
How climate change is melting, drying and flooding Earth – in pictures - headalgorithm
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02793-0
======
dev_dull
The thing that really bugs when when discussing climate change is that it's
one of the clearest examples of confirmation bias I've ever experienced as an
adult. Forget geological time, if _anything_ out of the ordinary weather-
related occurs then it's because of XYZ climate change reason.

The same people telling me the world will spiral out of control in just 12
years are also saying that we shouldn't build any nuclear power plants, or
that the root cause of climate change is "institutional racism"[1]. It is
really starting to look more like a religion to me than a science, and I don't
say that lightly.

1\. [https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/xwneej/racism-climate-
cha...](https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/xwneej/racism-climate-change-
crisis-jamie-margolin-zero-hour)

~~~
throwaway5752
I don't actually think that the all people saying the climate will spiral out
of control in 12 years are saying what you are attributing to them.

Nuclear is not a panacea, but we should build more because this is a global
emergency. There is a racist component to the reaction to climate change
because of who is being most immediately impacted (equatorial countries and
the poor), but intent doesn't matter, because only action matters.

The science is bland and harsh, and doesn't care about how people consume it.
You can put CO2 in an aquarium, seal it, and easily measure the greenhouse
effect from CO2 yourself. You can even work out the basics of the relationship
of CO2 concentration to degree of warming. This is happening right now - it's
not predictions, it is our reality. It will happen to you regardless of how
you feel about the discussion on either side of the issue.

~~~
Iwan-Zotow
> who is being most immediately impacted (equatorial countries

huh?!?

temperature raise is a lot more pronounced at poles, not at equator

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
In the tropics you'll find a lot of food unsecurity. Hawaii is a good example
of this, importing 80% of its food. Now, climate change brings about more than
just temperature rise, we're talking about more powerful storms causing more
inundation along coastlines. Hawaii is vulnerable in this way because all of
the shipping infrastructure which supports 2 million people is at the
coastline and could easily be knocked out by a category 5 hurricane. The
flooding from such a storm can also salinate farmlands, slosh salt water,
chemicals or pathogens into the aquifer. It is clear how shit goes south very
quickly from there.

Closer to the equator you'll find Kiribati, where salination of farmlands and
aquifers has already happened. Luckily the rest of the world is still online
and willing to keep their country on life support, but the prospects for
kiribati to independently support itself in the long term are non-existent.

Carbon dioxide also raises ocean acidity which kills off corals and crashes
fisheries, leaving coastal communities without reliable protein sources.

I hope you can see how an indifference to climate change on the part of
predominately white countries to can be construed as racist. When someone says
that, he or she is talking about all the non-white people who are currently
suffering due to changes in their climates.

~~~
viklove
> In the tropics you'll find a lot of food unsecurity. Hawaii is a good
> example of this, importing 80% of its food.

This is hilariously misled. Food must be imported into Hawaii because it's an
island with very little arable land, not because it's "in the tropics."
Equatorial nations have by far the greatest access to food when compared to
any other place on the earth. That's why biodiversity is the greatest near the
equator -- there are more resources.

> I hope you can see how an indifference to climate change on the part of
> predominately white countries to can be construed as racist. When someone
> says that, he or she is talking about all the non-white people who are
> currently suffering due to changes in their climates.

Yes, but they are not disproportionately affected due to some conspiracy, but
rather just because money protects you from consequences. If you're poor, you
can't move, and you can't buy water. That affects you less if you have a
stable income and marketable skills (which are easier to access in the west).

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
Hawaii has enough arable land to support the number of people living here.
It's their distribution that's problematic. Everything is in the wrong place
to make efficient use of the land.

I live out here in the pacific, I travel all over Oahu every day. People lived
here for over a thousand years without foreign goods. The food scarcity is
manufactured to suck money back to the mainland U.S.

~~~
viklove
> The food scarcity is manufactured to suck money back to the mainland U.S.

Hah--oh wait, you're actually serious?

~~~
jacobwilliamroy
If you'd rather attribute the situation to incompetence then we can say that
the food scarcity exists because the local government supports the tourism
industry over agriculture, alotting more land and water resources and
collapsing what was once a sustainable food system... accidentally.

When you use words like "hilarious" and "hah" I feel annoyed, because I need a
little more respect and acknowledgement for the work I am doing in
horticulture, food security out here in the pacific. I have a hard time
listening to what you are trying to say when you are typing laughter at me. Do
you want to try and share your thoughts without implying that you think my
world is a joke?

~~~
Udik
I'm sorry, but how long ago was the food system of Hawaii sustainable? And how
did the society of Hawaii look back then? How many Hawaiians were there at the
time, how many should leave the islands to go back to that state, and how many
of those who should remain would actually be in favour of this solution?

------
WhompingWindows
Can we start discussing geo-engineering strategies more seriously? Andrew
Yang's mention of space mirrors was derisively put-down, but can someone lay
out why it isn't a good idea?

If SpaceX and others continue to make getting things into orbit much cheaper,
what's the argument against putting highly reflective barriers in the Lagrange
point, which is a point constantly between the Earth and the Sun. If we
deflected even 1% of sunlight, wouldn't that be enough to lower temperatures
back down towards 0 C, as opposed to +1.1 C where we are now?

And why not focus the sunlight-blocking onto the poles, which we need to
maintain our climate and which are experiencing even more rapid change?

Is the argument against these strategies that relying on geoengineering will
take focus away from transitioning our energy system? I just think we have no
hope of transitioning our energy system in time, emissions are STILL rising
year over year...we have to think about how to cool the planet while we
decarbonize our energy.

~~~
_Microft
Space mirrors are almost impossible to build right now.

Shadowing 1% of the earth would require 10 million tons of mylar foil, which
would be 100,000 launches with SpaceX's yet to complete Starship at a payload
capacity of 100t (as it was announced, seems to be down a lot for the
prototypes) to low earth orbit. That's not doable yet - and it is just the
problem of launching the mass, nothing else.

~~~
bllguo
well spitballing.. does it have to be in space? and what if we split the
mirror into many smaller ones?

what if we launched a bunch of mirrored balloons?

~~~
fooblitzky
That would probably also have the effect of reflecting some of the energy
leaving Earth back down onto it, essentially increasing the greenhouse effect.

Also, assuming you need to reflect 2% of the incoming light, and using 8ft
diameter balloons, you would need approximately 2,744,628,480,000 balloons.

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Why think so small? Do something like this

{1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Nine_(tensegrity_sphere)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_Nine_\(tensegrity_sphere\))

combine that with the ideas of

[2] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
altitude_platform_station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-
altitude_platform_station)

and _PROFIT!_

------
olivermarks
There are some wonderfully artful images in this post but it is woefully short
of evidence of anything. The 2010 image of the east Kenyan person in water by
Andrew McConnell/Panos looks staged to me. There are endless articles with
'could' and 'may' in them which are making people very anxious. I'm all for
good stewardship of the planet but am old enough to recall when we were all
doomed to soon freeze to death last century
[https://youtu.be/mOC7ePWCHGk](https://youtu.be/mOC7ePWCHGk)

~~~
throwaway5752
How many times we we all have to see the Times cover and this History Channel
pop science piece. 99% of climatologist agree on the science and the effects
of warming are plainly visible to the layman.

~~~
kortilla
>99% of climatologist agree on the science

This is not a compelling argument for a skeptic.

>99% of all numerologists agree on the science

You need to highlight the backing by the rest of the scientific community to
give confidence that it’s a real science.

~~~
beat
When 99% of the experts in the field agree, and that's not a compelling
argument to a layman with no expertise, "skeptic" is not a word I'd use to
describe that layman.

~~~
kortilla
Did you take more than two seconds to think that through? If that was a
compelling argument, everyone would believe in numerology because everyone
that calls themselves a numerologist agrees that numerology is real.

Same for psychics, priests, and on and on.

------
surfsvammel
Climate change is the only thing in my lifetime to fully horrify me. I imagine
those before us feeling similar horror in the face of world war. Still. They
acted. I find myself going on like normal. Why am I not fighting with
everything I got, if, for nothing else, for the future of my children? There
seem to be some psychological dissonance. Is the challenge just too big, the
enemy just to diffuse, for us to bother?

~~~
dev_dull
I'll take present day living over any single point in the past. Antibiotics
weren't even produced until the 1940s, and before that time a scraped knee
could literally kill you.

In the cold war people built concrete bunkers in their basement for fear of a
nuclear Armageddon.

In Rome, if you couldn't pay your taxes you were forced to sell your children
into slavery.

And here we are, where past presidents are buying ocean-front property so
clearly the elites aren't truly as concerned about it as they publicly state.

~~~
mikeash
“In the cold war people built concrete bunkers in their basement for fear of a
nuclear Armageddon.”

It’s not like this threat went away. People just stopped paying attention to
it.

~~~
chrisco255
Agreed, it just doesn't seem imminent anymore. Mutually assured destruction
seems to keep the whole thing in check.

~~~
mikeash
It will until it doesn’t. What troubles me is that it’s hard to tell whether
the risk is 1% per year or 0.000001% per year.

------
pier25
> _The sudden thawing of Arctic permafrost is of great concern to scientists,
> who say that the methane and carbon dioxide gas that the process releases is
> accelerating global warming._

This type of language really bothers me. That methane and other feedbacks are
accelerating global warming are proven facts.

~~~
Diederich
> This type of language really bothers me.

Why? It seems like the statement agrees with yours: "The sudden thawing of
Arctic permafrost is of great concern to scientists, who say that the methane
and carbon dioxide gas that the process releases is accelerating global
warming."

~~~
umvi
GP doesn't want the statement to read: "scientists believe X", he wants it to
read: "X is a fact that is not up for debate" reply

~~~
pier25
Yes, that's what I would expect from Nature. Maybe not from the NY Times.

------
sgolecha
I wish people took this seriously. This is a slow moving disaster and that
elicits a non-response from most of us. Once the temperatures rise beyond 2C,
there are many consequences - 1\. Food yields and nutrition drops
significantly. 2\. Entire species go extinct (we already see that happening).
We cannot survive independently. An entire ecosystem is needed for us to lead
a healthy and happy life. E.g. insecticides are causing die-offs of
butterflies, bees etc.. 3\. Once wild weather becomes the norm - fires, food
shortages, hurricanes etc.. massive rioting will follow. Insurance will be
expensive or non-existent (they already don’t cover Act of God) and that means
financial insecurity for most of us.

The other overlooked fact is that the greenhouse gases stay in the atmosphere
for a long long time. So, once the climate changes it won’t be a 1-day/1-week
or a 1-year event. We talk a lot of geo-engineering etc.. but why not make
small sacrifices now (eat less meat, buy local and used stuff, no single use
plastic, less air-travel etc..) and save the beautiful planet that we already
have. Yes, it will cause some economic dislocations but we will be fine.
Companies will adapt or healthy and environment friendly alternatives will
come up.

Take this seriously folks. We don’t have another planet to go to and our
children are counting on us.

~~~
dorgo
> small sacrifices

My impression ist that people are talking about sacrifices for the sake of
sacrafices and not to solve the problem. If the global warming (and related
problems) would be (magically) solved tomorrow, they would be disappointed
because no sacrifices were needed any more.

Are sacrifices even enough to solve global warming?

And sacrifices have a marketing problem. It's hard to sell them to billions of
people.

~~~
sgolecha
I am not talking about sacrifices for its own sake. What I am saying is to do
things that reduce greenhouse emissions. The problem needs to be tackled in
top-down (government policies) and bottoms-up (where consumers make behavioral
changes).

Europe seems to be more in tune with top-down. In the US, bottoms-up seems to
be the only option. Once people change their purchasing decisions - e.g. stop
buying anything that comes in individual plastic packing etc, companies will
be forced to make changes. Another example - stop giving non-sensical loot
bags in b'day parties or stop taking or giving gifts altogether.

------
Reedx
It's ridiculous we're still not rallying around nuclear power (in addition to
renewables).

 _" Nuclear is ideal for dealing with climate change, because it is the only
carbon-free, scalable energy source that’s available 24 hours a day. The
problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be solved
through innovation.

TerraPower, the company I started 10 years ago, uses an approach called a
traveling wave reactor that is safe, prevents proliferation, and produces very
little waste. We had hoped to build a pilot project in China, but recent
policy changes here in the U.S. have made that unlikely. We may be able to
build it in the United States if the funding and regulatory changes that I
mentioned earlier happen."_ -Bill Gates, Dec 2018 [1]

And even before that it's already the safest form of energy. [2] Fear has shot
us in the foot and continues preventing us from making substantial progress.

1) [https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-
Review-2...](https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Year-in-Review-2018)

2) [https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-
energy](https://ourworldindata.org/what-is-the-safest-form-of-energy)

~~~
fooblitzky
Is it really safer than solar?

"The problems with today’s reactors, such as the risk of accidents, can be
solved through innovation." \- this is an example of wishful thinking. We
don't know how we would solve the problems, we are just assuming someone will
figure out a way. That assumption is probably influenced by survivorship bias.
There's a bunch of technologies where the problems weren't solved, but we
don't hear about them much.

The mean time to build a reactor is about 7.5 years[1], so if you wanted to
transition all remaining fossil-fueled electricity generation in 12 years,
currently with 120,000 TWh of fossil fuel consumption[2], assuming 1GW of
generation per nuclear power plant, you would need to start building
approximately 14 thousand (edit: originally read millions, corrected as
pointed out in comments) nuclear power plants today.

[1] [http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-
nucle...](http://euanmearns.com/how-long-does-it-take-to-build-a-nuclear-
power-plant/) [2] [https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-
fuels](https://ourworldindata.org/fossil-fuels)

~~~
aoeusnth1
Er, TWh isn't a measure of power. It's a measure of energy. Presumably that
120,000 TWh is consumption per year?

Then we get

120000 TWH/year * (1 / 24 / 365) hours/year ~= 13.7 TW

So you would need 13700 reactors, not 14 million.

Edit: maybe you were just off by a factor of 1000 in your calculation?

~~~
fooblitzky
Yes, you are right, I was off by a factor of 1000, must have typed '000' one
too many times. Sorry.

Also, yes, the TWh was a per year amount.

------
tito
Here's an open-source chart of carbon dioxide levels globally:
[https://carbon.datahub.io](https://carbon.datahub.io)

Data is pulled from MLO on Mauna Loa in Hawaii, the gold standard for data
going back to 1958.

~~~
Androider
That is terrifying.

------
tito
I help run AirMiners, the world's largest community of scientists, engineers,
and entrepreneurs working to pull carbon dixoide from the atmosphere. Check it
out here: [http://airminers.org](http://airminers.org)

------
ausjke
Is this all caused by us humans? I'm totally against pollution caused by us,
but for global warming, who is the major source contributing to it, could it
be beyond us, e.g. the solar system cycles etc. We had ice age/geenhouse eras
in the past without human's existence at all?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth)

List of Icehouse and Greenhouse Periods

    
    
      A greenhouse period ran from 4.6 to 2.4 billion years ago.
      Huronian Glaciation – an icehouse period that ran from 2.4 billion years ago to 2.1 billion years ago
      A greenhouse period ran from 2.1 billion to 720 million years ago.
      Cryogenian – an icehouse period that ran from 720 to 635 million years ago, at times the entire Earth was frozen over
      A greenhouse period ran from 635 million years ago to 450 million years ago.
      Andean-Saharan glaciation – an icehouse period that ran from 450 to 420 million years ago
      A greenhouse period ran from 420 million years ago to 360 million years ago.
      Late Paleozoic Ice Age – an icehouse period that ran from 360 to 260 million years ago
      A greenhouse period ran from 260 million years ago to 33.9 million years ago
      Late Cenozoic Ice Age – the current icehouse period which began 33.9 million years ago

~~~
adrianN
Yes, it is all caused by us. The cycles you speak of would currently put is
into a cooling phase. Check out this article:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attribution_of_recent_climate_change)

~~~
ausjke
if that's true, maybe we should just heating up the earth while it's going to
be frozen, so we're actually doing our future generations a favor?

~~~
adrianN
We're overdoing it a bit. We should have stopped about ten to twenty years
ago. Already today it's warmer than it has ever been while humans were around.

~~~
ausjke
if we did not do it, could the earth be having a much cold climate then? I
really want to have a balanced view on this climate topic, but either side is
too extreme about supporting their one-sided points, just like the news
medias.

science should be totally based on facts, but what I saw is that, some studies
are sponsored by big industries, some are supported by political parties, some
individual opinions are threatened, how chaotic.

------
bradezone
Some facts: [https://fee.org/articles/5-surprising-scientific-facts-
about...](https://fee.org/articles/5-surprising-scientific-facts-about-earth-
s-climate/)

------
evanwarfel
Every time I read a new climate change article or headline, I think about how
much of a squandered opportunity the MIT Media Lab represents. It has a budget
of $80MM, access to some of the best minds on the planet, and not beholden to
the perverse incentives that afflict politicians and corporate executives. Are
we supposed to believe it's impossible to generate useful and commercializable
IP while simultaneously tackling climate change?

If anyone wants to brainstorm... what would it take for universities to
announce cross-campus climate change initiatives dedicated to rethinking basic
social systems? The California-China Climate Change Institute is the only one
that I know of (1).

(1) [https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Jerry-Brown-
to-...](https://www.sfchronicle.com/politics/article/Jerry-Brown-to-head-
California-China-institute-to-14454114.php#photo-16392889)

------
carapace
Climate change is a symptom, the underlying problem is our divorce from
Nature.

There are other symptoms: plastic is _everywhere_ ; insects and birds are
vanishing; etc.

We treat the world as source and sink when it is really cyclical.

 _Applied ecology_ ("Permaculture", regenerative agriculture, "food forests",
etc.) shows that we can supply _most_ of our needs locally and within our
Solar energy budget: food, waste processing, medicine, fuel, building
materials, etc. And it's _fun_ and _easy_.

------
chiefalchemist
Climate change is a process. To be clear, I believe it is happening and that
human lifestyle decisions contribute to it.

That said, snapshots of floods and droughts - which happen all the time
regardless - are a distraction. At an extreme, they give ammo to the deniers
as they can look at such and article and say, "Floods? Droughts? No news here.
Mother Nature at work."

------
adrianN
At the time of writing, this story has 186 points and is 2 hours old. It
doesn't appear on the front page of HN anymore whereas plenty of older stories
with fewer votes do. This pattern can be observed with all submissions related
to climate change. Can someone explain this to me?

------
jeromebaek
The fact that these photos are so beautiful makes me uncomfortable. Without
context, these are simply beautiful pictures of nature. With context, it's
terrifying.

------
dqpb
How humans are melting, drying, and flooding Earth.

------
helpPeople
I have talked to many people on this. I don't think you can teach the ignorant
people facts.

I wonder if you taught them philosophy, if all would fall into place.

~~~
lucb1e
(Note: I edited out a big chunk of text that contained personal details that I
am not sure I want to have set in stone online. I think the comment still
makes sense, but in case it doesn't, please just ask to clarify how statement
B logically follows from statement A, or in case A seems to be missing
altogether, just how come I think B is true.)

My world view changed dramatically over the past, say, five years, with all
the news that has been coming at us, friends that talk about it, and a tiny
bit of research (actually that's just opening Wikipedia whenever someone on
reddit says something that sounds off). Climate change wasn't a big topic for
me before that, partially because my parents hardly talked about it, school
barely mentioned it, and I didn't have to make many choices of my own. Now I
do and now it's also a bunch in the news, and now I also bring it up with
friends and talk about it to colleagues. It just takes time to spread through
society.

I don't agree that there is a certain group of "ignorant people" that can
never be taught versus <insert name for the opposing group>, especially when
you put it in a way that makes it sound like the group of ignorant people on
this planet that can never be taught is very large.

> I wonder if you taught them philosophy

What does that have to do with anything? I don't know exactly what philosophy
_is_ , but I'm pretty sure I don't need it to understand that the climate is
going to shit from our carbon-based waste gases.

------
BonerBoi420
Why is it so hard to find actual satellite images of the norther polar ice
cap?

~~~
mikeash
Probably because satellites in LEO are too low to get such a broad view, and
the camera-equipped satellites that are higher up are all over the equator.

~~~
mirimir
I found several. The most recent: [https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/noaa-
shares-first-new-vi...](https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/content/noaa-shares-first-
new-view-north-pole-earth-day)

------
wtdata
I know I will be downvoted for stating a fact but I agree with you.

The gist of the so called environmentalists is (factually, these really are
their proposals when you look at their numbers): ok USA and EU, you have to
urgently stop your emissions, even if that means total economic breakdown.
China and specially India, it's ok you can continue your emissions, and
increase then by even more than the all 1st world will cut theirs (even if
they cut it to 0), that's just fine since your are entitled to it because you
didn't do it in the past.

End result: a planet with even more emissions than today and a destroyed
economy in the western world.

But somehow, this will save the planet according to people pushing this
catastrophic scenario.

Sorry no, these people aren't pushing major climate action to save the planet,
they are doing it because they think it's hip to push this idea that the
Western way of life should be destroyed to give way to their political
ideology.

~~~
commandlinefan
The more I hear environmentalists talk, the more skeptical I get to be about
climate change. The fact that they’ve been predicting doom and gloom since I
was a kid in the 80’s makes me kind of doubt their predictive ability, but I
figure that if they’re right and we don’t do anything, that would really suck,
so I tune in just long enough to listen to what they say. After a few hours of
“I’ll hate you forever and never forgive you if you don’t do what I say”,
eventually they get around to actually saying what they want me to do: and
it’s always the same. Vote liberal. Even if I bought into the climate change
alarmism, I’d still doubt their sincerity when they tell me the only thing I
can do is elect liberal politicians: the Democrats had a super majority in the
U.S. government for years and used it to do exactly nothing about climate
change. I see no confirmation in their actions that they really believe what
they’re saying.

~~~
sachdevap
If you think that the government under Obama didn't do anything for improving
quality of air and water in the US, you are just trying not to see the facts.
And if you haven't noticed, there is a whole oil lobby that has been pushing
money into the GOP machine trying to discredit climate change for decades. US
is (for the better) a federal structure, and nothing happens by fiat forever.

Could the democrats have done better? Definitely. Are they better than the
republicans in responding better to these issues? You have to be obtuse on
purpose to believe otherwise.

------
hsdflsdhjs
Since when was nature.com a political organization?

~~~
derg
Climate change is not political

~~~
defterGoose
If only you could convince the deniers of that. Speaking from a US
perspective, they seem to think that the "libs" just want to hobble our
economy because they hate "success" and "strength" and don't actually believe
there is an existential crisis at hand.

~~~
parsnips
The US has lowered it's CO2 emissions 10% since 2000. Thanks to the "right"
and fracking. 16% in the EU.

If you eliminated US/EU production of CO2, atmospheric CO2 levels would still
rise. The slight warming that would take place as China and India modernize
their life will still happen.

~~~
adrianN
If you eliminate US/EU production of CO2, atmospheric CO2 levels would rise
24% slower. If you added in a carbon tax that it levied on imports from
countries that don't implement an equivalent system you can bet that China
would lower its emissions too. If you're very fancy you can also offer to
install alternative energy in foreign countries at cost price.

~~~
parsnips
>If you eliminate US/EU production of CO2, atmospheric CO2 levels would rise
24% slower.

Thank you for confirming my point.

>If you added in a carbon tax that it levied on imports from countries that
don't implement an equivalent system you can bet that China would lower its
emissions too. If you're very fancy you can also offer to install alternative
energy in foreign countries at cost price.

So the pitch here is... Let's risk war with a Nuclear power with a tariff
stick and for a carrot offer a way to a worse standard of living then US/EU.
This sounds real viable.

~~~
adrianN
The alternative is risking war with a nuclear power for food and land that can
be used for agriculture.

~~~
parsnips
If anything, increased CO2 and temperatures is going _expand_ the amount of
available land for agriculture. CO2, it's the gas plants crave my friend.

~~~
adrianN
It might expand the available land for agricultural use, but that land is not
going to be in the same spots as our agriculture is now. What do you think
China will do when agriculture becomes harder in China, but there is all this
Russian wilderness that used to be frozen and is becoming fertile? Or the US
with Canada? Where do you think hundreds of millions of Africans will go when
equatorial regions become uninhabitabe without AC?

