8 ms·
Land Gained and Lost: A Fermi Estimate
- epall 5y agoNo mention of permafrost? Yes, the _air_ will be more habitable, but if the _ground_ is a boggy mess, you’re not going to be doing much with this newly habitable land.
- searchableguy 5y agoIs there a way to detect permafrost and remove it using available tech?
- KyeRussell 5y agoThank you for reminding me that I’m on Hacker News.
- ceejayoz 5y ago11% of the planet's surface has permafrost. Good luck.
- JulianMorrison 5y agoDetect it: poke a stick. It stops, at a pretty consistent depth, and not because of rock. Remove it: overheat the planet. It will turn to mud. Anything built on it will subside or sink. Massive amounts of trapped organic matter will turn to methane. Eventually, I presume the area would settle into a new climatic zone, with neither permafrost nor mud. Emphasis on "eventually".
- saalweachter 5y agoThere were also no occurrences of the words "sun", "light", or "insolation". The further away from the equator you go, the more your sunlight becomes a fickle seasonal creature hitting you at odd angles in varying intensity. Temperature isn't the only variable affecting the growing season and agricultural productivity.
- m0llusk 5y agoI know at least one midwestern US farmer who quit and sold his land which had been in his family for generations because increasing frequency of large storms made his harvests unreliable.
- ianai 5y ago“They also imply that nearly five hundred times as much land is gained through warming as is lost through sea level rise, which makes it odd that only the latter is commonly included in discussions of the effects of climate change.” Not odd. Wars are fought over “border changes” and resources which this definitely constitutes. The changes would be global and so would the war. This is a very simplistic view to the point of neglect crossing into malice.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- somenameforme 5y ago> "The changes would be global and so would the war." One thing that might lead different people to different perspectives is reflected in your choice of words. Climate change and sea level rise is not a future tense, but a present tense scenario. It's already happening. It's easy to view it as something that happens where you go from today's "normal" to the sea rise of the future and perceive the chaos that must entail. The NOAA, in their 2019 report, puts the worst case scenario at up to 5 meters by the year 2300. [1] So the tail end worst outcome results in an overall sea level rise of less than 2cm a year. There is of course an acceleration but it's relatively gradual. It never goes from zero to 'Let's go swimming on Main St.' If you'd like to see what might happen in a hyper-accelerated case of sea level rise, you can follow the news about Bangkok. Bangkok is a city that was built on a marshy soft clay type terrain and so the literal weight of urbanization and development within the city is causing the city to sink by compressing the terrain under the city. This is further compounded by real sea level rise, local climate conditions (annual extreme typhoons), and relatively poor infrastructure. A bit of a perfect storm. Estimates vary but the city is sinking by around 2cm per year. It's an issue and is affecting the city. But it's not really triggering a panic or causing any sort of chaos. The city is trying to resolve the issue using technological and developmental solutions, and life more or less goes on. Should the solutions prove untenable I expect the city will gradually start to decline in population with a proportional increase in population to outlying areas. And life continues. [1] - https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148494/anticipating-future-sea-levels https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/148494/anticipating...
- gregwebs 5y agoI think this glosses over the issues of land becoming more arid. Most of the western United States is struggling to deal with this and it seems likely that agricultural output will decrease in these areas even if the land is not unusable by the standards of this article.
- karlkatzke 5y agoIt also glosses over that arctic land isn’t usable for agriculture. There’s nowhere near enough fertile soil in former permafrost. The areas that did have fertile soil are now deserts or covered in salt water. It really comes off as disingenuous to me in that regard; it’s a quantitative analysis without any of the qualitative measures that are necessary.
- masklinn 5y ago> There’s nowhere near enough fertile soil in former permafrost. Not only that, former permafrost is highly unstable almost by definition: as soon as it starts melting it starts shifting. This is already starting to be an infrastructure issue, as roads and bridges built on/in permafrost degrade at very high rate when it thaws. And that's before considering the cool methane bombs. Nothing says stability like your field or house being replaced by a 40m deep crater. And then, obviously, global warming / permafrost melting doesn't magick a more reasonable insolation. Even ignoring soil quality factors, agricultural yields start degrading as you go further towards the poles because the seasons and sheer amount of sun are crap.
- Y-bar 5y agoSimilarly. Where I live (Scandinavia) we have seen modest change in precipitation on a yearly basis, and if you look at our country as a singular unit. However, the when and where when looking more detailed into the numbers reveal that lowland/farmland gets drier while highlands get wetter. We now have yearly drought warnings due to this.
- manholio 5y agoA significant concern the author is not considering is soil salinity. Most of the coastal land is not easily defendable cities, but productive agricultural land. When sea level rise then the salty water infiltrates into the ground water and makes vast amounts of soil infertile, from what I understand a much larger area than the zone lost directly to flooding. This will destroy massive wealth and push rural farmers inland, in conflict with each other or the wild areas.
- vegetablepotpie 5y agoThis is an interesting, coarse grained analysis. If you were looking for a false sense of security, or evidence to use in a melodramatic argument, this would fit. The fundamental problem with climate change is the amount of uncertainty it brings. All of civilizations infrastructure has been built assuming a constant climate system. With 1-6 ft of sea level rise possible, and 1.5 - 6 degrees of warming possible, and completely uncertain impacts to local climates, I can’t tell you where to build the next sea port, farm, and city.
- VariableStar 5y agoExactly. Also there is no mention of how temperatures are distributed and how extremes occur. A +3°C increase does not merely mean a linear shift of the temperature records but also an increase in the spread of the values, often meaning making tails fat, i.e. increasing the likelihood of high temperature extremes.
- ceejayoz 5y agoAnd on the high end, those extremes coupled with humidity can kill. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-bulb_temperature_and_health https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wet-bulb_temperature#Wet-bulb_... Neal Stephenson's latest novel, Termination Shock, starts with an Indian city hitting this point and having the power grid fail due to demand for air conditioning, resulting in millions dead. It's fairly plausible.
- Victerius 5y agoAnother beneficial consequence of climate change over the long term will be the return of megafauna. Apatosaurs, dunkleostei, sarcosuchus imperator, and others will make a comeback. I can't wait.
- mistrial9 5y agoor, anything larger than a dog will fail (extinction) in the wild.. many pollinators, species with a large range, and species with specific habitat needs and long breeding cycles, will fail.
- wazoox 5y agoThis seems to naively suppose that the gain could offset the losses. Except for the problem that large populations, cities, ports, industries etc are located on the coasts, while the land gains in cold, remote regions will be probably mostly useless for centuries.
- manholio 5y agoThe sea level rise is slow enough that no actual populated areas will be "flooded" leaving people homeless. Rather, it will be a very predictable process, each year the sea will rise by a small steady amount. The natural life of a city building is on the order of 100 years, on the same scale as the sea rise phenomenon. So cities and people will incorporate that into their planning and property valuation and urban areas will naturally shift towards higher altitudes as new buildings are constructed and old stock is abandoned. For particularly valuable pieces of real estate, defenses will be built. If sea walls were viable 200 years ago for agricultural land in the Netherlands, it will surely make sense for Manhattan.
- kadoban 5y agoWhat really happens is that areas flood more and more often due to "freak" storms. Eventually they're under water full time, but well before that, nobody can live there. > The natural life of a city building is on the order of 100 years That's great except sea level rise is going to be a lot faster than that.
- manholio 5y agoWhy would 0.6 m of water make a city unlivable? Will 0.6 m make a place where are no "freak" storms into a place "under water full time"? That is an entirely savage fantasy. 0.6 m is nothing compared to the natural rate of change in a modern city. See for example the embanking of the Thames, or try to imagine how the beaches of New York looked 100 years ago. They were built, rebuilt and raised and redesigned many times over.
- gmuslera 5y agoNever cross a river that is on average 4 feet deep. Storms, currents, each time more frequent extreme weather, disrupted climate features (like the polar vortex or AMOC). It won't be an orderly, even and without side consequences inch by inch sea rise. You will have pretty chaotic living conditions decades before that average sea rise, do you feel lucky? Can buy another house in another city if yours get flooded by a week long heavy rain next year? Can most people do that?
- jsnell 5y agoWhy does the author think that for the effects of high temperatures it's the annual average that matters, but for the effects of low temperatures it's the minimum? It seems intuitively obvious that the extremes matter way more for both cases. A place with a steady 30 degrees temperature across the year is just fundamentally more habitable than one with the same average coming from 60 degree peaks and 0 degree troughs. (The obvious answer is that the inconsistency is in bad faith, to fudge the numbers into fitting the author's preferred narrative. Is there any legitimate explanation?)
- vegetablepotpie 5y agoI didn’t want to believe your parentheses text, but I found that the author also has an article criticizing climate projections as volatile and too far into the future [1]. This is straight up climate denial. It’s very pernicious. It admits that climate is changing, it references one of the more dire predictions (3 C), and it doesn’t deny that the change is human caused. It’s pernicious because it shifts attention from an important negative implication (uncertainty with climate) towards an positive but inconsequential impact (more land area). Instead of talking about mass migrations of billions of people and food availability, we’re talking about land. These arguments are always all over the place, they vary from “it’s not happening” to “don’t worry about it if it is” Climate skepticism has never been about good faith scientific inquiry, it’s always been about insulating incumbent interests from change. [1] http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-prediction-we-will-get-to-test.html?m=1 http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2021/11/a-prediction-we-w...
- electromech 5y agoWhere are you getting that from the article? He seems to address that point: > Both of these calculations are based on average temperature. Arguably what habitability depends on is be maximum temperature. If it gets unendurably hot during a summer day, the fact that winter nights are cold is little compensation.
- jsnell 5y agoI'm getting it from what the author does, rather than what they say. The calculation for high temperatures is based on annual averages. The calculation for low temperatures is based on the coldest time of the year. I had missed that sentence, but fail to see how it makes things better. It just means that the author is aware of the problem and has no excuse for using a different methodology for the two cases.
- ______-_-______ 5y ago"I wish most of Canada wasn't so cold" And the monkey's paw curls.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoThis reminds me of Bjorn Lomborg going on the some interview show and saying that we should evaluate also the positive aspects of climate change, for example Denmark could use some warmer weather ha ha ha, charming reptillian smile.
- sebmellen 5y agoDo you have a link? I’ve never known quite what to think of Lomborg.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agoNo I don't offhand, my girlfriend at the time was doing a climate change project and that was one of the sources so theoretically I could find it. It was on Glen Beck, I found one but it wasn't the one I saw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquohKzR8QI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xquohKzR8QI , here Lomborg says good to be back so I guess that means he was on at least one time before. I remember in the interview I saw they were in the same room, this one is over a video call.
- bryanrasmussen 5y agowell went through the emails we had around the time, and the various versions of the report, but couldn't find a transcript or link to the Glen Beck video.
- jddil 5y ago[flagged]
- mistrial9 5y agosure, but it is vote based here.. post what you want to see
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- cmrdporcupine 5y agoMostly nonsense masquerading under math/science and missing forest for the trees. Rising temperature does not in itself make land arable or suitable for habitation. In fact it would probably have the opposite effect in sub-arctic regions by causing extensive desertification, forest fires, flooding, erosion, etc. I can't speak for land in Siberia, but I can speak about land in the north here in my own country, Canada. The limiting factor for arability in the north here is not temperature, but soil (or, rather, the absence of it.) Most of the north of Canada, especially the near-north which is now mostly boreal forest, is shallow soil overtop of an almost (or fully) exposed granite base we call the "Canadian shield". It covers a huge portion of the country. It doesn't matter how warm you make it, you won't be able to farm it. Warming the north also means massive forest fires, which we are already seeing. In areas where the soils are decent and that aren't on the shield there's already farming quite far north. E.g. take a look at the Peace River etc areas of Alberta. There's quite a few crops you can grow quite far north. (Also much of Canada isn't geographically that far north anyways, when compared to Eurasia.) But you have to have dirt to grow it in. As for the tundra / taiga / permafrost even further north, I don't know much about the potential soil quality of that land (I doubt it's great though, it's quite arid), but its thawing is already leading to massive erosion problems and population decline for native species. EDIT: Just for context: The Canadian Shield is 8 million km^2. The total land surface area of the earth is 148 million km^2, thus: The Canadian shield is 5% of the entire land surface of the EARTH, 8% of the northern hemisphere's land mass and 80% of Canada's landmass.
- EdwardDiego 5y agoFully agree. Here's a soil map of my island[0]. And the key to each type of soil.[1] I really don't see an increase in average temperatures changing our podzols into a better soil. But yes, if the climate change predictions pan out, then we can grow more grapes further south on the east side without fear of frosts, yay! However, the climate change predictions also state that the eastern side of the island will experience far less rainfall, and mean far more frequent hot and strong winds[2] that a) strip soil moisture and b) blow away topsoil, while the west side of the island, which is already very wet, will see its annual rainfall increase significantly, and also experience far more frequent extreme flooding events which tend to be very bad for crops and animals, never mind the increased erosion or spoiling (via flood deposits) of land under cultivation. All thanks to the magic of orographic lift.[3] Climate change predictions I'm referring to are here. [4] All this due to a predicted increase in air movement from the west. [0]: https://teara.govt.nz/files/m-12777-enz.jpg https://teara.govt.nz/files/m-12777-enz.jpg [1]: https://teara.govt.nz/en/table/12301/major-soils-and-their-features https://teara.govt.nz/en/table/12301/major-soils-and-their-f... [2]: https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-canterbury-norwester/ https://www.nzgeo.com/stories/the-canterbury-norwester/ [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orographic_lift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orographic_lift [4]: https://niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resources/clivar/scenarios https://niwa.co.nz/our-science/climate/information-and-resou...
- beebeepka 5y agoDale Gribble: I say let the world warm up, see what Boutros Boutros-Ghali-Ghali thinks about that! We'll grow oranges in Alaska. Hank Hill: Dale, you giblet-head, we live in Texas. It's already a hundred and ten in the summer, and if it gets one degree hotter, I'm gonna kick your ass!
- TimPC 5y agoDoes anyone else find a man who makes a living selling propane and propane accessories criticizing others over global warming to be a bit rich?
- photochemsyn 5y agoDrought and flood projections undermine the 'usable' claim: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2881/earths-freshwater-future-extremes-of-flood-and-drought/ https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2881/earths-freshwater-future-... Projected result on agricultural production? (IPCC 2020): "World Bank (2009) projected that, without the carbon fertilisation effect, climate change will reduce the mean yields for 11 major global crops, such as millet, field pea, sugar beet, sweet potato, wheat, rice, maize, soybean, groundnut, sunflower, and rapeseed, by 15% in Sub-Saharan Africa, by 11% in Middle East and North Africa, by 18% in South Asia, and by 6% in Latin America and Caribbean by 2046–2055, compared with 1996–2005. A separate meta-analysis suggested a similar order of reduction in yields in Africa and South Asia due to climate change by 2050 (Knox et al., 2012). Schlenker and Lobell (2010) estimated that in sub-Saharan Africa, crop production may be reduced by 17–22% due to climate change by 2051. At the local level, climate change impacts on crop yields vary by location (Chapter 5). Negative impacts of climate change on agricultural productivity contribute to higher food prices. The imbalance between supply and demand for agricultural products is projected to increase agricultural prices in the range of 32% for rice to 100% for maize by 2050 (Nelson et al., 2010), and cereal prices in the range between a 32% increase and a 16% decrease by 2030 (Hertel et al., 2010)."
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- electromech 5y agoThe most important part of the post: > This is a draft of a chapter for a book I am working on... My conclusions are pretty dramatic and I want to know if they are, for some reason, wildly wrong. I am familiar with the author; he's genuine about wanting feedback. Some of the comments here are likewise genuine, but I worry that other readers here are like this fellow: > The obvious answer is that the inconsistency is in bad faith, to fudge the numbers into fitting the author's preferred narrative. You want "bad faith," try assuming the author's plea for feedback is dishonest.
- ianai 5y agoHe also states this datum isn’t brought up in climate change discussions. It absolutely is brought up. Just listen to just about any interview with David Wallace-Wells and he’ll say it’s a mixed bag with some regions seeing benefits and others catastrophe. And that’s just one author. This overstatement suggests questionable motives.
- dboreham 5y agoI had this idea 25 years ago. Move to a place where it's cold, and away from the sea (Montana), and over time it will get warmer. In some respects it worked out. It did get warmer. There are far fewer < 0F days here now. More people want to move here now which has increased property prices, increasing my net worth. However, not all is positive. Warmer springs mean much more ice on roads, making driving more dangerous, more flooding, erosion. Less snowpack means more fires and larger fires. It's becoming more difficult to get insurance. Lack of extreme cold in winter allows invasive species to survive. Insects that would have been killed by the cold now devastate trees, killing them, making fire risk even worse. Severe hailstorms are now more common, increasing the risk of damage to vehicles and buildings.
- marcosdumay 5y ago> I want to know if they are, for some reason, wildly wrong. Yes, they are. Agriculture transforms solar energy into food. Any analysis that ignores the solar input is wrong by principle. Land area is an important secondary variable, you will need it too, but the main variable isn't even on the article.