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Comment by densh | Hacker News Reader

I always wonder when increasingly hostile climate is going to start redistribution of population. So far it seems like people are extremely resilient and would rather stay then move.

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The United States military has, for some decades, been planning for how to deal with the effects of climate change, which include the expected migration of huge numbers of people. Here’s one article:

https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/31...

Two excerpts:

As regions become too hot for sustaining livelihoods or human habitation, climate change may spur migration. Tensions over water and other resources could lead to instability and conflict. Climate change is already making the Arctic more accessible with nations vying over resources and access. Due to warming temperatures in many regions, diseases and viruses are expected to migrate to new areas of the globe.

And:

The world’s largest naval base, Naval Station Norfolk, Virginia, is endangered by rising sea levels, Water in the bay has risen about a foot-and-a-half since the 1920s, and a normal high tide now comes close to lapping over containment walls. The Navy, the city and businesses that depend on the harbor must work to adapt to rising sea levels.

And in their last appropriations bill, the GOP nutjobs running the house literally stripped out funding even for that. Fortunately, the Senate will probably put it back, but the GOP are just out-to-lunch on this.

You may be attributing lack of financial means to resiliency. It cost money to move and if you are already struggling to get by you may not have the money.

Only a small percentage of the population lacks the financial resources to move. It’s because people don’t care about the heat and will just turn up the AC. Arizona has the 4th highest rate of domestic net migration (people moving in from other states minus people leaving for other states).

Or when they do decide to move there are folks lining up to buy their house. Why would anyone move to AZ or even FL given the expected climate impact?

Most people, even those who believe in global warming, don't viscerally feel that it will cause large parts of the earth to become inhabitable in their lifetimes.

And that's a point in favor of this article. Are you more or less likely to move to a city after hearing that it does a month straight over 110 degrees? I know how I answer that question (having left Texas 20 years ago after a month of 100 degree temps.)

People are resilient here means that we have cheap enough energy and air conditioning as well as access to fresh water. Raise the cost of energy 100x and extracting fresh water and especially air conditioning becomes less economically viable than moving. Then again, the whole desert is wide open for building large banks of solar farms.

Of course, if you raise the cost of energy that much heating will have more of an impact then A/C. I still think the northern US cities will be more resilient (and I do live in one) but heating isn’t cheap

Northern US cities are much worse positioned than other cities. Those cities are full of old, poorly insulated houses with inadequate electrical infrastructure. No ducts for A/C, 100 amp electrical boxes, nowhere to put heat pump outdoor units, etc. It’ll be much easier for more recently built cities across the south and mountain west to go fully electric.

You are right. But also northern cities have water. You can rebuild a house to be more energy efficient. You can’t create a river (to a first degree of approximation).

The south, Midwest, and northwest also have water.

The Midwest and northwest are also northern US by every definition I’ve seen.

The northern US is the original thirteen colonies north of the mason Dixon line. It’s not a bare geographic term. Just as the “Midwest” is actually in the east.

For clarity, it might be better to just refer to that region as the northeast US.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Map_of_USA_with_stat.... Geographic labels in the US are a product of history. North is the northeast. South is the south east. Midwest means the mideast (many parts of which are further east than parts of the south). The actual midwest is called the mountain region the west is actually the west. If you referred to Phoenix as a “southern US city” or Portland as a “northern US city” most people in the country would look at you weird.

Doesn't AC basically solve itself, if you put solar panels on your roof? It's lack of water which seems like a much larger problem.

Nordhaus published a study how the economy is barely affected by rising temperatures because all high value activity happens indoors.

This ignores that in Africa there is a significant subsistence population that lives off their own food production which is exclusively conducted outdoors and very little of the produce is sold commercially which in turn means their monetary income is close to zero aka they are a low value industry. The fact that these people move away does in no way contradict the predicted impact on the economy, in fact, you would think that it expects them to move somewhere else with lots of indoor economic activity.

Dry deserts just aren't that hostile until there's no more water to be found.

When the water runs out is when shit will get real.

Until then, articles like this are just describing normal desert life while trying to be alarmist about it. Judging from a bunch of the comments here, it seems to work.

The real insanity is doing agriculture in these regions, stealing dwindling groundwater supplies in bulk from the inhabitants who'll need it in the future just to survive.

There’s a huge influx of refugees into Europe and the US mostly from hotter places.

Sources? I haven't seen that (yet)

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/21/1189253504/climate-change-mig...

I refreshed NPR this morning and it's literally the top story.

Hey Trump wasn't building that wall to keep the Norwegians out

But is that because of the heat or simply because in general the norther hemisphere is richer than the southern one?

Climate impacts are exacerbating the existing migratory trends.

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