>That piece of the IPCC report that article is cherry picking is a.) a bit out of date now
Did the latest IPCC report contain a more updated projection?
>b.) assuming a warming of 2C which we've already given up on, at least according to the more recent report which framed our current condition as a "code red"[0]
What is code red supposed to mean? I looked on wikipedia for a more detailed summary and got an "intermediate" projection of 2.7 °C of warming by 2100. I'm having trouble finding out what the "intermediate" projection was in the 2014 report, so it's unclear how much the forecasts changed. Depending on how "~2" is interpreted, it could be anywhere between a 0.7 degree rise and 0.2. How that would affect the estimate would be unknown, but 2% was the upper bound of the original estimate.
>though I find it very hard to believe that you missed that press release this some.
I'm having trouble understanding what your point is here. Are you accusing me of arguing in bad faith because the report says "code red", therefore it obviously means we're facing existential threat? I don't see how that follows. I could plausibly imagine a report coming out (for sake of argument, in feb 2020, before the death rates were known) saying that our situation with covid is "code red", but that doesn't mean I'll think we're literally at risk of going extinct from it.
>And to be clear, existential risk doesn't mean I'm claiming "we're going extinct!" it means that that lies in the realm of realistic possibility.
what counts is "realistic possibility" here? I guess if you take the most pessimistic interpretation as 2% (ie. 1 in 50 chance of earth going up in flames, 49 in 50 chance of nothing happening at all), then I suppose it's an high enough risk to count as a "realistic possibility", but I doubt the situation is that dire. It's far more likely to produce a normal distribution centered at 1.1% economic lost, the probability of 100% loss (ie. humans ceasing to exist) being at the tail end.
>The IPCC reports are well acknowledged to be fairly conservative and fail to incorporate a lot of unknowns (Thwaite's glacier is an obvious example of this).
Now would be a great time to answer my original question. "What's the evidence for "existential risk?". Are there studies that incorporates the unknowns in an objective way?
>He makes well reasoned arguments about how quickly conditions can change and how that could easily lead to massive extinction events (we're already in the 6th largest extinction event right now, which again, I'm sure you know).
Based on the description it sound less like an objective analysis on existential threats, and more of a "well if these things happen, then theoretically it will be Really Bad™".