Hacker News Reader

Comment by CalRobert | Hacker News Reader

Find a location that should still be able to sustain life in a few decades, learn self sufficiency and crop growing in harsh climates, emigrate (if necessary) as soon as possible before further refugee crises make this impossible, transition your career to one working to stop this or ameliorate its effects (climate.careers, etc.), decide whether or not to have a kid.

Edit: Also, consider running for office, if your government hasn't suffered complete regulatory capture, and if you have money to invest maybe look at things like Engine No. 1's ETF (VOTE)

View on HN

I've found the Strategic Intelligence Network (there's a copy at https://the-eye.eu/public/Strategic%20Intelligence%20Network...) very helpful as it contains lots of survival resources. It's also just really interesting to read- some of it would raise eyebrows (there's a subdirectory just for weapons and explosives) but I've found a lot of it is genuinely educational, like military literature on how to defuse or recognize explosives, etc. Plus the survival subdirectory is perfect for this situation. Anyone else have similar survival resources?

Edit: In the parent directory (the-eye.eu/public) the "murdercube" directory is amazing as well. Similar type of survival resources, but even wider scope- you truly have to just scroll through to see how much stuff it has. It's got so much military, survival, health, literature, fiction, education, etc. it's actually incredible what resources people put on the web for free.

This is a really great resource, thank you for posting

Thanks for bringing VOTE to my attention -- I'd followed Engine No. 1's work regarding Exxon, and didn't realize they had rolled out an ETF. While it was probably more their ability to persuade BlackRock et al that carried the day with Exxon, I'm glad to give them just a few dollars' more clout...

How can one find “our best” estimates” about how locations will respond to climate change ? How can I know where I should be thinking of moving too besides things like stay away from the coasts, etc? I’d like to try and think about where I should buy a house and look for a job for the next 50 years.

> emigrate

If considering that option, remember that climate change will affect the destination as well -- don't emigrate to a place that will be underwater or a desert in 10 years.

Out of curiosity, is there any consensus on what parts of the world might be underwater or a desert once this plays out?

I'm not a climate scientist, but I'm curious after these comments if there is some way to know what changes will happen where. I know there are some obvious assumptions like coastal areas are likely to be underwater, but how can we know if e.g., South Dakota will be a frozen tundra or desert?

Apologies if that is a dumb questions. I am not knowledgeable on this subject.

Although climate modeling has shown overall warming of the planet through increased greenhouse gasses, calculating future local climate conditions is still an area of active research.

Before moving to another area, it should be considered that the support system of employment, friends and family that we take for granted and that we depend on are things we would be leaving. So weigh options carefully.

10 years is a pretty crazy timeline, I don't think many places will be submerged in 10 years.

They might be frozen solid though...

Where do you anticipate that happening? And in 10 years no less. Is the study suggesting such crazy timelines?

Indeed. The "10 years" has always been "we have ten years to stave off a collapse that will then play out over the next hundred or so years."

Shellenberger's new book Apocalypse Never has been a comforting read in this regard. Despite the provocative title, he's a serious environmentalist and does not argue for "no action" but rather that many of the actions being pursued by NGOs and groups like XR are very short term oriented and not thinking about the big picture of second order effects. In particular, he argues that the key to saving the environment lies in doing things like deploying natural gas and nuclear power into Africa and South America to develop those economies as quickly as possible— that this is the route to stemming coal usage and hitting the world population cap sooner rather than later, and those are the two most important factors when it comes to ultimately controlling emissions.

This is a pretty interesting take. Sort of an, "accelerate every country through their inevitable industrialization and all that comes with it so we can help them get past it faster."

I wonder how much of the US defense budget could be deployed to providing nuclear power to newly industrializing countries and what the long-term ROI would be re; staving off future climate refugee issues.

My concern is especially for those people already in places that will be destroyed. Barring that, gaining citizenship to a large country with a diversity of biomes and latitudes might be prudent.

I'd echo this. Sadly. I've been doing research into hydroponic farms and how to build them. Grow my own food in basements. How to build a disaster shelter. All the things the doomsday preppers do. My internet ads are now on par with QAnon conspiracies and how to survive the apocalypse. It's depressing. It's demoralizing. It's real.

It's kind of bizarre that "prepping" (I prefer "preparedness" and fortunately like gardening anyway) is associated with the right when we have sober-minded scientists literally saying civilization stands a very good chance of collapsing. I think a lot of people "believe" in climate change, but relatively few people _believe_ in it, if that makes sense. It's coming.

I think a lot of people view it as true, but they also think society won't just give up when it happens.

> society won't just give up when it happens

It's happening right now.

Which countries have given up?

Is this "winter is coming", "the end is near" tone helpful? I'm not necessarily saying it's outright false, but look, there've been past times where the end truly felt near, but we managed to overcome it... Again, we might not this time, but why should we bet against us? Does anyone want to be the lone survivor in the post-apocalypse? Sorry if overreacting.

No need to be sorry. It's really depressing, obviously I hope I'm actually wrong.

I find it useful because we might, in fact, overcome this, but for now we seem to be on track for 3+C of warming within my kids' lifetimes, wet bulb temperatures making a decent chunk of the Earth uninhabitable (even naked healthy people will die sitting in the shade), the loss of the majority of insects we need for pollination, sea level rise giving us millions of homeless people, wars breaking out over access to resources, increasing ocean acidity and anoxia threatening sea life, accelerating self-reinforcing carbon emissions (hotter weather melting permafrost releasing methane making weather hotter, ice sheets melting reducing albedo making Earth warmer and melting more ice) etc. and all of those put together don't make me optimistic.

Unfortunately the problem with "we managed to overcome it" is that everyone who didn't manage to overcome is not around to comment. I certainly aim to be someone who "manages to overcome it" but that won't happen by being ignorant of the dangers we face and failing to adjust my life in ways that maximize the probability of this.

I don't think you'd be the lone survivor in the post-apocalypse, short of going full Venus the planet will sustain _some_ life, including humans, hopefully. Where there are groups of people, or most other mammals I'd venture. there is at least the possibility of joy.

IPCC working group 1 is putting out a draft report Monday, let's see what they say.

I am not aware of any association between prepping and being politically “right”.

"Prepping" became a "lifestyle", which means that it has become dominated by companies looking to peddle things to people whose judgment has been clouded by fear. There are ways to prepare for a climate-induced collapse of civilization, but stockpiling guns and MREs in a bomb-proof bunker will only suffice as a survival aid as long as there are people out who are actually prepared with agricultural know-how and tools (with the idea being, presumably, that you use your guns to threaten them to give you food (foolishly assuming that the farmers don't also have guns)).

Because society wants to keep you building the machine. Without you the rich have to prep themselves

I think the difference is right wing "preppers" are more individualistic. For them it's about saving themselves and their immediate family. The left acknowledges that we live in a society. And the real power to prevent happens at a societal level. So their energy is focused more on fixing government and through high leverage policy changes instead.

Yeah, I hear you, but in this case I'm not attacking the left or the right here. I'm simply saying "prepping" as in "preparedness" for impending doomsday (not armageddon) where climate change has forced us all to rethink the modern life. Non-political. Survival.

You should spend a moment looking at survivalist magazines from the early 1980s. Lots and lots of doom (mostly Soviet) for tolerably good reason. Basically exotic gun porn (not such a bad thing, but realize that's what it is) and fun hobby projects.

Truth is, everything turned out somewhat fine.

I can definitely see planning for a sketchy future, plan for the worst and all that, but I'd say that the average person's biggest risk is simply staying employed for an entire career. The sub-average is in constant trouble with LEOs, ex-wives, has poor health lifestyle choices, but you have relatively good control over that.

Why would you grow your food in the basement? There’s no sunlight in your basement. Build a hydroponic greenhouse, maybe, but if society fails to the point where you need to be growing your own food, why do you expect to have the electricity necessary to grow food in a basement?

(I’m skeptical on the hydroponics as a long term thing as well - traditional farming remains in the dirt for a reason, it’s much more practical - but the basement stands out more.)

Basement because I have more room, can channel solar/wind energy into low-power LED grow lights when the skies may be dark. Or utilize generators to power 100w lamps. It's also out of sight so no fear of neighbors trying to ransack my garden. I don't have a large yard for a greenhouse, but I do have 1,000sqft of unfinished basement.

Are those wind and solar on your own property, that you can rely on them if the day arrives when an every-man-for-himself subsistence-farming operation is necessary to survive?

If you're using generators burning fossil fuels to power lamps to grow food, that's an incredibly expensive way to do it. And if you're using "100W light bulbs" I'm not even sure what you're doing — is this traditional white light bulb or what? I sure hope not, but most grow lights aren't bulb-shaped and tend to come in larger wattages as a 600W LED grow-light panel is usually rated for about a 2'x2' area, which is not really a lot of food; you'd be looking at 9KW for your whole basement.

Yes, on my property. I already have a 100w led grow light panel. You should look into them. They are super efficient on power. IGTFARM, Groplanner, there’s quite a few on the market.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com