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Comment by whybroke | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, homo-sapiens will undoubtedly survive but the economy sure as hell won't. And given the inevitable loss of every major city coastal city, the unutterable disruption of agriculture and water supplies with the attendant massive die off, I agree the word 'fine' may be a tad inaccurate.

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Sea level is rising so slowly (currently 3.4 += 0.4 mm/yr) that we can absorb the increase for quite a while simply by abandoning coastal property and rezoning as each parcel of land becomes endangered by sea level rise. We're talking less than 7 1/2 inches over 50 years.

I suspect something similar will hold true for agriculture. Farmers will plant different crops 50 years from now than they do today.

You are assuming the rise will remain constant. It has only been rising slowly because the temperature change hasn't reached a tipping point that would trigger massive melting of polar ice.

The rate of increase has been going up, too. When I first started watching all this, which was 10 years ago or so, the rate was at 3.2 +- 0.4 mm/yr rather than 3.4. I haven't seen an estimate of that acceleration anywhere that gets it just from the data and not from assumptions about models or tipping points. I haven't really looked that hard, though.

I'm skeptical of tipping points. Right now, I'm taking a "just what I see in the data" approach because of how politicized everything is.

I don't know what the future holds, but I'm not convinced, yet, that it's going to be a complete catastrophe.

Note that we only need to worry about the south pole and Greenland. Floating ice, like all floating objects, already displaces water equal to its mass, so if it melts it will not affect sea levels.

You're also assuming that plants and animals can migrate/adapt at a fast enough rate. Trees seem especially at risk.

We'll move the corn potatoes and Roundup, but nature will have to manage the rest. If a few keystone species go who knows what havoc will be wrought.

"Simply abandoning costal property" and "rezoning" on a global scale is already going to be a far worse impact on what we consider today as modern life, than any realistic actions against CO2 would have been. We are talking about moving hundreds of millions of people. Sure that is entirely possible, but tell that to people who seem to be scared of helping a million Syrian war refugees.

Fortunately, with recent progress in renewal energies, achieving a massive reduction in CO2 emissions does not require hardship, just a larger investment program (which will pay even off long time for most countries, due to no more money drained from the economy for oil). This investment would be comparable to the building of the US highway network in the 50ies and 60ies. Long term it was a huge boost to the American economy.

> achieving a massive reduction in CO2 emissions does not require hardship

Houston is America's 4th largest city. Turning it into Detroit would absolutely be a hardship. We should still do it, but we shouldn't pretend that it won't cause suicide and violent crime.

are you arguing against the gospel of the up every year forever s&p500?

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