I would like to discuss climate change and its effects.
For those who know me, I lean conservative for many things, but I am not a climate change denier. I “believe” our climate is changing, and that mankind most likely is helping it along.
What I want to know is, what is the big deal if the Earth heats up a couple of degrees over the next 100 (or whatever) years? I get that we may need to move around from where we live now, and deal with changing weather, but why do people think we cannot deal with that or that it is a humongous deal? It seems we have been adjusted to those things without much problem up to now.
I read about how humankind is “doomed” within something like 30 or 60 or 100 years. I take that to mean humankind will be wiped out from the face of the Earth. Do you think that is true?
I think the big deal is that it’ll keep heating up. So, in 100 years, maybe ~3 degrees higher. 1000 years later, ~30 degrees higher. That’s the problem.
Also, as a conservative Christian, I too believe in climate change.
The biggest problem as I understand it is rising sea levels. Most of the most important cities in the world are on the coast and will be affected. Looking at Alpha+ and Alpha++ cities (the 10 most important cities in the world), we would be worried about New York City, Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai, Tokyo, Sydney, and Dubai, 7 of them. And that’s being generous, as some areas around London would be affected too, though not London itself. Relocating cities like this (and all the other cities that would be affected, it’s a huge portion of humanity) would be very difficult and costly.
There’s no threat to the existence of the species (and no serious person believes this) but there is huge threat to worldwide prosperity.
Predicting anything 100 years out is dubious. Predicting a 1000 years out is absurd. For all we know 500 years today there’s gonna be sun spots that cause a 30 degree decline in the global temperature. Or some new process on earth will extract CO2 and Methane from the atmosphere. Or maybe we’ll have colonized Mars by then. Who knows?
Even if major cities will be covered by sea water, isn’t this a gradual event, that will happen over a long period of time? I live near the coast in CA, and coastal properties have been eroding into the sea since as long as I have lived here (which is most of my life). It seems to me that habitation will simply slowly move inland. I don’t understand this as something that will threaten prosperity. It might even contribute to prosperity. What am I missing?
The idea is that we’re not far (in time) from where this rate will dramatically increase. It’s debatable how true exactly this is, different people have different models and have come to different conclusions and I’m not educated enough on the subject to really say myself. But some of the more extreme things I’ve heard are like “Manhattan will be completely underwater in 85 years” and such. There’s no easy inching away in Manhattan, it’s an island.
For instance, the 8.5 million or so people living in NYC would have to move elsewhere. Their homes will be flooded and jobs will be lost. They would have to be relocated. Takes time and money to do this. Overcrowding insues. I suppose eventually we’ll have the tech to just build structures over the water though.
Won’t previously uninhabitable areas (too cold) become habitable?
I’ve driven across Utah and there is a vast amount of open space now. I’m not registering the overcrowding idea. If people can live in the Arctic when it warms up, won’t that create tons of jobs in construction, etc? Why will jobs be lost?
I am not a climate change denier. But it does become rather suspicious when people claim that it’s mostly caused by humans. In particular, people in the United States, and the only way to combat it is to give poorer nations billions of dollars, and create carbon exchanges so people in the know can make plenty of $$ on trading carbon credits. Forget what China and India are doing, let’s give these corrupt dictators some money!
Sigh. This should not be a political issue. But when you hear so many exaggerations for an obvious agenda, what else can you think? Seems like there should be straightforward solutions that don’t involve politics or gross exaggerations.
Yes, I suppose uninhabitable areas may become habitable, but there are issues with that, such as permafrost storing a large amount of CO2 emissions. They’ll be released and speed up global warming.
I fail to see how you can fail to see how jobs will be lost. If a construction company is located in NYC and NYC is underwater, you can’t work there. Yes, new jobs will be created elsewhere, but it will take time and money. It will take time to erect new skyscrapers like those in NYC to build the next metropolis. Mass exodus will probably lead to some civil unrest.
That’s as classic a “broken windows” fallacy as I’ve ever seen.
The movement of people to safe lands is possible but very expensive. Those people who are constructing the buildings and materials aren’t doing all the other jobs that they would be doing. Alternatively, we could be looking at it as people could be building in these areas now, and absent climate change we’d have these buildings still existing on the coast where we have them now, while with climate change we now don’t. “More jobs = more prosperity” only holds ceteris paribus.
The changes in the weather will not all be gradual. More storms, more hurricanes, more tornadoes all cost us money, and moving inland is not a solution. Also some of the places that get warmer will not be the best farm land, In truth, we will have a problem in which the best places to plant till also be the best places to live and we will not be able to have an urban society and feed one ourselves in the same limited space.
I would expect the construction company to relocate inland before NYC is flooded, destroying its offices. So no jobs would be lost, and jobs would be created in constructing the new offices. Do you see it differently?
Prosperity doesn’t just mean there’s jobs. If productive assets are lost then prosperity is lost. If the sea levels rise we lose huge amounts of productive assets.
So much of it seems conjecture, I have to say. The best farmland we have in CA is in the Central Valley, not where the majority of residents live. I would expect that the prime farming areas would move around too, according to the changing climate. That makes sense to me. If it gets hotter in the Central Valley, then farming will move to a cooler place.
Well, knock out the Southeast, Texas, California, most of the coast and look to Canada. What makes you thing they will be open to immigrants like us that don’t necessarily share their economic and social values?
Much of the populated United States will be less than desirable.
It depends on how quickly it floods (gradual versus catastrophic). For example, I know an area of CA that is supposedly eventually going to be under sea level due to climate change. Housing values will decrease there over time as it becomes more apparent. But housing values inland will go up as those locations become more desirable.