuber-werden-auch-ueber-das-zwei-grad-ziel-hinausschiessen
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- Dec 2023
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www.derstandard.de www.derstandard.de
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- Jul 2022
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In the deep past these setbacks were local. The overall experiment of civilization kept going, often by moving from an exhausted ecology to one with untapped potential. Human numbers were still quite small. At the height of the Roman Empire there are thought to have been only 200 million people on Earth. Compare that with the height of the British Empire a century ago, when there were two billion. And with today, when there are nearly eight. Clearly, things have moved very quickly since the Industrial Revolution took hold around the world. In A Short History of Progress, I suggested that worldwide civilization was our greatest experiment; and I asked whether this might also prove to be the greatest progress trap. That was 15 years ago.
Indeed, Wright is right to ask: Is our modern human civilization the greatest progress trap of all?
Exponential technological progress has shortened the time for dangerous levels of resource extraction and pollution loads to the extent that we face the potential of cascading global tipping points and enter a "hothouse earth" state: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1810141115
Were this to happen, there is no place on earth that would be immune.
In hindsight, the unfortunate but predictable trend is one of every increasing size of progress traps, and ever shorter time windows when serious impacts occur. Today, it appears we have reached the largest size progress trap possible on a finite planet.
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- Apr 2021
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www.pik-potsdam.de www.pik-potsdam.de
- Jan 2021
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www.pik-potsdam.de www.pik-potsdam.de
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Ausführliche Presseaussendung des PIK zu der Arbeit von Churkina, Schellnhuber u.a. über das Transformationspotenzial des Baustoffs Holz im globalen Maßstab.
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