Cedar Rapids, IA: Flood of 2008
95% of the area above is typically dry.
I know — I grew up there.
Lots of people around the state report that it’s worse than the flood of ‘93 — supposedly a once-in-500-years event.
What many people don’t seem to understand is that this is just a taste of what’s in store for us if we don’t drastically reduce CO2.
Miraculously, I continue to see conservative talk heads dismissing all talk of climate change as “speculative science” and arguing for more oil wells.
O, if only this were a just world and I could bitch-slap every one of their asses back to hell…
To repeat: We need to build an aquatic equivalent of the electrical grid. It’s most likely too late to avoid future floods unless we put in place canals, reservoirs and pipelines to shunt water away from future disaster areas.
We could thereby transport it to California, the Rockies and the desert Southwest — all of which are starved for water and/or burning up and blowing away — thus accelerating climate change.
To those who object to the cost: Consider the cost of flooded fields unable to produce food to feed a hungry world. We’ve already seen the tip of that iceberg, whose larger part is global famine, war, epidemics, and economic collapse.
