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Comment by plank_time | Hacker News Reader

Which countries would benefit from global warming? Would Canada become the new California?

No. It’s already getting uncomfortably warm in Canadian cities in the summer. And we already settled most of the fertile soil.

The bulk of our sparsely inhabited areas are Canadian shield, taiga, tundra. The soils are not well suited to agriculture.

The rapid change will also make our ecosystems unstable, and the melting ice is hurting northern infrastructure. We were already cold adapted.

We also don’t get more sunlight, which is governed by the rotation of the earth and not the temperature. One of the hardest parts of winter here is short days, rather than the cold.

Russia might be the largest benefactor, as they have only very short (inhabited) coastlines but incredible amounts of currently barely inhabited land. That land might become arable, but in the meantime they too have their problems with increased fires, floods and immigration from Southern neighbors. The most important benefit would be the Northeast Passage for ships traveling between Asia and Europe. It runs through the Bering Strait and along Siberia, is 24% shorter for the popular Shanghai-Rotterdam trip, and is becoming increasingly viable thanks to global warming (and Russian nuclear icebreakers).

Canada has a similar story, but the Northwest Passage along Canada is much less exciting, and they have much more population on the coast.

Russia is going to need to protect that massive southern border from climate refugees.

Canada benefits from sharing a border with a relatively stable state.

Currently the northern hemisphere is closest to the sun during winter months. In the past when it was closest to the sun during summer months (so, hotter), the Sahara was paradoxically a lush savannah. It's possible that warming could affect air currents in a way that makes the Sahara receive dramatically more rainfall that could turn it back into savannah.

Currently the northern hemisphere is pointed away from the sun during summer months.

EDIT: ignore, parent comment has been clarified.

Typo, or am I misunderstanding something? Reality is the opposite of that:

https://www.weather.gov/cle/seasons

They probably meant that the Earth is closer to the Sun during Northern winter, and further during the Northern summer.

Yep, my bad, that's what I meant. Corrected.

No. But we might see a revival of US northeast agriculture.

Russia benefits, I think.

> Russia benefits, I think.

Not clear, most of Siberia would be turned into mud (which currently only happens for a month or so), many roads there are just frozen rivers.

That an over generalization. The more temperate parts of southern Siberia would have a thawing that could potentially open up more agricultural space and increase Siberia's food production capacity.

Even so... do you think agriculture is going to drive economic growth in the future?

Don't get me wrong we need agriculture, but it's not going to save an economy :)

What's the top soil look like in the US NE? It's been a while since I've been to, say, Maine. But I can tell you that the other new farmland folks propose is British Columbia, and it's obvious that they've never been to mid-to-northern BC and looked down toward their feet. You'd be better off trying to grow corn in sand that the stuff that passes for top soil in BC.

This also ignores the fact that when one starts heading north, that Sun in the sky tends to get pretty weak-ass, even in the summer. As a Seattle resident, I about go blind getting off the plane in Miami until I can get those sunglasses on. And I can tell you how much corn enjoys the lack of good sun in comparison to my home state of Indiana: it doesn't.

"Maine soil grows three things: potatoes, blueberries, and rocks" is an adage a hundred years old.

The silver linings brigade is running out of threads to pull on.

The northeast US was a huge agricultural region before the great plains. The entire area is covered with the remains of former farms. It is not as cost effective and there were other issues (rocky soil, for one) but it was once an agricultural center and can become one again if the economics shift.

I created a website called www.howhotwillitget.com for predictions on this topic

The two icons below "snow" are boxes (on chrome for windows). It seems those are "freezing" and "extreme hot days" but would be great to use a workaround for fonts that don't display all the unicode chars

It'd be nice if your predictions for south of the equator correctly flipped summer and winter. Right now they show winter as the warmer months and summer as the colder ones.

Currently ice-covered sealanes will open up north of Siberia.

Russia would get a lot of land out of it, and would get more usable coastline, which they have very little of. Countries like Canada and the Nordics also gain in this respect

Moreover, co2 is an input to photosynthesis. Studies show that projected levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere boost crop yields by 30%. Countries with a lot of agriculture exports stand to become wealthier from this, as well as countries with food insecurity issues.

I doubt anyone stands to gain much... Uncertainty is seems far worse than slightly better agriculture.

Especially, in countries where food is plentiful, and customers want organic produce... Why would 30% matter at all?

30% increase in production is a fair bit more than 'slightly better'.

If food became 30% cheaper that wouldn't affect the life-style of most people in wealthy countries that stand to benefit..

Organic often yields 19-25% less than non-organic, yet that doesn't make a huge difference.

Mechanizing agriculture in poor countries is likely to yield much higher returns.

For reasons I don’t understand it’s supposed to be really bad for all countries.

That's simply because of two facts:

First of all, weather is a chaotic system. And "good weather" is an extremely narrow band (at any given year try to find two farmers of different crops that both agree that the weather was good). As such, it is much more likely that any climate change (not chaotic on the scales discussed here) will have a negative effect on weather anywhere than the opposite.

Secondly, and more importantly, we are talking about a system that contains huge quantities of thermal energy. This energy will for instance create stronger storms. In general, we don't want to put energy into our climate because of the potential violence that follows from that.

Exactly. Even for places that get "better weather", that still is a huge strain on the existing ecosystem and economy that is built for the current climate. In a century or two some places might be better off, but the transition will be painful.

Also, as the saying goes, the rising tide lifts all boats. Even if only a couple of countries are hit hard, we will all feel the effects in trade and immigration. And it looks like a lot of countries might be hit hard.

Yeah, sure it's gonna be great to have millions (billions?) of people migrating to the few places that will be "blessed" by global warming.

I've been seeing articles about how Russia stands to gain

I refuse to believe it will be bad for all countries. That doesn’t make sense whatsoever, that just being overly emotional and unscientific. There is always a winner and loser in everything. The key is to figure out which country benefits the most.

Even something like the Pandemic, some businesses have learned to thrive. Humans are resilient and the ones who can adapt to change the best will always win out.

This was a fascinating read from a few months ago. TLDR: Russia

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/16/magazine/russ...

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