Brian Toon on Nuclear Winter, Asteroids, Volcanoes, and the Future of Humanity

Brian Toon joins us to discuss the risk of nuclear winter. Learn more about Brian's work: https://lasp.colorado.edu/home/people/brian-toon/ Read Brian's publications: https://airbornescience.nasa.gov/person/Brian_Toon Timestamps: 00:00 Introduction 01:02 Asteroid impacts 04:20 The discovery of nuclear winter 13:56 Comparing volcanoes and asteroids to nuclear weapons 19:42 How did life survive the asteroid impact 65 million years ago? 25:05 How humanity could go extinct 29:46 Nuclear weapons as a great filter 34:32 Nuclear winter and food production 40:58 The psychology of nuclear threat 43:56 Geoengineering to prevent nuclear winter 46:49 Will humanity avoid nuclear winter?

Om Podcasten

The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit working to reduce global catastrophic and existential risk from powerful technologies. In particular, FLI focuses on risks from artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, nuclear weapons and climate change. The Institute's work is made up of three main strands: grantmaking for risk reduction, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, US government and European Union institutions. FLI has become one of the world's leading voices on the governance of AI having created one of the earliest and most influential sets of governance principles: the Asilomar AI Principles.