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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: 3, Interesting) by Arik on Sunday January 07 2018, @12:49AM (9 children)

    by Arik (4543) on Sunday January 07 2018, @12:49AM (#618947) Journal
    "What we should have done was phase out fossil fuels starting 3 decades ago. It was the easiest solution."

    Spoken like someone who has a magic wand that makes other people do his will.

    In the real world, that wasn't an easy solution, it was impossible, a fantasy, a complete non-starter.

    "Reducing CO2 is still helpful."

    Maybe, maybe not. If you want to make a compelling case for it you'll need some cost estimates along with benefits analysis for alternative uses of that money, not just a mantra. You'll also need a serious solution to the tragedy of the commons, which doesn't appear to be available, because without that it's just as impossible as your first 'easy solution.'

    "Maybe, but don't count on it."

    Good advice on any number of questions.

    "Meantime, we need to face the fact that very likely the Greenland ice sheet is a goner and will melt sometime in the next 20 to 50 years."

    30, 50, 500, close enough when you're singing to the choir?

    Anyway, yes, the more interesting part of the story is getting to the point of, ok, if this is really happening, how are we going to cope? For some reason the very people that have been insisting for the longest time this was happening, also seem to want to pull back from really thinking about the consequences.

    And just as no one really knows when the Greenland ice sheet will melt again next, no one really knows the consequences fully. Warm it up a little, ice melts, sea rises, tropical storms get stormier, temperate regions slide toward tropical, the sub-artic becomes productive farm land. The hottest wettest parts of the tropics get even hotter and wetter while sub-tropical deserts start shrinking due to increased rainfall. That far seems reasonably certain. but then the next step after that?

    Does it continue to warm? From past climate records it seems that could be very difficult to cope with, if we exit the ice age entirely most of the planet would become very dangerous for us very quickly. On the other hand there are clearly negative feedback loops that are not well understood and might conceivably prevent that from happening at this time no matter what we do, and they don't seem to get much attention. But it's well established that higher atmospheric CO2 levels directly cause faster plant growth, which reduces CO2 and increases atmospheric oxygen levels, for a single example. Increased oxygen levels, on the other hand, slow plant growth, and increases both the frequency and severity of forest fire. So we might conceivably see the warm phase proceed to a phase where tropical plant growth explodes in response to the CO2, processes that CO2 heavy atmosphere into an oxygen rich atmosphere, and then we have the largest wildfire in human history, clouding the sun with ash, and kicking us back to the cold end of the glacial cycle...

    --
    If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by dry on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:44AM (8 children)

    by dry (223) on Sunday January 07 2018, @05:44AM (#619026) Journal

    A couple of points. There is fuck all for soil in the far north, not too mention a shortage of crops that are optimized for the daylight lengths you get up there. While soil can be made and there is hydroponics, it is not as straight forward to farm up there, even with genetic engineering the plants to like it.
    CO2 is only one nutrient that a plant needs. Add CO2 without nitrogen, phosphorous and even potassium, not to mention the micro-nutrients, and you don't get much extra plant growth or get leggy growth that fails.
    The feedback mechanism is increased heat causes increased evaporation, leading to more rain and silicate rocks getting weathered and binding the carbon into rock which eventually get subducted back into the mantle. It takes time.

    As for the problems with people getting displaced and such. Under most predictions, we're probably fucked. Civilizations often don't survive climate changes and between crop failures, 100's of millions of displaced people and large militaries, it's hard to see things keeping on improving and easy to see the opposite.

    • (Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:24PM (7 children)

      by Arik (4543) on Sunday January 07 2018, @09:24PM (#619285) Journal
      Where you see problems, others will see opportunities. Soil is not uniformly bad btw, though for the most part it's fairly poor. But we've been farming for millenia, and we know ways to improve the soil. The sun-cycle may cause difficulty with some plants but it's a boon to others.

      "The feedback mechanism is increased heat causes increased evaporation, leading to more rain and silicate rocks getting weathered and binding the carbon into rock which eventually get subducted back into the mantle. It takes time."

      That's just one of a great many different feedback mechanisms, which work on different timescales and often in different directions, but yes, that one is very slow. The bit where increased rainfall increases plant growth which sucks additional CO2 out of the atmosphere is much faster.

      --
      If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
      • (Score: 2) by dry on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:19PM (6 children)

        by dry (223) on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:19PM (#619324) Journal

        Yes soil can be improved and even created. The local landfill has a pretty good soil creation process, chip up wood, mix with compostables and chicken shit, blow lots of air through it and a couple of weeks later, some nice soil that also removes a certain amount of carbon from the system.
        Plants, I mostly know about the native ones, which have usually evolved to really like particular micro-environments.
        With domestic plants and some selective breeding, lots is possible.

        I don't know about plant growth permanently removing CO2. What I see where I live is trees grow, die, and generally rot. Some ends up in swamps and is taken out of the system and some is harvested, put into houses and such and taken out of the system, but most seems to rot and return the carbon to the atmosphere.

        • (Score: 2) by Arik on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:39PM (5 children)

          by Arik (4543) on Sunday January 07 2018, @11:39PM (#619328) Journal
          "I don't know about plant growth permanently removing CO2. What I see where I live is trees grow, die, and generally rot. Some ends up in swamps and is taken out of the system and some is harvested, put into houses and such and taken out of the system, but most seems to rot and return the carbon to the atmosphere."

          Even the ones that rot do not entirely return to the atmosphere.

          "As part of the natural process, some of the carbon is released into the atmosphere, but some carbon is captured within the soil and increases the soil's organic matter content. Soil organic matter consists of the living mass of microorganisms in soil and the decomposed residues like humus. This soil organic carbon component has been calculated to be about twice the amount of carbon present in the atmosphere, and about 2.5 times the amount of carbon present in the plants living on the soil. As part of the carbon cycle, the carbon present in the decomposing plant material and present within the soil is retained in the soil, or is consumed by soil organisms. Soil organisms respire carbon dioxide into the soil, which then diffuses into the atmosphere."

          https://teeic.indianaffairs.gov/er/carbon/apptech/terrapp/index.htm

          --
          If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
          • (Score: 2) by dry on Monday January 08 2018, @12:25AM (4 children)

            by dry (223) on Monday January 08 2018, @12:25AM (#619338) Journal

            But at what speed? The temperate rain forest I live in has been here for about 12000 years and produces a lot of growth and there still isn't much soil. Down in the valley bottoms there is a lot of soil but it is a small percentage of the land.

            • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday January 08 2018, @01:51AM (3 children)

              by Arik (4543) on Monday January 08 2018, @01:51AM (#619356) Journal
              "But at what speed? The temperate rain forest I live in has been here for about 12000 years and produces a lot of growth and there still isn't much soil. Down in the valley bottoms there is a lot of soil but it is a small percentage of the land."

              Without knowing where you're talking about it's hard to say much, but if you're in a rocky mountainous area then the soil created there does indeed tend to wash downstream. It still exists.

              Bottom land is where it builds up, and that's where the denser soils will be found. There's plenty of potential bottom land in the subarctic, and in the deserts.

              --
              If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
              • (Score: 2) by dry on Monday January 08 2018, @03:51AM (2 children)

                by dry (223) on Monday January 08 2018, @03:51AM (#619391) Journal

                I'm in the Pacific North West part of N. America, rocky mountains but fairly flat right here.
                I've just spent a half hour trying to research just how fast carbon gets sequestered into soil. Hard to find much as so many results are about artificial plans to sequester.
                Seems not very cut and dried, with most carbon stored in forests and forest soils with predictions of more fires and insect infestations releasing more carbon then is being stored but hard to find much info.
                One thing that did stand out and brings us full circle is this quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terrestrial_biological_carbon_cycle [wikipedia.org]

                Higher CO2 levels in the atmosphere can cause photosynthesis to take place more efficiently, thus increasing plant growth and primary production. This could lead to the biosphere extracting more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. How long this carbon would remain sequestered in the terrestrial biosphere before being rereleased into the atmosphere is unclear, however, and it is likely that other limiting factors (e.g. nitrogen availability, moisture, etc.) would prevent CO2 fertilization from significantly increasing primary production.

                So back to the question off how much increased CO2 helps plant growth if other nutrients are still in short supply.

                If you have any good sources for how fast soil sequestration works, I'd be interested in seeing them.

                • (Score: 2) by Arik on Monday January 08 2018, @04:07AM (1 child)

                  by Arik (4543) on Monday January 08 2018, @04:07AM (#619400) Journal
                  That's the frustrating thing about this. As I've said several times, there are many many different known cycles like this, and potentially unknown ones as well, and good luck finding good sources for the nitty gritty of just how they work and under what conditions. Instead there are tons of hand-waves, like you quoted from wikipedia. "It is likely?" An estimate, without a source. Even if it had a source it's still nothing but a guess. Where are the numbers?
                  --
                  If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
                  • (Score: 2) by dry on Monday January 08 2018, @05:16AM

                    by dry (223) on Monday January 08 2018, @05:16AM (#619419) Journal

                    It's a problem. The simpler things can be tested, setup a bunch of greenhouses and give various types of plants different levels/mixtures of nutrients including CO2. Even that is hard for the average person to do though there has been enough studies to show plants do need a balance of nutrients.
                    Other things such as managing the carbon in a managed forest rapidly become very complex. I came across some modeling software released by my government. Has a 450 page user manual along with 250 pages of tutorials. http://fcm.sgrc.selkirk.ca/decision-support/cbm-cfs3/ [selkirk.ca]. I don't currently have the skills or the time to research how this works, little well to judge if they missed something.

                    All I'm left with is to try to do as little harm as possible, but I do have to eat, have shelter, etc.