
Who Will Suffer Most from Climate Change? (Hint: Not You) - us0r
http://www.gatesnotes.com/Energy/Who-Will-Suffer-Most-From-Climate-Change
======
DennisP
Although true, I think headlines like this give a lot of people an impression
that the First World won't suffer. Climate change over +2C will hit the U.S.
hard, and the fact that other places are worse off won't be consolation. At
the rate we're going, that's not future generations, it's many of today's
working people at retirement age.

(For details, an excellent source is _Six Degrees_ by Mark Lynas, who read
3000 peer-reviewed papers on the effects of climate change and summarized
them, with extensive references.)

~~~
javert
> Climate change over +2C will hit the U.S. hard, and the fact that other
> places are worse off won't be consolation.

Care to elaborate? I don't see how that would be a problem. Agricultural areas
would shift, and maybe we'd have to move some stuff further inland/build
dikes/turn cities into Venice. Anything I'm missing?

I don't see how that stuff is worse than energy controls (people have no idea
how important energy is for the economy), plus even if we change, other
countries won't.

~~~
spacehome
I feel bad for the state of discussion on HN that you were downvoted for
asking an honest, polite request for more information.

~~~
olavk
Asking why it is a problem to move cites honestly sounds more like trolling
than a honest question.

~~~
spacehome
Moving or converting cities does seem like an incredible undertaking. However,
it also looks like making the world reign in its carbon emissions sufficiently
has been tried and is not yet successful; maybe it's actually impossible as
opposed to just difficult. At least changing the world to adapt to climate
change doesn't have the tragedy of the commons working against it, because
when a local government works to prepare for whatever is going to happen, the
benefit accrues locally to the people making the sacrifice.

I read several of javert's posts, and I don't get the impression of a troll.

~~~
intended
The issue at hand, isn't the people in the first world.

how would you move a city like Mumbai? Or how about any of the villages in the
hinterlands, like Waynard Kerala, Nagpur Maharashtra, random village in Bihar.

There is _very_ strong regional centrism when CC gets discussed on the web
(for obvious reasons). Local government has a hard time getting by _now_ , in
the places that have it at all.

Moving a city? Building infrastructure to manage water shortages?

I do not see how those human beings, with those resources, are going to
achieve that.

Only a few groups can talk about adapting to climate change.

------
nishantmodak
_The rice farmers I met in Bihar, for instance, are now growing a new variety
of flood-tolerant rice—nicknamed “scuba” rice—that can survive two weeks
underwater._

Found this extremely interesting. Probably because, I was surprised by the
thought that, this could be done

------
vixen99
Pros and cons? CO2 is of course the primary carbon source for plants. Not the
merest hint here of the enormous degree of planet-greening with record crop
yields equivalent to millions of dollars that's taken place as a result of the
increase in atmospheric CO2.

When discussing the results of this increase, typically, articles like this
and hundreds more [http://www.planetseed.com/relatedarticle/co2-production-
inte...](http://www.planetseed.com/relatedarticle/co2-production-
international-perspective) take pains not to mention it.

According to CSIRO" “CO2 fertilisation correlated with an 11 per cent increase
in foliage cover from 1982-2010 across parts of the arid areas studied in
Australia, North America, the Middle East and Africa.” This means that arid
regions across the world would have not greened if CO2 levels had not
increased.".

Hardly worth mentioning I guess.

~~~
ohitsdom
Interesting, it almost acts like a natural defense mechanism for the planet.
The problem is, it's not enough.

It's great if the CO2 increase has led to greater food production, but that
increased foliage hasn't stopped or slowed the CO2 increase. So yes, it's
probably "hardly worth mentioning".

~~~
sanxiyn
Eh, if you are talking about impact of climate change on agriculture, _of
course_ this is worth mentioning, and most sane sources do.

For example, quoting IPCC report "Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaptation,
and Vulnerability" chapter 7, "Evidence confirms the stimulatory effects of
carbon dioxide (CO2) in most cases on crop yields (high confidence)".

------
graycat
Let's see: Event A will cause event B. Event B will will be really bad. So,
let's go on and on about how bad event B will be, all the direct effects and
all the indirect effects. On and on.

So, get people all up on their hind legs based on how bad event B will be.

But event A, what about event A?

How do we know that event A will happen?

When do we get solid information about the chances of event A?

Event B: Gigantic flocks of pigs flying over our largest cities and dropping
huge piles of pig poop. Let's talk about all the really horrible problems all
those flying pigs will cause. Let's get the EPA, USDA, CDC, etc. working
really hard on the problem. Let's pass a lot of new laws restricting and
taxing pigs. Let's have the NIH doing genetic studies on how to do genetic
engineering to throttle the flying pigs. We need a UN effort to constrain all
those flying pigs with some treaties with some severe sanctions to protect the
world, including the poorest people who will be hurt the _worst_ , from all
those flying pigs.

In all of this, what is the chance of event A, the chances of the gigantic
flocks of flying pigs?

So, since event B with those pigs would be so bad, we get to neglect talking
about event A that the pigs will fly at all?

I smell the faint whiff of propaganda pig poop.

~~~
selimthegrim
Look, I respect you greatly, but this is not something to be cavalier about
just because the environmentalists act like it's the Great Revival and throw
up too many hosannas for our liking. Ocean acidification is real, greenhouse
and ocean thermal effects can't be explained away by sunspots and yes
Virginia, there is such a thing as phenomenology in science, despite what
people like Koonin might say.

~~~
graycat
Sure, significant and massively destructive "ocean acidification" would be
really bad.

~~~
selimthegrim
Not would be, is. It's happening now.

[http://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/11/disaster-weve-wrought-
wor...](http://www.newsweek.com/2014/07/11/disaster-weve-wrought-worlds-
oceans-may-be-irrevocable-256962.html)

~~~
graycat
_Newsweek_? Gee, I remember _Newsweek_ , 1975 and their prediction of
horrible, destructive, massive, life killing, earth ruining, devastating,
hideous, humongous, drum roll, please, "global cooling", with a scan of their
cover story in

[http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf](http://denisdutton.com/newsweek_coolingworld.pdf)

Right, _Newsweek_ , that is, _newsies_ looking to grab people, by the heart,
the gut, below the belt, always below the shoulders, never between the ears,
to get eyeballs for ads and ad revenue.

They are in the ad business. Their _content_ is just smelly bait to catch
eyeballs for their ad business.

Their stuff is garbage, as low as it can go, no higher than necessary, for
their ad revenue, in the short term. Their _reputation_? They assume their
target audience doesn't care and, thus, they don't care.

Their _content_ is really from the literary fiction tradition of _drama_ and
_art_ as in _communication, interpretation of human experience, emotion_. So,
they want to concentrate on the _drama_ of the human experiences, the horrible
things that will happen to humans.

They like to play on fears, the threats of both nature and society, as in E.
Fromm, _The Art of Loving_ , the main sources of human anxiety.

The newsies won't do any better as long as people keep reading them and they
keep getting ad revenue.

You should not have taken the newsies seriously in 1975, and you should not
today.

Again, emphasize all the horrible things that would happen with massive global
cooling. Like emphasizing all the horrible things that would happen with
gigantic flocks of flying pigs over our cities dropping thousands of tons of
pig poop a day. It would be really bad. There would be disease, death,
gigantic economic losses. What are going to do about this gigantic pig poop
problem?

To see more of how this goes, watch the now classic movie _The Music Man_
talking about the terrible threat of a pool table in town and, thus, the need
for a boy's band -- that will be $19.95 import fee.

For more, review some of how the old English morality plays went and how much
of Christian religion went in those days and nearly to the present -- terrible
threats from sin and the Devil, now we will pass the offering plate, sing the
Doxology, and see the 10%.

Got some spectacular stuff that way -- look up the Bishop's Residence in
Munich. Build something like that for yourself and it would really set you
back.

The good thing about the movie was Shirley Jones -- we're talking drop dead
gorgeous, just what you want next to you under piles of blankets on those
long, cold nights from the "global cooling".

It wasn't just Western Civilization; parts of the New World did much the same:
Indeed the ancient Mayans had some such thoughts and responded by killing
people and pouring their blood on a rock as at

[http://books.google.com/books?id=DgqLplWtGPgC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA...](http://books.google.com/books?id=DgqLplWtGPgC&pg=PA76&lpg=PA76&dq=Mayan+blood+sun+moving+sacrifice&source=web&ots=Do6njWN5M9&sig=FxTeclIiqggqIH5Ws_oENCek1uI&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA76,M1)

from page 76 of

Susan Milbrath, 'Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and
Calendars (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)',
ISBN-13 978-0292752269, University of Texas Press, 2000.

They didn't have enough solid science to know that (A) their blood would have
no effect on the sun and (B) there was no danger that the sun would stop
moving across the sky.

Ah, where can we get some of that massive, hideous, life-ending global
cooling? I was counting on it, getting under the covers with Shirley Jones!

That _global cooling_ scare was never about science, the earth, or temperature
-- those were all just _misdirections_ , as in a magic show, to hide what was
really going on. E.g., standard advice: "Always look for the hidden agenda.".

What was really going on? Sure, just obvious, just from common sense and
People 101, the usual suspects: A flim-flam, fraud, scam to get money and
power. Right, the two, usual biggies -- money and power.

~~~
selimthegrim
I'm not in the business of the sky is falling, but I can happily cite peer
reviewed, more respectable (in the scientific community) _observations_ and
measurements on ocean acidification, as opposed to the prognostications in the
seventies you are referring to.

Or, for example, if you want to drill down more into this clathrates issue, I
can put you in personal touch with some experts at Stony Brook and you can ask
all the detailed questions you like via email.

~~~
graycat
Okay, from your urging, I looked up _ocean acidification_ and found

[http://www.whoi.edu/fileserver.do?id=165564&pt=2&p=150429](http://www.whoi.edu/fileserver.do?id=165564&pt=2&p=150429)

with _Ocean Acidification_. They have a lot of seemingly serious organizations
with their logos at the bottom, e.g., NOAA. Of course, nearly all those
organizations (the IAEA is there and I can't guess why) are in the business of
screaming about CO2 from humans -- so objectivity is in question.

They had their chance, and they blew it; they just didn't make a convincing
case at all. About all they really said was that if I go swimming in the ocean
and exhale into the water, then my CO2 will make the water more acidic. I
agree. Obviously both true and trivial.

But that's also right where they blew it: They never got to how much CO2 and
how much more acidic. So, in principle nearly everything they said would also
hold for my case of blowing bubbles at the beach -- literally. They had a
chance -- they blew it.

Why? Incompetence or just covering up that so far the CO2 is nowhere nearly
enough to do much to the oceans anytime soon, and I don't know which, but in
either case they didn't turn me into a CO2 and _ocean acidification alarmist_.

Early on they said that the atmospheric CO2 makes the surface water more
acidic. I thought, "Sure, but so darned what?" It's just the surface water,
and there's a _lot_ more water out there and a lot of mixing. So, now, the
whole ocean, human CO2 is going to make the whole ocean a lot more acidic?
When? How? Via how darned much CO2 and how much more acidic? No answer.

The whole ocean? In another context, I'd take that as a thigh slapping joke
from Donald Duck or Bugs Bunny.

Next I think, significantly harmful CO2 in the ocean? _Gotta_ be kidding
because of sea floor _smokers_ , volcanoes, e.g., think Hawaii, and sea floor
spreading and associated volcanic activity from plate tectonics, e.g., the
line from Iceland south through the central Atlantic and around much of the
planet.

Next, especially in the top layers of the ocean are Phytoplankton, that is
plankton that are plants and, thus, suck up CO2. They mentioned some means of
the oceans getting rid of the CO2 but didn't mention plants. Gads.

My objections are not solid science, but their PDF didn't address even my
simple, obvious, first-cut points. So, their PDF fails both the sniff test and
the giggle test.

Maybe their worst was their

"16 Full recovery of the oceans will require tens to hundreds of millennia.
Over decades to centuries, neither weathering of continental rocks, deep ocean
mixing, or dissolution of calcium carbonate minerals in marine sediments can
occur fast enough to reverse OA over the next two centuries."

The first problem, grade F on the giggle test, is "hundreds of millennia".
That's hundreds of thousands of years, just to do something about CO2 since
the start of the industrial revolution? This is from Bugs Bunny?

In hundreds of thousands of years the oceans would routinely handle the CO2
from hundreds of thousands of years of volcanic activity but would struggle
with the industrial output of CO2 from, say, 200 years? Grade F on the sniff
test.

This statement needs at least some support from actual numerical estimates of
the quantities involved; just that statement in that PDF document is at least
incompetent as writing if not science.

Yes, they did mention pH:

"4 Average global surface ocean pH has already fallen from a pre-industrial
value of 8.2 to 8.1, corresponding to an increase in acidity of about 30%."

Boy, does that scream out for a reference, some supporting arguments (e.g.,
just how much CO2 would that take, even if none of it was taken up by plants),
and the significance of that much change in pH.

Without getting out a chemistry book, maybe I see how their change from pH 8.2
to 8.1 is "an increase in acidity of about 30%." Gee, 30%; that sounds big,
dangerous, etc. Wow! 30%! Gads.

So, 8.2 is not _acidic_ but _basic_. pH is essentially hydrogen ion
concentration. So, in a basic solution, expect nearly no hydrogen ions. So, if
pH 8.2 has nearly no hydrogen ions, then 30% more hydrogen ions to pH 8.1 is
30% of nearly nothing and, thus, nearly no change. Sorry, I have to get up and
turn off my screaming, loud BS meter that just went off ....

They blew it.

This PDF is from Donald Duck, Bugs Bunny, Goofy, The Three Stooges, Groucho
Marx, George Carlin, NOAA, or all of those?

It that's even roughly the best argument they can make, then they added
evidence of no serious problem from "ocean acidification".

Tell you what: Next time to the beach, I'll bring a roll of Tums and drop a
few into the ocean. For what's in the PDF, that should solve any problem.

For that PDF, there's a much better explanation than a significant threat to
the oceans: They want to _fit in_ with the CO2 alarmists and, thus, get grant
money.

I'm all for good research, but first they need to learn how to write. I would
not approve their grant request.

Gotta quit reading this stuff or unplug my BS meter ....

~~~
graycat
Let's see: For their pH 8.2, they have

"4 Average global surface ocean pH has already fallen from a pre-industrial
value of 8.2 to 8.1, corresponding to an increase in acidity of about 30%."

So, the 8.2 was "average", "surface", and "pre-industrial".

Hmm .... Where'd they get that number? How the heck was that known then, i.e.,
"pre-industrial"? And it was just "surface" which is already suspect.

For the 8.1, is that really comparable? That is, measured in the same places,
at the same times of year? For the 8.1, was there some recent high sea state
for a lot of mixing or a big rain storm with fresh water?

We can't just accept those numbers; we need references.

In general, for that PDF, we need references. Just due to the lack of
references, the PDF gets a grade of F due to failing to meet just common high
school term paper writing standards.

That PDF is junk.

The authors of the PDF are attempting a flim-flam, fraud, scam. That PDF is
about money and politics, not science or pH.

~~~
selimthegrim
Here's their references: [http://www.whoi.edu/OCB-
OA/page.do?pid=112616](http://www.whoi.edu/OCB-OA/page.do?pid=112616)

------
dovereconomics
>The world’s poorest farmers show up for work each day for the most part
empty-handed. That’s why of all the people who will suffer from climate
change, they are likely to suffer the most.

So, these poor farmers will demand low-cost solutions to manage these
problems. Entrepreneurs would sense this(Bill already did) and start building
these tools. It's just how capitalism works.

Unless, there's a crony global economy where corporations buy up government
and hold illegitimate monopolies.

As consequence, they are unproductive and unable to keep up with innovation.
The world doesn't get what it needs. Bill would also be a good example.

~~~
javert
I wouldn't blame this on governments/corporations. I would blame it on people
choosing to have children they can't necessarily support.

I think people should have the right to do that, but they should have to face
the consequences.

~~~
jlg23
> I would blame it on people choosing to have children they can't necessarily
> support.

It's not like that they perceive to have a choice: If one lives from day to
day (or here harvest to harvest) and has never heard of pensions nor any
chance to ever receive one, children are the only security one has for old
age.

~~~
stank345
In all likelihood, they also don't have access to education or birth control.

