On the bright side my property will increase in value, because now I'll own a bayside property while most of my neighbor's homes are underwater. Here's a fun map you can tinker with. Don't worry,...
On the bright side my property will increase in value, because now I'll own a bayside property while most of my neighbor's homes are underwater. Here's a fun map you can tinker with.
Don't worry, most are over 65 and will probably be dead before this happens. I'm lowkey hoping they survive though so they can scream "Climate Change Isn't Real!" as their house floats out to sea.
A "a sudden collapse over less than 100 years" is probably not what most people think of as sudden, if they're not geologists. But looking the discussion in the paper: [...] These are rapid,...
A "a sudden collapse over less than 100 years" is probably not what most people think of as sudden, if they're not geologists. But looking the discussion in the paper:
The results here give a clear answer to a long-standing problem around in the climate research community concerning the existence of AMOC tipping behavior in GCMs (33, 44–48). Yes, it does occur in these models.
[...]
the tipping is consistent with the wealth of paleoclimate evidence that rapid changes have occurred in the AMOC, in particular during Dansgaard-Oeschger events (10).
These are rapid, severe climate fluctuations that happened during the ice ages. Here's the Wikipedia article for that.
Atmospheric and sea-ice feedbacks [...] further amplify the AMOC-induced changes, resulting in a very strong and rapid cooling of the European climate with temperature trends of more than 3°C per decade. In comparison with the present-day global mean surface temperature trend (due to climate change) of about 0.2°C per decade, no realistic adaptation measures can deal with such rapid temperature changes under an AMOC collapse (49, 50).
This seems ominous but vague. I would guess they mean agriculture.
Yeah. If you look at the USDA plant hardiness zone map, just think about if, in the course of a decade, everything grown in one of those zones had to, instead, be grown in the next one over....
Yeah. If you look at the USDA plant hardiness zone map, just think about if, in the course of a decade, everything grown in one of those zones had to, instead, be grown in the next one over. Different crops take different skills and tools. Is everyone going to follow the crops they know how to grow? How will landowners deal with that?
Annual crops might be ok, since you could make a guess at the next year, but orchards take 5-7 years from planting saplings to first commercial crop, and they'd all be totally fucked. Vineyards take 3-4 years. There would be no way to safely invest in the future until the fluctuations have settled, except by playing it very very safe and being able to turn on a dime, and that requires financial resources that smaller farmers just don't have. Look forward to even more agricultural consolidation, as only the larger agribusinesses can afford to pick up all that farmland from smaller, bankrupted farmers.
Yes, to speculate, this sounds like major losses by some agricultural businesses and also higher prices for food that some more-adaptive businesses will profit from. But the land would still be...
Yes, to speculate, this sounds like major losses by some agricultural businesses and also higher prices for food that some more-adaptive businesses will profit from. But the land would still be there and it could be used for something, perhaps shifting more towards annual staples rather than luxury foods like wine.
A bigger problem might be major droughts in some parts of the world?
But these predictions don’t sound specific enough for investors to use yet. What would disaster planners want to do to prepare?
Here's a few: Expand farming subsidies/insurance for smaller farmers to help them handle more regular bad harvests and lower yields in order to maintain a diverse population of farming businesses...
Here's a few:
Expand farming subsidies/insurance for smaller farmers to help them handle more regular bad harvests and lower yields in order to maintain a diverse population of farming businesses as more regular shocks hit the industry.
Prepare crop-specific education programs to help farmers pivot to new crops as the weather changes, along with grants or low-interest loans to allow farmers to acquire new specialized equipment as needed.
Fast track genetic research to broaden the range of environmental conditions priority crops grow in.
Research ways of protecting our existing crops in place as long as possible. It won't work forever, but any additional years we can eke out will help.
Shift subsidies from animal feed crops to crops that are meant for people directly to increase the caloric efficiency of our farming.
Big disasters generally do cause major losses for insurers. (For example, consider a major hurricane in Florida.) That's what insurance is for and also what stockholders are for, to take this...
Big disasters generally do cause major losses for insurers. (For example, consider a major hurricane in Florida.) That's what insurance is for and also what stockholders are for, to take this risk. But to the extent that insurers understand the issue, I would expect insurance prices to go up. Maybe not right away, though, while we don't know what's going to happen. They'll take the loss once.
Insurance subsidies are a way of covering up the problem so you don't have to change, rather than adapting. Some of your other suggestions are more about adaptation.
One way to reduce losses is to somehow put less at risk, building a shack instead of a mansion. Switching to annual crops would do that. Another way is to somehow make stuff more resistant.
Agriculture, sure. Also fisheries, kelp forests, and all the "weird" shallow-water sea creatures we don't eat in the west but are consumed in Asia and Africa. All of these are impacted by surface...
Agriculture, sure. Also fisheries, kelp forests, and all the "weird" shallow-water sea creatures we don't eat in the west but are consumed in Asia and Africa. All of these are impacted by surface temperatures changing (because that changes the surface temperatures of water as well). Edit: Here's a brief article broadly discussing the subject of the impact of warming oceans.
On a related note, humans also have a difficult time surviving in extreme heat. Moreso than extreme cold because the human body is so reliant on sweat and moisture-wicking. If it's already hot and especially if it's also humid, the human body can't cool itself properly which is how people can die faster when adrift in warm water (oceans, but also large rivers) than in cold water. Hypothermia is especially dangerous for divers who stay near the surface for long periods of time.
Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future explores the human inability to cope with rising heat and humidity as a plot thread. People in already hot parts of the world experience unusual weather conditions and extreme heat. The impoverished, who can't afford or gain access to air conditioning, die in mass casualty events. In the book, one of the events occurs in a large river where people attempt to cool off, but the river temperature is high enough that their bodies are not cooling and people suffer from heat exhaustion, loss of mobility, and losing consciousness (like falling asleep on a crowded buss). Thus they drown.
The plot thread doesn't touch on a more likely scenarios of mass migration out of overly hot regions of the world. Many of which already have huge populations with challenges supporting themselves with food and fresh water. It also doesn't touch on the knock-on effects of people attempting to resettle in existing areas and the violence that would be caused.
So yeah, we can worry about changes to the agriculture industry over the course of a couple generations, but we can also worry about how to improve the sense of equality and access to what will become life-essential features of future human rights (food security, clean water and sanitation, adequate and safe housing, etc.). People migrating to a better, safer place are going to place a higher value on their concerns, and potentially a lower value on their own lives, than the people who are content with what they have or believe they have fewer worries with respect to those specific things. That will compound the problems with making our agricultural land use match up with future food security needs.
I am pessimistic about immigration restrictions. There are millions suffering now for whom borders are closed. Consider Gaza. Or how about Haiti? But we don't know the future.
I am pessimistic about immigration restrictions. There are millions suffering now for whom borders are closed. Consider Gaza. Or how about Haiti?
I am too, but one of the less talked about avenues to deal with immigration is to ensure that quality of life in other countries rises at a constant rate (at or better than inflation) and that...
I am too, but one of the less talked about avenues to deal with immigration is to ensure that quality of life in other countries rises at a constant rate (at or better than inflation) and that their essential needs are met while providing them with the opportunity to have the same wants (and spending power) as the west. Some of that is being achieved by jump-starting their local economies or by providing essential aid to them. But those aren't typically long-term solutions, they're short-term cures.
That said, a lot of countries and cities aren't taking any real future-proof steps to address whatever immigration concerns they may have.
On the bright side my property will increase in value, because now I'll own a bayside property while most of my neighbor's homes are underwater. Here's a fun map you can tinker with.
Don't worry, most are over 65 and will probably be dead before this happens. I'm lowkey hoping they survive though so they can scream "Climate Change Isn't Real!" as their house floats out to sea.
If you'd like to just read the journal article mentioned at the end, you can find it here
A "a sudden collapse over less than 100 years" is probably not what most people think of as sudden, if they're not geologists. But looking the discussion in the paper:
[...]
These are rapid, severe climate fluctuations that happened during the ice ages. Here's the Wikipedia article for that.
This seems ominous but vague. I would guess they mean agriculture.
Yeah. If you look at the USDA plant hardiness zone map, just think about if, in the course of a decade, everything grown in one of those zones had to, instead, be grown in the next one over. Different crops take different skills and tools. Is everyone going to follow the crops they know how to grow? How will landowners deal with that?
Annual crops might be ok, since you could make a guess at the next year, but orchards take 5-7 years from planting saplings to first commercial crop, and they'd all be totally fucked. Vineyards take 3-4 years. There would be no way to safely invest in the future until the fluctuations have settled, except by playing it very very safe and being able to turn on a dime, and that requires financial resources that smaller farmers just don't have. Look forward to even more agricultural consolidation, as only the larger agribusinesses can afford to pick up all that farmland from smaller, bankrupted farmers.
Yes, to speculate, this sounds like major losses by some agricultural businesses and also higher prices for food that some more-adaptive businesses will profit from. But the land would still be there and it could be used for something, perhaps shifting more towards annual staples rather than luxury foods like wine.
A bigger problem might be major droughts in some parts of the world?
But these predictions don’t sound specific enough for investors to use yet. What would disaster planners want to do to prepare?
Here's a few:
Big disasters generally do cause major losses for insurers. (For example, consider a major hurricane in Florida.) That's what insurance is for and also what stockholders are for, to take this risk. But to the extent that insurers understand the issue, I would expect insurance prices to go up. Maybe not right away, though, while we don't know what's going to happen. They'll take the loss once.
Insurance subsidies are a way of covering up the problem so you don't have to change, rather than adapting. Some of your other suggestions are more about adaptation.
One way to reduce losses is to somehow put less at risk, building a shack instead of a mansion. Switching to annual crops would do that. Another way is to somehow make stuff more resistant.
Agriculture, sure. Also fisheries, kelp forests, and all the "weird" shallow-water sea creatures we don't eat in the west but are consumed in Asia and Africa. All of these are impacted by surface temperatures changing (because that changes the surface temperatures of water as well). Edit: Here's a brief article broadly discussing the subject of the impact of warming oceans.
On a related note, humans also have a difficult time surviving in extreme heat. Moreso than extreme cold because the human body is so reliant on sweat and moisture-wicking. If it's already hot and especially if it's also humid, the human body can't cool itself properly which is how people can die faster when adrift in warm water (oceans, but also large rivers) than in cold water. Hypothermia is especially dangerous for divers who stay near the surface for long periods of time.
Kim Stanley Robinson's The Ministry for the Future explores the human inability to cope with rising heat and humidity as a plot thread. People in already hot parts of the world experience unusual weather conditions and extreme heat. The impoverished, who can't afford or gain access to air conditioning, die in mass casualty events. In the book, one of the events occurs in a large river where people attempt to cool off, but the river temperature is high enough that their bodies are not cooling and people suffer from heat exhaustion, loss of mobility, and losing consciousness (like falling asleep on a crowded buss). Thus they drown.
The plot thread doesn't touch on a more likely scenarios of mass migration out of overly hot regions of the world. Many of which already have huge populations with challenges supporting themselves with food and fresh water. It also doesn't touch on the knock-on effects of people attempting to resettle in existing areas and the violence that would be caused.
So yeah, we can worry about changes to the agriculture industry over the course of a couple generations, but we can also worry about how to improve the sense of equality and access to what will become life-essential features of future human rights (food security, clean water and sanitation, adequate and safe housing, etc.). People migrating to a better, safer place are going to place a higher value on their concerns, and potentially a lower value on their own lives, than the people who are content with what they have or believe they have fewer worries with respect to those specific things. That will compound the problems with making our agricultural land use match up with future food security needs.
I am pessimistic about immigration restrictions. There are millions suffering now for whom borders are closed. Consider Gaza. Or how about Haiti?
But we don't know the future.
I am too, but one of the less talked about avenues to deal with immigration is to ensure that quality of life in other countries rises at a constant rate (at or better than inflation) and that their essential needs are met while providing them with the opportunity to have the same wants (and spending power) as the west. Some of that is being achieved by jump-starting their local economies or by providing essential aid to them. But those aren't typically long-term solutions, they're short-term cures.
That said, a lot of countries and cities aren't taking any real future-proof steps to address whatever immigration concerns they may have.
That's a tough one when the temperature gets too hot for crops, or for human survivability for that matter.