So, but all of these things - forgive the soliloquy here. All of these things are - it's really important to know this - subconscious. This is - you know, we're talking about here consciously, right, as though it's rational. Suppressed in our optimism bias.
Yes, suppressed in all sorts of things that let us do risk choices, but they're innately subjective. And so when Professor Jacob, somewhat naively I think, talks about retreating to higher ground, well, that's going to be hard to do with a third of the population of the planet. We want to live in these places. We are innately going to want to live in these places. A better way to deal with it is his suggestion and others, building codes, economic incentives and disincentives, zoning codes. There's a beach in Massachusetts - I used to be a TV reporter - that floods all the time during the storms. It just recently did. The people who have houses that are damaged there can rebuild only if they drive pylons down to bedrock and raise their house 18 feet above the water. OK. OK, well Dave Ropeik, let's go to a city where people are not going to be able to do that, but neither, I think, are they going to move. Let's check out the optimism bias of Harry(ph) in San Francisco, California. Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION, Harry, if he's - and I think that perhaps Harry has gone. Let's then go to Ginger(ph), who's calling us from Ashland, Oregon.
Welcome to TALK OF THE NATION, Ginger. Thank you, Jacki. I - I'm actually in Central America right now and just outside of Des Moines, but I live in Ashland indeed. I just want to echo some of the things, of course, that people have said. And I also want to mention that I grew up in Minnesota, and so the draw of water, I think, is universal, whether it's salt or fresh. I can smell water from miles away. One of your other callers said something, in fact, you know, nothing like smelling that. I went to the flood of Fargo-Moorhead in '97, so I also understand that people are very hard-pressed to really take Mother Nature seriously and prepare. In one way, there's no way we can predict. It doesn't matter what the forecasts are like. But I just want to chime in and say it doesn't - to me, it doesn't matter what kind of water it is. That allure and that fascination is pretty universal. So thanks.
But, Ginger... Yes. ...don't go away just yet. When you hear Dave Ropeik say, this is why people do it, and they think it isn't going to happen to them, and you've already witnessed the flood in Fargo, one of the most significant interior floods that we had in the last 15 years, does it all go in one ear and out the other? I don't think so, and I guess - I think there's a lot of context. Freshwater is different from saltwater in the fact that there is some land border in an interior way. At the same time, I think it echoes some of your other 100W Led Heatsink, is that we believe what we want to believe. And if it hasn't happened to us - our recent memory as a population is extremely short.