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Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

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Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#21

Post by CharlesW »

hinkley wrote: post #9

If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems. Water retention capacity in upper watersheds directly contribute to average river flow, which is very easy to show by the behavior of streams. Deserts are self-reinforcing systems where the heat pushes clouds up or away from them. Wet, cool forests draw in more…

> …I strongly suspect that is the '3 Whys' trap of the Five Whys Process.

My search-fu fails me. What is this?

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#22

Post by bombcar »

ravedave5 wrote: post #13

This article has no details on causes. Minnesota has had a dry summer, and the driest September on record. Most streams/rivers in central/south MN are low. https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/river_levels/index.html

The flow of the Mississippi after leaving Minnesota is no where near the lowest recorded: https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=arx&gage=...

Low Water Records for Mississippi River at Lansing

(1) 3.39 ft on 03/13/1938

(2) 4.19 ft on 01/23/1944

(3) 6.09 ft on 11/27/1942

(4) 6.34 ft on 02/04/1943

(5) 6.58 ft on 01/17/1945

(6) 6.76 ft on 08/14/1941

(7) 6.92 ft on 10/28/1940

(8) 6.94 ft on 01/27/1957

Currently at 8ft.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#23

Post by [deleted] »

TylerE wrote: post #19
fredrikholm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's painful how widespread this notion of 'nature steals precious water' is, and how quickly the practical implications of such a mindset leads to further destruction. The municipality where I live have an annual cycle of doing things like: * Scraping away every fallen leaf to be burned * Removing all twigs, branches and dead wood * Burning or spraying down all weeds * Cutting the grass, even in places no one walks…

Quoted post unavailable.

[deleted]

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#24

Post by bombcar »

DavidPeiffer wrote: post #20

For anyone curious about water levels around their region, the US Geological Service monitors water levels in real time across thousands of stations. I had a great discussion with a couple USGS data scientists at the RStudio conference in July. Their remote monitoring stations report the data to their servers typically in 15 minute intervals. If you're worried about the water level at a particular location, they have…

Also if you're interested in the flood level of a river near you, put the alerts on the areas upstream as you can often get advance warning.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#25

Post by bombcar »

bobthepanda wrote: post #14
DavidPeiffer wrote: post #4

If you ever have a chance, I highly recommend going near a port and watching operations. I used to live near the Mississippi River in Iowa, and it was always impressive to see the barge traffic and think about the sheer volume of product moving. South of St. Louis, the barge tows can be up to 45 barges. Visiting Savanah, Georgia and watching the ships come and go was also impressive. There's a bridge that was built i…

The most impressive of the Panama Canal related expansion works was the project by PANYNJ in New York to raise the roadway of an existing arch bridge from within, and without interrupting traffic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayonne_Bridge

This kind of gives the lie to the "The US can't build anything anymore" - we do build things but we have all sorts of restrictions we wouldn't have operated under a hundred years ago.

Back then we would have just built a whole new bridge somewhere nearby and then probably detonated the old one.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#26

Post by routerl »

CharlesW wrote: post #21
hinkley wrote: post #9

If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems. Water retention capacity in upper watersheds directly contribute to average river flow, which is very easy to show by the behavior of streams. Deserts are self-reinforcing systems where the heat pushes clouds up or away from them. Wet, cool forests draw in more…

> …I strongly suspect that is the '3 Whys' trap of the Five Whys Process. My search-fu fails me. What is this?

I'm guessing it means "stop asking why before discovering the root cause". I.e. the analysis stops at a symptom rather than the cause.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#27

Post by hinkley »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #16
hinkley wrote: post #9

If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems. Water retention capacity in upper watersheds directly contribute to average river flow, which is very easy to show by the behavior of streams. Deserts are self-reinforcing systems where the heat pushes clouds up or away from them. Wet, cool forests draw in more…

>If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems. If you ever read/hear a statement like this you can safely ignore it because nobody with any second or even third hand exposure to the true vastness of the scope of wetland conservation laws would say such a thing. Somebody's little construction project to rep…

You say that like nobody of Hacker News knows anybody who is a land developer.

> some existing thing that didn't need permission when it was done 40-140yr ago

Not every law ever written has grandfather clauses, and where water rights are concerned we are quickly running out of patience for grandfather clauses.

> no matter how hard people may dishonestly try to imply otherwise

Hey you know what else is dishonest? Making a big conversation with wide ranging consequences have to pause to talk about one particular line item you have a problem with. Agenda or no (which you are projecting on others), the results are the same.

Every city is worsening its watershed - through development - except for the few that are actively fighting against it. And so many families are getting burned out by wildfires because we keep increasing the density of cabins out in the woods. It's not isolated incidents when you have 5 million or even half a million people living in a county all trying to do their own thing without The Man trying to stop them.

No single rain drop believes it is responsible for the flood.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#28

Post by hinkley »

bombcar wrote: post #18
fredrikholm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's painful how widespread this notion of 'nature steals precious water' is, and how quickly the practical implications of such a mindset leads to further destruction. The municipality where I live have an annual cycle of doing things like: * Scraping away every fallen leaf to be burned * Removing all twigs, branches and dead wood * Burning or spraying down all weeds * Cutting the grass, even in places no one walks…

The absolute amount of effort we spend fighting nature instead of just guiding and living with it is frightening.

Illusion of Control. We need group therapy and nobody who has successfully accomplished that at such scales has any formal training in the subject.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#29

Post by hinkley »

TylerE wrote: post #19
fredrikholm wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's painful how widespread this notion of 'nature steals precious water' is, and how quickly the practical implications of such a mindset leads to further destruction. The municipality where I live have an annual cycle of doing things like: * Scraping away every fallen leaf to be burned * Removing all twigs, branches and dead wood * Burning or spraying down all weeds * Cutting the grass, even in places no one walks…

Quoted post unavailable.

Which suburbs also contain. I don't know which is the more sacred cow, the automobile or the lawn. I suspect people with an agenda picked one rather than attacking on all fronts, alienating a larger group of people.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#30

Post by hinkley »

CharlesW wrote: post #21
hinkley wrote: post #9

If you ever have a friend or family member who is trying to get around wetland conservation laws, they are contributing to the shrinking of our river systems. Water retention capacity in upper watersheds directly contribute to average river flow, which is very easy to show by the behavior of streams. Deserts are self-reinforcing systems where the heat pushes clouds up or away from them. Wet, cool forests draw in more…

> …I strongly suspect that is the '3 Whys' trap of the Five Whys Process. My search-fu fails me. What is this?

What routerl said. Skipping out on root cause analysis by stopping as soon as you find something actionable. Those shallow analyses often result in a much bigger cleanup project that is also much less effective. Great for empire building, not so great for progress.

It just so happens that I usually catch people at this when they only have 3 Whys mapped out. There's something going on there but I'm not sure I understand the mechanics.

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