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On the other hand, Seattle is one of the best places in the world to ride out climate change, which is 100% happening, and happening already. It’s all a numbers
by ksenzee 3y ago
On the other hand, Seattle is one of the best places in the world to ride out climate change, which is 100% happening, and happening already. It’s all a numbers game.
- Axsuul 3y agoAnd SF isn't?
- mvdtnz 3y agoI'm no expert on the region but aren't people in California forever whining about heat waves and water shortages?
- akkartik 3y agoCalifornia != SF.
- iancmceachern 3y agoWater shortages are largely in the central valley and Southern California. Sf gets its water from Hetch Hetche, clean hydro power too. SF is a very different place in a lot of ways from the rest of California, and the US in general.
- callalex 3y agoYes but that aqueduct is hundreds of miles long and goes through the Central Valley. Once the water wars begin, that situation could change rapidly.
- iancmceachern 3y agoThey'd need to change some pretty old laws... https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hetch-hetchy/hr7207.html#:~:text=Introduced%20by%20Congressman%20John%20Raker,the%20bill%20with%20little%20debate https://www.archives.gov/legislative/features/hetch-hetchy/h....
- DoreenMichele 3y agoFresno County has a history of actually increasing its groundwater levels intentionally at times. Anyone interested in water issues could stand to take a look at what they do.
- rconti 3y agoMan, I moved from Seattle to the Bay Area and in the intervening 20 years it sure seems like summers in the PNW have gotten hotter than they are down here.
- ti30 3y agoLongtime Bay Area resident here - I haven't looked at the data, but it seems like this area seems to be getting colder over the past ten years. If so, it's an illustration that we're facing not global warming but climate change.
- dheera 3y agoNo, you're looking at just a few years of data on a certain region. When the global average temperature rises some places will get cooler from time to time, there are multiple underdamped systems at play.
- kagakuninja 3y agoBeen in the Bay Area since I was 2, 58 years... I never remember having heat waves in October or February. We also never needed AC, although maybe I'm just growing soft in my old age. "Indian Summer" meant things might get a bit warm in September, then cool down. Weather stayed cool until the spring. This summer has been oddly cool (at least in Berkeley), but got up to 92 2 weeks ago, which is not normal.
- lazide 3y agoWell, most things really.
- notyourwork 3y agoNo, it isn't.
- elliotec 3y agoDo you have a source for this? What is "best" in this context?
- adrianpike 3y agoFreshwater availability is a big factor that swings in the PNW's favor.
- jandrewrogers 3y agoI don’t have sources readily available but I have looked at several climate change projection models for the US in the past to answer similar questions. There are a handful of locales in the US where the local climate doesn’t change much under most models and parameters. They behave almost like fixed points in a mathematical sense. Some of these fixed points are not anywhere you’d likely want to live, so that might not help much. However, the Seattle region is one, and it already has a pleasant temperate climate. IIRC, the main expected change is that it will get more sun in the winter months, which would address the main criticism of Seattle’s weather. Of course, these models could be wildly off, but to the extent we have such models Seattle is in an enviable position. While there are some regions that look like they will change for the better e.g. some arid regions will get substantially more rain, it is hard to predict the true impact of that change on those regions — that outcome might come with significant trade offs.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- meowkit 3y agoThis is not something with a "source" or a real academic answer. There are too many variables and long tail events. Survival in some of the worst case climate change scenarios involves moving away from the equator where crop failure and extreme heat will occur. It involves having good access to water, and ideally farmland as wars over resources and refugee migration accelerate. Martial law of some kind would become a normalized thing in population centers as basic resources and commodities become more expensive. Seattle has a large military presence. Seattle is positioned geographical well for these things. Being farther north alone is a huge benefit. The mountains of the west due to their proximity to the Pacific enable much more temperate climates than other port cities.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- oceanplexian 3y agoPeople were saying that about Vermont, then last summer they had massive flooding that put cities under several feet of water. I knew a lot of, frankly over-confident people who moved to New England because the news told them it was good for Climate Change. I think the “experts” know a lot less about Climate Change impacts to weather than they want to admit.
- ghaff 3y agoYou do get flooding and at least residual hurricanes in New England. e.g. [1] Depends where your house is of course. Some properties are probably pretty well-situated; others much less so. Just about a month ago the city next door to me in MA got a freak foot of rain which caused some serious flooding. I had to pump water out of my basement for the first time in years. Very few places are immune to at least local natural disasters of various types and some of those, like the Vegas area have their own long-term issues. [1] https://www.weather.gov/media/btv/events/1927Flood.pdf https://www.weather.gov/media/btv/events/1927Flood.pdf
- DoreenMichele 3y agoI wish we were less focused on moving to where we can survive this mess and more focused on solving it, personally.
- fransje26 3y agoYes, but think about the poor shareholders.
- lazide 3y agoIndividuals can do more to pick a better place to shelter than they can do to get everyone to stop making the problem worse, no?
- DoreenMichele 3y agoThere's always some excuse why we can't even talk about trying in earnest to solve it.
- lazide 3y agoAre we talking in earnest? Because my complaint is we never do. Instead, like your prior comment, it’s either ‘well, as an individual you can do x’ (which doesn’t solve the actual problem in any real way, and hurts the individual) or ‘this problem doesn’t exist’. I’ve been wanting to actually talk about actually solving the problem for decades. But get no takers. And here, we’re even attacking people just trying to avoid getting run over by the steamroller we insist on not stopping. It’s crazy.
- DoreenMichele 3y agoI'm an Environmental Resource Management major. I've recently learned that wetlands store more carbon than forests and we've lost more than 85 percent of them since the 1700s. I posted an Ask HN looking for feedback on where to start trying to do the math and did not really get satisfactory replies. I am wondering if "the industrial revolution" is not really the primary cause of human caused climate change but perhaps largely coincidental. The math needs to get done to meaningfully examine that question. I'm always wondering how one would foster substantial global wetlands restoration.