California is going to have a water issue. Move to Detroit.
MizzBee,
We’ve got Alaska and tons of open space in the upper Midwest states.
If all of the earth’s ice melts, how much land will we lose? How far inland will the sea advance?
CA won’t have a water issue. There is a vast ocean out there, ripe for desalinization.
People don’t even want to repair our highways and bridges as they are. Is it possible that you don’t appreciate the considerable costs of “moving inland” and replicating an entire infrastructure?
Ports, refineries, military bases, weapons stations…all located along coastline and it will cost a lot of money, private and public, to move these installations. I get the idea from the Pentagon reports on climate change that there is potential for domino effects to become a humongous deal, a threat to national security.
^i like the “coulds” and “resource-rich” words in that article.
I also would like to know why people think that hotter necessarily means drier. Is there reason to think that CA will become a desert rather than a tropical paradise?
It’s my understanding that we’ll just have hotter summers in the inland areas. Major crops already have pretty wide crop hardiness ranges anyway. Many types of grains can grow in zones all the way down to 3 but only up to 8 or 9. Some of the best farmland is in places like Texas and Arkansas which may, under extreme climate change move above 9 (currently most of Texas is an 8 or 9 and most of Arkansas is an 8). Currently the only areas in the US above 9 are some of Southern Florida and Hawaii where we grow fruit. If we lost the ability to grow grains in Texas and Arkansas that would be a huge problem. The US has no area to gain for growing, there’s no where (outside of Alaska and a very small part of northern Minnesota) in the US below crop hardiness zone 3, and grains can grow in zone 3. Canada might be able to open up a smaller portion of northern Alberta and central Saskatchewan but that’s about all the possible gain in North America that we’d be looking at. We’re never going to have major farming operations in Alaska or the Yukon. And no one really knows how good the quality of the soil in these areas are.
Regardless, we’d only have to worry about losing the ability to grow grains in Texas and Arkansas under very extreme climate change, but we’d also only gain northern Alberta and central Saskatchewan in extreme climate change. It’s unlikely that what climate change we see over the next 100 years will change where we grow crops, but if we did see that kind of climate change, it would be bad, not good.
I posted after you posted this, but Alaska will never be suitable for farming and the Midwest already is suitable for growing. There’s no area in the US that we would gain as a growing area, only in Canada would there be the potential for any possible gain.
Well bay, since I know you like to take a contrarian approach, nothing is going to happen with climate change.
Everything will stay exactly the same. 
This…
My brother is a marine biologist. The changes in the ocean temperature and saline levels (from melting of the polar ice caps) will affect biosystems in the oceans’ currents, which will greatly affect the animals and plants that feed larger fish and the rest of the food chain. Changing ocean habitats will affect bird and ocean mammal populations (eg polar bears even now). Eventually this will affect human food sources, food sources for other animals that are human food, and will kill the reefs, which can affect the geology and stability of the ocean floor.
It’s not just about people, people!
No, dstark, I’m serious about this subject. I’ve given it a lot of thought and have a lot of questions I expect the brilliant people on this site can help me with, that’s all.
Global climate change is not just the air temperature warming up a few degrees. Aside from melting glaciers and sea ice leading to rising sea levels which has been mentioned, entire weather patterns are changing. Shifts in the jet stream give us things like the “polar vortex” that we’ve had for the last several winters. Some places get more rain or snow while others experience drought as the jet stream misses them. This changes agricultural patterns which raises prices in the US and leads to starvation and mass migration in other parts of the world. It is a human tragedy but also very politically disruptive. Warmer air holds more moisture and actually leads to increased snow fall in many places. That can cripple large urban areas and there is financial loss associated with the transportation impacts.
Bay, hotter in the Central Valley is not so much an issue as lack of snow pack in the Sierras. Dry land agriculture needs irrigation water. Much of central/eastern Washington is similarly dependent on irrigation water.
The infrastructure has to be serviced over time anyway. Maybe I’m naive, but why would it cost more to slowly extend it inland rather than replace it near the coast as the sea moves in? I get that if the change is catastrophic, it will be a different story. But do people think it will be catastrophic change or slow? It has been slow up to now.
Saintfan,
What makes you think the Central Valley will get drier? Couldn’t it just as likely become warmer and wetter?
That doesn’t mean we don’t lose them… Sure, we can build new buildings but that doesn’t mean that we don’t lose the old ones. I don’t understand what you don’t understand about this.
Let’s try this, let’s say you suddenly lost half of your net worth. Yes, you could make that money back, but through your lifetime you would be poorer than you would have otherwise. Does it make sense now?
Norfolk Naval Base is already suffering from rising sea levels and will be in serious danger as they rise further. Most of California is not flat from the ocean’s edge. Many other locations are not so lucky and small rises in sea level will have a much more significant impact that will be seen in the near term.
Some people will lose money, but the equivalent will make money as their location becomes more desirable. So it is a net wash.
When Katrina hit, this country did not want to pay up and rebuild New Orleans.
Look at the state of Florida. Look at the elevations of that state. What happens when sea water mixes with fresh water?
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/11/miami-drowning-climate-change-deniers-sea-levels-rising
You aren’t going to get the certainty you want @bay.
Scientists can’t predict how much water levels will rise. In my community, there is agreement between scientists, environmentalists and business people that we have climate change.
Water levels are expected to rise between 6 inches and 6 ft where I live.
6 inches…easy to deal with… 6 ft…huge costs…
Jaylynn, thanks for your post.
Have you noticed more rain or less in California these past years?