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Comment by eloff | Hacker News Reader

I've been thinking that there are a very small number of countries that will hurt less from climate change, possibly even benefiting on the whole. Canada, Russia, the Nordic countries, maybe Mongolia.

Because these countries have relatively few vulnerable coastal cities, and a lot of land that's too cold to do much with. Yeah some places will get drier, but some will get wetter too (I think overall it gets wetter, but that doesn't mean much to people in areas that turn into deserts.)

Anyway I like to talk to people about it because I've noticed a very visceral reaction among progressives (translation: it gets down-voted on HN) that there could be any "winners" in climate change. It has to be all bad. They might well be right, but I think my point is still valid. Again, I'm not sure these countries will "win" but they'll be relative winners in a game full of negative prizes. If you disagree, engage with me, don't just click on the arrow.

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We can only speculate. But we live in a globalised world so the countries you mention may suffer indirectly due to disrupted supply chains from water and food shortages and conflicts in countries hit harder. You then also have mass migrations of climate refugees flocking to areas with less extreme weather conditions.

Yes, but again, that makes them relative winners.

The historical averages for winters in my part of Canada has been rising for the past century, which I can only say I'm glad about.

However, some provinces, like Alberta, have already had increased insurance prices due to the more drastic weather patterns due to climate change. It's not a coastal province, but hail, floods, and fires are still extremely expensive.

Yes, more extreme weather effects will be bad. But it will be worse in other countries (think hurricanes and typhoons, monsoons, etc). I think that supports my point of relative winners.

> Canada, Russia, the Nordic countries, maybe Mongolia.

Dunno about others, but the Internet says that Russia is worried about the warming, because it thaws the permafrost, which makes the ground in the cold wilderness unstable, which is very dangerous for all the resource extraction and transportation (pipelines) infrastructure that they have in Siberia. Once the now-rock-solid ground starts turning into a swamp, they will have trouble keeping the infra intact.

Yes, that's likely to happen. In Canada as well. But the cost of doing that seems minor compared to the value of so much forests and cropland expanding northward.

Well... If temperatures continue rising, there will be a strong push towards abandoning that infrastructure.

And leave the petroleum in the ground? Not likely. Solutions will be found as long as it has enough value (unfortunately.)

We do that all the time with stuff that's costlier to extract than the market is willing to pay for it.

That's the eventual fate of the oil that's most costly to extract, like the Canadian tar sands.

But as long as you can extract it at a profit, people will do just that.

Which is kind of a shame because, in that case, the sand result of the extraction can eventually become usable soil.

I don't know much about agriculture, but isn't it the case that, apart from favorable climate, soil quality is another important factor here? Currently, pretty much none of Siberia is farmed, even the parts where the climate could permit it - and AFAIR that's because the soil is not conducive to farming. It's similar case in many parts of Africa. Again, please correct me if you know more about it, as my knowledge here is based on Wikipedia.

If you had to rebuild every oil pipeline to be floating on a marsh rather than anchored in permafrost, the cost would be small compared to other numbers in global economics...

Not just pipelines, but roads, foundations of buildings, storage tanks, and so on. And don't forget that oil prices are low and will get lower as the world transitions to renewable energy, so there is no money to pay for fixing all this.

Putin bet the economy on fossil fuel extraction, and as a consequence Russia is basically screwed over the long run.

I live in Vancouver, which is projected to get warmer and dryer, which any Vancouverite will tell you is a win. It's not that beneficial outcomes aren't possible, but it's not about specific wins, it's the overall outcome. In Vancouver, almost no one has air conditioning and most of the new housing is glass-walled condos that turn into ovens in the summar already. We already have sky-high rent and property values, so increasing the desirability of the lower mainland will only exacerbate the housing crisis.

Vancouver is a coastal city, so warmer weather will be paired with rising sea levels for which we haven't built. Forest fires have been a problem every summer in BC for the last decade. The mountain pine beetle has already been decimating our forests; previously they were held in check by cold winters, which are now a thing of memory and likely not to return any time soon.

And that's just Vancouver, BC. The prairies, breadbasket of Canada, have been seesawing between summers of drought and flooding.

It's not that there won't be some "winners", it's that the overall outcome is almost certainly more grim, at least in the short term, than the status quo.

I also live in Vancouver.

One could take the stance that climate change brings lots of change, and adjusting to change is painful, therefore mostly we lose.

Still I think none of that defeats my point that Canada will be a relative winner compared to other countries.

"Win" may be subjective. Is it a win if your land is flooded by refugees or the subject of a land grab or other power plays by a global super power?

I don't see Russia or Canada having to fear that, for different reasons. Canada no doubt will take on many refugees on purpose, as it does now. Russia is untouchable thanks to their strong military and nuclear weapons. Neither border countries likely to have large numbers of climate refugees. Again though, win is relative here. These countries may still lose, just not as badly as everyone else.

Is russia going to nuke refugees?

Maybe they'll just build a wall. A beautiful wall. The best wall.

Clearly the nukes are addressing the second point "subject of a land grab or other power plays by a global super power"

> or the subject of a land grab or other power plays by a global super power

The nukes would be useful against this.

This reminded me of my last Civ 6 game with Gathering Storm (an expansion that introduced disasters and global warming that can be extremely destructive...

1) Set disasters to maximum, map to old (flat), and with non-trivial amount of ocean.

2) Rush to flood barriers.

3) Build flood barriers while they are cheap (or ally the city-state that allows buying them with faith).

4) Burn coal until everybody drowns ;)

I remember years ago this came up as a way for Russia (then the USSR) to increase its food supply as Siberia becomes a breadbasket, but more importantly more water freed up too. Yes, some coastal areas will have to move inland, and others may have drought, but there will be positives and negatives. The real question is what will the net result be, more negative than positive or vice versa?

Yeah, impossible to say. But it could be more positive, that's at least part of the realm of possibilities.

> Canada, Russia, Mongolia

To be fair, if you look at it from a land mass point of view, then it is far more land than 3 countries would imply.

Additionally, climate has a lot to be with more frequent unpredictable extremes. In the sense, you are right, that these countries will only be 'relative winners in a game full of negative prizes'.

Unfortunately, Mercator projection strikes again.

Though there is a lot of 'unused' land near the poles, there is still a lot of 'used' land near the equator. But map projections distort this, as all 3D-2D projections must.

Here's an example: https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2016/0...

Africa is set to grow to ~4B people by 2099, India to ~2B, by 2099. Those 'unused' areas my find a use one way or another.

It seems strange that people aren’t buying more arctic coastal land as an investment IMO.

On the other hand it’s pretty hard to figure out who to buy it from and you’re literally betting on a combination of weather and geopolitics which seems a bit irresponsible.

> It seems strange that people aren’t buying more arctic coastal land as an investment IMO.

The rise in sea levels will be global though.

Interesting aside, not really. It won't be even. It has a lot to do with rebounding land and gravitational effects of ice sheets, etc. Sea levels will drop, at least initially, in some places even though the overall trend is rising sea levels. It's a complex topic.

I think the majority of climate change effects are too slow to be able to invest in those trends. I've given that quite a bit of thought. Demographic investment is likely to payoff much sooner and has an even better "predictable results" quality to it.

A great Canadian songwriter once wrote - “If you chose not to decide you still have made a choice”.

Capital needs somewhere to park, and it all come with risk. I don’t know a company that will be immune to the direct effects of climate change and the secondary geopolitical effects. How is land purchasing differently responsible than any other investment?

If that land may go up in value in the future, plenty of the current owners may be quite happy to realize some of that gain now with 100% certainty by selling to speculators.

> Russia

Russia has nuclear power plants built on permafrost. You don't need foundations and cooling is easy, but...

Permafrost that is no longer perma and soon not even frost is a massive problem.

> down-voted on HN

But HN is very "right wing" compared to say to say twitter or most subreddits.

And There may be some winners, but there may also be deaths and movement of people beyond any genocide ever seen.

That may well be true, but it's also aside from the point.

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