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Globally Warmed Real Estate

Buy land in areas likely to improve due to global warming
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(+1, -3)
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against]

I'll illustrate using the specific example of Burlington, VT.

Gorgeous place. I'd love to live there (as I'm sure a lot of people would,) but it's just too dang cold in the winter. I live near Boston, and it's bad enough down here, but Burlington is downright arctic in Jan/Feb.

Now I know global warming is only supposed to affect average global temperatures by, like, a degree or two max over the next 20 years, or something. But weather patterns are fragile creatures (e.g. the effects of El Nino). What if that one degree rise was enough to shift things around so that Burlington dipped below 0 F only once per winter instead of 8, and added an extra month of nice weather at the beginning and tail-end of summer. Suddenly Burlington becomes a kick-ass, year-round-hospitable town.

lbjay, Jun 20 2001

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       UnaBubba: I'm confused... first you say you don't think 2 degrees will make a difference, then you proceed to illustrate how 1.5 degrees actually made a tremendous difference. Did I miss something?   

       kiki: I don't think lbjay intends to cause the global warming; the idea sounds like it's only to buy land that will be positively affected and then wait for it to happen on its own.
PotatoStew, Jun 21 2001
  

       What UnaBubba may be saying is that changes of only a few degrees -- which you'll barely even notice from a "gee, it's warm outside" point of view -- can cause drastic changes in weather patterns, precipitation, sea levels, and ecology (especially marine ecology).   

       So, global warming that is an unadulterated disaster from an environmental point of view may leave the winters just as cold as ever, as far as you're concerned. In fact, in some areas, the winters may be even colder.   

       On the other hand, UB may be in the scientifically unsound but politically fashionable "global warming is a myth" camp. Who can say...
egnor, Jun 21 2001
  

       [waugsqeke] Analysis of air trapped in ice cores provides evidence to show what the atmosphere was like up to 100,000 years ago. Then, atmospheric changes shown by ice core analysis can be correlated with the effects of climatic changes such as extinctions and changes in vegetation cover which are shown in the geological record. Then, high levels of CO2 in the atmosphere at the moment imply imminent climatic change...
hippo, Jun 21 2001
  

       How about Globally Forewarned Real Estate?   

       With this varient you look for correlations between property prices and tmeperature/climate variations due to the theory that collectively the housing market might be able to predict castrophic global conditions ...
Aristotle, Jun 21 2001
  

       Don't think of it in terms of getting warmer. Think of it as so much more energy being put into a chaotic system that already had the ability to kill thousands at random and destroy billions in property.
Think of it as even more power to move air and water towards you at high speeds. If you're unsure what that means just ask the people of Houston who now measure rainfall in feet.
sirrobin, Jun 21 2001
  

       sirrobin is right (and I agree mostly with waugs as well). The only thing we can know is that in the short term, we have upped the C02 level in the atmosphere. IN the short term (again) this increases the amount of energy trapped in the atmosphere. It doesn't mean that the temperature will necessarily go up. The global average might, but the more relevant issue is the increase in energy in the system, which is likely to cause more severe weather systems in the future, more hurricanes, more flooding etc.
I have yet to see a reliable predictor of what will happen to cloud cover under this principle and how much more of the sun's energy will be reflected back as a result (the Gaia theory, though mostly claptrap, is right in one extent that these things do reach an equilibrium).
The only thing I would say against waugs argument is that while it is true most of these changes in the past have happened in geological time, so has the increase in CO2 levels. The natural effects which balance the equilibrium (such as warmer seas producing more shellfish whose shells act as a major CO2 sink, for instance) will not have time to react to the current increase which is in a much shorter time span. The likelihood, therefore, is that in the short term, the global average temperature will rise due to this effect - but only in relation to this effect.
I don't think it makes it absolute guesswork - it is the most likely overall scenario in the short term. But this is not a one way street - the natural effects which gave us a mini-ice age in the 17th century (which appears to be mostly down to the solar cycle and an almost absence of sunspots in this period) will also continue to occur, and therefore, the temperature over the next hundred years is almost impossible to predict, in which sentiment I agree with waugs entirely.
goff, Jun 21 2001
  

       Within a few decades, British wine will be the best available as current wine-producing regions will have to suffer desertification or else sinking under the rising waves.   

       Buy land in the north of Scotland and prepare it as a future holiday camp.
jcwalsh, Nov 27 2002
  

       Nobody mentions the sea level rising affecting real-estate prices. When I moved 17 years ago I checked that the house was more than 200 feet above sea level, so that even if all the ice in the world melts, I and my heirs will have somewhere to live.. Yet NOBODY ever considers this! They stlll buy, at high prices, in areas a few feet above sea level.
RusNash, Jun 18 2003
  

       Isn't Venice already flooded?
snarfyguy, Jun 18 2003
  


 

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