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We're not "all going to die", but "A lot of your coastal historical cities are going be be underwater and parts of your country will become uninhabitable, meani

We're not "all going to die", but "A lot of your coastal historical cities are going be be underwater and parts of your country will become uninhabitable, meaning you and everyone else will need to move elsewhere" is absolutely horrific. Add that to housing being increasingly out of reach for most people and it's hard to not feel disillusioned. In some sense, you could argue that "Work all your life to be able to buy a house on land that will be destroyed" is worse for morale than the Cold War's version of "We'll probably all just die from nuclear war at some point all at the same time".

jjulius 3y ago
> In some sense, you could argue that "Work all your life to be able to buy a house on land that will be destroyed" is worse for morale than the Cold War's version of "We'll probably all just die from nuclear war at some point all at the same time". In some sense, sure, I guess - maybe mostly for those who bought a house on land like this a long time ago. But if you're choosing to buy a house on land in an area like this now, or in the future, or even the relatively recent past, when we all know the risk and/or inevitability of it's eventual destruction, then I don't know what to tell you...
- disruptiveink 3y ago
  Depending on how bad it goes, it's unavoidable without upending your (current) life. Sure, let's assume things don't go too bad and you just avoid properties at close to sea level right next to the ocean. That's fine. But what if you're expecting for things go real bad? Do you rule out living in NYC completely? Do you preemptively move out of Florida leaving all your family behind? The issue is that this is not a swift "now the bad thing happened and it took us all together" crisis. For the better or worse, humans are actually reasonably ok with dealing with situations like that. This is a "your life is going to suck at some indeterminate point in the future, maybe, and depending on where your roots are, maybe you can avoid it at the cost of continuous great personal expense" crisis. No one can possibly be well prepared to deal with that and I'd wager that's where the incredible frustration around climate change comes.
  - WorldMaker 3y ago
    Even if you are smart enough to move somewhere safer (or lucky enough to have generational wealth there), you can't avoid the effects of things like refugee crises when the worst happens. If people have to leave NYC or Florida in large mass waves, that's going to destabilize in its own ways anywhere there are escaping to in large groups. There's a perspective that "nowhere" will be safe from the effects of climate change because if you aren't the ones getting flooded out (or drought destroyed or wildfire devastated or tornado wrecked; flooding isn't the only thing that gets extra energy in global climate change) and are lucky enough to be in whatever "the nice places" will turn out to be, you get to possibly deal with everyone else. (Some will make some money on that as slum landlords, perhaps, so there's a "silver lining" for disaster capitalists, but those are the same people that will be just fine turning any "nice place to live" into a terrible place for all in its own ways by preferring money to human happiness and kindness.) America has some lovely sometimes self-delusional myths of being a shining beacon for refugees in a crisis, but anti-immigrant rhetoric is already in a bad place this decade and overall America's worst internal refugee crisis was the dust bowl of the Great Depression and it took a lot of effort and today a lot of politicians don't believe the drastic changes made to save the country from the Great Depression were good changes and have spent the last few decades rolling them back and/or destroying them and/or trying to run a Great Depression speedrun like it is a GDQ category that should have been banned pre-emptively. That probably doesn't bode well for the next crises.
timmg 3y ago
> "A lot of your coastal historical cities are going be be underwater and parts of your country will become uninhabitable, meaning you and everyone else will need to move elsewhere" is absolutely horrific. Which cities and what timeline are you talking about? Sea level has risen like a half a foot in the last 70 years. That's not all that fast. Meanwhile, places like Netherlands are increasing their land area over that time.
- acdha 3y ago
  How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage? They probably aren’t going to end up permanently underwater but everything suggests a lot of pricey real-estate is going to end up getting washed away (California already has billions of dollars in real estate threatened by erosion) or regularly flooded. There’s no realistic long-term outcome other than relocating from the affected areas and letting them become buffer parks (hopefully with lush mangroves in Florida). That’s in a rich country with a lot of resources, and at least a history of helping other states out. Bangladesh is facing another climate change-boosted storm but has thousands of people who are still homeless from last year’s storm which also hammered food production. That’s the kind of scenario where things get ugly because millions of people live in areas which will see the worst impacts but lack anything like the resources to harden infrastructure or relocate large numbers of people.
  - katbyte 3y ago
    > rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage Miami will likely end up mostly underwater and dykes and seawalls will not be able to protect it. The city is built on porous limestone that will allow seawater to just bypass them unless you dig down past that limestone bedrock layer.
  - timmg 3y ago
    > How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage? We have continued to build in disaster-prone areas. That's a real problem. But that is somewhat orthogonal to climate change. Imagine a world without climate change. Are there still hurricanes? Is Miami still a low-lying city in a high-hurricane area? Do we continue to build more condos there? Imagine a world without climate change and ask again: How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after "a big" hurricane does damage?

jjulius 3y ago

> In some sense, you could argue that "Work all your life to be able to buy a house on land that will be destroyed" is worse for morale than the Cold War's version of "We'll probably all just die from nuclear war at some point all at the same time". In some sense, sure, I guess - maybe mostly for those who bought a house on land like this a long time ago. But if you're choosing to buy a house on land in an area like this now, or in the future, or even the relatively recent past, when we all know the risk and/or inevitability of it's eventual destruction, then I don't know what to tell you...

disruptiveink 3y ago
Depending on how bad it goes, it's unavoidable without upending your (current) life. Sure, let's assume things don't go too bad and you just avoid properties at close to sea level right next to the ocean. That's fine. But what if you're expecting for things go real bad? Do you rule out living in NYC completely? Do you preemptively move out of Florida leaving all your family behind? The issue is that this is not a swift "now the bad thing happened and it took us all together" crisis. For the better or worse, humans are actually reasonably ok with dealing with situations like that. This is a "your life is going to suck at some indeterminate point in the future, maybe, and depending on where your roots are, maybe you can avoid it at the cost of continuous great personal expense" crisis. No one can possibly be well prepared to deal with that and I'd wager that's where the incredible frustration around climate change comes.
- WorldMaker 3y ago
  Even if you are smart enough to move somewhere safer (or lucky enough to have generational wealth there), you can't avoid the effects of things like refugee crises when the worst happens. If people have to leave NYC or Florida in large mass waves, that's going to destabilize in its own ways anywhere there are escaping to in large groups. There's a perspective that "nowhere" will be safe from the effects of climate change because if you aren't the ones getting flooded out (or drought destroyed or wildfire devastated or tornado wrecked; flooding isn't the only thing that gets extra energy in global climate change) and are lucky enough to be in whatever "the nice places" will turn out to be, you get to possibly deal with everyone else. (Some will make some money on that as slum landlords, perhaps, so there's a "silver lining" for disaster capitalists, but those are the same people that will be just fine turning any "nice place to live" into a terrible place for all in its own ways by preferring money to human happiness and kindness.) America has some lovely sometimes self-delusional myths of being a shining beacon for refugees in a crisis, but anti-immigrant rhetoric is already in a bad place this decade and overall America's worst internal refugee crisis was the dust bowl of the Great Depression and it took a lot of effort and today a lot of politicians don't believe the drastic changes made to save the country from the Great Depression were good changes and have spent the last few decades rolling them back and/or destroying them and/or trying to run a Great Depression speedrun like it is a GDQ category that should have been banned pre-emptively. That probably doesn't bode well for the next crises.

timmg 3y ago

> "A lot of your coastal historical cities are going be be underwater and parts of your country will become uninhabitable, meaning you and everyone else will need to move elsewhere" is absolutely horrific. Which cities and what timeline are you talking about? Sea level has risen like a half a foot in the last 70 years. That's not all that fast. Meanwhile, places like Netherlands are increasing their land area over that time.

acdha 3y ago
How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage? They probably aren’t going to end up permanently underwater but everything suggests a lot of pricey real-estate is going to end up getting washed away (California already has billions of dollars in real estate threatened by erosion) or regularly flooded. There’s no realistic long-term outcome other than relocating from the affected areas and letting them become buffer parks (hopefully with lush mangroves in Florida). That’s in a rich country with a lot of resources, and at least a history of helping other states out. Bangladesh is facing another climate change-boosted storm but has thousands of people who are still homeless from last year’s storm which also hammered food production. That’s the kind of scenario where things get ugly because millions of people live in areas which will see the worst impacts but lack anything like the resources to harden infrastructure or relocate large numbers of people.
- katbyte 3y ago
  > rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage Miami will likely end up mostly underwater and dykes and seawalls will not be able to protect it. The city is built on porous limestone that will allow seawater to just bypass them unless you dig down past that limestone bedrock layer.
- timmg 3y ago
  > How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after bigger hurricanes do more damage? We have continued to build in disaster-prone areas. That's a real problem. But that is somewhat orthogonal to climate change. Imagine a world without climate change. Are there still hurricanes? Is Miami still a low-lying city in a high-hurricane area? Do we continue to build more condos there? Imagine a world without climate change and ask again: How much more are you willing to pay to rebuild Miami after "a big" hurricane does damage?