Hacker News Reader

Comment by alichapman | Hacker News Reader

It will be far worse than europeans having to buy a winter jacket. From [0]:

> Such an event would have catastrophic consequences around the world, severely disrupting the rains that billions of people depend on for food in India, South America and West Africa; increasing storms and lowering temperatures in Europe; and pushing up the sea level off eastern North America. It would also further endanger the Amazon rainforest and Antarctic ice sheets.

[0]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/aug/05/climate-...

View on HN

My basic point still stands. Wealthy humans will be mostly fine. We have lots more technology to protect ourselves. A major catastrophe is hundreds of lives lost.

Compared to the devastation experienced by the poor or non-humans, that's trivial.

The other posters are talking about prepping. That's almost completely unnecessary. As long as you're human and not poor, the worst you will be is uncomfortable.

Cold snaps in Europe and the USA right now end up killing quite a few people. Hundreds of lives directly lost because of this destabilization in developed countries is not unlikely. See the Texas cold snap for a really recent example. And further from that there will be a lot of economic damage and long term costs associated with such an extreme swing in average winter temperatures. Everything from housing to infrastructure isn't setup to cope with it.

It'll cost tens of trillions to adapt. But we can and will do so. Anybody or anything poor or non human is screwed.

It would have been far cheaper to spend trillions to mitigate and prevent, but that would have required foresight from politicians and voters.

The Texas cold snap and German floods are examples of what the rich world will be facing.

The Indian Ocean tsunami killing hundreds of thousands is an example of what the poor will be facing.

Extinction is what many non human species are facing.

But billions of deaths or civilization collapse is what some are predicting, which is nonsense.

I mean billions of deaths and civilization collapse is probably at the extreme end but still imaginable.

If poor people and poor countries are screwed then that will lead to major disruption in rich countries as we are reliant on them and potentially a large and dangerous climate refugee situation. Economic collapse in rich countries isn't off the table either.

Then there are questions like how much of the current status quo has to change for "our civilization" to have collapsed?

https://matadornetwork.com/read/mapped-united-states-canada-...

The name sounds nordic. Oslo, Stockholm & Helsinki would end up with a climate similar to Northern Manitoba. I tried to drop a Google StreetView to get a sense of the landscape. It was not possible, there are simply no roads and no cities at those latitudes.

Even the richest of the rich need a supply and support network. Money won't suffice.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com