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>I am glad that I live far away from the effects

Are you not on planet earth? Unless you're on Mars, you're not far away from any effects.

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There are regions on the planet that will likely fare better than others, though.
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Maybe you will require less insulation reconfiguration than some other regions, but it will be hard to escape the effects of billions of people suffering.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polycrisis

edit: To be clear, I still think there is time to react, and stop the worst impacts. We just need to get way off the rails of the route that we are currently on. If we put half of the heroic engineering + global capital that we put into fossil fuel extraction into better things, we could get most of the way to the goal. Fossil fuel extraction is like many simultaneous Manhattan Projects. It's nuts what we put into that.

Would be super cool if some of the breakout sessions titled "surviving WWIII," were replaced "avoiding WWIII."

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And we can tell ourselves that those regions which fare better will be left entirely alone. No one is going to, say, kill all the inhabitants and take the land from them.
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Not for long.
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It's like interest rates. I used to think it's weird why people are so obsessed with a couple percentage points. But it's turns out those couple of percent could mean hundreds of thousands of dollars difference for a 30 year mortgage
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> A few degrees warmer in the ocean and El Niño becomes an incredible problem for half the world.

Ice age was only 6 degrees less than now, half of Europe was under ice

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> "a few degrees, what difference does that make?"

Maybe this helps: Think about when we have a fever of "a few degrees", say, instead of 37 degree Celsius, we have 40. It shows that also a few degrees can make a huge difference.

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Think even bigger. 1 degrees inside your house? Not noticeable at all. But on a planet-wide scale? A 1 degree difference requires a LOT of energy.

It's like boiling a cup of water vs an Olympic sized swimming pool. The latter is going to take a lot more energy than the former.

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The temperature of a fever is not measuring the temperature outside.
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This may be hard to understand, but that was an illustrative example on why sometimes a few degree difference have bigger absolute impact than you'd expect from the purely numerical value.

Nobody (well, almost nobody, I guess) considered it an explanation or model of climate change.

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This is exactly what I hear from my MAGA relatives: Why should I care if the ocean rises a few inches? I don't own beachfront property in Florida.
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Well, at least they are honest about their stupidity. I live in Japan and am constantly shocked how many raised SUVs with the oversized max-grip tires in cities. Japan used to be a "doing it right" country in terms of not going overboard with waste. If you asked them why, they would probably say "it's cool!".

Turns out humans will always choose status symbols and vanity over facts. Oh well

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Humans simply choose whatever is comfortable and conforming. If their tribal mantra is solar panels, they’ll do that just like they’ll do anything else.
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I'm sorry, but why is this a surprise?
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Besides my saying that it used to be contrary to Japanese cultural expectations (もったいない)?
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From what we've seen, so far the (not projected to be underwater) coastal areas might be the areas spared in this scenario too, because being by the water still moderates temperature swings.

It's everywhere else that'll be getting record breaking heat/drought and snow, which have been far more damaging. The disaster radius of hurricanes reaches far more inland than just the coast.

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Your relatives clearly aren't MAGA if they're not concerned about what rising sea levels will do to Mar-a-Lago.
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Careful, that's a pitfall there if we assume MAGA words reflect an internal belief system.

Too often the words are whatever they have to say in order to secure continued membership in the group. The Emperor's New Clothes are a glorious blue today.

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I mean they're right, rising oceans will be a drop in the bucket for the majority of us. Unless we act together, human civilization will end through the combination of breakdown of global trade, mass migration due to heat and resource wars, and collapse of our food chain. Ocean levels are just one of the side effects that goes along with rising global temperatures.

Beef production in the US is already down from 30 years ago. At some point you won't be able to raise cows anywhere, less alone feed them. Corn and wheat have seen tremendous fluctuations in the past and will likely continue to fall. Imagine corn yields dropping by more than 80% in the US [1]. Of course MAGA people will probably only notice once the shelves aren't being restocked.

[1] https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.0906865106

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> Of course MAGA people will probably only notice once the shelves aren't being restocked.

And then they'll blame Obama.

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“Climate change will manifest as a series of disasters viewed through phones with footage that gets closer and closer to where you live until you're the one filming it.”

You cannot outrun agriculture and crop failures, infrastructure failures, insurance costs accelerating to properly price the risk, wild fires, etc. US cattle herds are at record lows from climate related input costs. Romanian, Hungarian, and Bulgarian nuclear reactors no longer have enough water to operate. The Colorado River Basin will only continue to dry out. And so on.

Some will be impacted more than others, but everyone will feel some impact, and it potentially will only worsen over time. If you believe in climate change, do your best to mitigate the impact for the remainder of your lifetime. If you don't believe, oh well, good luck.

https://x.com/ZackBornstein/status/1877055187241594986

Londoners Find ‘Horrendous’ Cracks in Their Homes After Successive Heat Waves - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-23/londoners... | https://archive.today/koMaT - August 23rd, 2026

> “The impact that climate change is having is undeniable.” -- Laura Hughes, Head of general insurance at the Association of British Insurers.

> 20%-25%: The average property devaluation as a result of subsidence, according to the Federation of Master Builders

The Age of Unstoppable Wildfires Has Reached Europe - https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2026-europe-summer-wildfi... | https://archive.today/OjDZH - July 30th, 2026

Climate Change Is Already Showing Up in the Cost of Living - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-04-24/climate-c... | https://archive.today/EYTqo - April 24th, 2026

Heat Strains US Power Grids That Need Off-Season Repairs - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-05-19/rising-he... | https://archive.today/K9VF0 - May 19th, 2026

US Spending on Climate Damage Nears $1 Trillion Per Year - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-06-17/us-spendi... | https://archive.today/9IJWo - June 17th, 2025

(Texas night time temps are staying high enough [~78F] that the utility equipment does not get time to cool off and cycle, leading to more faults, for example, and the manufacturing supply chain for transformers has a backlog measured in years)

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Even the US military treats climate change as not only real but as a destabilizing threat.

What other endorsement could one possibly need?

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"Yeah but they would say that, they are part of the system"

Sadly, there is no way to counter a conspiracy theorist because if you question or counter then you are just part of the conspiracy too. Governments know that they need to do stuff but they also know that ignorant voters who read trash tabloid newspapers will vote them out next time because they might have to pay a little more for their electricity or cars.

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