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Comment by hyko | Hacker News Reader

I understand your sentiment, but most westerner’s everyday lives will not be affected by climate change this decade, outside of government initiatives to help solve the problem. That’s why it’s so damn unfair: it’s the poorest people in the world that will bear the early burden.

It’s my opinion that if we give people in the west unrealistic timelines, it will only serve to undermine the political effort to solve the issues for the long term.

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European heatwave of 2003 resulted in 50-70k deaths [0]. It will be chump change in comparison of having uninhabitable regions of South East Asia when the wet bulb temperature reaches 35C (95F), but it already affects Western Europe. [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

Yes, but most of the hundreds of millions of westerners (US, Western Europe, Australasia) are unlikely to experience real consequences for everyday life from climate change in a wild ride this decade.

That’s for all sorts of reasons, principally economic and geographic.

You don't consider death, drought, and flooding real consequences?

Why not?

The insurance industries already disagree with you. Trying getting flood insurance in some parts of the UK now. It wouldn't have been a problem thirty years now, now it's impossible.

And try selling a house that can't be insured. But perhaps you don't think losing that kind of capital investment isn't a real consequence for everyday life?

He said most, not all. You even said your self "some parts".

I’m not saying there haven’t been serious consequences from climate change, I’m saying most westerners have not experienced them yet, and won’t experience them in the coming decade. There’s nothing controversial about that, it’s the view of mainstream climate science.

Alarmism is ultimately counterproductive, because the risk is that people will see the gap between their personal experience and the climate prognostications, and decide the whole thing is complete bullshit. So it’s important that we are precise in our communication, and honest about the state of our knowledge.

We face a monumental struggle to deflect the asteroid of climate change by the end of the century, and we need public buy in to do it. Anything that undermines that will magnify the challenge many times, and perhaps even render it impossible.

Disagree. In Europe there's increasing number of summer days with wet heat which persists overnight that makes many outdoor (and indoor without AC) activites difficult or impossible. It causes all kinds of adverse health effects. In the US you're used to AC everywhere but for europeans this is major adjustment.

In a way many Europeans have been experiencing one of the very real consequences of changing climate, refugees: The civil war in Syria was partly the direct result of a record drought [0] and a steadily escalating conflict over the limited access to fresh-water in the region [1]

[0] https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08DAMASCUS847_a.html

[1] https://library.ecc-platform.org/conflicts/turkey-syria-and-...

10 years ago none of the apartments in my building had ACs. they all have now (Romania)

I guess this tells more about AC becoming affordable in Romania than the weather.

I think that’s mostly a measure of people having more money. I’ve been living in different Bucharest apartments for almost 20 years now, the last 15 have all been in apartments with AC installed, otherwise summer can become hellish.

Yeah. The first really troublesome sign of climate change for most Europeans will be the waves of migrants desperately trying to find a place to live away from their homes that have been turned inhabitable because of climate change.

And they will look at the huddled masses and say; "Dirty foreigners. Why don't they stay where they belong instead of trying to mooch our hard-earned wealth" and build higher walls.

For crying out loud.

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