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Comment by tyre | Hacker News Reader

The threats of climate change are not that some biblical flood rises up to swallow humanity.

The danger of climate change is that incremental sea level rise would put tens of millions of people underwater.

Could they move? Absolutely. And we clearly have enough land to move people around, both globally and in many countries.

The danger is whether we can make those migrations without civil unrest. What land is taken for them to move to? What about Vietnam, where most of the country is projected to be underwater by 2050? We’re going to just move millions of Vietnamese and no one is going to be upset?

If we look today at the relatively tiny migration of people into the United States and Europe, we can see how quickly voters swing far right as The Other settles in.

The trickle down of these effects is tremendous.

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Not to mention famine; it's not so much natural disasters that'll kill a lot of people (after all, we're pretty good at moving out of the way, building shelters / dikes, etc), but it's going to be failed crops. This is already happening, and has happend in the past - all it takes is one hot / dry summer for a country and millions of people to be at risk.

Climate change means the chance of a hot / dry summer (or long / cold winter) will increase. Sure, at the time it seems like a fluke, and sure especially the more wealthy countries will be able to survive well enough, but at the same time it will cost lives. The poorest and disadvantaged will likely be the first to go, those that can't afford the gradually increasing prices of food.

And the problem will become bigger as the climate change becomes more widespread. We can (as a collective) survive a year of famine well enough, but what if crops fail two or three years in a row?

Agreed. Some studies link climate change as the trigger of famine/conflicts that lead to the Arab Springs [1].

Those events also generated few millions refugees and, here in Europe, we are already unable to act. I can see that when this phenomenon will get 100s or 1000s time more severe wars will be fought for securing food/land (IMHO likely it will happen in south-east Asia at some point [2]).

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937801...

[2] https://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/8/e1603322

> but what if crops fail two or three years in a row?

A small majority of grains grown world-wide are fed to animals. During crop failure the price of grain rises making it unprofitable to feed animals. These animals are sold, depressing the price of meat. People adjust to rising grain prices and falling meat prices by eating more meat in the short term. In the medium term the fewer number of animals available mean the animals eat less grain, depressing the price of grain again. In the long term a new equilibrium is met (if crop failure is the new normal) or the cycle reverses (if crop failure was only temporary).

It's not quite as rosy as I depicted above. Those price adjustments are massive changes, and change disproportionately affects the vulnerable. So lots of people will die. But it won't be because of lack of food, it'll be the lack of food in the right places, caused by the failure of capitalism to sell things to people who don't have any money.

The more probable cause of disrupted agriculture and widespread famine is a volcanic eruption with a rapid, dramatic cooling. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volcanic_winter

Right?? I thought the author was making somewhat reasonable points until they just shrugged off a prediction that sea level will rise 2 feet in the next 80 years or so with "Well 1/3 of the Netherlands is below sea level and they are ok soo......". Like that is even remotely equivalent to the sea level of entire planet rising by 2 feet.

It's also very quietly dismissive of centuries of engineering work that has gone into the Netherlands. Doing that over a couple of decades instead of a century? That's going to be a lot more work. (And likely the straw to break the camel's back on such already heavily burdened engineering projects like The Netherlands and Venice.) I saw one breakdown of the inflation-adjusted engineering costs once somewhere that the Netherlands has invested over the centuries and I recall it being a stunning amount of money in today's dollars.

I think what most people forget is... It's not like Vietnam is going to be fine, and then like a light switch in 2050, it's completely underwater... And oh, shit! Where do we put these people?

Vietnam probably already has thousands of climate refugees, and as 2050 gets closer, more and more people will leave, and by 2050, probably a lot of people will still be there, having figured it out somehow.

So, yes, I believe this is a huge problem. But I think most people have this idea that there's going to be some set time where it suddenly becomes HUGE. Maybe there will be some Black Swan moment. But it's just going to progressively get worse, slowly not suddenly.

The problem with things like that is, progressive problems have a track record of going unsolved.

This comes from action movies where there is always some fixed deadline, and nothing happens until the deadline. It even happens in movies where people are being irradiated, and they'll die if not saved before two hours is up. They are saved with ten minutes to spare, so suddenly they're fine, not 90% dead.

Right, the "boiling the frog" problem; "It's always been this bad, no reason to fix things now until they get worse."

> What about Vietnam, where most of the country is projected to be underwater by 2050?

For that matter, what about the Netherlands, where 21% of its population is underwater today? Or rather, 21% of its population is below sea level. They manage to keep the land above water. The article addresses this. ctrl+f "400 years ago"

sea-level rise

+ wild fires

+ tropical storms

+ pollinator die-off and pest booms

+ crop failures

...all adding up to migration pressure, food supply shocks, and infrastructure losses.