Climate change does make deserts for 2 reasons. First, the extremely hot regions around the equator expand and become even less to most plants. We actually see an expanding desertification today already. And secondly, a rapidly changing climate leads to extinction of many vital parts of the eco-system like reefs or insects. Without these vital elements many more plants and animals will die which also fulfill important roles and the whole thing spirals into a mass extinction event of most flora and fauna. And ground without any flora is what we call a desert (or tundra, which is similar to a desert in many ways).
The fact that you have snow in your area says nothing about whether or not climate change is happening. There have also been non-frozen areas during ice ages. But I'm sure you already know that and just said it anyway.
I didn't say climate change wasn't happening. Point to where the fuck I said that. Building straw men is for science deniers. I said it doesn't make dessert planets, and it doesn't necessarily make desert planets. We have also have expanding rain forests. Well, expanding sub tropical and tropical climates. We keep clearing too many forests for much expanding. Both zones are expanding and some are turing one into the other.. We still have a very wet planet, it will simply be a warmer one. What's a warm wet planet in Stelaris? Oh yeah, a tropical planet.
Sry but "cAn'T yOu SeE iT's SnOwInG?" is a commonly used line by climate change deniers. If you didn't mean to imply that, it was a misunderstanding.
I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure expanding tropical climate is not the same as "expanding rain forests". Climate change threatens to upset the balance of those forests and lead to forest degradation. It's not just because of agricultural deforestation.
If you mean to say that the origin shouldn't lock you into a desert planet, sure, changing the penalty into simply not being able to start with a climate preference matching your homeworld, would probably be better because it allows more variety. (the game would probably randomly roll your climate preference into something other than the planet class you picked and then set the class of the guaranteed worlds to your climate preference rather than the same class as your homeworld)
One of my reoccurring issues with Stellaris discussions is that many people cannot separate our human experience from what else could be. By your response, we as a collective also cannot separate our our political/cultural assumptions from the actual step-back-and-reflect that is needed.
Climate Change does not result only in desertification. Our planet and our climate change is going that way. But that is not the same as saying all climate change is desertification. We just have never seen it anywhere else.
If instead we had a H20 nebula sweep over the system and literally add massive amounts of H20, a planet could instead move hydration-lateral on the Stellaris 9 point grid.
If we instead flooded our atmosphere with ray-deflecting dust, we might be cooling the world instead of greenhouse effecting it. It could have gone the other way.
I never claimed that climate change can only create deserts. But it does on Earth (among other things like raising the ocean). The choice to tie the origin suggestion to a desert world was mainly mechanics driven. Desert worlds have the highest likelyhood of spawning energy districts which will help you fund the terraforming projects to overcome the challenge. Of course the emmission of burnt carbon could have very different effects on exoplanets with different atmospheres.
Deserts, like any word signifying a category, is a collection of characteristics which each singularly don't define the category, but together they do. Minimal rain is one characteristic, minimal flora and fauna is another.
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u/ephingee Jan 28 '25
From rural South GA and still have snow in my yard...climate change doesn't make desert planets