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Comment by flir | Hacker News Reader

> We can't colonize Greenland or Antarctica due to the lack of fertile soil

Just on this example, you can physically pick soil up and move it. Enough for 9bn people? No. Enough for 100k? Yes.

I've thought about this as well. It's feasible to move soil only to certain regions. Greenland and Antarctica aren't among them (remember the ice shields; they will continue to scrape all the soil as they melt). Some islands in Antarctic Ocean could potentially sustain a population of 20-40k. However, you need to start moving the soil now, but you will also need to develop methods of preserving this soil until it is needed, because right now it will be useless and it will be eroded by wind and hydro factors. What might happen is a gradual migration towards the poles on the Americas and Eurasia, moving the soil as migration progresses. This will be bloody and ruthless. But none of these solutions take into account the "exponent", and there is no way to forecast if a Venus atmosphere scenario will occur or not due to the water vapor.

Edit: good point in the next comment, expect sea levels rising for at least 10m.

Aren't we hypothesizing a situation where there is no (or a much reduced) Greenland ice sheet? I'm imagining "hey, look at all this bare rock that's suddenly available, and it's gonna take a couple of thousand years for erosion and lichen to develop soil here, so lets take a short cut".

I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm saying it's a theoretically possible idea in the face of an extinction-level event.

Here is where you are incorrect in your anticipation. The amount of land usable for agriculture will be decreasing faster than the ice shields melt. The territory where the fertile soil is available will not be human-friendly for the entire season, if at all. You can't make people work at 50°C or even 45°C with 90° humidity. You can't breathe water...

https://ourworldindata.org/land-use

But "usable for agriculture" implies "has soil" to me. We're talking about moving the soil to a more temperate zone, and we're not talking about the current population of the planet, we're talking about the human species surviving.

(I'm trying to find a sea rise map that looks right by eye and not having much luck. Here's the North Atlantic at 10m[1]. Surely that's not enough flooding?)

[1] https://coastal.climatecentral.org/map/4/-10.3532/51.4503/?t...

There's lots of room in Northern US, Canada and Russia. Not sure why Greenland and Antartica would be the only living places on Earth. There's also the Rockies, Andes, Himalayas and other mountain ranges. That's some extreme doomerism. I doubt most of Earth will become uninhabitable. Some places will be harder to maintain larger populations and grow crops.

Places without decent soil (i.e. Northern Russia, or high mountains) can only grow food in meaningful qualities if you bomb the soil with copious amounts of fertilizer. Fertilizer production requires fossil fuels and advanced civilization, both of which are not a given in the future.

Or just keep your intestine working actively

If the sea is fertile the soil can be hacked to be fertile. Any seabird could tell us how

But this is not the problem. The sea level will raise

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