How Will Climate Change Affect You Personally?

[Michael in ABQ]

I've seen several comments in other threads recently regarding the threat from climate change. I didn't want to derail those threads with an unrelated discussion so I thought it best to create a new thread.

Just to set the stage, the people in this forum and reading this thread are by and large some of the wealthiest that have ever existed (relatively speaking compared to the world average and span of human history). Most of us live in developed countries with stable governments, infrastructure, and abundant resources, etc.


So what is the actual threat climate change will have on any of us personally?

I do not mean this in a snarky way, I am truly interested in how someone living a comfortable life in America, Canada, Australia, Germany, Norway, etc. will be personally affected by climate change.

• Rising sea levels - move away from the beach.
• Hotter temperatures - turn on the A/C.
• Colder temperatures - turn on the heat
• Increase in hurricanes or other severe storms - move away from the beach.
• Changes in rainfall/temperature affecting crop yields - spend slightly more of your income on food.

Are people envisioning scenes from The Day After Tomorrow where New York is permanently flooded and then freezes solid in a matter of days?


I do recognize that for the world's poor living in tenuous situations where they don't have the luxury of moving, air conditioning, spending more on food, etc. the effects will be more pronounced. I saw this first hand in Djibouti where the level of poverty is unimaginable to most Americans (i.e. living in a tent in a place that routinely hits 100-110 degrees subsisting off a monthly ration of rice from the UN with no clean water or source of income for miles). However, I'd like to focus on those of us who do have those luxuries.

[Kris]

I mean, just because I doubt it will affect me very much personally, does that mean I shouldn’t care because it is gonna affect a shit-ton of people younger and less advantaged than I am?

[AccidentialMustache]

Does the existing increase in quantity and severity of natural disasters count?

I mean, so far me personally pretty little. Less snow in the winter. Hotter summers. I'll might end up moving north at some point to follow a cooler (and maybe less humid) annual average temp. I'm too far inland in the Midwest to get smacked by hurricanes, it's generally too rainy and humid to have the wildfires like out west. Tornadoes are probably worse, but they're pretty rare anyway. I guess we have had the lovely polar vortex thing over the last few years. Those suck.

But I know folks who live elsewhere in the country and I know its been kinda spicy for them these last few years. Heck, we even got impacted by the CA wildfires smoke. Mostly it made the sky weird, it was too high to mess with our air quality, but it was present.

Mostly I plan to be dead before it gets bad. I'm already past the halfway point for male life expectancy, so, ya know, 2100 isn't a problem I need to solve for myself, personally*.

*: Somewhat snarkily answered in the way the question was asked -- "us personally." But yes, what @Kris said.

[Abe]

My response is below:

• Rising sea levels - move away from the beach.

- doesn't affect me except some ports will have flooding issues and resulting delays. Cost of food increase.

• Hotter temperatures - turn on the A/C.

- doesn't affect me except summers in Houston will suck more. I'll be moving north out of the suck. Was planning on doing so anyway, so guess not an issue. Maybe property values?

• Colder temperatures - turn on the heat

- not an issue for me.

• Increase in hurricanes or other severe storms - move away from the beach.

- I'll assume from this comment you aren't familiar with how hurricanes work. Briefly, in addition to the storm surge at the coast (hurricanes lift and push the sea level upwards and then inland for a few miles) there's also a broad swath of rain that can extend quite a bit inland (easily 100 miles with the larger ones). Hurricanes also move in from the ocean onto land (usually), but take time to drop all the moisture they've built up. A lot of the land within 50-60 miles of the ocean in the US also has a lot of rivers that run through. For example, Hurricane Harvey flooded most of my current neighborhood despite it being 25 miles from the closest shoreline. This was primarily due to extended rainfall rather than the storm surge. My particular house did not flood though many of my neighbors' did. I guess the cost to me then would be having to raise the house if we choose to stay (or more likely move).

Storms also occur inland, for example flooding along the Mississippi river from excess rainfall in the Upper Midwest. These strong rainfalls causing flooding are common here in Houston and are somewhat more common than 50 years ago.

• Changes in rainfall/temperature affecting crop yields - spend slightly more of your income on food.

- agree with this. We don't eat much meat so will not affect us much.

[/list]

Yeah in general it's not my problem due to being very rich. Inconvenience of having to move at some point with +/- loss in property value. Agree I will be dead before it personally affects me (though flooding maybe not).

[maizefolk]

As a (comparatively) rich person, the big direct impacts on my lifestyle I envision from climate change are its impacts on social stability and system stability. Keeping a civilization running gets a bit more expensive and a bit harder when you're trying to hit a moving target instead of a predictable one.

In the USA we have an awful lot of buffer built into our food system. But Germany and Norway, for example, are very dependent on globe spanning supply chains in order to feed their people. When food gets more expensive, eventually some people aren't going to be able to afford to eat, and those people are unlikely to just sit around and starve quietly (or sit and watch their children starve quietly). That can manifest as higher rates of crime, organized violence, or even revolution (e.g. the arab spring). Even whole countries are more likely to go to war when people are starving and their leaders need someone else to blame.

Then there is the issue of shared systems like electricity and water. If everyone turns up the AC, there may not be enough power to go around. An economist would argue the solution is the raise the price of electricity until demand drops. That's what was tried in Texas last winter when there wasn't enough electricity to go around. Did not work well, created a lot of political pushback, and ultimately they switched to rolling blackouts instead. I, a person who doesn't live in Texas, ended up seeing mandatory rolling blackouts. No matter how much I paid I couldn't buy electricity from my utility during those blackouts. Never happened to me in my life until this past winter. The systems that supply our drinking and bathing water are similarly subject to failing or rationing rather than just rising prices until demand drops enough to equal supply. So shortages end up impacting everyone, even people with enough money to pay much more than we currently do.

[HPstache]

Ive often thought about this, and to be honest, I dont really think climate change will affect me much in the PNW.  Probably more in line with inconveniences and increased cost of living than unsolvable and/or catastrophic problems in my and even my through my kid's kids lifetime (call it 100 years).  I would say the most noticeable change due to the warmer weather has been an increase in forest fires that have lowered air quality for a few weeks every year, I'd chalk that up as an inconvenience and something I can easily deal with so far.  Of course those fires have messed up some lives, but even if my house burned down,  I have insurance for that.  Life is also now more expensive because we installed central AC, but to be honest that's probably cheaper to run than the 3 or 4 window units we used before.  We had all time record highs this year of approaching 100F for and our AC just ran a little longer during the cycles than normal.  I get it that it could really mess up the lives of the less fortunate in more sensitive areas, but for me I'm in a pretty good place.

[Hash Brown]

Prevailing ocean currents would have to change profoundly in order for there to be a profound change to the United States.  For example, all of the moisture that has been blown northward and eastward from the Gulf of Mexico in a clockwise manner for the past 10,000 years (since the last ice sheet receded) would have to start doing something else.  Maybe it goes counter-clockwise.  Maybe it stops blowing northwardly and air from Canada starts coming down 365 days each year.   Until something that drastic happens, life isn't going to change much for anyone. 

Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois were covered by a glacier until 10,000 years ago.  When they receded, the Great Lakes and Niagra Falls were formed.  The average temperature in the Midwestern United States was like 26F, year-round.  The homo sapian species was already fully developed about 100,000 years ago, so humans have only enjoyed temperate conditions in what is now the United States for 1/10th of our existence. 

[deborah]

It already does. I can see the changes this century.

Bushfires.
In 1984 we had one of our "normal" once in 25 years fires. It burnt a lot of south east Australia that day. The sky was black at noon and the whole horizon was red. We have always been fire prone, but at that time, we had an extremely hot day, with very hot winds, and everything would go up in flames in a day, and that would be it. I knew people who lost their houses. This has changed. We have more frequent fires, for longer, and more damaging. In each of the recent fires, I've known people who've died.

In 2003, my house in the middle of suburbia was under threat - we were told to wet down our roofs - and I could see flames from my house. About 500 houses in my city were burnt, and 80% of my territory (state). I worked in computing, and we had our backup centre more than the recommended distance from our primary centre. The fire burnt the back door of one centre, and came within 50 feet of the other. It created fire tornadoes (the first time they were documented) which dispersed the fire into places that were nowhere near the edge of the fire. My house wasn't actually affected (although we did get embers). The owners of the houses that burnt didn't even know they were at risk until after they were burnt. We had been living in an 8 year drought (also climate change) and were under strict water restrictions before the fire. It polluted the dams and the catchments, so our water restrictions became draconian after the fires. My staff had no power for weeks.

In 2009 the whole town where my mother grew up burnt to the ground. All my memories of my grandparents... disappeared. Fortunately the town people decided to evacuate - not in the recommended path (they would all have perished), but a different way.

In early 2020 I could see flames from my house again for two weeks, but fortunately we didn't get strong winds, although 60% of my territory burnt again. The 2019/2020 fires all lasted for a long time and burnt places (including rainforest) that hadn't burnt before. Almost everywhere I go, I can still see the devastation.

In 2019/2020 there was so much smoke that I was coughing every time I went outside for three months. The covid19 lockdowns were a relief because I could go outside without coughing. The fires also made visiting friends and relatives difficult.

You will note that we've changed from "once in 25 years" to "once in 10 years or less" and the severity is much more. My territory has never burnt as much as it did in either of the last two fires. People can't assume that they can stay and fight fires because they are more severe. The fire season is longer. A lot of crops get damaged from smoke (for instance wine), so food is more expensive and of poorer quality.

Floods.
At the end of the 2019/2020 fires we had severe flooding that washed away a lot of the seed bank in many areas. This hasn't happened before. Most National Parks haven't reopened because they still don't have much vegetation. We have had to work within the parameters of what is open when we try to visit places. So I have personally been affected even though it didn't flood where I live.

Drought.
Where I live in late 2019 we lost about one fifth of the trees in my city because of drought. We even lost trees that were over a hundred years old because this was unusually severe. I could see plants that had died in every garden when we went for walks in the neighbourhood. Over the Christmas/New Year period it was extremely hot, and suddenly everything died. I gave up on my vegetable garden.

[sui generis]

Yeah, I also feel like I've already been and am being personally affected by climate change, increasingly each year.  Mostly due to fires and their concomitant smoke.  It decreases the number of days you can comfortably be outside, particularly backpacking in the mountains, which is something I FIREd to spend more (not less!) time doing.  It also is really bad for your lungs, so I expect longer-term effects as well.  And this is not just at home.  We went on vacaton in AK and MT this year where the smoke caused visibility and potential health issues, as well as being on alert to evacuate our vacation home.  These are in areas that rely heavily on tourism, so I'm sure it was worrisome in many, many ways for locals.

At home, I'm not as worried about temperatures, but it does niggle at the back of my brain.  Because the temps so rarely get over 80 degrees in the summer, no one here has A/C.  But increasingly in the last few years, we have a week or two of 100+ temperatures.  We rent, so installing A/C is iffy.  At least for now.  At some point, you might have to come up with solutions, so that would be a personal impact that is negative and wholly undesirable.

Drought it a big concern where I live.  DH thinks we'd smarten up in this state and get rid of unsustainable agriculture, and there's plenty for residential, but I'm not so sure.  If we've seen anything from COVID, it is that we can get used to some pretty terrible things as opposed to being brave enough to implement needed reforms.  I mean, some of the most liberal places can barely get through vaccine mandates and we think there's a chance draconian water use restrictions like outlawing almond and alfalfa farmers or golf courses would work?  I am not optimistic and with (knock on wood) 40 or 50 years to go, I am not sure I get to die before I see the big, bad water fights.

But mostly in the present, it's smoke.  I grew up in the west and the only smoke I ever remember was from campfires.  Now, we spend weeks living with smoke surrounding us constantly as we go about our business.  It's more than a little dystopian.

[mspym]

Absolutely, Australia is a rich country *and* Sydney will have large sections of it that will be very difficult to live in due to heat within the next 20 years. The bushfires made it impossible to go outside all last summer, and even with AC, the smell was nauseating. I am not looking forward to needing to wear a face mask in 40+ celsius heat this summer.

My home country is New Zealand. Most of the population lives in coastal areas that will be affected by changing weather and sea rises. In the South Island, most roads are along the coast line and there are only 3 passes through the mountains that make up the bulk of the Island. Everything else goes along the edges. Now, those roads will be washed away or blocked by landslides, with the majority of them underwater in the next 80 years. The majority of electricity is hydro-generated. If the rainfall or snow melt changes, that has impact on the power used by the country.

My husband is American. With climate change likely to increase the number of pandemics (anyone remember Zika?), our visits to visit his family will become increasingly rare. We were meant to go in 2020, but that obviously didn't happen. Repeat as needed for all future pandemics. That's just keeping it on the very personal level. We also have a whole swag of younger generation people* we care about who will live through whatever happens next.

*kids, niblings, etc

[former player]

Climate change isn't just about building a hurricane-proof bunker on a hill in a location chosen because it might still have a benign climate and drinkable water.  Climate change makes food hard to grow, climate change makes fish and shellfish scarce as their habitats change temperature and acidity, climate change makes transport more difficult.  Rising food prices as a result make governments less stable.  Destruction of property values and reductions in places to live, making the remaining places more crowded, make governments less stable.  Wealth depends on stable government: what do you think a house in Syria or Afghanistan or Somalia is worth?  What do you think their stock markets are worth?  The rich will do better longer under climate change than most others, but it is coming for all of us.

I do recognize that for the world's poor living in tenuous situations where they don't have the luxury of moving,

I'm going to take issue on this.  There are a lot of people in the world who won't have the ability to move because they are just too poor.  They and their children will die where there are.  But the world has got a lot richer in the last few decades, and that means that there are a few billion people who have just enough resources to pick up and move rather than stay and die.  Before the end of this century human migration is not just going to involve a few thousand Haitians and central Americans at the southern border of the USA, or a million Syrians, Iraqis and Afghanistanis crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, it is going to involve tens and hundreds of millions of people moving across and between continents, on a scale that cannot be stopped.

Prevailing ocean currents would have to change profoundly in order for there to be a profound change to the United States.  For example, all of the moisture that has been blown northward and eastward from the Gulf of Mexico in a clockwise manner for the past 10,000 years (since the last ice sheet receded) would have to start doing something else.  Maybe it goes counter-clockwise.  Maybe it stops blowing northwardly and air from Canada starts coming down 365 days each year.   Until something that drastic happens, life isn't going to change much for anyone. 

I'm taking issue with this too.  There is a credible scientific path to the end of the Gulf Stream as a result of rapid melting of the Greenland ice pack, which is already underway.  The reason air currents blow northeast from the Gulf of Mexico is that the Rocky Mountains are a barrier to the general flow of air at that lattitude and in their lee air comes up from the south to fill that space. Hopefully (there is already disruption to the patterns of air currents) that will continue to ameliorate the loss of the Gulf Stream. But the full consequences are currently uncertain.  The loss of the Gulf Stream would adversely affect my (otherwise carefully chosen and climate-safe) location.

[Fresh Bread]

Deborah's already covered the issue with fire & drought in Australia. We are getting more torrential rainfall when we do get it, so on a personal level (but first world problem level), I struggle with brief localised flooding events in the urban areas. All my basic costs like insurance, local authority rates and food will rise.

Other than that, I'm expecting to be affected by huge refugee numbers / political instability
and populist governments reacting to xenophobia & higher prices. In the future I expect more unrest, terrorism & the rise of right wing extremists who will offer hope to those who are struggling.

[chemistk]

A loaded question for sure.

The demographic that includes this forum won't be anything more than inconvenienced. Maybe some will even have to work a few extra years. A few could see their home communities and/or the places they were raised burn down or become permanently uninhabitable. Relocation won't even be remotely difficult.

Personally, where I live, I'm likely to see a few more storms and extra flooding but barring a 'Day After Tomorrow' event, my region will continue to be habitable for a long time.

Nah, as a few others have said, we're all going to be affected indirectly. All these regional, disparate events aggregate to be major issues that are going to continue to economically destabilize many in the country and many more around the world. Power outages in Texas currently are still seeing their effects play out right now - even now there are still many petroleum-derived products that are hard to get. When that happens again, it's only going to magnify the stress on already stressed supply chains. Same with shipping and transportation. Or tropical crops. Or hurricanes/wildfires/floods that suck millions or billions in federal aid.

As these ripples make their way through the global economy, more people will starve, more people will fall into poverty, more people will suffer food insecurity (even if they aren't in poverty). None of us (except the most wealthy) will be able to avoid little things like price increases or product shortages. None of us will be able to escape the socioeconomic discontent that results from the destabilization of interconnected and fragile systems.

[jrhampt]

I live on the East Coast.  So far, I see warmer winters (I run year round now) and hotter, more humid summers (used to only use the AC maybe 6 days total during the entire summer - now it is 2-3 months of AC - you have to do this because in the extreme humidity your house will rust, mold, and warp).  This house was not in a flood plain until FEMA redrew the maps about 6 years ago, and now it is.  Water table is rising and we have to upgrade our septic systems around town to accommodate this.  Our lobster have migrated northward to Maine and Canada.  More frequent extreme weather events, tropical storms, etc. causing basement flooding and power outages around the state.  More days during the summer when our skies are hazy with wildfire smoke from the West Coast and poor air quality.  These are just the immediate local impacts off the top of my head.

[deborah]

I’m sure everyone here is already seeing climate change. I live in the alpine region of Australia, and a number of birds that couldn’t live here year round twenty years ago (when I moved here) now live here year round. Even in the past few years the birds have changed. The Aborigines had big ceremonies here when the bogong moths arrived from the coast in summer - they were a delicacy. Until five years ago, each summer the migrating bogong moths would hide in my line dried washing, trying to find a dark place to hibernate. For the last five years I’ve rarely seen any of them. When I’ve visited the US and Canada over the past few years, people have mentioned all sorts of things that are changing.

The Indian Pacific Ocean has a weather system that oscillates, bringing monsoons and droughts to half the world - https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/ninonina.html - the system has been changing, bringing noticeably longer, more severe droughts and more torrential rains. In 2019/2020 my area had its lowest recorded soil moisture - no wonder so many trees died. The guardian put together what Australia had been going through - https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2020/dec/22/interactive-map-which-areas-of-australia-were-hit-by-multiple-disasters-in-2020 - but the other side of the pacific, including the US would be experiencing the opposite part of the oscillation as well - wet seasons when we’re having droughts, droughts when we’re having rains.

The US has many pacific island territories, which are now battling rising oceans and salt water inundating their water tables. As they are part of the US, you probably already have some of your own internal climate refugees.

[anotherAlias]

Aside from temperatures swinging further between extremes and more local flooding,  the most immediate and probably most impactful change is the longer more intense allergy season.  With longer growing seasons, more of the pollens that I'm allergic to are peaking at the same time.  I have noticed this getting worse in the past 10 years or so.  This may seem trivial to most people but for me, it means months of being in a drugged stupor, sleeping like shit, massive amounts of snot, endless itching of my whole body and hating being outside for months at a time. I plan on starting allergy shots next year but that isn't an immediate or guaranteed solution.

[MudPuppy]

Personally, I live in an area prone to severe thunderstorms and tornados. Those will get worse. My specific community (and most of the surrounding ones) has a lot of drainage issues. The heavier the rainfalls will cause greater flash floods. Our house is in a great location in the middle of our small city, but the park that we walk to has a creek that flooded nearby houses earlier this year. I hope we don’t, but I would not be surprised if we have to move to another part of the county.

[YttriumNitrate]

For things directly impacting my daily life, a slightly warmer Lake Michigan is probably the main thing. On the plus side, a warmer lake means more fun days playing in it, but less ice shelf in the winter also means more erosion and smaller beaches.

[GodlessCommie]

I agree with the poster above that one of the greatest direct threats is a threat to social stability. It beyond naive to think that if life becomes unbearable for a significant portion of the population, they will let others enjoy their bunkers in the hills. Plus, you'll have even greater pressure on the Southern border.

You need to be really far from a beach for a hurricane not to affect you with certainty. The amount of rain it can dump can (and already is) lead to problems, and they can be felt pretty far from the coast. And even w/o hurricanes, more intense rains -> more intense flooding. See Germany, earlier this summer.

[GuitarStv]

My dad's a farmer.  He follows farming news very closely, and is quite concerned about the impacts of climate change.  He has been seeing his yields slowly dropping over the past 20 years on the same land.

Climate change means less consistent weather.  Some areas will get longer periods of drought, some will get more flooding.  Just an extra couple weeks of either can ruin an entire year's worth of crops.  If crops become more expensive, then meat becomes more expensive as most feed animals are fed grains produced the year before.  Dairy also becomes more expensive.

The price increases will vary depending on the type of food, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect dairy and meat prices to triple in the next decade and a half.  The price of grain could easily double.

Certain popular types of produce are also likely to become unavailable, or so expensive that they're effectively unavailable.  Last I read, more than 60% of the wild species of coffee tree are at risk of extinction due to climate change.  More than 50% of the land currently used to farm coffee is expected to be unusable for the crop by 2100 (https://theconversation.com/how-the-coffee-industry-is-about-to-get-roasted-by-climate-change-85054).  There is real possibility that the Cavendish crop of bananas you eat will be extinct in the near future, as they're being ravaged by Panama disease.  The world supply of chocolate is also starting to be negatively impacted by climate change.

You couple a dropping supply of food with an increasing supply of people, and that seems like a big recipe for social problems - even if you're rich.

[Sanitary Stache]

I am thinking the migration will cause the largest impact to me personally.  Where I live is very likely to fail the test of accepting climate refugees.  People will come, the rich first, and they will make their bunkers. Then the poor will come.  Our apparently abundant resources will quickly be used up, our trees, starting to struggle from changing climate, will be cut down and will not regrow.  Increased intensity rain storms and the reduction in tree cover will wash our valley centric infrastructure away - though perhaps this will separate the villages and hillsides from the highways just enough to preserve them.

My home will become crowded and threatened by erosion. I will be cut off from emergency resources and electricity more frequently.  I hope to fortify my bunker against these eventualities with more solar and battery backups and more stormwater management structures and retaining walls.  Drinking water could easily be cutoff to my house. I would pump water from the river, probably haul it for the first few years that this starts happening.  Really, I would work to fortify the drinking water system to prevent this (mostly improve the river crossings).

The changing climate will likely help food production for my little homestead, but additional protection from rain, wind, and drought would be needed in the form of green houses and grey water recycling.  I hope to purchase my neighbors property to both expand the farming area and control additional housing.  I, at least, hope to pass the migration test and welcome both those in need and those with means into the community and help them identify a role in the community that builds our resiliency.

[bacchi]

40 million people get water from the Colorado River. Those people, in Arizona, Nevada, and California, will need to find another source of water. Or move.

Beginning next year they [Arizona farmers] will be cut off from much of the water they have relied on for decades. Much smaller reductions are mandated for Nevada and for Mexico across the southern border.

But larger cuts, affecting far more of the 40 million people in the West who rely on the river for at least part of their water supply, are likely in coming years as a warming climate continues to reduce how much water flows into the Colorado from rain and melting snow.

That's going to affect property prices, even for rich people.

[tygertygertyger]

Oof, allergy season - yes.

I live in an area with plenty of fresh water, so I expect it to be a place where people want to move in the future. No fires, but I anticipate worse storms. We're doing a TERRIBLE job with stormwater management, so I expect a lot more flash flooding. We've seen a bit of it (I've seen cars floating away), but it'll be more often and worse.

It'll be hotter. With less winter. My partner would prefer to move elsewhere, so we'll see where we end up. 

[Chris22]

It will make our property up in northern WI more valuable in the summer (cooler up there) and less valuable in winter (less snowmobiling and ice fishing, the two big winter sports).  In IL, it might cause a few more warmer summer days and less snow. Basically zero effect overall.

[Jenny Wren]

Money won't necessarily save you from some of the more insidious side effects of climate change -- increasing chances of more deadly pandemics, loss of global air quality due to a combination of wildfires and dwindling forest coverage, severe drought, and war. All the money in the world can't buy you food if there is no food to buy, or if transporting it is impossible due to lack of fuel or the need to cross war ravages areas.

Further, the solutions one thinks may be available for their own personal comfort simply may not be an option anymore, especially if the infrastructure for alternative energy doesn't catch up. It somehow seems naive to think one could just turn up the AC. Not only does that add to the climate burden, we live in a world with dwindling fuel supplies - which are needed for producing energy, manufacturing alternative energy system components, and transporting them.

There are already climate refugees in the US. True, they are the affluent and rich west coasters that are fleeing forest fires and drought by buying homes in areas they deem safer, but they are the first vanguard of US climate refugees none the less. The less affluent and the poor are already coming on their heels.

Let them eat cake, though, am I right?

[Chris22]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

[ender]

I suspect the biggest change most people will experience in the short term is diet based on food and water availability.

Even if the climate itself doesn't change negatively at all from today onwards, fresh water is guaranteed to be an issue in large parts of the world in the next decades.

As climate change happens I suspect it's going to drive different food patterns being economically viable. At least for those of us in the USA, a massive percentage of corn doesn't get directly eaten by people as most of it goes to ethanol/feed for animals. So the "bright side" is that unless the areas growing corn stop being able to grow corn due to major rain pattern changes, the USA grows an insane amount of calories that don't get converted into food right now (plus lots of soybeans and other products used for feed).

If the changes occur gradually, I think it's likely societies will be able to slowly adapt - at least wealthy societies. I don't have good answers for countries which are poor and most likely to be dramatically impacted by climate change...

That being said... the big risk and unknowns imo are major societal unrest/war as a result of the above or rapid unexpected shifts in weather/ecological patterns.

I sort of think that humans will be able to, largely, adapt to climate change, barring the day after tomorrow type of event. A large numbers of ecosystems won't and we will see an increasing number of species go extinct as collateral damage.

[Jenny Wren]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

Putting on my botanist hat, there are some issues with this assumption. First, we have to assume that food crops can grow in the soil conditions present in that tundra-- otherwise massive inputs will be needed to create nutrient rich and arable land. In the modern world, this means synthetic petroleum-based inputs. As easily accessible oil disappears, we have been turning to things like tar sands to extract oil -- much of which is located up north. So food or oil? Further, this is not land that has been farmed. You can't turn new soil to highly productive farmland in a single season. There is a lot of forest and rough terrain up there, climate change isn't going to change geographical limitations.

Studies have also shown that although plants increase growth in high CO2 environment, their nutritional quality suffers greatly. So more land will be needed to grow enough food to provide the basics of life. Meat animals in particular suffer from low protein density in plants grown in high CO2, and most Americans depend upon meat for their own protein needs. Higher temperatures can also stress plants and reduce productivity, and water shortages may impose irrigation limits.

And let's not overlook other pests. Diseases and insects won't disappear as the climate changes. We may be competing more for our food than we do at present.

[tygertygertyger]

To follow up on Botany... https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/30/topsoil-farming-agriculture-food-toxic-america

"The world grows 95% of its food in the uppermost layer of soil, making topsoil one of the most important components of our food system. But thanks to conventional farming practices, nearly half of the most productive soil has disappeared in the world in the last 150 years, threatening crop yields and contributing to nutrient pollution, dead zones and erosion. In the US alone, soil on cropland is eroding 10 times faster than it can be replenished.

If we continue to degrade the soil at the rate we are now, the world could run out of topsoil in about 60 years, according to Maria-Helena Semedo of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Without topsoil, the earth’s ability to filter water, absorb carbon, and feed people plunges. Not only that, but the food we do grow will probably be lower in vital nutrients."

Further north, there isn't excellent soil just waiting to be farmed. We farm where the soil is good, now.

[brandon1827]

PTF

My area should continue to remain viable for at least my lifetime. I do worry about my son and any potential children that he may have remaining here as climate worsens, heat & drought become more pronounced, storms and flooding worsen, and fresh water becomes more scarce. I have always liked the idea that with the resources my wife and I will leave him, he will have the ability to either sell the land and move to a more hospitable location, or that he will have the financial resources to make the land work for him in the form of farming/growing food, digging a well/water catchment, installing solar panels & using battery storage for power, etc. but I realize those options may at some point become unavailable...so I worry.

[GuitarStv]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

Farming operations don't exist in isolation.  Farmers need a whole infrastructure to support their operations.  They need to live in a house close to their farm, they need regular supplies of fuel, machinery and parts for the vehicles, buildings to house the tractors/combines/etc, buildings to house the grain, etc.  There need to be processing facilities or large scale transport of some sort for the farmers to actually move and sell their grains.

Even assuming that the tundra is arable, you'll need to account for the (massive) costs associated with setting up this whole ecosystem in the middle of nowhere.  Farming isn't a very lucrative business, few farmers would be able to afford it (assuming you can convince them to leave the farms they've been working for decades or even centuries).

At least initially, these costs alone would lead to very high food prices.  And that doesn't even cover the new/unusual issues.  Polar bears (for example) are aggressive and powerful animals . . . not something most farmers need to deal with at the moment.  Then there's the actual work of clearing the fields of stones and debris, cutting down trees that are in the way, different birds might be attacking crops, the possible lack of necessary pollinators, and even the lack of earthworms (did you know that earthworms are an invasive species in North America?) can all play a role in causing difficulties for this plan.

[CNM]

In New Mexico, where I live, biggest threat is drought which means more forest fires and less available fresh water.

[maizefolk]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

To add to the important points Botany Bae and GuitarStv already made about the lack of good topsoil and other environmental necessities of high yielding agriculture, and the lack of infrastructure for farming: Canada, Greenland, and Russia are a lot smaller than most people picture just because of the difficulties of projecting the surface of a sphere into a flat 2D projection.

The latitudes where crop yields are declining as a result of heat stress and/or reduced access to water* have a lot more total land area than the northern latitudes where warming and a longer growing season is going to be a net positive for agriculture. It's even worse when you look at the southern hemisphere where more of the relevant latitudes is either ocean or Australia (where ag is primarily water limited, not land limited).

*Not purely a climate change issue, also expanding cities that successfully out compete farmland for access to water.

[StarBright]

I am thinking the migration will cause the largest impact to me personally.  Where I live is very likely to fail the test of accepting climate refugees.  People will come, the rich first, and they will make their bunkers. Then the poor will come.  Our apparently abundant resources will quickly be used up, our trees, starting to struggle from changing climate, will be cut down and will not regrow.  Increased intensity rain storms and the reduction in tree cover will wash our valley centric infrastructure away - though perhaps this will separate the villages and hillsides from the highways just enough to preserve them.

I was just thinking of this recently because our property taxes are going up enough, year on year, to make me wonder if we can afford to live here in the long term. So how would the town deal with climate refugees as we are in a fairly desirable location?

I think the answer is: rich people only.

Even with "just" good schools and decent infrastructure, we are already pricing middle class people out.  Our property taxes have tripled since we bought our house 5 years ago. The town across the river is cheaper, but increased storms have wrecked havoc on sewers and basements the last couple of years.

Those that can are already picking up and moving across the river to our town. We've had three houses on my block turn over this past summer and all have been older people who can't/don't want to pay thee increased taxes, selling to families that have moved from the town across the river. This is such a micro scale, but I can't help but see it through the lens of climate change.

[Roland of Gilead]

Shipping routes opening up in the north waters could be viewed as a positive I guess.

[YttriumNitrate]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

Just like looking at a changing economy, it's easy to see the jobs/agriculture that will be lost in future while it's much harder to predict what will be created.

[CodingHare]

How climate change is affecting me personally:

1. Warmer winters, less snow.  Some winters we are snowless.  Hotter summers, more fires.  Poor air quality making us hide indoors.
2. Higher food costs with no signs of slacking.  Higher costs for fish as overfishing and rising ocean temperatures continue to decrease stock.
3. A less stable world, which makes me very reticent to consider having children.
4. Housing is concentrating as rich people "just move", raising costs in viable areas.  This is pricing out my lower income relatives.
5. The general paralysis of trying to balance "good" environmental decisions when I know damn well regulation to enforce rules on big players is what is needed.  (IE, make clothing manufacturers PAY for new clothes that go directly to the landfill and pay for runoff pollution.  Make plastics manufacturers directly responsible for recycling their product and paying to keep disposable plastics out of the environment.  Etc, etc.)

In the future, I expect to increasingly be hit with carbon taxes as the younger generation tries to claw back some recompense for a broken, over developed world. Greta Thunberg is the butt of jokes now, but I think she represents a coming generation very interested in recompensing damages from climate they are being left to deal with.

[wenchsenior]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

Pendantic, but just as a point of clarification. There is no tundra in Lower 48 states. Only in Alaska.

[Paper Chaser]

I'm assuming that more frequent and severe weather will mean more frequent electrical outages, etc so plans that improve our energy independence or reduce our usage have been prioritized.

[Jenny Wren]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

Pendantic, but just as a point of clarification. There is no tundra in Lower 48 states. Only in Alaska.

I assumed the poster was referring to the Canadian and Alaskan tundra.

[TrMama]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

To add to the important points Botany Bae and GuitarStv already made about the lack of good topsoil and other environmental necessities of high yielding agriculture, and the lack of infrastructure for farming: Canada, Greenland, and Russia are a lot smaller than most people picture just because of the difficulties of projecting the surface of a sphere into a flat 2D projection.

The latitudes where crop yields are declining as a result of heat stress and/or reduced access to water* have a lot more total land area than the northern latitudes where warming and a longer growing season is going to be a net positive for agriculture. It's even worse when you look at the southern hemisphere where more of the relevant latitudes is either ocean or Australia (where ag is primarily water limited, not land limited).

*Not purely a climate change issue, also expanding cities that successfully out compete farmland for access to water.

These are all excellent points. However, as was demonstrated very graphically this summer in Western Canada and the prairie provinces, another big threat to food supplies is the unpredictability of extreme weather events. In late June western Canada suffered an extreme heat wave. The heat cooked fruit on the trees and killed hundreds of thousands of poultry animals. Even though the heat wave *only* lasted a week, it had a huge effect on crop yields. Drought in the prairie provinces significantly reduced grain yields. Canada has enough grain that we won't see shortages this year, but that's partly because we have leftover grain from last year. If next year has similarly low yields, prices could increase significantly and exports to other countries will also decrease.

https://vancouversun.com/news/heatwave-animal-deaths
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/heat-fruit-crops-okanagan-fraser-valley-1.6092155
https://globalnews.ca/news/8071120/drought-statistics-canada-food-prices/

[YttriumNitrate]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

Pendantic, but just as a point of clarification. There is no tundra in Lower 48 states. Only in Alaska.

There may not be arctic tundra in the lower 48, but there is alpine tundra.

[wenchsenior]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

Pendantic, but just as a point of clarification. There is no tundra in Lower 48 states. Only in Alaska.

There may not be arctic tundra in the lower 48, but there is alpine tundra.

Good point. Probably not going to be made arable by climate change though, b/c of the spotty geography and steep terrain. Might be usable for limited grazing, though.

[Roland of Gilead]

Not sure.  Once you get rid of the snow and have longer growing seasons, you can do things to make the ground more arable.

Sunlight is one issue though as one pointed out the tilt of the earth doesn't change with global warming.

[maizefolk]

These are all excellent points. However, as was demonstrated very graphically this summer in Western Canada and the prairie provinces, another big threat to food supplies is the unpredictability of extreme weather events. In late June western Canada suffered an extreme heat wave. The heat cooked fruit on the trees and killed hundreds of thousands of poultry animals. Even though the heat wave *only* lasted a week, it had a huge effect on crop yields. Drought in the prairie provinces significantly reduced grain yields. Canada has enough grain that we won't see shortages this year, but that's partly because we have leftover grain from last year. If next year has similarly low yields, prices could increase significantly and exports to other countries will also decrease.

https://vancouversun.com/news/heatwave-animal-deaths
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/heat-fruit-crops-okanagan-fraser-valley-1.6092155
https://globalnews.ca/news/8071120/drought-statistics-canada-food-prices/

Yup. I will just add that I don't know how linked the Canadian and US grain markets are, but in the USA we're already seeing substantially higher prices for grain. At a certain point the distinction between a price increase and a shortage becomes arbitrary. The price is increasing until enough demand is destroyed that there is no longer a shortage. In the USA the way demand is being destroyed right now is reductions in the size of meat herds (beef cattle and pigs) because it doesn't make economic sense for farmers to pay for their feed. Which obviously is much better than demand being destroyed by people not being able to afford to eat. But yeah.

And this year's crop is looking average at best.

[GuitarStv]

Why the assumption there will be less food?  Won’t vast swaths of land in the northern US and Canada that are basically tundra now be suddenly viable for farming?  And more CO2 in the air means increased plant growth.

Pendantic, but just as a point of clarification. There is no tundra in Lower 48 states. Only in Alaska.

There may not be arctic tundra in the lower 48, but there is alpine tundra.

Good point. Probably not going to be made arable by climate change though, b/c of the spotty geography and steep terrain. Might be usable for limited grazing, though.

Google tells me the alpine tundra is in the Rocky Mountains, the Cascades, the Sierra Nevada and the Olympic mountain range, as well as the highest and harshest northern Appalachian heights.  Looks like very poor land for farming.

[Jouer]

To me, you've asked the wrong question. Climate change is not about how it affects me personally. It's about how it affects society overall, now and in the future.

[BZB]

Wow, the way OP asked this was very loaded. But to directly answer the question of how it affects me personally: More frequent extreme weather, street and home flooding risk (I am not on the coast), higher utility usage because of extreme temperatures, and the chance of total grid shutdown for months, such as what almost happened in February here in Texas. I am already experiencing all of these.

[TrMama]

These are all excellent points. However, as was demonstrated very graphically this summer in Western Canada and the prairie provinces, another big threat to food supplies is the unpredictability of extreme weather events. In late June western Canada suffered an extreme heat wave. The heat cooked fruit on the trees and killed hundreds of thousands of poultry animals. Even though the heat wave *only* lasted a week, it had a huge effect on crop yields. Drought in the prairie provinces significantly reduced grain yields. Canada has enough grain that we won't see shortages this year, but that's partly because we have leftover grain from last year. If next year has similarly low yields, prices could increase significantly and exports to other countries will also decrease.

https://vancouversun.com/news/heatwave-animal-deaths
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/heat-fruit-crops-okanagan-fraser-valley-1.6092155
https://globalnews.ca/news/8071120/drought-statistics-canada-food-prices/

Yup. I will just add that I don't know how linked the Canadian and US grain markets are, but in the USA we're already seeing substantially higher prices for grain. At a certain point the distinction between a price increase and a shortage becomes arbitrary. The price is increasing until enough demand is destroyed that there is no longer a shortage. In the USA the way demand is being destroyed right now is reductions in the size of meat herds (beef cattle and pigs) because it doesn't make economic sense for farmers to pay for their feed. Which obviously is much better than demand being destroyed by people not being able to afford to eat. But yeah.

And this year's crop is looking average at best.

The other important point that gets missed, and I forgot to make in my first post, is that the temperature isn't projected to rise uniformly. Whether the global average rises 1, 2 or 3C may be less important to farming than what happens during heat waves. Heat waves are projected to become more extreme. Again, this summer's heat wave was a good example. Record high temps were smashed in almost all parts of BC AND the heat lasted for days longer than in past heat waves. This kind of thing is very, very hard on crops and clearly some of them didn't survive. Different crops may do better in warmer conditions (my backyard zucchini grew so fast I could practically see them growing in real time), but I bet it's very hard for farmers to predict which crops they should switch to and whether the new, unpredictable, conditions will cause some unforeseen growth problem.

For example, the Fraser Valley in SW BC has lots of blueberry farms. During the heat wave all the berries ripened at once, and were much smaller. This reduced crop yields because there weren't enough pickers available to get all the fruit off the bushes before it spoiled. Plus, it was too hot for humans to work long hours anyway. In a more normal year, the fruit ripens over several weeks, conditions aren't dangerous for the human pickers, and farmers can hire accordingly. When conditions change with only a couple weeks warning, farmers don't have many options.

The alpine forest in the Cascades is already used for "farming". Cattle have been grazed on crown land (government owned land) for decades, at least. I think the same is true in the US for BLM land. Although I don't know how much BLM land is in the alpine. However, since the Cascades are also subject to massive forest fires, I wouldn't want to be a rancher with a bunch of cows out in the woods. You can't round them up and move them somewhere safe fast enough when a fire breaks out.

[maizefolk]

I bet it's very hard for farmers to predict which crops they should switch to and whether the new, unpredictable, conditions will cause some unforeseen growth problem.

Yes, it's very much a question of trying to hit a moving target.

Not only switching from one crop to another but even different varieties of the same crop. The corn they grow in Minnesota is very different than the corn they grow in Arkansas (or Iowa for that matter) and if you plant a variety bred for one state in a different one it'll do quite poorly.

But at this point corn bred for Minnesota in 2021 might also do quite poorly in Minnesota of 2030 and farmers won't know which new varieties to plant instead (not as simple as using varieties from farther south since temperature is changing one way, rainfall changes another, and both day length and soil type are quite different between states but not changing as a result of global warming).