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posted by mrpg on Saturday January 06 2018, @08:30AM   Printer-friendly
from the I-pick-south-france dept.

[...] Some experts estimate that climate change could force between 150 and 300 million people to find a new place to live by the middle of this century, though there is considerable uncertainty about the amount. Finding suitable locations to house them will be a significant impediment. As Michael Gerrard explained, "part of the problem is scale. If we're talking about millions of people having to be on the move, it just doesn't work."

In the U.S., there are very few habitable places that aren't already occupied by homes, businesses, or agriculture, or preserved as park lands or forests. Meanwhile, rural areas would provide few opportunities for migrants to find employment and rebuild their lives.

Instead, Gerrard suggested moving people from high-risk areas to cities whose populations are shrinking, such as Detroit, Michigan. He sees cities' potential for vertical development, energy-efficient buildings, and public transportation as a way to sustainably host climate migrants.

What if refugees from Caribbean islands don't want to live in Detroit?


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by VLM on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:06PM (11 children)

    by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:06PM (#618765)

    Its not a useful prediction in that too many other things are changing. Depletion of aquifers and oil wells means they'll have no energy which means no industrial agriculture which means no food and no water, which are somewhat more important problems.

    Kinda like those predictions that based solely on fucking rates and birth rates, Africa will have a billion higher population in a couple decades or centuries. Yeah, sure, based on fucking and birthing rates. Now try modeling the population based on fresh water supplies and food supplies. Oh the population of Africa will be decreasing then... Sounds like a continent of death.

    There's a nice side dish of the usual worthless coastal elitism, why life isn't worth living if you can't live next door to Harvard in Boston, etc. LOL at "there are very few habitable places that aren't already occupied". They're climate change migrants, by definition they'll be poor and oppressed and they'll go anywhere cheap. The article does get the destination of Detroit correct but thats not going to make Detroit a Star Trek like paradise, its going to make it like Somalia. You move Somalia to Minnesota you get Somalia in Minnesota, not star fleet academy. You move Swedes to Minnesota you get livable although cucky leftist western Sweden, which isn't so bad to visit, but nobody wins the lotto and celebrates by visiting Somalia. I'm just saying they're gonna move a bunch of poor people somewhere cheap and turn it into a complete shithole.

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  • (Score: 2) by mhajicek on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:45PM (3 children)

    by mhajicek (51) on Saturday January 06 2018, @03:45PM (#618782)

    Were you under the impression that Detroit is in Minnesota?

    --
    The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
    • (Score: 3, Flamebait) by VLM on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:13PM (2 children)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:13PM (#618800)

      MN famously has been flooded with Somali refugees to ruin it, so its an interesting analogy.

      The summary mentioned refugees going to Detroit although recently we've sent refugees to ruin MN so I'm not necessarily seeing going to Detroit as a likely outcome.

      • (Score: 2) by t-3 on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:39PM (1 child)

        by t-3 (4907) on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:39PM (#618814)

        Somalian food is great though! The last time I was in Minneapolis I ate a ton. Very friendly people too.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @07:06PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 07 2018, @07:06PM (#619242)

          Gotta love those alt-righters. "They aren't white people, they're ruining everything!" With all evidence to the contrary.

  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:01PM (2 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:01PM (#618793) Journal

    Depletion of [...] oil wells means they'll have no energy

    Oil is far from the only source of energy out there. Sun still shines. Rain still falls. Earth still hot.

    • (Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:10PM (1 child)

      by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:10PM (#618797)

      Try to fertilize, plant, harvest 2000 acres of wheat with natgas provided fertilizer and diesel tractors, then try again on the same 2000 acres with a solar panel, geothermal, and river water.

      In the long run in a rich white country, maybe. In the short run in Africa where they can't even feed themselves today WITH petrochemical easy mode toggled on, yeah that ain't happening.

      The biggest problem in Africa is historically not enough water and not enough food rarely directly kills people on long term average, the death toll is mostly indirect where lack of resources leads to total war leads to disease epidemics, etc.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:36PM

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 06 2018, @04:36PM (#618813) Journal

        with natgas provided fertilizer

        Natural gas isn't oil either.

        then try again on the same 2000 acres with a solar panel, geothermal, and river water.

        Or we can convert coal to synthetic fuel with those power sources.

  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @05:45PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 06 2018, @05:45PM (#618831)

    thats not going to make Detroit a Star Trek like paradise, its going to make it like Somalia.

    So not a paradise, but still an improvement?

  • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:58PM (2 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Saturday January 06 2018, @10:58PM (#618928) Journal

    There's a nice side dish of the usual worthless coastal elitism, why life isn't worth living if you can't live next door to Harvard in Boston, etc. LOL at "there are very few habitable places that aren't already occupied".

    That made me smile, too. So many of these articles are written by people who have never actually been to the rest of the country. They imagine they would starve, cease to exist, etc, without the mighty cities of New York, Los Angeles, Boston. They have literally no idea where the food in their corner deli comes from or how the consumer items they buy at the Apple Store are made.

    Depletion of aquifers and oil wells means they'll have no energy which means no industrial agriculture which means no food and no water, which are somewhat more important problems.

    Here I'll take issue a bit. There is plenty of wind and solar to go around to power human civilization. We only have to build the means to capture it. Prices for both have come down dramatically in the past decade. It's also pleasant and convenient that you can get both anywhere on Earth; no need to invade anyone to get it.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by deimtee on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:28AM (1 child)

      by deimtee (3272) on Sunday January 07 2018, @02:28AM (#618974) Journal

      The reason solar and wind are slow to expand is EROEI. Energy Return On Energy Invested.
      Solar and Wind have something between 1 and 40 depending on location and longevity.
      Originally oil had a EROEI of tens of thousands, to millions. Punch a hole in the ground and get huge amounts of energy.
      Even with all the easy oil gone, oil, gas, and coal still have an EROEI of hundreds.

      The reason EROEI is so important is that it dictates what proportion of your productivity is spent on energy collection, 1/EROEI
      With fossil fuels it is less than 1%, sometimes much less.
      To go fully renewable with an average EROEI of 20, fully 5% of your economy would be installing and servicing solar and wind power.

      --
      If you cough while drinking cheap red wine it really cleans out your sinuses.
      • (Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:26PM

        by VLM (445) Subscriber Badge on Sunday January 07 2018, @03:26PM (#619173)

        I've been an energy market investor / researcher for decades, deimtee gets it. I would agree with and expand on those remarks that an interesting side effect of the logistics curve and Hubbert and EROEI and the rest is famously you can pump oil out of a dump and burn it on the other side of the planet for quite a long time, but if you're having a societal collapse then starting to build a syngas plant is too little too late.

        South Africa under apartheid had white people building syngas plants and it worked "OK". That ain't happening in Africa in general or collapse areas in specific. So the plot line is everything gonna collapse which is a great time to build a fusion reactor; um, not so much. Even by Hollywood standards its a little far fetched.

        In the rich and stable rural USA someone is gonna get the idea to build syngas plants in the powder river basin and start train shipment syncrude instead of coal hoppers. That's great if you're rich and living in the rich USA, but regardless if those plants get built or not, Africa is still gonna starve and the tropical islands will still be submerged.

        There's a way to save some of the rich, is not a solution to the worlds poorest migrants wandering increasing because climate change or WTF. Its a Dunkirk type thing; some won't die, lots will, but regardless of survival, they gonna lose (at least in the short term anyway)