6 ms·

So what’s everyone thinking? Move to Vermont to close out our dying years in 70 degree weather?

jfengel 3y ago
If you live anywhere in the US you're probably ok. The southwest droughts are bad but the rivers were overused even before climate change. We'll build more air conditioners and more levees. Those rich enough to move to Vermont will be fine anywhere. The billions living in already marginal places near the equator will die or leave. That's where the real humanitarian disaster will be, and it will be far beyond precedent.
- drewcon 3y ago
  As human being have been doing since the dawn of history.
  - acdha 3y ago
    If you learn more about history, note how much suffering was caused by famine, disease, and the ensuing warfare, too. One of the hallmarks of modern civilization is that we were less callous about shrugging off deaths & lowered quality of life. Thanks to those advances we have a much larger population than in the past which means each failure will impact numbers of people which would have been hard to reach in most of human history.
  - cjalmeida 3y ago
    Back then we could not prevent or ameliorate such disasters. This is equivalent to arguing we should not invest in sanitation because humans have been dying of cholera since ever.
    - drewcon 3y ago
      This is the equivalent of arguing that we instead invented sanitation to adapt to reality instead of sitting in our own shit and dying of cholera and opining about sanitation refugees.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    It would have been nice to think that we could have improved since the dawn of history. Or at least not actively do it to ourselves.
- acdha 3y ago
  “Probably ok” doesn’t seem adequate to cover wildfires, large scale storm flooding in areas which weren’t previously prone to it, tropical diseases becoming endemic, etc. We probably won’t have massive famines but we’re definitely going to have cost increases and reduced availability which a lot of people are going to have a hard time with. People who aren’t rich are going to struggle with all of this at the same time, especially when homeowners insurance starts meaning you can’t get a mortgage (or sell your home to someone who’ll need one).
  - prepend 3y ago
    “Probably ok” means there will be trains to drive and almost everyone lives. But yeah, lots of stuff will be worse. But definitely more careers than “climate refugee.”
    - acdha 3y ago
      Yeah, I don’t think the U.S. is turning into Sarajevo during the 90s but I think there will be more disruption than we expect and probably actual refugee camps sooner than we like to think.
      - prepend 3y ago
        We have refugee camps now. FEMA trailers and whatnot for hurricanes and earthquakes and for the Mexican border. So I expect we’ll continue to have them. But we won’t have the kind of camps they had in Jordan that had millions of refugees from Syria or something. So I think we’ll have “normal” refugee camps that help place thousands of people. But not “end of the world” style camps with the population of Mississippi. People seem to be catastrophizing what’s going to be a different future into something much worse than it likely will be.
- gcanyon 3y ago
  I don't like the idea of living someplace where if the air conditioning fails, I die. I don't know where the wet bulb temp is hitting/will hit 35/95, but those places are off my list of places to live.
  - jfengel 3y ago
    Sure. The great thing about living in a rich country is that people have that option. The real problem is those without options.
JackMorgan 3y ago
I'm not sure how one would get enough food to live if the world's breadbaskets have collapsed due to excessive rain/drought. I guess one could get enough land to try to subsistence farm and hope none of the hundred million starving New Yorkers decide to steal your food while you sleep. I'm not particularly bullish on that strategy. At this point I'm legitimately resigned to just dying in the food riots. There doesn't seem to be a way to clever my way out of this one. If I'm in the right place at the right time, maybe I'll die of old age. Otherwise, I'll die in middle age. My grandfathers only lived to their mid-fifties, so it wouldn't even be that unusual. Too many unknowns, embracing prepping and farming just seems like a cope when no one even knows what exactly the situation will be. Maybe food is plentiful but it's raining so hard in VT that roads get washed out and trucks can't get to your area. It just feels like anywhere near a major city is likely to have either a few hundred thousand starving people roving the countryside or nuclear fallout on the wind. VT is close to Boston and Montreal. Even a military compound could easily be overrun with enough hungry people. There's only so many bullets when people are frantic and hungry. So it's not like I'm going to be successful hiring armed guards and putting up barbed wire. One could try to live on a sailboat, but open sea piracy is real, and it'll be very hard to fish when the oceans are dead from acidification. If the food supply is disrupted due to weather, it'll be a very small number of people even in the US who survive. Societal unrest will likely kill more than actual starvation.
carapace 3y ago
I just got twenty acres of land in a place that gets over 100F in the summer now. I spent some time there last month and it's unlivable when it's that hot. You have to have some way to mitigate the heat or you'll pretty much just die. It's literally harder to think when it's that hot. I'm going to build big stone walls three meters thick and ten meters tall to keep out fire and regulate temps. It will be like the Forestiere Underground Gardens[1]. The "Grow Bio-intensive"[2] folks say you can grow a complete diet for an adult in five acres. So, yeah, basically I'm going to build a "climate fortress" and stockpile emergency supplies to give to people when/if uh emergencies happen. I don't know what most people are going to do. Frankly, the situation is starting to look pretty sketchy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens [2] http://growbiointensive.org/ http://growbiointensive.org/
- JackMorgan 3y ago
  I'm legitimately curious, if food supply is disrupted, how do you plan to stop starving people from stealing that food while you are asleep? Armed guards doing shifts along the walls? If you've got enough food production that's probably a legit option, as long as they are loyal. Also how about water supply for the crops?
  - carapace 3y ago
    > how do you plan to stop starving people from stealing that food while you are asleep? In a word, robots. But I really really hope it doesn't come to that. If things get really "Mad Max" ... I don't know that I could actually kill people, even to save my own life (I have no children nor spouse.) I would basically have to give up? > how about water supply for the crops? Moisture-sealed greenhouses. I've got a well, but I want to make integrated water recycling systems. Then I can "top off" from atmospheric moisture as needed.
    - JackMorgan 3y ago
      Gotcha yeah that makes sense. It's as good a plan as any I've heard, trying to make like a walled biodome. What are you thinking about doing for fertilizer? Fish systems?

If you live anywhere in the US you're probably ok. The southwest droughts are bad but the rivers were overused even before climate change. We'll build more air conditioners and more levees. Those rich enough to move to Vermont will be fine anywhere. The billions living in already marginal places near the equator will die or leave. That's where the real humanitarian disaster will be, and it will be far beyond precedent.

drewcon 3y ago
As human being have been doing since the dawn of history.
- acdha 3y ago
  If you learn more about history, note how much suffering was caused by famine, disease, and the ensuing warfare, too. One of the hallmarks of modern civilization is that we were less callous about shrugging off deaths & lowered quality of life. Thanks to those advances we have a much larger population than in the past which means each failure will impact numbers of people which would have been hard to reach in most of human history.
- cjalmeida 3y ago
  Back then we could not prevent or ameliorate such disasters. This is equivalent to arguing we should not invest in sanitation because humans have been dying of cholera since ever.
  - drewcon 3y ago
    This is the equivalent of arguing that we instead invented sanitation to adapt to reality instead of sitting in our own shit and dying of cholera and opining about sanitation refugees.
- jfengel 3y ago
  It would have been nice to think that we could have improved since the dawn of history. Or at least not actively do it to ourselves.
acdha 3y ago
“Probably ok” doesn’t seem adequate to cover wildfires, large scale storm flooding in areas which weren’t previously prone to it, tropical diseases becoming endemic, etc. We probably won’t have massive famines but we’re definitely going to have cost increases and reduced availability which a lot of people are going to have a hard time with. People who aren’t rich are going to struggle with all of this at the same time, especially when homeowners insurance starts meaning you can’t get a mortgage (or sell your home to someone who’ll need one).
- prepend 3y ago
  “Probably ok” means there will be trains to drive and almost everyone lives. But yeah, lots of stuff will be worse. But definitely more careers than “climate refugee.”
  - acdha 3y ago
    Yeah, I don’t think the U.S. is turning into Sarajevo during the 90s but I think there will be more disruption than we expect and probably actual refugee camps sooner than we like to think.
    - prepend 3y ago
      We have refugee camps now. FEMA trailers and whatnot for hurricanes and earthquakes and for the Mexican border. So I expect we’ll continue to have them. But we won’t have the kind of camps they had in Jordan that had millions of refugees from Syria or something. So I think we’ll have “normal” refugee camps that help place thousands of people. But not “end of the world” style camps with the population of Mississippi. People seem to be catastrophizing what’s going to be a different future into something much worse than it likely will be.
gcanyon 3y ago
I don't like the idea of living someplace where if the air conditioning fails, I die. I don't know where the wet bulb temp is hitting/will hit 35/95, but those places are off my list of places to live.
- jfengel 3y ago
  Sure. The great thing about living in a rich country is that people have that option. The real problem is those without options.

JackMorgan 3y ago

I'm not sure how one would get enough food to live if the world's breadbaskets have collapsed due to excessive rain/drought. I guess one could get enough land to try to subsistence farm and hope none of the hundred million starving New Yorkers decide to steal your food while you sleep. I'm not particularly bullish on that strategy. At this point I'm legitimately resigned to just dying in the food riots. There doesn't seem to be a way to clever my way out of this one. If I'm in the right place at the right time, maybe I'll die of old age. Otherwise, I'll die in middle age. My grandfathers only lived to their mid-fifties, so it wouldn't even be that unusual. Too many unknowns, embracing prepping and farming just seems like a cope when no one even knows what exactly the situation will be. Maybe food is plentiful but it's raining so hard in VT that roads get washed out and trucks can't get to your area. It just feels like anywhere near a major city is likely to have either a few hundred thousand starving people roving the countryside or nuclear fallout on the wind. VT is close to Boston and Montreal. Even a military compound could easily be overrun with enough hungry people. There's only so many bullets when people are frantic and hungry. So it's not like I'm going to be successful hiring armed guards and putting up barbed wire. One could try to live on a sailboat, but open sea piracy is real, and it'll be very hard to fish when the oceans are dead from acidification. If the food supply is disrupted due to weather, it'll be a very small number of people even in the US who survive. Societal unrest will likely kill more than actual starvation.

carapace 3y ago

I just got twenty acres of land in a place that gets over 100F in the summer now. I spent some time there last month and it's unlivable when it's that hot. You have to have some way to mitigate the heat or you'll pretty much just die. It's literally harder to think when it's that hot. I'm going to build big stone walls three meters thick and ten meters tall to keep out fire and regulate temps. It will be like the Forestiere Underground Gardens[1]. The "Grow Bio-intensive"[2] folks say you can grow a complete diet for an adult in five acres. So, yeah, basically I'm going to build a "climate fortress" and stockpile emergency supplies to give to people when/if uh emergencies happen. I don't know what most people are going to do. Frankly, the situation is starting to look pretty sketchy. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestiere_Underground_Gardens [2] http://growbiointensive.org/ http://growbiointensive.org/

JackMorgan 3y ago
I'm legitimately curious, if food supply is disrupted, how do you plan to stop starving people from stealing that food while you are asleep? Armed guards doing shifts along the walls? If you've got enough food production that's probably a legit option, as long as they are loyal. Also how about water supply for the crops?
- carapace 3y ago
  > how do you plan to stop starving people from stealing that food while you are asleep? In a word, robots. But I really really hope it doesn't come to that. If things get really "Mad Max" ... I don't know that I could actually kill people, even to save my own life (I have no children nor spouse.) I would basically have to give up? > how about water supply for the crops? Moisture-sealed greenhouses. I've got a well, but I want to make integrated water recycling systems. Then I can "top off" from atmospheric moisture as needed.
  - JackMorgan 3y ago
    Gotcha yeah that makes sense. It's as good a plan as any I've heard, trying to make like a walled biodome. What are you thinking about doing for fertilizer? Fish systems?