When will climate migration start?

[wheresmymojo]

It feels very much like the impact of climate change is ramping up much quicker than perhaps many of us imagined...

• Obviously the huge fires in Australia right now

• Cape Town got within days of running out of water last summer

• Huge fires across parts of the US in last couple of years

Obviously these are impacts on Western countries, and there has been a bigger impact on developing countries but I'm working on the premise that it takes a certain amount of money to decide to 'get out'.

Do you think we'll start to see the first climate migrants soon?

People who are migrating purely because they're scared of the impact climate change is having...

If I was in Australia I would certainly be thinking of moving my family to Northern Europe / Canada as it's only going to get hotter / drier.

Even if it wouldn't help me...I'd be thinking Northern Europe or Canada would be a better bet for future generations of my family...

And hasn't somewhere just had their coldest day for a century? Bangladesh? I can't remember now. But I agree. It'll start happening.

Water is going to be the things we fight wars over.

look up seychelles where its happened on an island there already! ( ds did it in yr 8 geography).

None of what you have listed is new

Cape Town regularly gets within days of having no water and has done for..... ever in a day!

They suspect the Australian fires were started by humans, don’t they?

Oh good the climate change deniers have turned up already

Water is going to be the things we fight wars over.
@DonPablo - yes.

I’m not denying it!
I’m just pointing out that your examples aren’t compelling examples

Plenty of wildfires in Canada every summer

Most are started by humans or lightening strikes

Menorca..

Yes, as always some of the fires have been caused by arson.

However in previous times when the weather was not as hot and there hadn't been so little rain the fires would not have spread and grown to the size that they have this year.

Scientists have long warned that climate change would not cause fires but that the hotter, drier climate would cause them to spread further, faster. And now this is happening.

They already are a thing. The Middle East has a very delicate ecology and a tragically stunted green movement - there is no coincidence between resource shortages and civil unrest. One of the contributing factors of the Arab Spring was that rising food costs were starting to affect the middle classes - it was a tinderbox waiting for a spark. So the current refugee crisis is effectively a war from climate change in many respects.

Also the island nation of Tuvalu has an arrangement with New Zealand as it is unlikely to exist 30 years from now...

Similar thing with Cape Town - climate change tripled the likelihood of drought that pushed them towards Day Zero.

They are actual examples of how climate change works. It rarely creates a brand new weather situation that didn't occur before in that region it increases the chances of severe situations and increases their severity.

Thus these things will happen more and more often and be more and more severe...but there will still be someone sitting there going 'well...they always had fires in Australia didn't they' when the whole land mass is burning...

I'm not an alarmist about climate change (I'm still planning to have a child for example) but I'd be preparing to head to a temperate country if I were anywhere threatened by heat / drought / fires / hurricanes.

We've seen so much change in our lifetimes so far...imagine what it will be like in another 40 or 50 years in those areas for our DC/DGC

...and it's beyond worrying that we can see these things ramping up. Climate shouldn't (and hasn't before even in previous natural cycles) changed so rapidly that a human can see the changes in their lifetime.

@JohnMcCainsDeathStare

Interesting about Tuvalu - I was reading an article a couple of weeks ago about island nations that are starting to move their populations to the mainland. I can't remember which one it was though...

I just moved countries and part of the reason was the increasingly extreme summers where we were living. I suspect there are an increasing number of small scale moves in the privileged, developed world. Climate refugees already exist in the developing world. We’re also going to see increasing internal movement - some local councils within the UK have already decided that some small settlements will be abandoned to sea level rise, rather than defended.

But a lot of the evidence is that people won’t believe it will happen to them until it is actually happening - everyone knows parts of the Florida keys will be underwater soon but because it hasn’t happened yet people still build and buy waterfront property there.

Most the world's population lives in low lying areas, most of the world's population is poor. Pretty obvious what will happen.

Most the immigrants will end up in nearby countries, Brazilians & Nigerians will go uphill in country, Bangladeshis will go to India. Qataris will buy some desert off of Saudi, maybe. I guess Estonians can go anywhere. Dutch & Danes could be interesting.

It's already started in lots of places.

But people everywhere know that it is happening... remember end of February, with warm weather and 20°C in some UK places?
And what about the luck of snow? Regular skiing in Scotland? A distant memory.

Problem is, it's put down as freak weather or it's a slow, gradual process that we can choose to ignore.

It was certainly on my mind when we moved to Northumberland. Water shortages in the South and East Anglia due to irrigation uptake will be regular occurrences soon, along with extreme floods.

I'm beyond annoyed though at posts like the one I just responded to on a local FB group.

"They said X would be happening in the UK by now and it isn't. It's all just a made up way of getting us to pay more tax"

In the midst of the obvious ramping up of weather related disasters in the UK and abroad...but Mark from Hampshire hasn't seen anything in his area so all is well. We can all sleep soundly tonight, presumably including the thousands threatened by wildfires while he types.

Somewhere on high ground, away from the coasts obviously.

I just looked at his profile - it is a picture of him with Nigel Farage.

FFS.

Humans need to be encouraged not to reproduce, everywhere for startwes

Agree, and to eat less meat. It takes 10 bathtubs of water to make just one beef burger patty.