Comment by 1attice
10 hours ago
This is true, and, relatedly, is the feeling I have about all of climate change. By the numbers, it won't be close.
Of course, this little preview is itself anthropogenic. This horrific disaster is the thinnest tendril of the monster we have unleashed.
Both figuratively and literally, this experience was the tip of the iceberg. Terrifying. People might think I'm crazy, but I'm choosing my retirement location 100% based on resistance to climate change. Local water, too much humidity for massive fires, too cold for insane heatwaves... you get it.
Pro tip for people moving north; don't buy land in the valleys around Mt. Rainier. This type of flood (also known as a lahar) has occurred there many times. The mudflows reached the harbor of Tacoma in the past. [0] I expect we'll see at least one new one in our lifetime, as the glaciers have been greatly affected by rising temperatures.
[0] https://www.usgs.gov/media/images/mt-rainier-lahar-hazard-ma...
Do you have a source about the Nepalese flood being a Lahar? I've only read that it was caused due to the glacier collapse, which seems like a different thing
1 reply →
Which places have you found? I'm in Canada and figured most of the places are going to suffer more rain falling in the next decades.
Great Lakes area is probably well positioned.
1 reply →
Personally, I'm aiming for Pittsburgh.
Not unexpectedly, follow real estate prices.
The average value of homes in safe parts of Canada has risen significantly. E.g. Vancouver is devastatingly expensive, while nearby Abbotsford and Richmond are floodplains and reclaimed marsh, respectively, and are cheap. Sometimes uninsurable, but cheap.
The market will price us all out of the safest places and indeed arguably already has. Expect housing values to continue to diverge. A dry hovel is superior to the mightiest of flooded manses, but a home in a dry, safe metropolis, with enough water for all?
Literally invaluable. It will be priced accordingly.
I have spoken to quite a few real estate agents in Sudbury who mentioned folks are buying property there as a hedge against climate change.
I've seen recommendations for locations near the Great Lakes. Upper peninsula of MI, for example. Plenty of water. A warming climate should actually make the winters there somewhat less harsh.
Depends on how much warming. Some areas of the UP are colder temperature wise, but because it stays below freezing most of the winter the humidity stays low and it doesn't feel so bad. Where as some lower areas in Michigan now regularly break the freezing line in winter and everything is always a sopping mess with cold high humidity and no snow to act as insulation for buildings.
Wildfire smoke will be the big question there. It's started to be bad for a week or two a year in Minneapolis, and is only worse the closer you are to the boreal forest.
6 replies →
Honestly there is no safe haven while humans over-consume continue to waste in the chase of excess. We have seen in the last few years all the supposed climate safe areas get hit hard.
https://www.npr.org/2024/10/09/nx-s1-5137024/climate-haven-h...
birth rates are falling off the cliff in all developed nations, most are below replacement rate already
2 replies →
Deaths from. atrial disasters are the lowest in history: https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/422084/climate-change-nat...
This event has nothing to do with climate change and is pure fear mongering.
This is the same adage used by the Governments with the "think about the children" campaigns, its a distraction. A cop out.
Yeah, the event primarily marked by receding glaciers probably has nothing to do with this glacier that weakened to the point of destroying a village.
This glacier probably melted many times in the past, especially in such a sudden and violent manner.
I'm sure this is in no way anomalous, nor is it something that could predictably result at some point from a warming planet.
The Missoula Floods. This kind of thing has been happening for a good long time.
That doesn’t diminish the tragedy in any way, this event was shocking and brutal. But it wasn’t the first and won’t be the last.
I sympathize with the reaction to the hyperbole, but it's not a binary thing. Better to think in terms of marginal increases in occurrence rate, or in a single case marginal increase in progression of an impending event (glaciers were all gonna be gone in a few thousand years anyhow).
Still plenty of room to debate numbers.
I do not know if I would consider stopping the climate change as a solution for all such events.
Watching the video makes you realize how small you are in front of the nature. It feels painful to even watch it but its an eyeopener at the same time. Its a misconception to think that the climate would always remain same, nature is an constantly moving/changing entity. What might be perceived as destruction is also the mechanism how creation of life or life like conditions happened in the first place. Just makes me feel like appreciating the day even more.
Mt St Helens erupted in 1980. The landslide alone was 3.3 billion cubic yards, that traveled 15mi at speeds of up to 155mph, and buried 23 square miles to an average depth of 150ft, and up to 600ft, within 10 minutes.
The blast flattened 230 sq mi of forest in minutes.
540 million tons of ash fell in 9 hours, affecting 22,000 sq mi.
The mudflow (lahar) was this debris mixing with 170 million cubic yards of glacial ice and snow, moving at 80 mph.
People liked to make smart ass comments about people who took photos "and would soon be dead" - "they were miles away, they could have left". For a lot of them? No.
The sheer magnitude of these events is truly unimaginable, even if you "were there" (nearby).
And MSH was barely a 5 on the VEI 0-8 (roughly) logarithmic scale, though you can't map to death toll easily.
Pinatubo in 1991 was a high 6. Krakatoa too. Tambora is the largest we know, in 1815, VEI 7, and is estimated at eighty times more output than MSH, and triggered the "Year Without a Summer" globally (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Year_Without_a_Summer) that pulled down average -global- temperatures by a full degree over the course of a year. It completely disrupted the monsoon season throughout Asia, leading to flash flooding events like this becoming a very regular occurrence.
I think some of these types of stats are the closest terrestrial things we have at the limits of human comprehensibility (probably only eclipsed by "interstellar distances").