Hacker News Reader

Comment by sasasassy | Hacker News Reader

Another wild prediction. This person's wild claim is that if go on with the current path the ocean's will rise 7 meters and there will be worse storms. You can visit http://www.floodmap.net/ and see how 7 meters is nothing, even discounting that we can adapt and protect against flooding. Worse storms are bad, but if the alternative is "World War II-style transformation of industry", what alternative is that? How can the world say to 5 billion people "sorry, you have to stop your industrialisation now, there may be storms in the US".

View on HN

At 7 meters, much of Florida is gone.

Regardless, global warming will impact poorer (and tropical) countries disproportionately. I live in the Pacific Northwest, and I know it is a pretty good place to be as it warms up. Bangladesh, less so.

You can't expect Bangladesh to lead the decarbonation of industrial production - but the US can, and there are good arguments that it will yield an increase in wealth and standards of living.

This is a crucial point. The huge changes to the ecology will make some places difficult to inhabit and destabilize food production, which will destabilize economies, which will lead to large social disruption and conflict.

It is the poor who will be least able to protect themselves from this destabilization. Not just because poorer/tropical countries will be disproportionately effected, but it's because it's the rich (globally or locally) who have the resources to protect themselves. With technology, with mobility, with "security".

Some who are now rich (globally or locally) will also find themselves less so.

When I see the standard the U.S. is setting for how refugees are treated, I'm terrified, even on just a self-interested level. Many more of us will be refugees in the future.

that sites UI is so bad, seems like low hanging fruit for some React frontend wizard to redo and make the defacto site to go to for climate / flooding visualizations

Reply on news.ycombinator.com