Will Steffen

February 4, 2023 6:36 AM

Will Steffen's "ideas were grounded in his view of the Earth as a complex, interconnected, evolving system" .. "Viewing the world in this way helps us understand what we have done to our environment – and how to begin fixing the problems." (see also the Climate Council and his talks on youtube)

Among his many works..

The planetary boundaries effort is receiving its third update and helps quantify how our "environment [overall, not just climate] is not boundless and elastic [or] able to absorb all that we throw at it or take from it" (wiki, tribute)

The Nature of the Challenge (2018) page 37:

Is a +4°C world inhabitable?
Most of the tropics and subtropics will be too hot for human habitation.
Changing temperature & rainfall patterns may make current large agricultural zones unproductive.
...
Maximum carrying capacity of ~1 billion humans

“Facing a future of accelerating climate change while remaining blind to worst-case scenarios is naive risk-management at best and fatally foolish at worst”.

posted by jeffburdges (5 comments total)

A major loss.


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posted by doctornemo at 10:56 AM on February 4, 2023

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posted by Pouteria at 1:03 PM on February 4, 2023

Am curious, was he related to Alex Steffen?
posted by infini at 1:31 PM on February 4, 2023

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posted by anecdotal_grand_theory at 5:26 PM on February 4, 2023

I'll single out the third update talk for the planetary boundaries project, not too long and quite informative. It's only 9 months old, so you can see Will Steffen seemed in good health then.

As an aside, James Anderson has an interesting talk about climate change destroying the ozone layer on his webpage, and this 8 year old talk by him discusses how artic ice won't refreeze and methane clathrates holding more carbon than all fossil fuel reserves.
posted by jeffburdges at 4:16 AM on February 6, 2023