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Comment by JohnMakin | Hacker News Reader

What is this author smoking? "2 to 3 feet" of sea level rise is still absolutely catastrophic and is hand waved away in one sentence. 5 degrees in 50 years? We've already gained about 1 degree in the last 20 years alone - with no signs of slowing down. If it's ackshually 5 degrees in 75 years, what even is the point of making a point about that? We're reaching several ecological tipping points. We're in a mass extinction. What in the everloving hell is this? Have we gone full "don't look up" with this now?

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I think the problem is that "catastrophic" is not well-defined. Will we all be back to caves and sticks? No. Will there be trillions of dollars of damages and massive societal upheaval from massive migrations of people? Yes. Will a billion people die? Probably not, unless a war breaks out and leads to nuclear destruction.

I would consider all of these to be "catastrophic" but some may not consider migrations + damagaes to be "catastrophic."

We have a working system. That's why our world's population is so large. And it improved over time, as in more efficient ways to grow food, more productivity, the green revolution, to feed more, then roads/cities/buildings tied to single spots improving efficiency, giving safe housing to billions, mass transport and global logistics.

So what will happen if that gets disrupted? And badly disrupted, while at it. And while that is happening, multiple other things pile up in different ways everywhere?

Thats the danger. You don't die from climate change. You may occasionally die from increasingly frequent extreme weather, a flood because rains, some dam break, extended forest fires and so on. But that is not a single catastrophic event that kill billions. What will kill billions are losing food security in big scale, no safe/climate controlled place to live, violence and wars, widespread diseases and no way to help. In some years to decades millions to billions may die by that combination of factors.

So no, it wont be a single day, sudden event that will kill billions. Is the breakup of the system that holds it together. Agriculture needs a stable climate, megacities need food, the economic system depend on more things, and everything else is packed together. And the first wave of deaths will be just the start.

we arent replacing population either. food scarcity doesnt exactly help that.

I don't see any food scarcity? A lot of innovation coming. Indoor 3D farming if needed. Bio-engineered algae bars if needed! Constant innovation at all levels. Why would food production methods collapse? Some currently productive agricultural land may become unproductive, and then areas too cold now will then become viable, so a shift, not just a one sided destruction. More CO2 means plants grow faster, more global greening. Disruption yes. Over 50+ year time span? Very manageable. Unimaginable advances in energy and robotics ahead.

> Will a billion people die? Probably not

Really underestimating the amount of deaths that will occur when our food production systems start collapsing.

In the US, our domestic food production has started collapsing thanks to the massive deportations of farm workers. According to various reports, a tremendous amount of food went to waste in the fields last summer because farmers couldn't get workers to harvest it.

Sure, but a big part of the reason for that is that we produce a huge surplus of food, so food prices are extremely low compared to how wealthy the US is. That means wages for farm workers are too low for typical Americans to want to do the job.

If our food production goes down significantly, that will raise prices which will let wages for farm workers rise to the point where more people will be willing to do the job. Will it be unpleasant? Sure, but not to the point of famine, we'll just go back to spending a larger portion of our household budgets on food like we used to fifty years ago.

Yeah, that's a common myth. How much would you have to be paid to work 8 to 12-hour days bent over in the sun, with minimal water, and with exposure to pesticides and herbicides? Spotty bathroom access and few breaks?

A common theme found in various sources about using American labor in the fields is that American laborers are too slow, damage too much produce, and don't show up after a couple days. Another common theme is that immigrant labor works hard and uses their resources to ensure their children don't do the same work.

A study that attempts to quantify the damage done by ICE enforcement actions. https://arxiv.org/html/2508.03787v1#:~:text=The%202025%20ICE...

Interview with a farmer and his experience of the impact of ICE actions, the farming life, and produce economics.

https://www.thepacker.com/news/industry/some-farms-may-not-r...

First of all, many of those conditions can be improved. 12 hour days, minimal water, lack of bathroom, few breaks are imposed by employers trying to squeeze as much out of as few workers as possible. More people would be willing to do the job at maybe 25% cost to make conditions better.

It my late thirties, I wouldn't do the job because I have better options, but when I was high school or college age I would have killed to do that job if it was paying $30 (in 2025 dollars)/hour. My dad literally did that type of job for a while in his younger years.

Will that raise prices of food? Absolutely, but we're talking about going back to 1950s prices relative to wage, not about famine.

ICE enforcement and immigration laws are also a choice. We can change those if we need to.

During some of the worst starvation events in the 20th century, it was still only on the order of ~10 million people that died. And most of those deaths were because horrific totalitarian governments prevented outside aid to the affected regions.

I have not seen evidence that there will be food system collapse driven by climate change that would be worse than those events, but my ears are open if you have some.

There is one absolutely massive one, and that's that for the first time the problem is truly global. Other famines have been caused either by war or local droughts, both of which affect only a population in a limited area and crucially, can be somewhat mitigated by importing food from elsewhere. You can't import food if there are global food shortages.

> I have not seen evidence that there will be food system collapse driven by climate change that would be worse than those events

Doing my best to not come off condescending here in case you are being sincere, but the comparison of totalitarian gov crackdowns and local drought are not exactly comparable to an almost worldwide heat increase and less water availability for key high density areas... Once countries have to start hoarding their resources and other countries run out of resources, things will not be good and there's plenty of data, studies and articles out there discussing this that are not hard to find.

If you are being sincere, apologies, but living in the US lately has shown a level of bad actors trying to grift that's made it really difficult to be patient with climate change denial/dismissiveness.

If you think that these very vague suggestions come across as some sort of strong critique of me, don't worry. I don't think you have provided any sort of refutation of me, and you certainly do not exhibit much understanding of what, say, 2 degrees of change will looks like.

If you have any papers, please share. If you have sections of the IPCC to point to, please share. I am very sincere, in all my comments. But if you can't point to actual scientific documents, then you're doing no better than the climate denialists.

Took 2 minutes of Googling and little effort to provide these 2 of 10+ articles that immediately popped up. So, you are fully aware you could have found these easily but were putting out "pRoVe It" energy for whatever reason.

https://sustainability.stanford.edu/news/climate-change-cuts...

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2018/07/25/climate-change-...

> “If the climate warms by 3 degrees, that’s basically like everyone on the planet giving up breakfast.” That’s a high cost for a world where more than 800 million people at times go a day or more without food because of inadequate access.

The numbers in those articles are exactly in line with everything I have ever seen on the topic. That you think they contradict what I'm saying makes me think that either you're completely misreading me or the articles.

Well, one plane crashing or one building falling, destroying something valuable and killing "only" a few dozen people is considered a catastrophe. I think we can say the bar for "catastrophe" is lower than that for "apocalypse".

The higher global average temperatures alone are already a yearly catastrophe, by this standard.

Don't forget most animal like lions tigers and bears oh my! Becoming as mythical as a dragon or fairy.... The theft from future generation and children is immeasurable imo

> “…some may not consider migrations + damagaes to be ‘catastrophic.’”

I think you’re showing a lack of imagination. The COVID shutdown was not that long ago. People lost their minds when they were asked to wear a mask in public.

All you need to do to make a “catastrophe” is imagine the trauma response played out over shorter and shorter time periods.

Now take the speed of natural disasters measured over hours and days. Recovery time over months and years.

Now pile multiple such events back to back and dispersed across the nation.

You will have a Tipping Point where public opinion and suffering overwhelm any attempts by government to restore order with a speech.

Finally, Marshal Law and empty stores.

There you go. Have a nice day.

It's closer 1 one degree in the last 120 years, than 20, for a global average, though polar areas are bearing more of the brunt.

Unless AMOC collapses and we foolishly trip into another glacial period, the 200ft increase in sea level is inevitable in the next thousand years, but totally manageable for the continents. It's the oceanic mountaintops, aka, low level islands, and coastal cities that are at risk. Most of those cities are already filled with happy rich people who will have been long gone decades, or even centuries before Florida and Bangladesh are submerged and Russia, Australia and Canada are booming with happy with abundant rainfall, crops and awesome weather.

It just seems like focusing on ameliorating pain and focusing on the making the inevitable a better outcome is the most important focus for the next few decades.

Why not address the actual points he is making? He dramatically screwed up his forecasts of both human population growth rate and technological advancement rate.

These underlying assumptions being incorrect are the reason climate alarmist move the goal posts every year.

I think this mostly points to us not taking his opinion seriously on the matter.

Most others in the climate science debate have been far more realistic and measured. Similarly, I tend to ignore everything from David Wallace-Wells, another person who has written a ton on climate but from a very different political perspective, who has also been quite wrong.

Sea level has risen 1 foot since 1800 and nobody noticed. 2 to 3 feet isn't catastrophic. Nobody credible claims temperatures will rise 50 degrees in 50 years.

Nobody will notice 1m/3ft rise, except the whole Oceania disappearing, and also Florida getting basically inhabitable, and... details, details.

Not sure that just providing climate alarmist talking points is going to be a convincing counter to a climate alarmist who is now a climate pragmatist and provides some interesting reasons why they switched.

How about explaining why he is wrong? Don’t just respond with incredulousness and generalizations and assumptions.

He’s literally just giving his opinion. There’s nothing to argue against. He doesn’t provide much if any evidence for his claims and heavily relies on his “authority” on the subject to present them. Climate science largely disagrees.

One of the funnier points in this word salad is when he casually dismisses AMOC collapse without giving any real reason why then “trust me bro.”

What pragmatism?

> What pragmatism?

Perhaps I read it wrong, but isn’t he basically suggesting that he will be relying more on the observed effects of climate change as compared to predicted rather than just adopting the theoretical predictions as his driving POV? That’s literally the definition of pragmatism.

> Climate science largely disagree

Climate scientists may largely disagree, but not all do. Shame that it also apparently needs to be stated here that science isn’t a democracy that is subject to popular vote. When observed effects don’t match the predicted effects, it really doesn’t matter much if climate scientists disagree with the observed effects. Actual data is actual data and should be considered even if it doesn’t match your model.

A metre of sea-level rise is painful for a rural cottage by the sea. But if you're in a city - particularly a wealthy city - it's something that can be engineered around.

An expensive liability? Definitely. A civilization or nation ending event? Unlikely.

And how will these engineered workarounds be paid for ? It is known workarounds will cost trillions today, NYC alone could cost $1T+. And these workarounds should have been started 5 years ago when it became very clear we will never get off fossil fuels.

I fully expect no workarounds will be done just like Climate Change Mitigations. Getting off fossil fuels should have been seriously started 30 years ago, and maybe even 50 years ago. Instead the politicians have been adding hot air talking and fighting instead of doing real work.

We are now seeing this repeat with "engineered workarounds", no one wants to pay for it, so yes I call BS on the article.

All I can say is I feel real bad the past generations did nothing to really reverse CC, people being born now are looking at a very bleak future.

$1 trillion is one year of Manhattan's GDP. Painfully expensive? Absolutely, but it's absolutely affordable over the course of a few decades.

The sooner we start, the cheaper it will be, so we shouldn't put it off, but it's not going to kill everyone or even convince everyone to leave NYC in the foreseeable future.

Yes, but NYC is nor the only city that need climate change mitigations :)

Factor in all other cities, how will that get paid and by how ?

Or do we chose which cites to save ? Other cities, tough to be you.

besides the fact that 40% of the world's population lives near the coast - and that 2-3 feet of sea level rise is not a uniform "the tide used to be 8 feet, now it's 11 feet" - Entire islands in the pacific will disappear - How do you think global trade works? What do you think happens to ports? AMOC collapsing (a byproduct of sea level rise) will have profound effects on climate, despite this author claiming without any evidence whatsoever that "actually it isn't a big deal."

Ports get retrofitted, redesigned, and rebuilt. The AMOC collapsing is a serious thing, but I'm not saying climate change isn't real or isn't a threat. My original point is that three feet of sea level rise is manageable, if expensive. Simply that, nothing else.

If you draw the line at the year 2100, things are uncomfortable but maneagable. If your horizon is 2300 or 2500, you get a different story. But you would hope that in tha sort of time frame, we have time to adapt.

Anyone with a bit of common sense can understand that that "massively retrofitting cities in a way unseen in centuries due to climate risk" is just an off-the-charts level of reconditioning of society that I don't understand how that doesn't fall into "extremely alarming" levels of concern.

I didn't say it wasn't alarming, I said it wasn't civilization- or nation-ending. Unless you're a tiny island nation, in which case I'll happily retract what I'm saying.

There are degrees of awfulness between "the end of all mankind" and "nothing to see here", but it seems like there's a taboo on calling those shades of grey out when it comes to climate change.

So after many decades of wildly under estimating the rate of climate change, the same people in the same institutions, answering to the same money, have it sussed out? This simple fact that ALL global shipping happens at sea level, and ALL shipping infrastructue is designed and built to operate in a rarrow range, and that this whole edifice, minutly complicated, can be adjusted continiously along with the million miles of coastal roads and bridges. ?Londan just walled off, all of NYC's wharfs jacked up a bit, sure, sure, whats a few dozen cubic miles of equipment refit worth anyway, phffff

Canada, this year committed to spending $3.9 billion dollars to hopefully have just completed plans for a high-speed train line in six years [1]! The number of years and dollars to actually build the line are unknown at the moment. This is a project that has humongous potential economic upside.

Would Canada be able to build a seawall to protect Vancouver? I am not sure.

[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/trudeau-announces-high-spee...

Fun fact - sea level rose 120m since 20,000 years ago but people seem to have largely not noticed. If you don't have large buildings and planning laws you could just move your shack a few yards inland.

That's more than 10k years before the start of recorded history, so we definitely can't say that people didn't notice.

0.006 m/year, we can definitely work with that /s

It's 0.0046 m/year at the moment so more relaxed.

It's libertarian woo; David D. Friedman even makes an appearance in the comments.

Earth's climate always changes over time, it's not unusual, although not always the best for us.

What causes this climate change, how much infuence humans have on it, and how much we could possibly do about it is unclear.

That's not a reason to not do anything about it, but there's also no reason to be super intense about it.

> Earth's climate always changes over time, it's not unusual, although not always the best for us.

Earth's climate has been stable during the rise of human civilisation. It has changed more in the past 100 years than in the past 200,000.

It's true it's changed often over the course of the 4 billion year history of the pkanet. It's not true to claim it's fluctuated wildly over the course of human civilisation.

> What causes this climate change, how much infuence humans have on it, and how much we could possibly do about it is unclear.

False.

It's clear the cause is the increased insulation factor of the atmosphere. It's clear this change has been in the majority due to human activity dragging up millions of years worth of past captured C02 via fossil fuel extraction.

> That's not a reason to not do anything about it,

Naturally, because as stated it is false to claim the cause is unclear.

> but there's also no reason to be super intense about it.

Sure. It's true that no one alive today in a G20 non equatorial country need fuss much about it - all the real serious consequence will fall after their lives have passed.

> It has changed more in the past 100 years than in the past 200,000.

I don't think so.

Look at sea level: 125,000 years ago, sea level was 8 m higher. 20,000 years ago, sea level was 130 m lower. [0]

So over the past 200,000 years sea level has varied ~ 138 meters. It hasn't varied that much over the past 100 years.

[0] https://courses.ems.psu.edu/earth107/node/1496

Dammit - I went a zero too many, human civilisation ~ 20,000 years worth of "settled" building, agriculture, slowly increasing in scale as climate variations decreased in scale.

Everything that is "modern human civilisation" from, say, early Egyptian onwards (following the formation of the Sahara some 6,000 years past) has taken place in a period of climatc stability.

Point being, come climatic change on that scale again, the planet and various eco systems will adapt and move on, human civilisation patterns as we know them from history will be heavily jarred.

Cheers for that.

As a general note, @7402 was right to question my comment, particularly with a supplied reference to university course notes.

I made a fat fingered typo, they made a respectful statement of fact, downvotes are not deserved here, if anything throw @7402 a few upvotes for taking part as the HN guidelines encourage.

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