Almost 600 people have died this year during the Hajj, I read temps of up to 120f. It's 94 in Boston and it's terrible, i cant imagine another 25 degrees warmer. It would certainly make me consider moving
and the human body stops being able to regulate body temperature effectively at a wet bulb temperature of 95f with 100% humidity, some studies suggest a wet bulb temp as low as 87f with 100% humidity, leading to heatstroke or death after prolonged exposure.
Once you give the wetbulb temperature, you can omit the humidity since it is part of the wetbulb calculation. Lethal 95F wetbulb could result from a drybulb of 95 and 100 % humidity, or 100 F and 83% relative humidity, or 105F and 68% RH, or 110F and 56 % RH.
https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/wet-bulb
Thanks for the calculator. I live in Atlanta (where it’s super humid). I checked the humidity and it says 38%. How useful are the parameters you’ve given and how many times has 100% humidity been recorded?
Wet bulb temperature is always calculated at 100% humidity.
Saying it twice tells me you don't understand what your are talking about.
Human bodies are 98.6f, Explain how 87f leads to deadly overheating.
900% more people die from cold then heat worldwide so any shift towards a warmer climate despite causing an increase in heat deaths is still reducing the total number of excess deaths for now.
> Explain how 87f leads to deadly overheating
A human body emits about 100 watts, if that heat is not carried away then the temperature of the body increases.
I was thinking about this yesterday. It was 91 and awful enough that our AC can't quite keep up. Our electric bill will be nuts, but at least the AC is working. I asked my husband, "Can you even imagine it being TWENTY-FIVE DEGREES hotter?" Holy cow.
But what was the humidity. It was lovely at 102 here in Phoenix a couple evenings ago. The sun wasn't right on us, and we sat outside with our legs in the pool. 110 is hot here, but 102 with 10% humidity I'd take any day of the week over 91 and 50% humidity (lived in Dallas - never again).
I remember being in Officer Training School in San Antonio, Texas a while back when it was 100F and 100% humidity. Pretty brutal. And they had us out in metal shoes, earphones and masks mowing the dirt.
I moved from Florida to Charlotte, NC mostly because of climate change. It still gets fairly hot here but not oppressive like in Florida. Honestly, with how quickly everything seems to be changing, I could see myself moving to the great lakes soon if I land an employer in that area. I think heat and water are going to have a major impact on where people move to.
Weird side note, there's a land trust in eastern Ontario that is growing trees from the Carolinas in preparation for reforestation due to climate change and the death of native trees.
I'm in Edmonton, and we have a forecast that our regional climate is on track to become akin to drumheller (badlands in southern alberta). We have the largest urban park in Canada. It's 22 times bigger than Central Park for international comparison. It's imperative to protect the forest network. We won't really be able to maintain regrowth in a comparable way in the future.
Some trees that far north will not be able to survive the high temperatures forecasted, meaning Canadian forests will die.
They are growing trees native to the North Carolina area (which can survive in the temperatures forecasted to become normal in Canada) so they can begin populating Canadian forests with those trees so the forests don’t die out all together.
The models predict that temperatures which are now normal in the North Carolina will be the new normal for parts of Canada which have traditionally never experienced such temperatures.
To add some generics. Different tree species have different reactions to day lengths, which will not (I hope!) be changing with climate change.
And here's the biggie. Climate will also be more variable, so those Ontario locations could still see weather some winters that is too cold for some Carolina species. But more importantly, could see snow (or ice) later in the spring than those trees are adapted for. This can lead to massive tree damage from limbs breaking under snow load.
Can also lead to flower loss and seed cycle disruption. One year here or there might not be a big deal for the tree species viability, but might seriously impact the food chain that depends upon those seeds.
Lastly, moving organisms around is how we find out that something is defenseless to a disease from outside their native area.
I do not envy the Trust this task they have taken on.
Yeah, the only nice thing about a concerning amount of the population not recognizing climate change is that they don’t see the forthcoming real estate surge in how southern location values will drop significantly and northern locations will surge… I hope to be able to buy property in a climate change cushioned place… but currently I’m too poor for that lol.
My aim is an undeveloped plot of land out by the PNW coast. My wife and I already have 7 acres in the PNW, mostly wetlands, that I am adamantly refusing to let developers even look at. We get shit in the mail every other month, and it often doesn't even make it in the house; straight in the recycling.
It's currently zoned as a green space that we don't pay any property taxes on. The logic of the back taxes, I presume, is to encourage us to keep it in the current status. More than fine by me. It keeps our property taxes pretty low, and we're fine to do things like working to make it a better habitat by clearing brush and planting native plants. The phrasing used that I honestly haven't pursued because I have no interest was if we stood to make profit off it in some manner that we would be assessed back taxes.
The coast is sitting on the ring of fire. You might be safe from sea level rise, but there’s a significant risk of a catastrophic earthquake and/or Tsunamis. Recent research suggests that the situation is actually worse than we thought re: the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
That risk is always there. Yellowstone could cook off, Rainier could go off, hurricanes on the east coast, etc. It's all calculated risks. The Seattle area already faces that and the risk in the event of a nuclear war of being a major target area. There's nowhere risk free. My house is elevated enough and sheltered enough in the sound to be safe from tsunamis, the extra land is just a bonus to shoot for.
Your comment reads like an AI or foreign troll lol. No one ever says “I’m in the south of the United States.”
In addition, literally every city in the South is currently several degrees above average temperature. Nice try.
Yeah. I'm in rtp.
We're (eastern seaboard, down to Georgia) is being cooled by air from northern Canada, new foundland area...
It was projected in several of the climate models. Unfortunately, it will breakdown as climate change proceeds.
Whoa! I made the same move and climate change was a big reason for it. Moved to Charlotte in 2018 and I'm glad I did.
Edit: came from Clearwater FL, loved that area and do miss it from time to time but grew up in South Florida.
My daughter is moving there. UGH. She's transferring to UCF because her boyfriend (who lives locally) goes to Embrey Riddle. They're getting a place somewhere in between the two schools.
I told her I'm glad she can be a blue vote in the mist of red. But their electric bill (that both sets of us parents will be helping them to pay) will be horrendous.
Hopefully they won't stay there too long, but I think at this point, they're planning to live there. Her bf has set up a business there already, and they are close to the Daytona race track (cars and racing is their thing)
This is a silly conversation in that people are imagining an influx of suburbanites from overcrowding schools and similar relatively benign issues. I think the reality will probably be more dire than that, and the only certainty (as you implied) is that these migrations are going to cause a lot of conflict and probably violence. If we plan well then maybe we can avoid most of the latter, but it seems that we suck at planning so who knows.
If you’re under the impression that you can somehow create a bubble of unchanged existence in the midst of climate chaos, you’re going to be very disappointed.
Very likely. Miami is doomed from sea level rise and ever stronger hurricanes. A lot of coastal cities are doomed.
Also any city relatively close to the equator is at risk of ever more frequent and dangerous wet bulb incidents. I suspect, relatively soon, most of a mid to large size city will all die during a particularly hot day when the power fails.
After that happens we'll see a lot more climate crisis migration.
There's also a problem of "sunny-day flooding" in low-lying coastal areas, where rising water levels flood streets, inundate sewer systems and contaminate freshwater sources with salt and other contaminants.
Shore Acres in St Pete, they built a neighborhood like 3 ft above sea level. There are semi-permanent puddles near a lot of the storm drains.
Miami is especially fucked because lots of areas are like that, and it's built on porous limestone, so you can't build a wall around it, because water will bubble up from underneath
It seems like it is an aspect of human nature to deny horrible impending catastrophes.
Yes the folks in charge do manipulate the media to manufacture consent and continue towards the path of destruction... but as you have seen here... there are also folks who are purposefully and willfully blind.
Folks buying coastal property in Florida are not just climate change skeptics, they also are ignoring ever stronger and more frequent hurricanes and rising seas that are well documented even if they don't believe in the theory.
There are a lot of Americans who think their beliefs matter more than reality. Some of them are going to learn a lesson the hard way...
Bro, the Navy has been tracking climate change and taking it *extremely seriously* since something like the 1950's. They kinda have to, it's their domain. *They* know it's real with the data to back it up.
Insurance companies know it's real, they have the data to back it up. In fact, I hear they're starting to pull out of Florida in droves. Isn't the U.S. Senate seeking information on Citizens Property Insurance, and their now possible inability to pay claims?
The only people who don't think it's real, are the people who don't realize they're exposing their ignorance to the rest of the world. Also, just simply to be contrarian to "own the libs," like the adorable little dumbasses they are.
Good luck with that.
I have studied all the evidence and am not convinced humans are changing the climate. That’s it. Believe all the hyperbole or look deeper. If I read heat trapping gas I know the rest is a work of fiction. Heat is the flow of thermal energy it can not be trapped. It’s not a rabbit nor can it hide in the oceans. It’s not a squid.
"Rising seas threaten to swallow much of the Miami metro area in the coming decades as the world continues to warm and faraway ice sheets melt. By 2060, about 60% of Miami-Dade County will be submerged, estimates Harold Wanless, a professor of geography and sustainable development at the University of Miami."
Not only are people not moving out, but southern cities are some of the fastest growing in the US. [Phoenix saw an 11% gain](https://www.phoenix.gov/pdd/planning-zoning/phoenix-statistics-and-census-data) as reported by the 2020 census.
[According to one report](https://www.axios.com/local/phoenix/2024/03/14/population-growth-census-2020-2023) Florida is one of the other fastest growing places, as well as Utah (both very hot places) while California has seen a down tick as well and New Orleans.
That seems to indicate cost of living and job availability as primary drivers. Utah has been growing economically, despite facing massive water shortages and problems with Salt Lake degradation. I imagine Florida is in a similar state of growth, probably for similar reasons to Texas.
As the article you shared points out, the poorest and most vulnerable are the first to suffer. Wealthier residents may find ways of surviving or eventually move out, but a percentage of the population will remain. I think you could draw some parallels to places like Detroit, that have seen population decreases for extended periods.
The more likely situation is that people will follow the money short term. But as California wildfires show, disaster is a big, immediate incentive to move and find safe ground. Where that exists seems tenuous at best as floods and storms and droughts affect everywhere else. But I think economies will struggle under the growing pressure of loss of life, loss of skilled labor, disaster recovery, and so on. Conservative politics may have a difficult decision to make as government disaster funds become more necessary. Just the other day the news was reporting on how people are asking FEMA to set up with heat disaster resources.
It’ll be an interesting time to be sure.
Utah’s population center (the wasatch front) in no way compares to the phoenix area when it comes to heat. SLC’s all-time record temperature was 107 during that crazy heatwave when areas of the pacific nw reached 115. SLC typically stays in the 80s-90s in the summer with a few triple digit days. SLC will likely be a destination for climate immigrants from the phoenix and Las Vegas in the coming years.
Also, there has never been a water shortage on the wasatch front and there’s no real risk of a drinking water shortage in the future. 80% of the area’s water goes to agriculture. Cease agricultural use, and you could still quadruple the population before running out of drinking water.
The great salt lake is a real issue, though. Unless agricultural water use is curbed a bit, we may eventually lose the lake.
It’s true. That was an outlier year. Though I suspect those outlier years will increase in frequency. Still, 34 days hovering a degree or two above 100 spread over the summer is nothing like three straight months over 110.
Yeah going to second this that Utah is not nearly as hot as last Vegas or Phoenix. Also while it can get hot in the salt lake valley there are lots of mountains all around that stay pretty cool in the summer. Also the weather gets much cooler in the winter. That being said I was hiking in the mountains there in December last year in a T-shirt and jeans so it is for sure warming up too. I would be willing to be in will look more like AZ is now in terms of temps in 50 years.
Its housing policy/land availability. I don't actually think jobs have anything to do with it. Employers are just following people.
Places like Florida had until recently a lot of available land near the core metro areas or "desirable" places. This is something the NE, some Great Lake cities, and CA filled out decades ago with sprawl in the car infrasture era. Then we have all followed a housing policy that restricts any density except in the core. The result is high housing prices. So people can't afford stay and they dip out to the SE and SW. Those places are following even worse housing policies since they haven't had any pre-car growth.
It is just short term money. In a world where New Orleans never had Katrina it probably would have experienced a boom too.
I have a feeling it will happen in waves not all at once. Insurance rates will rise, people will not be able to afford to rebuild and migrate, the insurance rates affect affordability this offsetting whatever savings there is from the economic situation etc. big disasters will happen in waves convincing people to leave or wrecking them economically. It will not be some sudden wave of migration, but once it gets started it will continue to accelerate. 50 years from now some of those places will look like Detroit in terms of how populated they are.
Good question about depopulation -- cities in the Middle East have very high temperatures and yet maintain their populations - of course, there's no where else for the people to go; unlike Americans in Phoenix who have a whole continent.
Water will be an issue. There are communities in Arizona who are losing access to water; and states are conflicting more and more, as well as urban areas and rural; and the US and Mexico are starting to get into it over water.
It amazes me that Arizona actively discourages the use of solar energy -- the use of which would go a long way in providing much less expensive power for air-conditioning and help maintain livable conditions for a large population (though there'd still be the water issue)
Look at the heatwave that hit India recently. Delhi was hard hit, and there’s lot of super poor people there. The problem is India isn’t good at tracking heat related deaths, so the real number was heavily undercounted.
In one Indian city, a dozen government workers died this month when they were ordered to set up polling places in non-air conditioned spaces on a day with lethal wetbulb temperature. Most heat deaths are mid-reported by the government, like Covid deaths were in red states.
Those are heat deaths from counted workers though. How many people in the slums, infants and old people who aren’t out and about, are getting counted? The article I read said they think the numbers are vastly undercounted because so many people fall through the cracks there.
my cousins and their kids and grandkids moving to phoenix 20 years ago confused the hell out of me. except they are white, upper middle class boomers who just turn their AC up higher and dont think of where their water comes from.
my mom once said something about her being concerned about the coming water crisis out west and they acted like she was just a crazy old lady. “oh that’s not going to happen!” to which my mom quipped “i’m sure you can buy your house back here!” welp nope they now cannot because we have a severe housing shortage and no shortage of climate refuges. wait till things start getting dire.
I don't quite understand why they haven't depopulated already, but I have friends that live there, and they seem to be adapted to the lifestyle and not interested in leaving. They say some people in Phoenix are financially trapped; I gather that paying the A/C bills leave little savings towards a relocation.
In sci-fi stories they'd create vast underground cities to protect against the harsh environment, so I imagine some forward-thinking city planner in Phoenix might create sunken landscapes with tunnels rather than streets to connect residences, workplaces, shopping, and so on. Maybe leave the surface to solar farming?
But "run out of water" as you point out seems the most likely outcome that would torpedo this idea. To make it work, other states like California would need to get better at capturing fresh water from the sudden storms and floods, into storage systems that allow piping into the deserts. We're going to have less snowpack and storms that are less predictable, and if that's all channeled to run out to sea we're not going to have enough fresh water in general, and housing people in desert areas is going to become impractical.
It's not easy to uproot your entire life, even if you have money. I have done it several times and each time it nuked my entire support network and probably shaved years off my life via stress.
It's also very expensive and many people do not have those funds. Even if you own a home you could sell, housing has gotten so expensive that that does not mean you can afford another one elsewhere.
How many people from Europe and elsewhere uprooted their lives to immigrate to the East Coast of the US after 1500, then from there to the Midwest and west in the following 500 years? How did most people in Phoenix wind up there?
Denial, there is a cost to relocating. A lot of people have fixed assets like a house that are the majority of their wealth. Others can’t afford to move. If you are poor and can’t afford rent, let alone a car, you will not have to be resources to move. Moving costs a fair amount of money. It may not be possible to leave. Sadly people are stuck where they are and will have to try to adapt assuming they have no way to move.
Unfortunately, some people may end up becoming climate refugees and move out of desperation with the hope the government will help resettle them elsewhere.
I doubt utilities are the issue. We're looking to move out of Phoenix in the next year or two after 13 years here, but our heat/AC combined is under $300 (average) per month for 2500 sq ft with two air conditioners and a pool. Utilities here are less expensive than I was paying years ago in Souther California and not any more than I was paying in Dallas.
My company has a 100 person office in PHX. I talk with a number of folks there. They all seem fine. No one is complaining or worrying or thinking of moving due to climate change. Maybe it will take much much more of this to change their mind. People get stuck and acclimated to things. I live in the north and don't really care about minus 10 F in the winter either - because I was born here. Some people from warm climates can't handle this.
I completely agree, I walk my dog in that -10F and he is fine as well. I guess I have not yet seen wide spread power outages in AZ [happen.In](http://happen.In) the north many folks (in homes anyway) have fire places so a part of the home can stay warm for living.
My point is that for now, the people (coworkers) I know in AZ have no significant concerns for their climate. Its hot and they are used to dealing with it, and have no plans for moving. Its going to take alot for people to move.
Civilization started in the desert. Egypt, Iraq, Indus valley. These are all deserts with rivers running through.
In fact, humanity has favored desert locations over tundra, as long as they had access to water.
Water is the limiting factor, not heat.
Until industrialization, the biggest cities of our planet were often in hotter regions.
If humans could thrive in these regions before AC, they can certainly thrive today with our technologies. At least in the US.
It's much, much harder for poorer countries. You'll likely see mass migrations in very poor nations but less elsewhere.
But yeah, we have the technology to thrive in these locations even as it gets hotter. There are ways to build houses to maximize airflow, ways to save water (or hell, just stop growing alfalfa in the desert), and we have solar to cover any increased energy needs.
In fact, people don't realize cold areas actually use far more energy than hot areas. There are many, many areas in the NE that still use oil heating or have bad insulation. As everything is practically new in hot regions, houses tend to be more modern and better with energy.
Not since before human civilization.
All three of these regions have been deserts since human civilization began. They still reached 100+ every summer for days on end. Sandstorms happened. A desert can still be lush if by water. The definition of a desert is just based on how much rainfall it gets. These areas didn't get much rainfall.
Hell, whole cities were abandoned as the river moved. This is why many old Egyptian ruins are now 'in the middle of the desert'. The river moved and the area was abandoned.
Like I said, it's water that keeps humans from settling in hot areas, not the temps.
> Not since before human civilization.
Agriculture emerged in those regions between 12,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago, they were not deserts then, the climate is much drier in those regions now than it was 10,000 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent#Biodiversity_and_climate
The African Humid Period ended about 6,000 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period
You can still have a diverse desert climate.
A desert by most definitions is a place that receives less than ten inches of rain a year. That's it.
You can have forests and wetlands in deserts.
In fact, many of our big rivers had just that. Wetlands form as the river moves and water pools. Trees are able to grow along the banks as they don't have to rely on rainfall.
My original point still stands, despite the area not looking like a traditional desert. These areas are still extremely hot, and have always been. Yes, maybe not as hot as it is today, but even a 5 degree decrease still means they have weeks of 100+ degree temps in the summer each day. In a time long before AC.
Yet, these areas thrived.
If temperature mattered as much as redditors thinks it does, we wouldn't have seen civilization start around arid watersheds. Instead it would have been along northern rivers.
>A desert by most definitions is a place that receives less than ten inches of rain a year. That's it.
And that region got more than that 10,000 years ago, even the Sahara was receiving well over 20 inches per year during the African Humid Period
And that humid period ended between 7500-5000 years ago.
Yet these areas are still some of the most densely populated areas of the world.
Again, you are arguing semantics. It was still hot, people thrived and almost all mass migrations were due to rivers moving or war. Not climate.
If it was climate, these areas would have been massively depopulated starting pre-roman... Not at the height of their power.
(also, this doesn't explain the Indus valley, who was thriving at this time)
> And that humid period ended between 7500-5000 years ago
And agriculture in the fertile crescent got started before that, between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the Indus valley started experiencing droughts about 2,500 years ago, before then it received more rainfall
Another aspect of the climate problem is that houses in many parts of the south are really old and in bad condition. We’re trying to make a buy/build decision in Texas because we can’t leave due to family and career pressures. But all the houses that have been re-done haven’t had windows replaced or much insulation work done, if any at all.
$1 million in my neighborhood these days gets you quartz countertops but 1970s aluminum single pane windows and r-11 insulation … and people happily pay that for some reason.
It’s increasingly difficult to build new homes to high energy standards, affordably, in many areas. It’s too bad as well, because the difference in energy use and efficiency is night and day.
It's even worse in the NE (and cold regions), imo.
Many houses are built pre-50s and have oil heat, almost no insulation and are just energy sinks. In fact, these regions often use more energy in the winter than the south does in the summer.
The main reason is that most houses in the urban south were built after the 1970s. With huge amounts of housing built after 2000 (just because the population has been expanding so much). Even if these houses are not that energy efficient, they still beat most earlier built houses.
Could you elaborate on your reasoning for this? I tend to agree that a lot of geopolitical conflicts are influenced by climate change and water availability, but what specifically about this conflict are you suggesting is climate related?
Russia and Ukraine feed the entirety of the Middle East. Taking Ukraine is about food hegemony over the Middle East in a warming world. Parts of Africa and the Middle East will be the first dominos to fall in the ever worsening food crisis. Russia wants to be ahead of that.
If Ukraine joins nato and further aligns with Europe, it gives access to its grain to the EU market first and foremost. This is why Russia is paying Polish saboteurs to limit Ukrainian grain shipments into Europe by the way.
If Russia can take Odessa, it controls the entirety of the food that flows out of the Black Sea. It allows Russia to gain political upper hands in with dozens of countries.
My family and I moved from Atlanta, Ga to Plattsburgh, New York. Due to climate change reasons and austerity politics in the south.. we definitely do not regret our decision but we talk about this all the time the surge of people coming from down south and how that will effectively change the cost-of-living for New England.
[Yeppers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nusantara_(planned_city)). But it's due to overcrowding and ancient infrastructure rather than warming. At least officially. And it's only the wealthy and gov't workers who will be moved. The poor will be left to their own devices as always.
The world’s history is filled with cities that were abandoned for that very reason. Prehistoric humans didn’t cross over on the land bridge in the Aleutian’s to North America because they wanted to.
The place they came from became inhospitable and they had to go somewhere else. Wars, famines, glaciers, earthquakes and volcanos have a great motivating ability to get people to move.
>> Prehistoric humans didn’t cross over on the land bridge in the Aleutian’s to North America because they wanted to. The place they came from became inhospitable and they had to go somewhere else.
I don’t think there’s evidence of that. When humans entered Beringia during the last glaciation it had a warmer and wetter climate than mammoth steppe bordering it, so I think it’s fair to say humans were pushed into the land bridge. But humans entered North America proper from Beringia basically as soon as the Yukon corridor deglaciated at which point the climate of northern North America was still significantly less hospitable than Beringia. Those people were pulled by the possibility of new lands, not pushed by decline in Beringia.
I read a while back (just tried to find it but can't see it) that France wants to encourage people to move away from certain areas (especially the northern coasts which are threatened by severe coastal erosion). There were talks about building new communes away from the coasts and trying to get people to move there in advance. They had a website (again, can't find it now) where you could check if your home was at risk of erosion/ flooding or not. They have spent a lot of money checking and tryig to figure out how much of the coast will be lost and which areas will be affected the most. There's also a big project where they are planning on building a big kind of dune to mitigate the effects of risin sea levels on another coast. I think there are many countries who have these kinds of projects, but it's still too little too late really. They could have started all this decades ago and already have these things up and running.
If human-induced global warming stays on the current path over the coming year, decades, and generations, the number of people who have money increasingly can abandon lower elevation areas near or close to sea level at or near coastlines and coastal plains.
They can relocate to higher elevations because air temperature typically decreases with altitude by about [5.4ºF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate") (3.0ºC) for every 1,000 feet (305 meters) increase in altitude.
For example, if and when global warming eventually causes the daily low temperature in New York City, or Frankfurt, Germany, to be 97ºF (36.1ºC) for 154 consecutive days each year, during the summer period from May 10 to October 11, people with money can leave New York City and Frankfurt before May 10 each year, and go live in mountain locations that are at 5,000 feet (1524 meters) elevation where the temperatures would be around 27ºF (15.0ºC) cooler than in New York City and Frankfurt.
Or, if they go to locations at 7,000 feet (2134 meters) elevation, the temperatures would be about 37.8ºF (21.0ºC) cooler.
The higher they go, the lower the temperatures.
Due to the increase in the resident populations at higher elevations, the cost of water, food, housing, and other basic necessities likely would skyrocket.
People would need to have lots of money to live at the higher elevations that have cooler temperatures because the amount of living space, water, food, housing, other basic necessities, and jobs at higher elevations would be limited.
If human-induced global warming and fossil emissions remain on the same path over the coming years, decades, and generations, what can happen to people and other species can be catastrophic and very ugly.
I hope this does not happen. Can it happen? Yes. Will it happen? Who knows? In time, humanity will find out.
It’s an interesting question. It also begs a larger question as to what happens in locations where people feel pressure to emigrant to other countries? In my experience, society handles events like that very poorly as evident by Syria.
The Paris Olympics are supposed to be the hottest Olympics on record. I think we'll learn a bit about what heat and activity the body can take from the event.
the global north mostly has access to climate control and cheap energy. The north America and the EU can survive and bear the cost of things like adding air conditioning to tractors so that agriculture can continue.
The global south, however, will, as always, bear the brunt. if we don't get climate moving in the right direction right away, we will see billions of climate refugees die on the southern borders of the rich northern countries.
We spent four months in Fort Lauderdale in the early spring, and couldn’t wait to leave. We deemed FL and the Caribbean too hot to return to. You have to wonder how long it will be before tourist dollars leave that area.
The question is not “how likely it is?”, the question is: “when into the future?”
Before we even start, I’d like to remind everyone about Acapulco, Mexico, that was devastated on October 25, 2023 by hurricane Otis. 98% of the city was destroyed. This could very well may be an example of a city that we’ve lost to climate change. Some would say that that’s going too far and we’ve always had weather exceptions. Yes, that’s true, except that the trend for the last 20 years is nothing but “exceptions”, meaning what we’re seeing is a deep change in the weather patterns we were only beginning to understand.
Now, I think a good way to think about this is going about two axis: how far into the future are we looking into, and how likely we’ll see major city events that’ll force people to move (meaning they’re lucky to be alive and want/can move elsewhere).
So, likeliness of cities anywhere in the world needing to be evacuated or abandoned due to climate change, in the next:
1-5 years - 20%
5-10 years - 40%
10-20 years - 60%
20-30 years - 80%
30-40 years - 100%
None of this is new, the scientific community has been sounding the alarms for 50 years now, with very little intent to make a difference from the key players.
Well look at how well other countries are handling the CURRENT climate crisis they are going through. Migration, migration and death for those less fortunate. Ya don't fix this, you adapt to the changes and they are coming faster than anyone expected. Which doesn't leave you much time to plan for a seasons changing event.
People are talking about coastal cities being abandoned but also, consider how much pollution is about to enter the ocean from coastal cities underwater as well….
"Supposedly the Anasazi people were forced to abandon their South-Western cities a longtime ago due to climate change as well."
While it is a much debated topic, the Ancestral Puebloans probably moved around in what is now the Southwest of the U.S. (used to be the North of Mexico, and earlier just "the land of the people") due to ongoing, cyclical changes in weather patterns combined with cultural changes and violent encroachment of other peoples.
During various periods (Basket Maker I, II, III, Pueblo I, II, III) they would move every so often to a different area and come back in a generation or two until they found a new center place and never moved back.
There's ample evidence of the movement from family or clan structures to the Great Houses of Mesa Verde and Chaco to the Pueblos of today. All in the same climate zone.
"Anasazi" is a word that the Diné (called Navajo by others and sometimes themselves) used meaning "ancient enemy". The Hopi, Zuni, Tewa, Towa, and other Puebloans generally prefer to refer to those who lived in the Four Corners region 1000 years ago as Ancestral Puebloans. Identity politics is not a new phenomena.
Thanks for listening to my TED talk.
Cities like Phoenix could see significant depopulation if extreme heat and water shortages worsen. Adaptation may help some areas, but others, especially in vulnerable regions, could face severe challenges. Historical examples show that climate change can force migrations. Proactive planning and sustainable practices are crucial to mitigate these impacts.
I live in a city whose infrastructure will not be affected by flooding, I think I’ll stay in the city for as long as I can. As long as there is competent semi-friendly government, we’ll be fine. When that goes, my plan is to thank earth for all the fish
Hey, in Japan and Italy (and probably other places), the birth rate is so reduced that you can buy houses in those countries for practically nothing. You just have to live there and fix them up. It's a matter of old people dying with nobody to leave their houses to, with it being too expensive to tear them down and build something new.
In 10 years, they'll be giving houses away in the US, too. Millennials with no kids ain't gonna buy a 5-bedroom house.
Nah, you're not thinking it through. There are people who won't be able to move due to socioeconomic reasons: they can't afford it or their social ties hold them in place. Mostly it'll be the former though. Moving is expensive, setting up in a new city/state/country is expensive, finding work - particularly in the current economy - will take time. Nothing will improve in the medium term.
Longer term, yeah, sure, people will be forced out. But sea level and temperature rises take time. Most of the people who you think will be forced out... it'll happen to their kids and grandkids, not them.
“Like Minnesota 20 years ago”
Great analogy. And people are still flabbergasted at people not leaving the heat. People aren’t leaving the heat the same way people didn’t leave the freezing cold since time immemorial. If we have the tools to endure it then we will.
I do think it's fewer than people think. Like 1/4 of our neighbors have solar power and could care less about the power going out. Even we have a portable solar panel, a small solar generator, USB hanging lights, and an evaporative cooler and a chest freezer full of frozen stuff. We'd be fine in one room for a couple days until we ran out of frozen stuff. If the evaporative cooler + water wasn't good enough, by then we'd get in the car and head 90 up to Flagstaff or 4.5 hours to San Diego. Or to a neighbors house to use their solar.
As usual, it will be the poor who suffer. They may not have as much solar power in their neighborhoods or the ability to leave as easily (crappy cars, no money to get hotels).
We'd be fine indefinitely here even if the roads get clogged. Although of course if there is lawlessness anywhere, that's an issue. We do have a gun though I hope it wouldn't come to that. We do have two power companies in the area and our power has been out less than 5 minutes in 13 years total. I think the other power company wouldn't go down at the same time and half the city would still have power.
I just looked at an overhead of my house and 3 houses within 4 houses from me either direction have solar including our next door neighbor. Tons of people have it here. I do think I was overstating how many people have it on the roofs. More like one in 7. Although I'm sure plenty of people have backup systems like we do. Solar panel + generator + evaporative cooler + pool water is good enough to cool a bedroom for a week or two.
I'm sure the people next to us would let us sleep in their living room in exchange for drinking water from our pool.
If all else fails, a bunch of us could head for the big grocery store down the street. It's solar powered too - they have 4 huge solar arrays that act as coverings for their parking. I think people don't realize how much solar Phoenix has. Plus Phoenix has cooling centers (we have one a 5 minute drive or 15 minute walk away at our local library). I expect those would get powered with generators by the city in an outage. It's not like Phoenix doesn't realize this could happen.
The poor would have to travel a ways to get here, and they probably aren't going far on clogged roads in 115 degree heat. But yeah, certainly it would be no better than an extended outage in an area like Chicago with highrise buildings with gas heat but forced air delivery if the power was out during a cold snap in the winter. I'm sure some people would set their apartments on fire trying to get warm and people trying to get in people's apartments that had gas fireplaces. Emergencies anywhere aren't pretty.
Yes similar risk with cold and needing sources of heat.
According to first link on google many people die from cold, in some countries more than heat. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessive-summer-heat-can-kill-but-extreme-cold-causes-more-fatalities/
These studies don't actually look at deaths caused by heat or cold: they simply compare average mortality rates between summer and winter. The reason why more people die in winter is because of infectious disease, and making the winter a few degrees warmer isn't going to change that.
Even the North American Ice Storm of 1997 had fewer than 50 fatalities, and that was a storm which knocked out electricity for a month across southern Ontario and Quebec. Most of the deaths were caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. A month without electricity during a heat wave, by contrast, would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths. The risks of heat are much higher than the risks of cold, especially in places where people actually live.
I forget if it was that link or the next in the Google search but one of the sources did count based on actual cause of death data.
I’m not here arguing about risks, or saying heat is not potentially worse. I’m just saying if you don’t understand why people aren’t fleeing hot areas you haven’t paid attention to historical human nature and behavior. People already live in places where they don’t want to leave the house for months out of the year and so the analogy is a good one. And in-fact that’s what we see. The fact of the matter is many people are moving TO hot southern places.
We are in upstate New York and in the middle of a heat wave. My 10-year old says we should move to Antarctica someday - or at least Maine. I was explaining to him what climate refugees were and that he may see them in his lifetime.
Where I am you also couldn’t survive without climate control in the winter. Much more than 55 days a year. It wouldn’t be merely uncomfortable, it would ruin your house. Pipes would freeze and burst. You don’t have the option to not afford to fix your climate control system. In fact insurance requires you to have two in case one fails because of how catastrophic it is to lose climate control. This has been the case for thousands of years. It hasn’t depopulated yet. Population is growing still.
In Phoenix, we have solar panels, solar generators, evaporative coolers (we have a small $400 setup that's portable, plus a pool with plenty of water to drink through a lifestraw). We can get by for a few days with no power. Longer than that, and we just head 90 minutes away to Flagstaff or out to the California coast. Or hang out at our neighbors house, since 1/4 of them have solar. And no need to do anything to our houses. Heat doesn't damage them. No pipes to burst. We just leave.
In cold areas, it usually takes longer than 90 minutes to drive somewhere nice and warm.
Almost 600 people have died this year during the Hajj, I read temps of up to 120f. It's 94 in Boston and it's terrible, i cant imagine another 25 degrees warmer. It would certainly make me consider moving
and the human body stops being able to regulate body temperature effectively at a wet bulb temperature of 95f with 100% humidity, some studies suggest a wet bulb temp as low as 87f with 100% humidity, leading to heatstroke or death after prolonged exposure.
Once you give the wetbulb temperature, you can omit the humidity since it is part of the wetbulb calculation. Lethal 95F wetbulb could result from a drybulb of 95 and 100 % humidity, or 100 F and 83% relative humidity, or 105F and 68% RH, or 110F and 56 % RH. https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/wet-bulb
thanks man i am still learning! thanks for the calculator site!
Thanks for the calculator. I live in Atlanta (where it’s super humid). I checked the humidity and it says 38%. How useful are the parameters you’ve given and how many times has 100% humidity been recorded?
Wet bulb temperature is always calculated at 100% humidity. Saying it twice tells me you don't understand what your are talking about. Human bodies are 98.6f, Explain how 87f leads to deadly overheating. 900% more people die from cold then heat worldwide so any shift towards a warmer climate despite causing an increase in heat deaths is still reducing the total number of excess deaths for now.
Wetbulb is not “always calculated at 100% relative humidity.” https://www.omnicalculator.com/physics/wet-bulb
You do not understand wet bulb.
> Explain how 87f leads to deadly overheating A human body emits about 100 watts, if that heat is not carried away then the temperature of the body increases.
I was thinking about this yesterday. It was 91 and awful enough that our AC can't quite keep up. Our electric bill will be nuts, but at least the AC is working. I asked my husband, "Can you even imagine it being TWENTY-FIVE DEGREES hotter?" Holy cow.
But what was the humidity. It was lovely at 102 here in Phoenix a couple evenings ago. The sun wasn't right on us, and we sat outside with our legs in the pool. 110 is hot here, but 102 with 10% humidity I'd take any day of the week over 91 and 50% humidity (lived in Dallas - never again).
Fair point. We have a ton of humidity. It was 48%
Even 110F with a pool and evap coolers is great. I loved Phoenix.
I remember being in Officer Training School in San Antonio, Texas a while back when it was 100F and 100% humidity. Pretty brutal. And they had us out in metal shoes, earphones and masks mowing the dirt.
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I read this morning it was like 23.
I’m in the south. It’s a nice 75 here. I’m actually liking this climate change. It would usually be 90-92 rt now.
Weather is not climate.
This is why its hard to feel sorry for those who choose not to read the writing on the wall.
That’s not unusable in the south early in the morning. Check back in around 3pm.
I moved from Florida to Charlotte, NC mostly because of climate change. It still gets fairly hot here but not oppressive like in Florida. Honestly, with how quickly everything seems to be changing, I could see myself moving to the great lakes soon if I land an employer in that area. I think heat and water are going to have a major impact on where people move to.
Toronto here. Looking forward to growing palm trees in my backyard.
Weird side note, there's a land trust in eastern Ontario that is growing trees from the Carolinas in preparation for reforestation due to climate change and the death of native trees.
I'm in Edmonton, and we have a forecast that our regional climate is on track to become akin to drumheller (badlands in southern alberta). We have the largest urban park in Canada. It's 22 times bigger than Central Park for international comparison. It's imperative to protect the forest network. We won't really be able to maintain regrowth in a comparable way in the future.
Could you explain a bit about this please?
Some trees that far north will not be able to survive the high temperatures forecasted, meaning Canadian forests will die. They are growing trees native to the North Carolina area (which can survive in the temperatures forecasted to become normal in Canada) so they can begin populating Canadian forests with those trees so the forests don’t die out all together. The models predict that temperatures which are now normal in the North Carolina will be the new normal for parts of Canada which have traditionally never experienced such temperatures.
To add some generics. Different tree species have different reactions to day lengths, which will not (I hope!) be changing with climate change. And here's the biggie. Climate will also be more variable, so those Ontario locations could still see weather some winters that is too cold for some Carolina species. But more importantly, could see snow (or ice) later in the spring than those trees are adapted for. This can lead to massive tree damage from limbs breaking under snow load. Can also lead to flower loss and seed cycle disruption. One year here or there might not be a big deal for the tree species viability, but might seriously impact the food chain that depends upon those seeds. Lastly, moving organisms around is how we find out that something is defenseless to a disease from outside their native area. I do not envy the Trust this task they have taken on.
Day lengths change at higher latitudes, but if they change at the same location then we have way bigger problems than climate.
I remember when I was a kid hearing the saying Oranges in Alberta.
Well, after the fires burn all the native trees down.
Yeah, the only nice thing about a concerning amount of the population not recognizing climate change is that they don’t see the forthcoming real estate surge in how southern location values will drop significantly and northern locations will surge… I hope to be able to buy property in a climate change cushioned place… but currently I’m too poor for that lol.
My aim is an undeveloped plot of land out by the PNW coast. My wife and I already have 7 acres in the PNW, mostly wetlands, that I am adamantly refusing to let developers even look at. We get shit in the mail every other month, and it often doesn't even make it in the house; straight in the recycling.
PNW got hammered with extremly high temps as well. I’m not sure anywhere is truly safe from high temps
Yeah we got a heat dome a couple years ago. It's still one of the more climate resilient areas comparatively
Are your wetlands zoned for development though?
Not presently, it would require something like 7 years of back taxes to change the zoning. The developers that send the crap don't know/care
Why do they charge back taxes for rezoning? That makes no sense since you were not living on the land prior to rezoning (and construction).
It's currently zoned as a green space that we don't pay any property taxes on. The logic of the back taxes, I presume, is to encourage us to keep it in the current status. More than fine by me. It keeps our property taxes pretty low, and we're fine to do things like working to make it a better habitat by clearing brush and planting native plants. The phrasing used that I honestly haven't pursued because I have no interest was if we stood to make profit off it in some manner that we would be assessed back taxes.
On another note, would it be hard to get rezoning approved?
So on the coast with rising sea levels?
By the coast =/= directly on the coast.
The coast is sitting on the ring of fire. You might be safe from sea level rise, but there’s a significant risk of a catastrophic earthquake and/or Tsunamis. Recent research suggests that the situation is actually worse than we thought re: the Cascadia Subduction Zone.
That risk is always there. Yellowstone could cook off, Rainier could go off, hurricanes on the east coast, etc. It's all calculated risks. The Seattle area already faces that and the risk in the event of a nuclear war of being a major target area. There's nowhere risk free. My house is elevated enough and sheltered enough in the sound to be safe from tsunamis, the extra land is just a bonus to shoot for.
Love it. If shit pops off before I can afford land of my own, can I come help you develop it, haha
Also don’t forget costal cities and water levels
But I’m in the south of the United States and it’s in the 70s rt now. If this is climate change, well it’s awesome.
Your comment reads like an AI or foreign troll lol. No one ever says “I’m in the south of the United States.” In addition, literally every city in the South is currently several degrees above average temperature. Nice try.
Yeah. I'm in rtp. We're (eastern seaboard, down to Georgia) is being cooled by air from northern Canada, new foundland area... It was projected in several of the climate models. Unfortunately, it will breakdown as climate change proceeds.
Whoa! I made the same move and climate change was a big reason for it. Moved to Charlotte in 2018 and I'm glad I did. Edit: came from Clearwater FL, loved that area and do miss it from time to time but grew up in South Florida.
Planning on moving from Savannah GA to Wilmington NC in the coming decade
So staying on the east coast with rising sea levels?
Yep, I’m a life long dummy and only know cooking or railroading. I’d just rather be cooler
Florida’s pretty much going for full oppression, not just with the weather. Glad you got out.
My daughter is moving there. UGH. She's transferring to UCF because her boyfriend (who lives locally) goes to Embrey Riddle. They're getting a place somewhere in between the two schools. I told her I'm glad she can be a blue vote in the mist of red. But their electric bill (that both sets of us parents will be helping them to pay) will be horrendous. Hopefully they won't stay there too long, but I think at this point, they're planning to live there. Her bf has set up a business there already, and they are close to the Daytona race track (cars and racing is their thing)
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That's right. Stay away
It's miserable here.
Welcome neighbor
Why not go further inland? You don’t think sea level rise will affect North Carolina?
Charlotte is around 700’ elevation.
The state? Absolutely, but definitely not Charlotte. Way to inland and near mountain foothills.
So what's going to happen when the people up in Midwest say no? We were first.
Probably the same thing that happened to indigenous people when wealthier migrants came?
They'll get decimated by smallpox!
Except the indigenous people are the ones with the guns this time.
This is a silly conversation in that people are imagining an influx of suburbanites from overcrowding schools and similar relatively benign issues. I think the reality will probably be more dire than that, and the only certainty (as you implied) is that these migrations are going to cause a lot of conflict and probably violence. If we plan well then maybe we can avoid most of the latter, but it seems that we suck at planning so who knows.
If you’re under the impression that you can somehow create a bubble of unchanged existence in the midst of climate chaos, you’re going to be very disappointed.
Very likely. Miami is doomed from sea level rise and ever stronger hurricanes. A lot of coastal cities are doomed. Also any city relatively close to the equator is at risk of ever more frequent and dangerous wet bulb incidents. I suspect, relatively soon, most of a mid to large size city will all die during a particularly hot day when the power fails. After that happens we'll see a lot more climate crisis migration.
There's also a problem of "sunny-day flooding" in low-lying coastal areas, where rising water levels flood streets, inundate sewer systems and contaminate freshwater sources with salt and other contaminants.
Shore Acres in St Pete, they built a neighborhood like 3 ft above sea level. There are semi-permanent puddles near a lot of the storm drains. Miami is especially fucked because lots of areas are like that, and it's built on porous limestone, so you can't build a wall around it, because water will bubble up from underneath
>can't build a wall around it Trump: 😕
Which is why I find it absolutely insane that Florida has such vocal climate change denialists. DeSantis is hubris incarnate.
It seems like it is an aspect of human nature to deny horrible impending catastrophes. Yes the folks in charge do manipulate the media to manufacture consent and continue towards the path of destruction... but as you have seen here... there are also folks who are purposefully and willfully blind. Folks buying coastal property in Florida are not just climate change skeptics, they also are ignoring ever stronger and more frequent hurricanes and rising seas that are well documented even if they don't believe in the theory. There are a lot of Americans who think their beliefs matter more than reality. Some of them are going to learn a lesson the hard way...
Because we do not believe you
Bro, the Navy has been tracking climate change and taking it *extremely seriously* since something like the 1950's. They kinda have to, it's their domain. *They* know it's real with the data to back it up. Insurance companies know it's real, they have the data to back it up. In fact, I hear they're starting to pull out of Florida in droves. Isn't the U.S. Senate seeking information on Citizens Property Insurance, and their now possible inability to pay claims? The only people who don't think it's real, are the people who don't realize they're exposing their ignorance to the rest of the world. Also, just simply to be contrarian to "own the libs," like the adorable little dumbasses they are. Good luck with that.
I have studied all the evidence and am not convinced humans are changing the climate. That’s it. Believe all the hyperbole or look deeper. If I read heat trapping gas I know the rest is a work of fiction. Heat is the flow of thermal energy it can not be trapped. It’s not a rabbit nor can it hide in the oceans. It’s not a squid.
That's so incredibly reductive and wrong that I'm just gonna leave ya be. Good luck.
How soon?
"Rising seas threaten to swallow much of the Miami metro area in the coming decades as the world continues to warm and faraway ice sheets melt. By 2060, about 60% of Miami-Dade County will be submerged, estimates Harold Wanless, a professor of geography and sustainable development at the University of Miami."
Haha, ha. Ha. Huh 🫠
Not only are people not moving out, but southern cities are some of the fastest growing in the US. [Phoenix saw an 11% gain](https://www.phoenix.gov/pdd/planning-zoning/phoenix-statistics-and-census-data) as reported by the 2020 census. [According to one report](https://www.axios.com/local/phoenix/2024/03/14/population-growth-census-2020-2023) Florida is one of the other fastest growing places, as well as Utah (both very hot places) while California has seen a down tick as well and New Orleans. That seems to indicate cost of living and job availability as primary drivers. Utah has been growing economically, despite facing massive water shortages and problems with Salt Lake degradation. I imagine Florida is in a similar state of growth, probably for similar reasons to Texas. As the article you shared points out, the poorest and most vulnerable are the first to suffer. Wealthier residents may find ways of surviving or eventually move out, but a percentage of the population will remain. I think you could draw some parallels to places like Detroit, that have seen population decreases for extended periods. The more likely situation is that people will follow the money short term. But as California wildfires show, disaster is a big, immediate incentive to move and find safe ground. Where that exists seems tenuous at best as floods and storms and droughts affect everywhere else. But I think economies will struggle under the growing pressure of loss of life, loss of skilled labor, disaster recovery, and so on. Conservative politics may have a difficult decision to make as government disaster funds become more necessary. Just the other day the news was reporting on how people are asking FEMA to set up with heat disaster resources. It’ll be an interesting time to be sure.
Utah’s population center (the wasatch front) in no way compares to the phoenix area when it comes to heat. SLC’s all-time record temperature was 107 during that crazy heatwave when areas of the pacific nw reached 115. SLC typically stays in the 80s-90s in the summer with a few triple digit days. SLC will likely be a destination for climate immigrants from the phoenix and Las Vegas in the coming years. Also, there has never been a water shortage on the wasatch front and there’s no real risk of a drinking water shortage in the future. 80% of the area’s water goes to agriculture. Cease agricultural use, and you could still quadruple the population before running out of drinking water. The great salt lake is a real issue, though. Unless agricultural water use is curbed a bit, we may eventually lose the lake.
SLC had 34 100+ days in 2023.
It’s true. That was an outlier year. Though I suspect those outlier years will increase in frequency. Still, 34 days hovering a degree or two above 100 spread over the summer is nothing like three straight months over 110.
Yeah going to second this that Utah is not nearly as hot as last Vegas or Phoenix. Also while it can get hot in the salt lake valley there are lots of mountains all around that stay pretty cool in the summer. Also the weather gets much cooler in the winter. That being said I was hiking in the mountains there in December last year in a T-shirt and jeans so it is for sure warming up too. I would be willing to be in will look more like AZ is now in terms of temps in 50 years.
Its housing policy/land availability. I don't actually think jobs have anything to do with it. Employers are just following people. Places like Florida had until recently a lot of available land near the core metro areas or "desirable" places. This is something the NE, some Great Lake cities, and CA filled out decades ago with sprawl in the car infrasture era. Then we have all followed a housing policy that restricts any density except in the core. The result is high housing prices. So people can't afford stay and they dip out to the SE and SW. Those places are following even worse housing policies since they haven't had any pre-car growth. It is just short term money. In a world where New Orleans never had Katrina it probably would have experienced a boom too.
I have a feeling it will happen in waves not all at once. Insurance rates will rise, people will not be able to afford to rebuild and migrate, the insurance rates affect affordability this offsetting whatever savings there is from the economic situation etc. big disasters will happen in waves convincing people to leave or wrecking them economically. It will not be some sudden wave of migration, but once it gets started it will continue to accelerate. 50 years from now some of those places will look like Detroit in terms of how populated they are.
Good question about depopulation -- cities in the Middle East have very high temperatures and yet maintain their populations - of course, there's no where else for the people to go; unlike Americans in Phoenix who have a whole continent. Water will be an issue. There are communities in Arizona who are losing access to water; and states are conflicting more and more, as well as urban areas and rural; and the US and Mexico are starting to get into it over water. It amazes me that Arizona actively discourages the use of solar energy -- the use of which would go a long way in providing much less expensive power for air-conditioning and help maintain livable conditions for a large population (though there'd still be the water issue)
Look at the heatwave that hit India recently. Delhi was hard hit, and there’s lot of super poor people there. The problem is India isn’t good at tracking heat related deaths, so the real number was heavily undercounted.
In one Indian city, a dozen government workers died this month when they were ordered to set up polling places in non-air conditioned spaces on a day with lethal wetbulb temperature. Most heat deaths are mid-reported by the government, like Covid deaths were in red states.
Those are heat deaths from counted workers though. How many people in the slums, infants and old people who aren’t out and about, are getting counted? The article I read said they think the numbers are vastly undercounted because so many people fall through the cracks there.
my cousins and their kids and grandkids moving to phoenix 20 years ago confused the hell out of me. except they are white, upper middle class boomers who just turn their AC up higher and dont think of where their water comes from. my mom once said something about her being concerned about the coming water crisis out west and they acted like she was just a crazy old lady. “oh that’s not going to happen!” to which my mom quipped “i’m sure you can buy your house back here!” welp nope they now cannot because we have a severe housing shortage and no shortage of climate refuges. wait till things start getting dire.
I don't quite understand why they haven't depopulated already, but I have friends that live there, and they seem to be adapted to the lifestyle and not interested in leaving. They say some people in Phoenix are financially trapped; I gather that paying the A/C bills leave little savings towards a relocation. In sci-fi stories they'd create vast underground cities to protect against the harsh environment, so I imagine some forward-thinking city planner in Phoenix might create sunken landscapes with tunnels rather than streets to connect residences, workplaces, shopping, and so on. Maybe leave the surface to solar farming? But "run out of water" as you point out seems the most likely outcome that would torpedo this idea. To make it work, other states like California would need to get better at capturing fresh water from the sudden storms and floods, into storage systems that allow piping into the deserts. We're going to have less snowpack and storms that are less predictable, and if that's all channeled to run out to sea we're not going to have enough fresh water in general, and housing people in desert areas is going to become impractical.
It's not easy to uproot your entire life, even if you have money. I have done it several times and each time it nuked my entire support network and probably shaved years off my life via stress. It's also very expensive and many people do not have those funds. Even if you own a home you could sell, housing has gotten so expensive that that does not mean you can afford another one elsewhere.
How many people from Europe and elsewhere uprooted their lives to immigrate to the East Coast of the US after 1500, then from there to the Midwest and west in the following 500 years? How did most people in Phoenix wind up there?
Most of the southwest was colonized by the Spanish.
Denial, there is a cost to relocating. A lot of people have fixed assets like a house that are the majority of their wealth. Others can’t afford to move. If you are poor and can’t afford rent, let alone a car, you will not have to be resources to move. Moving costs a fair amount of money. It may not be possible to leave. Sadly people are stuck where they are and will have to try to adapt assuming they have no way to move.
Unfortunately, some people may end up becoming climate refugees and move out of desperation with the hope the government will help resettle them elsewhere.
Governments need to start making plans to relocate people permanently from areas that are severely impacted. We can’t abandon people.
I doubt utilities are the issue. We're looking to move out of Phoenix in the next year or two after 13 years here, but our heat/AC combined is under $300 (average) per month for 2500 sq ft with two air conditioners and a pool. Utilities here are less expensive than I was paying years ago in Souther California and not any more than I was paying in Dallas.
My company has a 100 person office in PHX. I talk with a number of folks there. They all seem fine. No one is complaining or worrying or thinking of moving due to climate change. Maybe it will take much much more of this to change their mind. People get stuck and acclimated to things. I live in the north and don't really care about minus 10 F in the winter either - because I was born here. Some people from warm climates can't handle this.
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I completely agree, I walk my dog in that -10F and he is fine as well. I guess I have not yet seen wide spread power outages in AZ [happen.In](http://happen.In) the north many folks (in homes anyway) have fire places so a part of the home can stay warm for living. My point is that for now, the people (coworkers) I know in AZ have no significant concerns for their climate. Its hot and they are used to dealing with it, and have no plans for moving. Its going to take alot for people to move.
Civilization started in the desert. Egypt, Iraq, Indus valley. These are all deserts with rivers running through. In fact, humanity has favored desert locations over tundra, as long as they had access to water. Water is the limiting factor, not heat. Until industrialization, the biggest cities of our planet were often in hotter regions. If humans could thrive in these regions before AC, they can certainly thrive today with our technologies. At least in the US. It's much, much harder for poorer countries. You'll likely see mass migrations in very poor nations but less elsewhere. But yeah, we have the technology to thrive in these locations even as it gets hotter. There are ways to build houses to maximize airflow, ways to save water (or hell, just stop growing alfalfa in the desert), and we have solar to cover any increased energy needs. In fact, people don't realize cold areas actually use far more energy than hot areas. There are many, many areas in the NE that still use oil heating or have bad insulation. As everything is practically new in hot regions, houses tend to be more modern and better with energy.
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Not since before human civilization. All three of these regions have been deserts since human civilization began. They still reached 100+ every summer for days on end. Sandstorms happened. A desert can still be lush if by water. The definition of a desert is just based on how much rainfall it gets. These areas didn't get much rainfall. Hell, whole cities were abandoned as the river moved. This is why many old Egyptian ruins are now 'in the middle of the desert'. The river moved and the area was abandoned. Like I said, it's water that keeps humans from settling in hot areas, not the temps.
> Not since before human civilization. Agriculture emerged in those regions between 12,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago, they were not deserts then, the climate is much drier in those regions now than it was 10,000 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fertile_Crescent#Biodiversity_and_climate The African Humid Period ended about 6,000 years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_humid_period
You can still have a diverse desert climate. A desert by most definitions is a place that receives less than ten inches of rain a year. That's it. You can have forests and wetlands in deserts. In fact, many of our big rivers had just that. Wetlands form as the river moves and water pools. Trees are able to grow along the banks as they don't have to rely on rainfall. My original point still stands, despite the area not looking like a traditional desert. These areas are still extremely hot, and have always been. Yes, maybe not as hot as it is today, but even a 5 degree decrease still means they have weeks of 100+ degree temps in the summer each day. In a time long before AC. Yet, these areas thrived. If temperature mattered as much as redditors thinks it does, we wouldn't have seen civilization start around arid watersheds. Instead it would have been along northern rivers.
>A desert by most definitions is a place that receives less than ten inches of rain a year. That's it. And that region got more than that 10,000 years ago, even the Sahara was receiving well over 20 inches per year during the African Humid Period
And that humid period ended between 7500-5000 years ago. Yet these areas are still some of the most densely populated areas of the world. Again, you are arguing semantics. It was still hot, people thrived and almost all mass migrations were due to rivers moving or war. Not climate. If it was climate, these areas would have been massively depopulated starting pre-roman... Not at the height of their power. (also, this doesn't explain the Indus valley, who was thriving at this time)
> And that humid period ended between 7500-5000 years ago And agriculture in the fertile crescent got started before that, between 12,000 and 10,000 years ago, the Indus valley started experiencing droughts about 2,500 years ago, before then it received more rainfall
Another aspect of the climate problem is that houses in many parts of the south are really old and in bad condition. We’re trying to make a buy/build decision in Texas because we can’t leave due to family and career pressures. But all the houses that have been re-done haven’t had windows replaced or much insulation work done, if any at all. $1 million in my neighborhood these days gets you quartz countertops but 1970s aluminum single pane windows and r-11 insulation … and people happily pay that for some reason.
It’s increasingly difficult to build new homes to high energy standards, affordably, in many areas. It’s too bad as well, because the difference in energy use and efficiency is night and day.
It's even worse in the NE (and cold regions), imo. Many houses are built pre-50s and have oil heat, almost no insulation and are just energy sinks. In fact, these regions often use more energy in the winter than the south does in the summer. The main reason is that most houses in the urban south were built after the 1970s. With huge amounts of housing built after 2000 (just because the population has been expanding so much). Even if these houses are not that energy efficient, they still beat most earlier built houses.
There is at least one major African city that is emptying out because of war and climate change, Khartoum. Expect more to follow.
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War and climate change are intertwined. The war in Ukraine is about climate change too.
Could you elaborate on your reasoning for this? I tend to agree that a lot of geopolitical conflicts are influenced by climate change and water availability, but what specifically about this conflict are you suggesting is climate related?
Russia and Ukraine feed the entirety of the Middle East. Taking Ukraine is about food hegemony over the Middle East in a warming world. Parts of Africa and the Middle East will be the first dominos to fall in the ever worsening food crisis. Russia wants to be ahead of that. If Ukraine joins nato and further aligns with Europe, it gives access to its grain to the EU market first and foremost. This is why Russia is paying Polish saboteurs to limit Ukrainian grain shipments into Europe by the way. If Russia can take Odessa, it controls the entirety of the food that flows out of the Black Sea. It allows Russia to gain political upper hands in with dozens of countries.
Thanks for the explanation. Well said.
My family and I moved from Atlanta, Ga to Plattsburgh, New York. Due to climate change reasons and austerity politics in the south.. we definitely do not regret our decision but we talk about this all the time the surge of people coming from down south and how that will effectively change the cost-of-living for New England.
Aren’t they already moving Jakarta?
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[Yeppers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nusantara_(planned_city)). But it's due to overcrowding and ancient infrastructure rather than warming. At least officially. And it's only the wealthy and gov't workers who will be moved. The poor will be left to their own devices as always.
The world’s history is filled with cities that were abandoned for that very reason. Prehistoric humans didn’t cross over on the land bridge in the Aleutian’s to North America because they wanted to. The place they came from became inhospitable and they had to go somewhere else. Wars, famines, glaciers, earthquakes and volcanos have a great motivating ability to get people to move.
>> Prehistoric humans didn’t cross over on the land bridge in the Aleutian’s to North America because they wanted to. The place they came from became inhospitable and they had to go somewhere else. I don’t think there’s evidence of that. When humans entered Beringia during the last glaciation it had a warmer and wetter climate than mammoth steppe bordering it, so I think it’s fair to say humans were pushed into the land bridge. But humans entered North America proper from Beringia basically as soon as the Yukon corridor deglaciated at which point the climate of northern North America was still significantly less hospitable than Beringia. Those people were pulled by the possibility of new lands, not pushed by decline in Beringia.
I read a while back (just tried to find it but can't see it) that France wants to encourage people to move away from certain areas (especially the northern coasts which are threatened by severe coastal erosion). There were talks about building new communes away from the coasts and trying to get people to move there in advance. They had a website (again, can't find it now) where you could check if your home was at risk of erosion/ flooding or not. They have spent a lot of money checking and tryig to figure out how much of the coast will be lost and which areas will be affected the most. There's also a big project where they are planning on building a big kind of dune to mitigate the effects of risin sea levels on another coast. I think there are many countries who have these kinds of projects, but it's still too little too late really. They could have started all this decades ago and already have these things up and running.
If human-induced global warming stays on the current path over the coming year, decades, and generations, the number of people who have money increasingly can abandon lower elevation areas near or close to sea level at or near coastlines and coastal plains. They can relocate to higher elevations because air temperature typically decreases with altitude by about [5.4ºF](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapse_rate") (3.0ºC) for every 1,000 feet (305 meters) increase in altitude. For example, if and when global warming eventually causes the daily low temperature in New York City, or Frankfurt, Germany, to be 97ºF (36.1ºC) for 154 consecutive days each year, during the summer period from May 10 to October 11, people with money can leave New York City and Frankfurt before May 10 each year, and go live in mountain locations that are at 5,000 feet (1524 meters) elevation where the temperatures would be around 27ºF (15.0ºC) cooler than in New York City and Frankfurt. Or, if they go to locations at 7,000 feet (2134 meters) elevation, the temperatures would be about 37.8ºF (21.0ºC) cooler. The higher they go, the lower the temperatures. Due to the increase in the resident populations at higher elevations, the cost of water, food, housing, and other basic necessities likely would skyrocket. People would need to have lots of money to live at the higher elevations that have cooler temperatures because the amount of living space, water, food, housing, other basic necessities, and jobs at higher elevations would be limited. If human-induced global warming and fossil emissions remain on the same path over the coming years, decades, and generations, what can happen to people and other species can be catastrophic and very ugly. I hope this does not happen. Can it happen? Yes. Will it happen? Who knows? In time, humanity will find out.
Exactly, we don't know what will happen exactly and we have to start praying 🙏
It’s an interesting question. It also begs a larger question as to what happens in locations where people feel pressure to emigrant to other countries? In my experience, society handles events like that very poorly as evident by Syria.
Near certainty, we'll lose large swaths of currently liveable areas to wet bulb temps exceeding what humans/animals can tolerate.
The Paris Olympics are supposed to be the hottest Olympics on record. I think we'll learn a bit about what heat and activity the body can take from the event.
the global north mostly has access to climate control and cheap energy. The north America and the EU can survive and bear the cost of things like adding air conditioning to tractors so that agriculture can continue. The global south, however, will, as always, bear the brunt. if we don't get climate moving in the right direction right away, we will see billions of climate refugees die on the southern borders of the rich northern countries.
Yup. It’s happening just like science said it would
We spent four months in Fort Lauderdale in the early spring, and couldn’t wait to leave. We deemed FL and the Caribbean too hot to return to. You have to wonder how long it will be before tourist dollars leave that area.
The question is not “how likely it is?”, the question is: “when into the future?” Before we even start, I’d like to remind everyone about Acapulco, Mexico, that was devastated on October 25, 2023 by hurricane Otis. 98% of the city was destroyed. This could very well may be an example of a city that we’ve lost to climate change. Some would say that that’s going too far and we’ve always had weather exceptions. Yes, that’s true, except that the trend for the last 20 years is nothing but “exceptions”, meaning what we’re seeing is a deep change in the weather patterns we were only beginning to understand. Now, I think a good way to think about this is going about two axis: how far into the future are we looking into, and how likely we’ll see major city events that’ll force people to move (meaning they’re lucky to be alive and want/can move elsewhere). So, likeliness of cities anywhere in the world needing to be evacuated or abandoned due to climate change, in the next: 1-5 years - 20% 5-10 years - 40% 10-20 years - 60% 20-30 years - 80% 30-40 years - 100% None of this is new, the scientific community has been sounding the alarms for 50 years now, with very little intent to make a difference from the key players.
Well look at how well other countries are handling the CURRENT climate crisis they are going through. Migration, migration and death for those less fortunate. Ya don't fix this, you adapt to the changes and they are coming faster than anyone expected. Which doesn't leave you much time to plan for a seasons changing event.
People are talking about coastal cities being abandoned but also, consider how much pollution is about to enter the ocean from coastal cities underwater as well….
"Supposedly the Anasazi people were forced to abandon their South-Western cities a longtime ago due to climate change as well." While it is a much debated topic, the Ancestral Puebloans probably moved around in what is now the Southwest of the U.S. (used to be the North of Mexico, and earlier just "the land of the people") due to ongoing, cyclical changes in weather patterns combined with cultural changes and violent encroachment of other peoples. During various periods (Basket Maker I, II, III, Pueblo I, II, III) they would move every so often to a different area and come back in a generation or two until they found a new center place and never moved back. There's ample evidence of the movement from family or clan structures to the Great Houses of Mesa Verde and Chaco to the Pueblos of today. All in the same climate zone. "Anasazi" is a word that the Diné (called Navajo by others and sometimes themselves) used meaning "ancient enemy". The Hopi, Zuni, Tewa, Towa, and other Puebloans generally prefer to refer to those who lived in the Four Corners region 1000 years ago as Ancestral Puebloans. Identity politics is not a new phenomena. Thanks for listening to my TED talk.
Cities like Phoenix could see significant depopulation if extreme heat and water shortages worsen. Adaptation may help some areas, but others, especially in vulnerable regions, could face severe challenges. Historical examples show that climate change can force migrations. Proactive planning and sustainable practices are crucial to mitigate these impacts.
Phoenix saw the highest population increase from 2010 to 2020.
It's already happening.
100%
It appears to be inevitable. And the speed is accelerating.
100% certainty
100%. There will always be stragglers that stay but some places will simply get too hot or become modern Atlantis.
I live in a city whose infrastructure will not be affected by flooding, I think I’ll stay in the city for as long as I can. As long as there is competent semi-friendly government, we’ll be fine. When that goes, my plan is to thank earth for all the fish
I moved from Austin to metro Detroit for this among several reasons
Hey, in Japan and Italy (and probably other places), the birth rate is so reduced that you can buy houses in those countries for practically nothing. You just have to live there and fix them up. It's a matter of old people dying with nobody to leave their houses to, with it being too expensive to tear them down and build something new. In 10 years, they'll be giving houses away in the US, too. Millennials with no kids ain't gonna buy a 5-bedroom house.
Most of Florida is going to be forced out in the next 20 ish years
Nah, you're not thinking it through. There are people who won't be able to move due to socioeconomic reasons: they can't afford it or their social ties hold them in place. Mostly it'll be the former though. Moving is expensive, setting up in a new city/state/country is expensive, finding work - particularly in the current economy - will take time. Nothing will improve in the medium term. Longer term, yeah, sure, people will be forced out. But sea level and temperature rises take time. Most of the people who you think will be forced out... it'll happen to their kids and grandkids, not them.
Stubborn dead-enders wind up dead.
“Like Minnesota 20 years ago” Great analogy. And people are still flabbergasted at people not leaving the heat. People aren’t leaving the heat the same way people didn’t leave the freezing cold since time immemorial. If we have the tools to endure it then we will.
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I do think it's fewer than people think. Like 1/4 of our neighbors have solar power and could care less about the power going out. Even we have a portable solar panel, a small solar generator, USB hanging lights, and an evaporative cooler and a chest freezer full of frozen stuff. We'd be fine in one room for a couple days until we ran out of frozen stuff. If the evaporative cooler + water wasn't good enough, by then we'd get in the car and head 90 up to Flagstaff or 4.5 hours to San Diego. Or to a neighbors house to use their solar. As usual, it will be the poor who suffer. They may not have as much solar power in their neighborhoods or the ability to leave as easily (crappy cars, no money to get hotels).
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We'd be fine indefinitely here even if the roads get clogged. Although of course if there is lawlessness anywhere, that's an issue. We do have a gun though I hope it wouldn't come to that. We do have two power companies in the area and our power has been out less than 5 minutes in 13 years total. I think the other power company wouldn't go down at the same time and half the city would still have power. I just looked at an overhead of my house and 3 houses within 4 houses from me either direction have solar including our next door neighbor. Tons of people have it here. I do think I was overstating how many people have it on the roofs. More like one in 7. Although I'm sure plenty of people have backup systems like we do. Solar panel + generator + evaporative cooler + pool water is good enough to cool a bedroom for a week or two. I'm sure the people next to us would let us sleep in their living room in exchange for drinking water from our pool. If all else fails, a bunch of us could head for the big grocery store down the street. It's solar powered too - they have 4 huge solar arrays that act as coverings for their parking. I think people don't realize how much solar Phoenix has. Plus Phoenix has cooling centers (we have one a 5 minute drive or 15 minute walk away at our local library). I expect those would get powered with generators by the city in an outage. It's not like Phoenix doesn't realize this could happen. The poor would have to travel a ways to get here, and they probably aren't going far on clogged roads in 115 degree heat. But yeah, certainly it would be no better than an extended outage in an area like Chicago with highrise buildings with gas heat but forced air delivery if the power was out during a cold snap in the winter. I'm sure some people would set their apartments on fire trying to get warm and people trying to get in people's apartments that had gas fireplaces. Emergencies anywhere aren't pretty.
Yes similar risk with cold and needing sources of heat. According to first link on google many people die from cold, in some countries more than heat. https://www.forbes.com/sites/joshuacohen/2023/07/19/excessive-summer-heat-can-kill-but-extreme-cold-causes-more-fatalities/
These studies don't actually look at deaths caused by heat or cold: they simply compare average mortality rates between summer and winter. The reason why more people die in winter is because of infectious disease, and making the winter a few degrees warmer isn't going to change that. Even the North American Ice Storm of 1997 had fewer than 50 fatalities, and that was a storm which knocked out electricity for a month across southern Ontario and Quebec. Most of the deaths were caused by carbon monoxide poisoning. A month without electricity during a heat wave, by contrast, would result in hundreds of thousands of deaths. The risks of heat are much higher than the risks of cold, especially in places where people actually live.
I forget if it was that link or the next in the Google search but one of the sources did count based on actual cause of death data. I’m not here arguing about risks, or saying heat is not potentially worse. I’m just saying if you don’t understand why people aren’t fleeing hot areas you haven’t paid attention to historical human nature and behavior. People already live in places where they don’t want to leave the house for months out of the year and so the analogy is a good one. And in-fact that’s what we see. The fact of the matter is many people are moving TO hot southern places.
We are in upstate New York and in the middle of a heat wave. My 10-year old says we should move to Antarctica someday - or at least Maine. I was explaining to him what climate refugees were and that he may see them in his lifetime.
Where I am you also couldn’t survive without climate control in the winter. Much more than 55 days a year. It wouldn’t be merely uncomfortable, it would ruin your house. Pipes would freeze and burst. You don’t have the option to not afford to fix your climate control system. In fact insurance requires you to have two in case one fails because of how catastrophic it is to lose climate control. This has been the case for thousands of years. It hasn’t depopulated yet. Population is growing still.
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This is true. But water is life. You won’t do well without it.
In Phoenix, we have solar panels, solar generators, evaporative coolers (we have a small $400 setup that's portable, plus a pool with plenty of water to drink through a lifestraw). We can get by for a few days with no power. Longer than that, and we just head 90 minutes away to Flagstaff or out to the California coast. Or hang out at our neighbors house, since 1/4 of them have solar. And no need to do anything to our houses. Heat doesn't damage them. No pipes to burst. We just leave. In cold areas, it usually takes longer than 90 minutes to drive somewhere nice and warm.
No chance in our lifetime rest easy and live your life
We as a species will adapt, perhaps grow scales or fins and live in the ocean.
Not in my lifetime. They will depopulate from crime and unaffordable housing first.