Ask HN: Where would you move to escape climate change?
Title says it all. Which city or country would you move to protect yourself from the impact of climate change?
You, me and 50 generations down the road.
Sorry to be this crude but the psychosis is getting crazy, well into the lunacy territory.
I get the religious-like impetous of being part of something bigger than themselves, but equally stimulating challanges in global health abound and they have the added benefit of being material to the lifespan and quality of life of basically everybody.
Finally to people who want to change global climate, talking about 1.5C , 2C like they are deciding how they want their beard to be trimmed. Well I must ask them : Have you tried changing your cholesterol first?
Besides being the thing that would get you in the end, it also proves to be one of the many steps on the way to super ambitious goals.
As the saying goes, you gotta walk before you can run.
If you can't change your cholesterol , you'll hardly be able to change the global climate
But if the climate does warm past the expected number, having a clean bill of health won't do much to protect you.
The highest authority on the matter is the IPCC, they produce climate reports every 4 years.
There made lots of them, and people wait anxiously their reports to see the state of the art.
Not in one of their reports did the words "human extinction" ever come up.
Again life is a matter of priorities and triage.
Before screaming and predicting the end of the world, people should worry about doing everything in their power to delay their own personal "end of the world"
And if you are worried about systemic risks, then nuclear and bioweapons are still way above climate change
There are 10000+ of them with potential ramp up and proliferation, and unlike generalized climate change they are directly aimed at targets were people live.
At the end of the day there isn't ever one focus, there are multiple focuses when it comes to keeping ourselves and each other alive. The risks of climate change IMO are not a question of how but when, in amongst all other health risks.
So is the heat death of the Universe but it's a bit too early to start worrying about it.
No we won't die from climate change, but wouldn't you like to be somewhere where the effects are mitigated if you had the choice?
More people are potentially going to be affected in the short term by government responses - whether you agree with them or not, they probably affect your quality of life more.
https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/aac4d4/...
In Germany for example there is no noticeable difference, although some people like to think that yearly differences in snow are due climate change.
In Spain I could observe some storms are now a bit stronger and sudden as they used to be as if the weather would turn slightly more tropical.
But these events, even if are an actual consequence of climate change and not just causality, are like not easy to spot as the climate stays mostly the same and there is no apparent change in any drastic way. Perhaps after hundred years if we compare it with today that would be more dramatic, but that’s all. And still there were short periods when the maximal recorder temperatures were even higher during the Middle Ages, so it might be feasible to imagine a future where everything is reversed like the Ozon depletion drama from the 90s. Heck even a single super volcano could change everything in a single month.
So I don’t think the question is more important than where would you like to live for its climate.
As said I would be more concerned of other factors, including pollution, general climate, time to nature and sustainability of the city for a good work life balance. And king would be: time to commute work.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/12/Present_...