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I find when you actually work out the costs of these things in terms of real, in context, impact - the story often does not justify the headline. For instance a

I find when you actually work out the costs of these things in terms of real, in context, impact - the story often does not justify the headline. For instance an article The Guardian ran was, "We're moving to higher ground': America's era of climate mass migration is here." [1] That article took a negative end outcome of climate change and calculated that by the end of this century 13 million people might have to migrate. That sounds pretty scary until, again, you actually break it down into something in context. 13 million people over 82 years works out to 434 people per day. I contrasted this against current day migration rates found here [2]. Today Florida has a very large migration rate of 16/1k. For a population of 21.3 million that means they're seeing 340,800 new residents per year or 933 per day. So to put another way this migration rate, which was framed as a catastrophic and revolutionary event, would have a net effect of the entire US having to take on about half as many migrants per unit time as Florida alone already does. Of course it wouldn't be evenly spread out, but it also wouldn't just instantly jump from e.g. 20 to 20,000 per day. It's a gradual effect that is and will continue to pass mostly unnoticed. Present tense because we're already seeing this. Climate change has likely at least contributed to the severity of conditions in Louisiana, North Carolina, and Florida. Those residents that decided, 'ya know.. this isn't for me' already make up part of that 13 million. Another mitigating factor is that I'm certain their study accounted for population growth. I'm not. 82 years from now there will probably be a whole lot more people in the US meaning this "mass climate migration" will be even more minuscule just relative to normal day to day migration levels. Climate change is not something that should be ignored, but the media is exploiting it for clicks. That not only damages society but also undermines the issue by poisoning the well. If somebody reads one article on the topic and realizes how far it was taken out of context, and reality, it makes them more skeptical of everything else they read on the topic. And while healthy skepticism is good, some end up taking that skepticism a step beyond healthy. [1] - https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/americas-era-of-climate-mass-migration-is-here https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/sep/24/americas... [2] - http://www.governing.com/gov-data/census/state-migration-rates-annual-net-migration-by-state.html http://www.governing.com/gov-data/census/state-migration-rat...

regularfry 8y ago
There are other effects, too. You'll see the population of Central America shift northwards, for instance. Given today's political climate, and the available directions of travel, how do you see that playing out? In my mind it's got a good chance of getting very nasty, very quickly.
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  Why would you expect people to leave their country instead of simply moving inland and continuing, more or less as they already are? Climate change's primary destructive effect will be to shift the coasts. There are good and bad things about this. To bad thing is quite self evident. We, and I mean as a species, tend to be extremely densely populated on coasts. This maximizes the numeric affect of increasing sea levels. But there are also some good things about this. The corollary of densely populated coastal regions is that there is an immense amount of sparsely populated inner land to migrate towards. It's not like the increasing seas will push people up against a wall. There is plenty of underutilized land to expand into, right behind us! And another thing here is to keep in mind is what I already hit on above. Climate change is slow. Even the catastrophic near 0 probability ignore-everything climate change will happen very slowly and over many decades. This again has pros and cons. The obvious con is the parable of a frog boiling in water (which as an aside is not true...). People are less likely to act in any substantive way when the negative change is so gradual, which will increase the chances of us ending up in one of the worse scenarios. But there's also a very positive aspect. The change will not be catastrophic. The coast line won't suddenly be inundated with tens of feet of permanent water. Instead you're going to see the seas inch forward ever so slowly. This gives people time to adjust and migrate while minimizing chaos. So for instance take Miami, which is already suffering from increasing sea levels. You're not going to see property values go from sky high to $0. Instead they will slowly trend downwards and we'll likely see more inner land values slowly trend upwards. And they are also trying to combat the rising tides technologically, with some success. This same pattern will be expected in most places, so it helps preclude scenarios getting "very nasty, very quickly."
  - regularfry 8y ago

regularfry 8y ago

There are other effects, too. You'll see the population of Central America shift northwards, for instance. Given today's political climate, and the available directions of travel, how do you see that playing out? In my mind it's got a good chance of getting very nasty, very quickly.

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Why would you expect people to leave their country instead of simply moving inland and continuing, more or less as they already are? Climate change's primary destructive effect will be to shift the coasts. There are good and bad things about this. To bad thing is quite self evident. We, and I mean as a species, tend to be extremely densely populated on coasts. This maximizes the numeric affect of increasing sea levels. But there are also some good things about this. The corollary of densely populated coastal regions is that there is an immense amount of sparsely populated inner land to migrate towards. It's not like the increasing seas will push people up against a wall. There is plenty of underutilized land to expand into, right behind us! And another thing here is to keep in mind is what I already hit on above. Climate change is slow. Even the catastrophic near 0 probability ignore-everything climate change will happen very slowly and over many decades. This again has pros and cons. The obvious con is the parable of a frog boiling in water (which as an aside is not true...). People are less likely to act in any substantive way when the negative change is so gradual, which will increase the chances of us ending up in one of the worse scenarios. But there's also a very positive aspect. The change will not be catastrophic. The coast line won't suddenly be inundated with tens of feet of permanent water. Instead you're going to see the seas inch forward ever so slowly. This gives people time to adjust and migrate while minimizing chaos. So for instance take Miami, which is already suffering from increasing sea levels. You're not going to see property values go from sky high to $0. Instead they will slowly trend downwards and we'll likely see more inner land values slowly trend upwards. And they are also trying to combat the rising tides technologically, with some success. This same pattern will be expected in most places, so it helps preclude scenarios getting "very nasty, very quickly."
- regularfry 8y ago