[HN Gopher] Uninhabitable places in 2100 (interactive map)
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       Uninhabitable places in 2100 (interactive map)
        
       Author : superphil0
       Score  : 92 points
       Date   : 2022-04-04 20:28 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (interaktiv.morgenpost.de)
 (TXT) w3m dump (interaktiv.morgenpost.de)
        
       | deanCommie wrote:
       | Northern India seems to be the area of the map most affected by
       | the combined factors specifically heat and water shortage. It's
       | also, by my unscientific estimation home to hundreds of millions
       | of people.
       | 
       | What...are we going to do about this? This seems like it could
       | shape up to be a humanitarian crisis of completely incomparable
       | proportions. Could a million people die from one heatwave at some
       | point this century?
        
         | julienb_sea wrote:
         | Well, any changes in sea level and habitability will be a mix
         | of very gradual shift in tidal patterns and acute high-impact
         | flooding events. Areas will not suddenly go from habitable to
         | inhabitable all at once.
         | 
         | In the US, it is very expensive and sometimes impossible to
         | procure insurance for areas at extreme risk of wildfire or
         | flooding. This is essentially the private market's assessment
         | of risk based on location. Most people will leave if they are
         | unable to reasonably insure their homes and property. Cities at
         | very high risk will build seawalls and flood defenses in order
         | to protect their taxpaying base. These are acute solutions to
         | acute impacts.
         | 
         | To preempt some replies, I am not denying the extreme scale of
         | the challenge ahead and the broad impact, especially in less
         | developed and highly dense nations. I believe it is an
         | inevitable adjustment that societies will need to make.
        
         | csdvrx wrote:
         | > What...are we going to do about this? This seems like it
         | could shape up to be a humanitarian crisis of completely
         | incomparable proportions
         | 
         | There are a lot of empty places on earth. Without looking far,
         | just look at the midwest, Canada, Russia... There's even a
         | whole continent that's currently frozen - Antarctica.
         | 
         | If temperatures rise to the point of say making Antarctica
         | livable, it would just be fair compensation to open it for
         | settlement to every ecological migrant.
        
           | tomrod wrote:
           | Only if these places have the capital and resources to build.
           | 
           | Water sourcing, soil generation, mining and extraction,
           | energy generation, food production, and favorable trade
           | conditions are bog standard needs.
           | 
           | You can't just dump a million people somewhere after
           | collecting them from off the street and hope for the best.
        
             | csdvrx wrote:
             | > You can't just dump a million people somewhere after
             | collecting them from off the street and hope for the best.
             | 
             | Indeed. But look at the time it takes to create new
             | infrastructure (large building, hospitals...) in China when
             | it's needed right now.
             | 
             | I believe we have the technology to make large metropolis
             | in a matter of a few semesters. Even assuming a total lack
             | of improvements, a few years is all it should take to
             | tackle the emergency even if we are barely prepared and
             | organized.
             | 
             | And if there's only one thing to trust, when push come to
             | shove, humanity always accomplish miracles. Crisis unites:
             | people forget about old feuds to care about each other.
        
         | more_corn wrote:
         | If anything you're underestimating the risk.
         | 
         | Kim Stanley Robinson explodes the possibility in "Ministry for
         | the Future" the most terrifying and troubling opening of any
         | book I've ever read.
        
         | PradeetPatel wrote:
         | >What...are we going to do about this?
         | 
         | For starters we can raise awareness about the potential
         | ecological calamity, education and awareness goes a long way.
         | Influencing key policymakers and stakeholders is the only
         | sustainable way to ensure change...
        
       | gmuslera wrote:
       | Last year (not 2100) a town in Canada reached 49.5oC, in an event
       | when a lot of places in US got temperatures 35+oC for a week or
       | something like that. Siberia reached past June the 38oC mark.
       | Those are the heatwaves that we are getting right now, not in 80
       | years. Couple that with wet bulb conditions and we might have a
       | lot of problems, this decade.
       | 
       | You don't need a full year with the average day past the
       | uninhabitable mark to be in trouble, you just need one day with
       | conditions that you can't survive.
        
         | Flankk wrote:
         | Lytton burned to the ground the next day. Let's see how long
         | the American egocentric approach lasts as more cities burn down
         | with each passing summer. Keep topping up your SUV, it's not
         | your problem.
        
       | adamrezich wrote:
       | anyone else have pretty bad We're All Gonna Die Fatigue at this
       | point
        
       | disordinary wrote:
       | According to this map I have nothing to worry about (except for
       | global economic collapse, famine, and war)
        
         | more_corn wrote:
         | Always look on the bright side.
        
       | swader999 wrote:
       | WW3 seems more pressing atm.
        
         | more_corn wrote:
         | And the good news is that nuclear winter will totally cancel
         | out climate change. We couldn't have planned it better if we
         | tried.
        
       | alar44 wrote:
       | Nearly unusable on my phone, Pixel 4.
        
         | rbosinger wrote:
         | Strange. Works really well on my Pixel 4a.
        
       | more_corn wrote:
       | Neat map
        
       | cammikebrown wrote:
       | Runs fine on my iPhone 12
        
       | mark_l_watson wrote:
       | I live in Arizona. Looks like Arizona and much of California is
       | in the bad red zone. But, we are talking 2100, and, my 71st
       | birthday is this year.
       | 
       | BTW, the animation was fine on an iPad Pro.
        
         | kennywinker wrote:
         | We've known about global warming since the 1970s, when you were
         | in your 20s. This situation is due to you, and your
         | generation's inaction over the past 50 years.
         | 
         | I'm happy you can shrug it off as an "I'll be gone by the time
         | this is an issue" problem, but I hope none of your descendants
         | ever see this comment.
        
           | umanwizard wrote:
           | People in their 20s now are fucking this up just as badly as
           | they were in the 1970s. It's everyone's fault.
        
             | kennywinker wrote:
             | It'll be a long time before people who are in their 20s now
             | have the kind of power that the boomers had and continue to
             | have. Both in terms of personal wealth and consumption
             | choices, in terms of political power (the average age in
             | the senate is currently 64), and corporate power (the
             | average CEO is 58).
             | 
             | You can only hold people accountable for the things that
             | they could have done. For someone in their early 70s that's
             | about 26 times voting for federal representatives. For
             | someone in their early 20s that's about 2 times.
             | 
             | To say those two groups bear any kind of equal
             | responsibility is just wrong.
        
         | Ancalagon wrote:
         | Its mainly a water security issue, which I think with de-sal
         | plants, rationing, and careful preservation of resources during
         | surplus years would make the issue solvable in the long run for
         | urban/suburban dwellers. Farming, however, will need to move.
         | 
         | There was an article a while back talking about this, usually
         | these water insecurity issues in the southwest are attributable
         | to the unsustainable farming practices that go on here (because
         | the year round sun and temperatures make farming convenient-
         | despite lack of rainfall).
        
           | notch656a wrote:
           | Precisely. Agriculture uses something like 74% of the water
           | supply in Arizona. 'Unable to grow desert cabbage in 2100'
           | isn't as catchy a headline, however.
        
           | czbond wrote:
           | Piggybacking your comment - I have been looking into personal
           | water recycling systems as I live in the U.S. West that
           | already has water issues due to growth.
           | 
           | Example (not endorsement): https://www.hydraloop.com
        
         | wongarsu wrote:
         | Much of California is in the red zone not only for the year
         | 2100 but also for the present, mostly due to water stress.
         | 
         | But with enough will industrial nations can largely spend their
         | way out of all of these problems. Water can be brought from far
         | away or desalinated from the ocean (both happen in California),
         | heat can be fought off by being indoors with AC, sea level rise
         | can be resisted with dikes, levees and pumps. But a lot of
         | places in Africa and Asia won't have the money to do that.
        
       | kaetemi wrote:
       | Ouch. Not even 1fps on my phone.
        
         | LAC-Tech wrote:
         | Such inefficient use of our CPU cycles is only bringing this
         | bleak reality closer!
        
           | [deleted]
        
         | mike-cardwell wrote:
         | Worked nicely using Firefox on my 11 year old Thinkpad running
         | Debian 10, with only onboard Intel graphics
        
         | keithnz wrote:
         | super smooth on a PC
        
         | losteric wrote:
         | Which phone? Silky smooth on pixel 4 using Firefox
        
       | ishtanbul wrote:
       | would be nice to see what cities are covered by the hexagons. or
       | get info about a spot by clicking it...
        
         | czbond wrote:
         | Would love to see that too.
        
         | ahnick wrote:
         | heck, just giving approximate long/lat coordinates would be a
         | huge improvement.
        
       | thriftwy wrote:
       | The nice thing that we no longer have to care due to now-imminent
       | nuclear war, have we?
        
         | wongarsu wrote:
         | I don't think nuclear war is imminent at all, but having one
         | would certainly help us reach our climate goals and give us a
         | couple decades more time. On the other hand rebuilding from a
         | war isn't conducive to using carbon-neutral energy sources or
         | the kinds of infrastructure projects necessary to deal with the
         | global warming effects we have already committed to.
        
           | rank0 wrote:
           | Lol get a load of the "environmentalist" espousing the bright
           | side of nuclear war.
        
           | thriftwy wrote:
           | It will help somebody else reach their climate goals. You and
           | me: being dead at the time.
        
         | czbond wrote:
         | I think that was media war-mongering coupled with "Putin" big
         | talk a la Trump style.
        
       | irrational wrote:
       | I don't get it. Is there some way to rotate the globe? I'm using
       | Firefox on a MacBook Pro, is it the browser I am using?
        
         | Cerium wrote:
         | You have to click a button on the top right of the info panel
         | to enable interactive globe mode.
        
         | n_o_u wrote:
         | scroll down for a while then a button to "explore the globe"
         | becomes available.
        
       | csdvrx wrote:
       | It seems a bit biased to only list the places that will become
       | uninhabitable due to say high temperature (the losses), without
       | also listing the places that will become inhabitable thanks to
       | the exact same thing (the gains)
       | 
       | It's not clear to me that say an expansion of the Sahara or the
       | desertic part of Australia won't be more than mitigated by the
       | large amount of land currently covered by permafrost in Eurasia.
       | 
       | A proper accounting of the phenomenon would show both, if only to
       | refute my naive take.
        
         | tomrod wrote:
         | > inhabitable thanks to the exact same thing (the gains)
         | 
         | A big gap will be soil quality, I reckon, as native
         | microorganisms, fungi, and plants don't traverse north/south
         | axes well
         | 
         | But yeah, there might be water and amenable temperature in
         | areas.
        
         | eropple wrote:
         | Given that few people currently live in those places _and_
         | national borders are unlikely to go away in the next hundred
         | years (while there 's a pretty clear path to ecofascist
         | isolationism if we screw this up), perhaps "it's not optimistic
         | enough" is a little bit of a reach of a criticism.
        
           | csdvrx wrote:
           | > perhaps "it's not optimistic enough" is a little bit of a
           | reach of a criticism.
           | 
           | It's not about optimism, but being factual.
           | 
           | > national borders are unlikely to go away in the next
           | hundred years
           | 
           | That's a strange take, because an argument often raised is
           | that ecological migrants must be accommodated if entire
           | countries become uninhabitable.
           | 
           | As borders are just imaginary lines in the ground, if there
           | is indeed a climate emergency, I do not see why say people
           | from the Indian subcontinent (shown preeminently in the
           | interactive map) would have no rights to settle in the empty
           | eurasian steppes.
           | 
           | Human lives matter more than imaginary lines caused by
           | historical circumstances.
        
             | eropple wrote:
             | _> an argument often raised is that ecological migrants
             | must be accommodated if entire countries become
             | uninhabitable_
             | 
             | Yes. That is the argument. It is a just and reasonable
             | argument. It does not mean that they _will_ be accomodated.
             | 
             |  _> if there is indeed a climate emergency, I do not see
             | why say people from the Indian subcontinent, I do not see
             | why say people from the Indian subcontinent (shown
             | preeminently in the interactive map) would have no rights
             | to settle in the empty eurasian steppes_
             | 
             | You don't see why? OK. Tell me: who is going to roll tanks
             | into Russia on their behalf when Russia says no?
             | 
             | An ecologically perilous future is one of harder borders
             | and angrier international affairs and is _yet another_
             | reason to avert it instead of leaping for the quick
             | dopamine pings of  "well, actually".
        
             | cwmoreiras wrote:
             | Your idea that climate change is going to disappear borders
             | is _very_ optimistic. It would be nice, but let 's not
             | forget all of human history...
        
       | losteric wrote:
       | So Africa and Middle East regions, and India, Mexico, Indonesia
       | are most at risk. Economic/climate immigration politics will get
       | ugly
        
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       (page generated 2022-04-04 23:02 UTC)