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Changing fortunes

On Hurricane Beryl, small-town flooding, and the need to maintain perspective about worst-case scenarios

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Brian Gongol
Jul 03, 2024

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As of late March, just a little more than three months ago, more than 80% of the state of Iowa was rated at some level of moderate drought or worse. In October, that value was greater than 95%.

â–  A few places in the state are still "abnormally dry", but the drought has been erased statewide. Drought, though, has been replaced by catastrophic flooding; Spencer, Iowa, lost 1,000 homes to a flood that evolved basically out of nowhere. Not far away, places like Correctionville, Iowa, North Sioux City, South Dakota, and Mankato, Minnesota experienced comparable levels of devastation. The drought-to-flood reversal wasn't literally overnight, but it was fast enough to defy normal human expectations. (For an even faster deterioration of conditions, see the record-smashing intensification of Hurricane Beryl.

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â–  These are climatological manifestations of a maxim worth remembering in lots of other areas of life: Things are rarely as bad as they seem, but they can get much worse much faster than we can imagine. As humans, we seem predisposed to over-estimating how bad things are in the moment right before our eyes, and to under-estimating how much preparatory work needs to be done from day to day to keep the worst from happening.

â–  There are plenty of people who take those preparations too far, but usually only in isolation: Think of climate catastrophists, doomsday preppers, and death-of-democracy keyboard warriors. The problem with a singular fixation is that it tends to result in blindered thinking, like that of the climate activist who wants economic "de-growth" or an intentional decline in the population, but who won't entertain the possibility of advanced nuclear power generation.

â–  The drama of a "solution" isn't a good measure of its sensibility. Figuring that out and intentionally finding ways to build constructively, iteratively, and persistently toward the more prudent long-term solutions that bear fruit with less fanfare.

The horizon is distant

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