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I know this may be silly but one reason why I stay in the "Great lakes states" and own property here is because of global warming and my lack of hope that tech/

by avgDev 5y ago

I know this may be silly but one reason why I stay in the "Great lakes states" and own property here is because of global warming and my lack of hope that tech/governments/capitalism will solve it before we reach a point of no return during which we will experience massive property and life loss in the US. Only then significant change will occur IMO. There are places in the south now that need water to be delivered by trucks due to shortages. At some point it is going to be pointless to live there and housing market in those areas will collapse. Coastal areas will be flooded due to increasing sea levels. Places with little to no rain will experience more extreme fires(happening now). I'm sure Midwest will also experience more severe weather but you can make it work, living under water or without water is impossible.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
I don't think it's silly, it's honestly why my wife and I keep deciding to keep our family here in Ontario despite the rest of my family being out west. We keep talking about moving to British Columbia for lifestyle and social reasons (skiing, family, scenery, politics etc.) but every time I go out west to visit family in Alberta & BC there's forest fires, talk of drought, shrinking glaciers (that supply all drinking and irrigation water to that whole half of the continent) and I come back thinking that the great lakes region is ideal, particularly here on the Canadian side: politically stable, lots of fresh water, arable land, few forest fires, etc. For now, anyways. EDIT: and yeah, amazing you're getting downvoted. I've been downvoted here for expressing the same sentiment before.
- dleslie 5y ago
  BC has no lack of water; it rains _heavily_ most of the year along the coast. What BC lacks is a water storage plan; as you've mentioned, our glaciers and snow pack are no longer reliable. And there's the impact from less water in rivers and streams to consider, and how that will effect the ecology.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    There's really three different ecozones we're talking about here. Coastal, interior, and northern. Yes, there's lots of rain along the coast, but that doesn't help the interior. And it's pretty damned hard to build the infrastructure for rain storage on the scale we're talking about. That said, the recent heat wave hit the coast pretty badly, too.
    - dleslie 5y ago
      The southern interior hosts a desert; definitely not a lot of rain there. ;) We're building rain storage right now, in the form of Site C.
      - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
        Wouldn't you say Site C more of a glacial-melt supplied reservoir? EDIT: It's a dam built on the Peace, which is out of the Rockies, on the other side from most of BC. And a long way from anywhere in B.C. that will be requiring drinking water or irrigation really. The farm land that would be irrigated I would imagine would be primarily on the Alberta side.
        dleslie 5y ago
        It's a snow-pack reservoir, I think. The intended use of the water is for power generation, but I think dams are clear model of how to build rain water reservoirs going forward.
- kortilla 5y ago
  > and yeah, amazing you're getting downvoted. I've been downvoted here for expressing the same sentiment before. Because it’s an irrational prioritization. It’s like refusing to move to a new location for your dream job because the cost of milk is a little higher. People like yourself and OP tend to struggle with this because it’s hard to imagine water not being an unlimited free resource. Once you think of it like food or any other utility, you’ll realize there is a always a price point where you can get it and it’s just one of another many costs you analyze in a place.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    Holy crap you're arrogant.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      How so? Because I grew up in a water constrained environment? In your other post you literally brag about how wasteful you can be with water (kids spraying hose, etc). Living without unlimited water takes an adaptation that the majority of the world deals with just fine. It’s only the people who grew up with it that have an irrational fear of the concept of it being a limited resource like any other.
  - avgDev 5y ago
    Right.... So holding onto an investment property in a location where I think prices will go up in the next 20 years is irrational. I simply stated my opinion, you can disagree with it all you like. I'm a programmer, I can do my dream job from the comfort of my home without traveling, wasting my time and gas.
    - kortilla 5y ago
      > So holding onto an investment property in a location where I think prices will go up in the next 20 years is irrational. Thinking that they will go up because of water is the irrational bit. Israel is the worst case (desalination of sea water) and water is still affordable there. It’s a non-issue that would be as far down the list of considerations when choosing where to live as electricity costs. You may have “thought about it” a lot, but even a little bit of research of what the worst case looks like would have revealed it’s a terrible reason for any investment plans.
- Niglodonicus 5y ago
  I mean, there's a lot of techno-optimists on this forum diligently huffing the hopium that the eventual (perhaps even imminent) collapse of our current systems will surely be subverted by some great breakthrough. Of course they're going to downvote any view that purports that this is highly unlikely.
  - blooalien 5y ago
    Personally, I been upvoting everyone who makes realistic and valid points, even if I don't like what they have to say, because especially in discussions about this particular topic, we need to entertain a wide variety of viewpoints and be willing to accept that not any one magical solution is gonna fix this. The reality is that the whole "climate crisis" thing is gonna require humanity in general to gang up on the problem from all angles and each contribution will help the overall situation improve to some degree. The sum of all those contributions is the solution. The longer we keep looking to corporations, politicians, and scientists to come up with a "magic bullet" for the problem, the worse it's gonna be for everyone and the less likely any amount of human efforts will be able to improve it again.
    - Niglodonicus 5y ago
      It's a lot bigger of an issue than merely the climate crisis. Regarding trying to prevent it (and related issues), we would not only needed to have started 50+ years ago (when it was already clear what was happening), but the incentives in our economic system just do not work in such a way to allow for all the capitalist decision makers to all collectively stop turning a profit. The system is somewhat like rolling a boulder up a hill, it must continuously push it up, or the boulder will roll back down, a little, or all the way. Once growth becomes imposssible/infeasible due to resource limitations, this will happen eventually anyway. But if the machine stops churning, it will simply happen sooner. Regarding the various aspects of the unsustainability of our society and how it is reaching its limits, this wiki subsection is a very good read (and the rest of the wiki page as well, separated into concrete sections, and links to lots of source materials): https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/index#wiki_what_would_cause_collapse.3F https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/index#wiki_what_would...
candiddevmike 5y ago
Cheap fresh water will become the new oil. I wouldn't be surprised if the ridiculous idea of pumping Lake Michigan to NV/CA comes to fruition.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  There are international treaties with Canada that are supposed to forbid that. But yeah, that remains a worry.
  - cableshaft 5y ago
    The treaty mentioned: https://www.gsgp.org/media/nvzkrpyv/great_lakes-st_lawrence_river_basin_sustainable_water_resources_agreement.pdf https://www.gsgp.org/media/nvzkrpyv/great_lakes-st_lawrence_...
  - 8note 5y ago
    The US imposes treaties, it doesn't follow them, and Canada is a national security threat, so any treaty requirements can be ignored for national security purposes
    - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
      Yes, hence why I said "remains a worry". Though the treaty is signed between various states on the US side, too, and some US states have interests that compete with others on these matters that might be the one thing that saves us here in Ontario & Quebec.
- mastax 5y ago
  The Great Lakes Compact forbids that. As an agreement between states it went through US Congress, so theoretically an act of Congress could repeal or modify it. However this seems unlikely to me due to the Midwest's outsized political influence and how protective locals are of the lakes.
  - OldHand2018 5y ago
TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Sshhhh! - We can't support the required influx of climate refuges. /s Seriously though, nothing silly about it, choosing a climate that requires the least resources to live in is the common sense thing to do. Living in the desert, now that is silly. EDIT: Why is parent getting down voted?
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Because HN + Silicon Valley, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g, etc.
dogman144 5y ago
It's not silly. I'm sitting in a coastal tech city but with a remote job for cultural reasons, and looking at what's next after this lease and long term. I'm not sure how I want to balance the pragmatism I can execute on with this mobility to move to somewhere tolerable in the midwest (MN comes to mind), vs. a common nihilistic trend that warming will affect everyone*, might as well live where I want to live (not MN comes to mind). I worry we're experiencing "gradually then suddenly" trend with climate developments, but I have difficulty placing if it's a me-concern, or grandkids concern.
- wombatpm 5y ago
  Having lived in MN I would point out that 90% of Canadians live south of the Twin Cities.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    Yes, most of us cluster in a latitude about parallel with northern California or southern Oregon.
  - dogman144 5y ago
    Ya frozen chosen up there, spent some time as well but not for years. figure it'll get better though if climate all pans out as people are concerned about. MSPL tech is (or used to: unclear if remote work will change this) appealing b/c of the corporate cluster around there, and the city's future despite last year seems ok as it's the main eastern urban hub for all the rural farming stretching west of it. I work with a lot of remote folks from MSPL, so seems like there is a tech community. Chicago seems interesting, but as I understand it the state finances are upside down because of pensions and the like, and it's slowly reflecting in income taxes.
kortilla 5y ago
> There are places in the south now that need water to be delivered by trucks due to shortages. At some point it is going to be pointless to live there and housing market in those areas will collapse. Why do you think that? They are clearly fine with the most expensive option already. > Coastal areas will be flooded due to increasing sea levels. No, some coastal areas will have problems with this where the inland has very little elevation gain (e.g. Florida). A house in the South Bay Area alternatively has a lower flood risk than anything near the Great Lakes (just because of the precipitation received on the eastern half of the US). > Places with little to no rain will experience more extreme fires(happening now). Some will. It depends on the ecology. Many of these places on fire have fire as part of biological cycle (I.e. the California forests) so if you weren’t ready for that risk you were screwed regardless of climate change. > I'm sure Midwest will also experience more severe weather but you can make it work, living under water or without water is impossible. And neither of those things will be feasible outcomes for those of us in the West. Unless you’re a farmer, living near the Great Lakes for water security is pretty stupid. You have a higher chance of being killed by a tornado or a lightning strike than there being a water shortage that makes the west unlivable. Israel desalinates ocean water and a fuckload of people still live there.
- dakna 5y ago
  > being a water shortage that makes the west unlivable Unlivable? Probably not. But more expensive? Absolutely. And once the agricultural economy needs to shut down due to free water not being free anymore, I'll expect ghost cities all over the West, starting with small communities not able to provide enough jobs and not attractive enough to turn into retirement places for people with money. So far the projections on temperature and rainfall changes are in line with what we see today, but hey, the jury is still out on that. Once we know for sure in roughly 25 years, it might be too late, so I take my chances based on what I know now.
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    Agree with all your points, but also: the moment I had children the horizon of years that concerned me expanded significantly. I am a bit over half-way through my life but I have two young children and where we settle and build our lives affects their prospects as well. We have 6 acres of arable land a 10 minute drive from Lake Ontario and a well into the Niagara Escarpment into an underground river that I can pull dozens of gallons a minute of water from. As I write this my son is splashing in the pool and spraying the dog with a hose ;-)
kibwen 5y ago
> There are places in the south now that need water to be delivered due to shortages. An argument for moving to Florida or Louisiana, where the water will be delivered to your home for free in short order. Dark humor, but sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.
- avgDev 5y ago
  I love dark humor! Honestly, I don't think we need to worry about global warming, Apple basically solved it by not including a charging brick with the iPhone12 and new watches! /s This sums up how capitalism feels about global warming.
- busterarm 5y ago
  Louisiana's problem is more land erosion than sea level rise and it's mostly due to dams all the way up in the Dakotas. Water rights are a huge mess and I see it being the thing that eventually breaks up pacts between most nations. The US and EU will cease to be and nations will go to war over it. The legislation around these rights is a time bomb.
Diederich 5y ago
"Coastal areas will be flooded due to increasing sea levels." I don't mean to nit pick, but clarification in this context is appropriate I think. For example, I live about 500 meters from the Pacific ocean, but my house is in absolutely no danger of flooding, because we're about 100 meters above sea level, and we are at the top of a rise. There's nothing 'above' us, so no rain flooding is possible. Many costal areas will flood due to sea level rise; many more costal areas will flood even sooner due to increasing storms. But it's quite possible to live safely near the ocean.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
  You are indeed nitpicking and presenting a cherry picked scenario. You are the outlier. The majority of coastal settlements are on flat land or at the mouths of rivers which - surprise - are also flat and prone to flooding. There is a good reason that rocky coasts like those in Scotland or Gaspe in Quebec have such small populations. It is possible to live safely near the ocean, provided your government has the foresight to build storm barriers. At the moment, one of the only places where this is true is the Netherlands. Also, there's a more plausible reason for river basin floods - melting glaciers and upstream floods.
  - Diederich 5y ago
    "... a cherry picked scenario. You are the outlier. The majority of coastal settlements are on flat land or at the mouths of rivers which - surprise - are also flat and prone to flooding." I agree. The vast majority of people who live near the ocean are at risk. I was thinking in rather privileged terms as someone able to pick and choose where to live. I chose this location, surrounded on three sides by cold Pacific water, because of the strong temperature moderating effects. Among those within a few miles of the Pacific in a radius of 50 miles from my location, at least 95% of them will be strongly affected by sea level rise and temporary surges due to strong storms. "... one of the only places where this is true is the Netherlands." For the time being. :(
- wott 5y ago
  Cliffs get eaten by the ocean too. Depending on the type of material and other factors, the ocean may get closer to your home by several metres each decade. It has become a problem in several places in France, where they thought they were safe because they were not low and on the sand but high and on the rock, but they are not safe any more.
vmception 5y ago
It's not that you aren't correct on some time frame, its more so that you have to live your life there for the entire duration that you aren't correct. So, whatever helps you sleep at night.
- avgDev 5y ago
  But I don't. I just plan to hold onto the property, if I buy another house. As dev with a dual citizenship and ability to work anywhere in Europe, I have pretty high mobility and I can always move.
  - vmception 5y ago
    I considered that but you wrote "why I stay in the "Great lakes states"" In any case, yes it is a bet to hold property there for that reason. Good luck.
delecti 5y ago
I've idly thought about which areas are likely to come out ahead because of climate change. It's going to affect just about everything, but surely there will be at least a couple winners next to the pile of losers. Obviously you can't predict too far out, but like you've said, the midwest seems likely to be a winner in the short-term. I've also seen a lot about the Russian permafrost melting, and I can't help but think they'll come out ahead as well. It makes me wonder if they've done that same mental math, because it would give them incentives that conflict with most of the rest of the world.
- blooalien 5y ago
  Problem is that in this particular issue the natural systems of the planet are straight up breaking down and soon could spiral so out of control as to be entirely beyond our ability to do anything about the issue. The longer we wait, the higher the odds it becomes "unfixable".
  - delecti 5y ago
    I don't disagree with any of that. I'm not saying things will be good globally, or even in very many places. I'm just saying that it's likely that climate change will leave some areas of the planet better than they are now. Whether or not we have the ability now, or will have the ability in the future, to reverse course on climate change was entirely unrelated to the point I was trying to make.
    - blooalien 5y ago
      > … "it's likely that climate change will leave some areas of the planet better than they are now." Almost certain to be true … temporarily.
asdff 5y ago
I know people who work for local governments in the midwest and the big elephant in the room there is quite a lot of the roads, sewers, bridges, and other essential infrastructure that was built in the 60s and 70s is approaching the end of its useful life, and these governments don't have the tax income to maintain or improve any of it. Recent heavy rains this summer have inundated local sewer systems, the national weather service had to issue an alert for people to stay in their homes due to how much high water was appearing and trapping vehicles.
- TrispusAttucks 5y ago
  Storm drains are a much smaller problem than a regional water shortage catastrophe. If that is the biggest issue a municipal grapples with they are in a good position.
  - asdff 5y ago
    There isn't much of a regional water shortage catastrophe occuring in the west so much as a general mismanagement of water resources. We make water cheap and in plenty supply for farmers, so they pick water intensive lucrative crops for export like alfalfa, cotton for mattresses fabricated in mexico, or even rice. Residential use makes up such a small percentage of water usage compared to agriculture which isn't managed well. Seeing the great lakes as an infinite body of water is also a logical fallacy, that resource also needs not to be mismanaged in order for it to be relied upon 100 years from now. The infrastructure issue is a huge problem. Municipalities are going bankrupt. They can't afford to replace these systems that were laid out decades ago. Who will pay for it when there isn't money available even to pay existing pensions on the municipality and the state level, and federal policy changes with the wind every 4 years? In the mean time while that is being debated historic storms are finding the weakest links to stress and breaking them, and compromises are being made to sustain the bare essential of infrastructure. And that's just the public works. Homes are rotting too, and they aren't building new ones fast enough. A housing tract that was nice and new in 1995 probably needs work on the roof today, a repair bill that might be worth 10-20% the total value of the home. You won't get that nice coastal salary to make these sorts of bills worry free, either. This is the midwest where engineers are paid like 80k and that's seen as pretty good pay.
AtlasBarfed 5y ago
It's dangerous because at some point some idiot brained Western politician will demand a huge water pipeline from the great lakes to Arizona so they can sustain their massive city in a middle of a desert that should not be there in the first place. Then a few decades later, the US will have its very own Aral Sea. That particular cynicism aside, what will probably happen is that sufficient global warming will make the desert actually uninhabitable and people will migrate to the Great Lakes.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  I think the Aral sea was particularly vulnerable because almost all of its water was supplied from only a couple rivers. I don't think the Great Lakes would be so easily choked off, especially on the northern end of them where they blend into the Canadian Shield which is unusable for agriculture (it's mainly just granite) and so irrigation projects taking the water from there would be less likely.

by avgDev 5y ago

cmrdporcupine 5y ago

I don't think it's silly, it's honestly why my wife and I keep deciding to keep our family here in Ontario despite the rest of my family being out west. We keep talking about moving to British Columbia for lifestyle and social reasons (skiing, family, scenery, politics etc.) but every time I go out west to visit family in Alberta & BC there's forest fires, talk of drought, shrinking glaciers (that supply all drinking and irrigation water to that whole half of the continent) and I come back thinking that the great lakes region is ideal, particularly here on the Canadian side: politically stable, lots of fresh water, arable land, few forest fires, etc. For now, anyways. EDIT: and yeah, amazing you're getting downvoted. I've been downvoted here for expressing the same sentiment before.

dleslie 5y ago
BC has no lack of water; it rains _heavily_ most of the year along the coast. What BC lacks is a water storage plan; as you've mentioned, our glaciers and snow pack are no longer reliable. And there's the impact from less water in rivers and streams to consider, and how that will effect the ecology.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  There's really three different ecozones we're talking about here. Coastal, interior, and northern. Yes, there's lots of rain along the coast, but that doesn't help the interior. And it's pretty damned hard to build the infrastructure for rain storage on the scale we're talking about. That said, the recent heat wave hit the coast pretty badly, too.
  - dleslie 5y ago
    The southern interior hosts a desert; definitely not a lot of rain there. ;) We're building rain storage right now, in the form of Site C.
    - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
      Wouldn't you say Site C more of a glacial-melt supplied reservoir? EDIT: It's a dam built on the Peace, which is out of the Rockies, on the other side from most of BC. And a long way from anywhere in B.C. that will be requiring drinking water or irrigation really. The farm land that would be irrigated I would imagine would be primarily on the Alberta side.
      - dleslie 5y ago
        It's a snow-pack reservoir, I think. The intended use of the water is for power generation, but I think dams are clear model of how to build rain water reservoirs going forward.
kortilla 5y ago
> and yeah, amazing you're getting downvoted. I've been downvoted here for expressing the same sentiment before. Because it’s an irrational prioritization. It’s like refusing to move to a new location for your dream job because the cost of milk is a little higher. People like yourself and OP tend to struggle with this because it’s hard to imagine water not being an unlimited free resource. Once you think of it like food or any other utility, you’ll realize there is a always a price point where you can get it and it’s just one of another many costs you analyze in a place.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Holy crap you're arrogant.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    How so? Because I grew up in a water constrained environment? In your other post you literally brag about how wasteful you can be with water (kids spraying hose, etc). Living without unlimited water takes an adaptation that the majority of the world deals with just fine. It’s only the people who grew up with it that have an irrational fear of the concept of it being a limited resource like any other.
- avgDev 5y ago
  Right.... So holding onto an investment property in a location where I think prices will go up in the next 20 years is irrational. I simply stated my opinion, you can disagree with it all you like. I'm a programmer, I can do my dream job from the comfort of my home without traveling, wasting my time and gas.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    > So holding onto an investment property in a location where I think prices will go up in the next 20 years is irrational. Thinking that they will go up because of water is the irrational bit. Israel is the worst case (desalination of sea water) and water is still affordable there. It’s a non-issue that would be as far down the list of considerations when choosing where to live as electricity costs. You may have “thought about it” a lot, but even a little bit of research of what the worst case looks like would have revealed it’s a terrible reason for any investment plans.
Niglodonicus 5y ago
I mean, there's a lot of techno-optimists on this forum diligently huffing the hopium that the eventual (perhaps even imminent) collapse of our current systems will surely be subverted by some great breakthrough. Of course they're going to downvote any view that purports that this is highly unlikely.
- blooalien 5y ago
  Personally, I been upvoting everyone who makes realistic and valid points, even if I don't like what they have to say, because especially in discussions about this particular topic, we need to entertain a wide variety of viewpoints and be willing to accept that not any one magical solution is gonna fix this. The reality is that the whole "climate crisis" thing is gonna require humanity in general to gang up on the problem from all angles and each contribution will help the overall situation improve to some degree. The sum of all those contributions is the solution. The longer we keep looking to corporations, politicians, and scientists to come up with a "magic bullet" for the problem, the worse it's gonna be for everyone and the less likely any amount of human efforts will be able to improve it again.
  - Niglodonicus 5y ago
    It's a lot bigger of an issue than merely the climate crisis. Regarding trying to prevent it (and related issues), we would not only needed to have started 50+ years ago (when it was already clear what was happening), but the incentives in our economic system just do not work in such a way to allow for all the capitalist decision makers to all collectively stop turning a profit. The system is somewhat like rolling a boulder up a hill, it must continuously push it up, or the boulder will roll back down, a little, or all the way. Once growth becomes imposssible/infeasible due to resource limitations, this will happen eventually anyway. But if the machine stops churning, it will simply happen sooner. Regarding the various aspects of the unsustainability of our society and how it is reaching its limits, this wiki subsection is a very good read (and the rest of the wiki page as well, separated into concrete sections, and links to lots of source materials): https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/index#wiki_what_would_cause_collapse.3F https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/index#wiki_what_would...

candiddevmike 5y ago

Cheap fresh water will become the new oil. I wouldn't be surprised if the ridiculous idea of pumping Lake Michigan to NV/CA comes to fruition.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
There are international treaties with Canada that are supposed to forbid that. But yeah, that remains a worry.
- cableshaft 5y ago
  The treaty mentioned: https://www.gsgp.org/media/nvzkrpyv/great_lakes-st_lawrence_river_basin_sustainable_water_resources_agreement.pdf https://www.gsgp.org/media/nvzkrpyv/great_lakes-st_lawrence_...
- 8note 5y ago
  The US imposes treaties, it doesn't follow them, and Canada is a national security threat, so any treaty requirements can be ignored for national security purposes
  - cmrdporcupine 5y ago
    Yes, hence why I said "remains a worry". Though the treaty is signed between various states on the US side, too, and some US states have interests that compete with others on these matters that might be the one thing that saves us here in Ontario & Quebec.
mastax 5y ago
The Great Lakes Compact forbids that. As an agreement between states it went through US Congress, so theoretically an act of Congress could repeal or modify it. However this seems unlikely to me due to the Midwest's outsized political influence and how protective locals are of the lakes.
- OldHand2018 5y ago

TrispusAttucks 5y ago

Sshhhh! - We can't support the required influx of climate refuges. /s Seriously though, nothing silly about it, choosing a climate that requires the least resources to live in is the common sense thing to do. Living in the desert, now that is silly. EDIT: Why is parent getting down voted?

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
Because HN + Silicon Valley, sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g, etc.

dogman144 5y ago

It's not silly. I'm sitting in a coastal tech city but with a remote job for cultural reasons, and looking at what's next after this lease and long term. I'm not sure how I want to balance the pragmatism I can execute on with this mobility to move to somewhere tolerable in the midwest (MN comes to mind), vs. a common nihilistic trend that warming will affect everyone*, might as well live where I want to live (not MN comes to mind). I worry we're experiencing "gradually then suddenly" trend with climate developments, but I have difficulty placing if it's a me-concern, or grandkids concern.

wombatpm 5y ago
Having lived in MN I would point out that 90% of Canadians live south of the Twin Cities.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Yes, most of us cluster in a latitude about parallel with northern California or southern Oregon.
- dogman144 5y ago
  Ya frozen chosen up there, spent some time as well but not for years. figure it'll get better though if climate all pans out as people are concerned about. MSPL tech is (or used to: unclear if remote work will change this) appealing b/c of the corporate cluster around there, and the city's future despite last year seems ok as it's the main eastern urban hub for all the rural farming stretching west of it. I work with a lot of remote folks from MSPL, so seems like there is a tech community. Chicago seems interesting, but as I understand it the state finances are upside down because of pensions and the like, and it's slowly reflecting in income taxes.

kortilla 5y ago

> There are places in the south now that need water to be delivered by trucks due to shortages. At some point it is going to be pointless to live there and housing market in those areas will collapse. Why do you think that? They are clearly fine with the most expensive option already. > Coastal areas will be flooded due to increasing sea levels. No, some coastal areas will have problems with this where the inland has very little elevation gain (e.g. Florida). A house in the South Bay Area alternatively has a lower flood risk than anything near the Great Lakes (just because of the precipitation received on the eastern half of the US). > Places with little to no rain will experience more extreme fires(happening now). Some will. It depends on the ecology. Many of these places on fire have fire as part of biological cycle (I.e. the California forests) so if you weren’t ready for that risk you were screwed regardless of climate change. > I'm sure Midwest will also experience more severe weather but you can make it work, living under water or without water is impossible. And neither of those things will be feasible outcomes for those of us in the West. Unless you’re a farmer, living near the Great Lakes for water security is pretty stupid. You have a higher chance of being killed by a tornado or a lightning strike than there being a water shortage that makes the west unlivable. Israel desalinates ocean water and a fuckload of people still live there.

dakna 5y ago
> being a water shortage that makes the west unlivable Unlivable? Probably not. But more expensive? Absolutely. And once the agricultural economy needs to shut down due to free water not being free anymore, I'll expect ghost cities all over the West, starting with small communities not able to provide enough jobs and not attractive enough to turn into retirement places for people with money. So far the projections on temperature and rainfall changes are in line with what we see today, but hey, the jury is still out on that. Once we know for sure in roughly 25 years, it might be too late, so I take my chances based on what I know now.
- cmrdporcupine 5y ago
  Agree with all your points, but also: the moment I had children the horizon of years that concerned me expanded significantly. I am a bit over half-way through my life but I have two young children and where we settle and build our lives affects their prospects as well. We have 6 acres of arable land a 10 minute drive from Lake Ontario and a well into the Niagara Escarpment into an underground river that I can pull dozens of gallons a minute of water from. As I write this my son is splashing in the pool and spraying the dog with a hose ;-)

kibwen 5y ago

> There are places in the south now that need water to be delivered due to shortages. An argument for moving to Florida or Louisiana, where the water will be delivered to your home for free in short order. Dark humor, but sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying.

avgDev 5y ago
I love dark humor! Honestly, I don't think we need to worry about global warming, Apple basically solved it by not including a charging brick with the iPhone12 and new watches! /s This sums up how capitalism feels about global warming.
busterarm 5y ago
Louisiana's problem is more land erosion than sea level rise and it's mostly due to dams all the way up in the Dakotas. Water rights are a huge mess and I see it being the thing that eventually breaks up pacts between most nations. The US and EU will cease to be and nations will go to war over it. The legislation around these rights is a time bomb.

Diederich 5y ago

"Coastal areas will be flooded due to increasing sea levels." I don't mean to nit pick, but clarification in this context is appropriate I think. For example, I live about 500 meters from the Pacific ocean, but my house is in absolutely no danger of flooding, because we're about 100 meters above sea level, and we are at the top of a rise. There's nothing 'above' us, so no rain flooding is possible. Many costal areas will flood due to sea level rise; many more costal areas will flood even sooner due to increasing storms. But it's quite possible to live safely near the ocean.

eldaisfish 5y ago
You are indeed nitpicking and presenting a cherry picked scenario. You are the outlier. The majority of coastal settlements are on flat land or at the mouths of rivers which - surprise - are also flat and prone to flooding. There is a good reason that rocky coasts like those in Scotland or Gaspe in Quebec have such small populations. It is possible to live safely near the ocean, provided your government has the foresight to build storm barriers. At the moment, one of the only places where this is true is the Netherlands. Also, there's a more plausible reason for river basin floods - melting glaciers and upstream floods.
- Diederich 5y ago
  "... a cherry picked scenario. You are the outlier. The majority of coastal settlements are on flat land or at the mouths of rivers which - surprise - are also flat and prone to flooding." I agree. The vast majority of people who live near the ocean are at risk. I was thinking in rather privileged terms as someone able to pick and choose where to live. I chose this location, surrounded on three sides by cold Pacific water, because of the strong temperature moderating effects. Among those within a few miles of the Pacific in a radius of 50 miles from my location, at least 95% of them will be strongly affected by sea level rise and temporary surges due to strong storms. "... one of the only places where this is true is the Netherlands." For the time being. :(
wott 5y ago
Cliffs get eaten by the ocean too. Depending on the type of material and other factors, the ocean may get closer to your home by several metres each decade. It has become a problem in several places in France, where they thought they were safe because they were not low and on the sand but high and on the rock, but they are not safe any more.

vmception 5y ago

It's not that you aren't correct on some time frame, its more so that you have to live your life there for the entire duration that you aren't correct. So, whatever helps you sleep at night.

avgDev 5y ago
But I don't. I just plan to hold onto the property, if I buy another house. As dev with a dual citizenship and ability to work anywhere in Europe, I have pretty high mobility and I can always move.
- vmception 5y ago
  I considered that but you wrote "why I stay in the "Great lakes states"" In any case, yes it is a bet to hold property there for that reason. Good luck.

delecti 5y ago

I've idly thought about which areas are likely to come out ahead because of climate change. It's going to affect just about everything, but surely there will be at least a couple winners next to the pile of losers. Obviously you can't predict too far out, but like you've said, the midwest seems likely to be a winner in the short-term. I've also seen a lot about the Russian permafrost melting, and I can't help but think they'll come out ahead as well. It makes me wonder if they've done that same mental math, because it would give them incentives that conflict with most of the rest of the world.

blooalien 5y ago
Problem is that in this particular issue the natural systems of the planet are straight up breaking down and soon could spiral so out of control as to be entirely beyond our ability to do anything about the issue. The longer we wait, the higher the odds it becomes "unfixable".
- delecti 5y ago
  I don't disagree with any of that. I'm not saying things will be good globally, or even in very many places. I'm just saying that it's likely that climate change will leave some areas of the planet better than they are now. Whether or not we have the ability now, or will have the ability in the future, to reverse course on climate change was entirely unrelated to the point I was trying to make.
  - blooalien 5y ago
    > … "it's likely that climate change will leave some areas of the planet better than they are now." Almost certain to be true … temporarily.

asdff 5y ago

I know people who work for local governments in the midwest and the big elephant in the room there is quite a lot of the roads, sewers, bridges, and other essential infrastructure that was built in the 60s and 70s is approaching the end of its useful life, and these governments don't have the tax income to maintain or improve any of it. Recent heavy rains this summer have inundated local sewer systems, the national weather service had to issue an alert for people to stay in their homes due to how much high water was appearing and trapping vehicles.

TrispusAttucks 5y ago
Storm drains are a much smaller problem than a regional water shortage catastrophe. If that is the biggest issue a municipal grapples with they are in a good position.
- asdff 5y ago
  There isn't much of a regional water shortage catastrophe occuring in the west so much as a general mismanagement of water resources. We make water cheap and in plenty supply for farmers, so they pick water intensive lucrative crops for export like alfalfa, cotton for mattresses fabricated in mexico, or even rice. Residential use makes up such a small percentage of water usage compared to agriculture which isn't managed well. Seeing the great lakes as an infinite body of water is also a logical fallacy, that resource also needs not to be mismanaged in order for it to be relied upon 100 years from now. The infrastructure issue is a huge problem. Municipalities are going bankrupt. They can't afford to replace these systems that were laid out decades ago. Who will pay for it when there isn't money available even to pay existing pensions on the municipality and the state level, and federal policy changes with the wind every 4 years? In the mean time while that is being debated historic storms are finding the weakest links to stress and breaking them, and compromises are being made to sustain the bare essential of infrastructure. And that's just the public works. Homes are rotting too, and they aren't building new ones fast enough. A housing tract that was nice and new in 1995 probably needs work on the roof today, a repair bill that might be worth 10-20% the total value of the home. You won't get that nice coastal salary to make these sorts of bills worry free, either. This is the midwest where engineers are paid like 80k and that's seen as pretty good pay.

AtlasBarfed 5y ago

It's dangerous because at some point some idiot brained Western politician will demand a huge water pipeline from the great lakes to Arizona so they can sustain their massive city in a middle of a desert that should not be there in the first place. Then a few decades later, the US will have its very own Aral Sea. That particular cynicism aside, what will probably happen is that sufficient global warming will make the desert actually uninhabitable and people will migrate to the Great Lakes.

cmrdporcupine 5y ago
I think the Aral sea was particularly vulnerable because almost all of its water was supplied from only a couple rivers. I don't think the Great Lakes would be so easily choked off, especially on the northern end of them where they blend into the Canadian Shield which is unusable for agriculture (it's mainly just granite) and so irrigation projects taking the water from there would be less likely.