Well said. You brought up some good points, that climate change causes cascading environmental failures and that it’s not a slow march toward the end because climate change is accelerating. We’re already past the point of no return due to atmospheric CO2 levels add the methane being released from melting permafrost is only making things worse. If mankind somehow reduced its CO2 emissions by 95% overnight it would not spare us from climate change although it would spare us from the worst of it.

The sad thing is I’ve talked about this a lot of times and I get a lot of people who are convinced that carbon capture will save us or that fusion will give us unlimited clean power so we can start polluting. Fusion is at least a few decades too late and we’re at least 20 years away from it being useful. Carbon capture only works at ground level, atmospheric carbon capture it simply is not possible even if all the worlds governments put trillions of dollars into it we’d still be polluting like hell building the means to capture carbon. I’ve tried explaining to people that we aren’t in a car racing toward a cliff, we’re in a car that already went over the edge.

You’re right that this is only one example and that’s why a lot of people don’t believe what is happening. It’s because they’re blind to what’s going on around the world. People really don’t have the time, don’t care or are too freaked out to pay attention. I’m one of the lucky ones in a way, I didn’t have kids because my family genetics are a crapshoot. I’m staying in New England and buying more land because I genuinely enjoy homesteading snd can try to prepare for a food insecure future.

They are a clear indicator of climate change and some thing that should concern you greatly. we’re not just having an easy winter, we haven’t had a winter not really. and it’s not just here, weather patterns around the world are all wrong and it’s accelerating. People focus too much on the global warming aspect of climate change not understanding that as the planet warms weather becomes unpredictable and dangerous. You lose crops to temperature fluctuations and far too much or far too little rain. The figure well if it’s hotter, colder, wetter or drier than it should be I can stay inside but that doesn’t do anything to feed us.

The people that were complaining about two frigid days aren’t the problem, the problem is it should not be anywhere near this warm. The average nightly low by the lake for the next 10 days is 23°F and the average high is 39°F, that’s not February weather. Those temps are at least 15 to 20° higher than they should be on average.

This is what climate change deniers and people who don’t care do not understand, that we are already having serious issues with crop losses globally. As those crop losses worsen food won’t just become more expensive it will become less available. The vast majority of farmed crops do not tolerate severe weather fluctuations. One freeze or heat wave might not kill off a crop but it will damage at reducing you and could take out the whole crop.

I’m no expert on the subject but I read what experts say regarding climate change. The global warming aspect of climate change is causing bizarre weather events around the world, the planet is progressively getting warmer but that doesn’t mean it will be warmer everywhere. Look at the bizarre weather last year where much of the US, Europe and China suffered severe crop losses from drought. Some US farmland dried out so badly that the ground cracked. So the soil ecosystem was badly damaged if not killed off making that land not useful for farming. around that time 1/3rd of Pakistan was underwater. An area the size of Texas or France since they are roughly equivalent flooded in Pakistan, this was caused by severe weather and glaciers melting due to climate change.

Dumb people will say big deal if it gets a little hotter I’ll just turn on the air conditioning not understanding that plants and animals do not cope with this kind of weather. They don’t understand that global crop losses means food is more expensive today and 20-30 years from now just getting food is going to be a problem. Dumb people will say what global warming means will be able to farm areas we couldn’t before. Areas that are currently farmed probably aren’t suitable for farming without massive amounts of fertilizer, irrigation or both and much of the US is running out of water. I’m not someone who just talks about this either, I’ve taken steps to be food secure in the future.

Same for the flora. Said it here before, my fruit trees dropped their leaves super late then a few started budding probably because it warmed up again. That has to stress them.

The real problem is the opportunity cost of spending 20k that isn’t going into mutual funds, retirement savings, extra house payments.

The price of raw materials is still high and wages have gone up because of significant inflation so buildings homes is expensive. Combine that with all the regulation iand redtape and building homes is not cheap here. Sure mobile and modular homes can be cheaper but A lot of available land is not connected to city utilities due to distance and cost. you’ll need a septic system, drill a well, have gas bottles, all that adds up.

I understand why the locals don’t like a lot of transplants because those transplants try to turn this state into where they came from without caring about the needs of the locals. I’m friendly with my neighbors and most of them have been excessively kind to the point. I’ve come home super late from work more than a few times to find my driveway plowed by a random neighbor just being kind because they noticed I got stuck at work and wouldn’t be home until midnight. I bought a house in the country expecting that my neighbors would target shoot, hunt, keep animals, make a little noise at odd hours because they got to go to work and that’s fine by me. Then you’ve got transplants that treat the state like a theme park and expect to be worshiped for bringing their remote job here, I get why they wouldn’t be popular.

Oh I understand what you’re saying, skilled trades pay terrible here.

I’m lucky, bought before rona.

Very much so. I came here about four years ago but I’m blue collar and bought a house that had sat on the market. I’m giving serious consideration to moving to Maine myself for lower property taxes and less expensive land. The plan was to buy my house here, fix it up in a year then flip it and get something in the country where I can homestead properly. Plan a huge garden, get fruit and nut trees in the ground, harvest timber, raise animals and all that good stuff. Coronavirus screwed up my plans but I’m working on it. The state is lovely but it’s become unaffordable.

That’s because they live in New York City, one of the very highest priced housing markets in the country. I don’t get much for my about $6500 in taxes a year here since I work and don’t have kids but I understand that those taxes are necessary.

The state does need people to move here but it needs people to move here and work here. It’s going to be a problem a few years from now we’re all of these people who moved here as coronavirus refugees or full remote jobs decide to leave because they can’t get their kids in daycare, restaurants are barely open, they aren’t getting their mail etc, can’t find anybody to work on their house. He won’t realize that they created the problem by taking up housing without filling a useful position.

I know home prices are fucked everywhere but our property taxes are quite high and what you get for the money here ain’t great.

This state has a severe lack of blue collar workers right now, skilled trades people and service industry workers are needed.

Combined with the excessive property taxes and buying a home in this state right now is a great way to stay poor.

I’m going to sound like an old man but I’ve noticed that the younger generations don’t know how to ask questions, makes me wonder if it’s not being taught in school or by their parents. I routinely have to coax information out of people because they’ll ask about a third of a question and do not understand why the details are important. Seems like a combination of assuming people know what’s going on in their head and either not knowing how to formulate a question or being too lazy to do so.

Sure you can get a house in those areas but they’re gonna be awful far from things they want.

It’s never a good sign when you have to coax all of that information out of someone.

I’d like to preface by saying that mortgage rates are extremely high right now, this is not a great time to buy a house. Sure if you’ve got good credit you could always refinance your mortgage later but the extremely high interest rates right now are going to be a limiting factor for most home buyers since so much more mortgage is going to interest these days than it was in 2019. Jobs also pay very little here so unless you’re bringing a remote job with you that’s going to make buying home difficult.

Be forewarned that the housing stock here is very limited, pretty much everything is a fixer upper and houses are routinely selling for over asking price. You’re competing against rich people buying vacation homes and assholes buying homes to rent out for Airbnb. We have high property taxes also so there that in mind. A lot of homes aren’t hooked up to city water, gas or sewer so that’s some thing else to factor in, none of that’s the end of the world bright having to maintain or worse replace a septic system, replace well pumps and stuff like that can pose unexpected expenses.

It’s a lovely place to live but you may be unpleasantly surprised by how little there is to do pretty much anywhere in the state, remember this is a very low population state so if you love the outdoors you’ll be fine but otherwise you might get really bored.

That’s not a bad idea, thank you.

Except you’re not, you’re talking about building a great deal of infrastructure which will cost a fortune and not achieve much ridership. The vast majority of people have no interest in traveling by bike and the vast majority of people have no interest in doubling or tripling their daily commute just so they don’t have to drive.

thank you for your help, I’m not trying to fully insulate the basement just trying to strike a balance between reducing heating costs, having a warmer floor during the coldest days and not spending a lot of money. I’m also thinking it would help avoid a sticking point when I sell since I can get this done for about $600 and insulation and maybe $30 for a painters suit, goggles and mask.

The vast majority of people do not commute my bike and do not want to commute by bike. You would need a robust bus system for this to work we have nothing of the sort plus we have a severe lack of blue-collar labor in this state. You’re talking about needing hundreds of blue-collar workers to drive trains and buses and considering how poor the wages are in the state on average I doubt a lot of people are going to move here to drive a bus.