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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

#41

Post by pjot »

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…

I live in New Orleans along the river - some of the largest ships I’ve seen are branded with “Chiquita” and “Dole”. It’s hilariously fascinating to watch literal tons of bananas gently float by.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#42

Post by dismalpedigree »

tomrod wrote: post #35
hinkley wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Based on my experience, lawns are the bigger sacred cow. Cars get vilified in certain places. Lawns? Just me and my friends on /r/nolawns and similar subreddits. My rare mowing brings rabbits, frogs, insects of all kinds. Few mosquitoes, as there are critters that eat them. We keep the front trim (short) without seeding but the back a bit wild. My neighbors? They complain sometimes. They are the ones who voted out th…

Voted out the HOA? Tell me more.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#43

Post by hef19898 »

fredrikholm wrote: post #17
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…

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…

Not that we, or rather I, mowed our lawn often, at most ince every 3-4 weeks or so. This year, we decided to leave part of it to grow. The amount of insects in there was astounishing, so the patch stayed uncut between June and two weeks ago. The rain transfromed it ibto something less than pretty. Turned out the grass underneath is prettier than before. Next we gonna repeat the same thing with a different patch.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#44

Post by Turing_Machine »

hinkley wrote: post #27
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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? Maki…

> we are quickly running out of patience for grandfather clauses.

Who is "we"? Who put you in charge of speaking for everyone?

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#45

Post by hinkley »

bcrosby95 wrote: post #31
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…

Your post reminds me of this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSctr0aQOso

There's a group working in the Columbia River basin, and they've seen good results both from just setting beavers loose. They've seen positive but lesser results from man-made bespoke beaver dams, but of note is that in some cases the beavers adopted a man-made dam and completed it, which may help smooth the path for reintroduction in places where Illusion of Control sufferers paint beavers as anarchists. We would prefer the beaver dams be here, here and here, so we will try to coax them into doing just that.

Part of my statements above come from their work, and if memory serves, they made an off-hand comment in one of their reports about wanting to try the same thing in the Colorado. The Columbia is in good enough shape that we've removed dams to restore salmon spawning grounds. The Colorado is a fucking mess, but it's not in 'hippy dippy' states where funding is easier to come by.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#46

Post by mc32 »

ericmay wrote: post #39
mc32 wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you don't manage it (fight it) you get the buried and re-discovered pyramids of southern Mexico (and Cambodia). Yes, there is a balance, however, the other extreme is also not viable for habitation.

Yea but we're so far on the extreme of slash and burn and pouring chemicals on lawns that it's not even worth considering at this point concerns of habitation. It's just not even on the radar in terms of things that we need to bother caring about for the foreseeable future (100+ years minimum).

I agree that we can find better solutions than what lawns provide, however, weeds, nature and plants will take over an unmanaged property pretty quickly... maybe 20 years. In 100 places are near unrecognizable. The abandoned areas of Detroit did not take 100 years to become overtaken by nature. And that's a continental climate. In Tropical climates the rate will be quicker.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#47

Post by hinkley »

Turing_Machine wrote: post #44
hinkley wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Maki…

> we are quickly running out of patience for grandfather clauses. Who is "we"? Who put you in charge of speaking for everyone?

Start at the south end of the Colorado for the loudest voices, and then work your way north. So that's the entire country of Mexico who wonders where their river went, and the people upstream who are progressively less effected by the reduced flow.

Then add in environmentalists and conservationists. You can't preserve wetland plants and animals when there's no wetland.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colorado_River_Delta

> The loss of freshwater flows to the delta over the twentieth century has reduced delta wetlands to about 5 percent of their original extent, and non-native species have compromised the ecological health of much of what remains. Stress on ecosystems has allowed invasive plants to out-compete native species along Colorado River riparian areas. Native forests of cottonwood and willow have yielded to sand and mudflats dominated by the nonnative tamarisk (also known as salt cedar), arrow-weed, and iodine bush, a transformation that has decreased the habitat value of the riparian forest.[7]

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#48

Post by CharlesW »

makestuff wrote: post #34
CharlesW wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

pretty popular for root cause analysis technique at AWS. They published an article on it here https://wa.aws.amazon.com/wellarchitected/2020-07-02T19-33-2... .

Thanks, I'm a fan of "5 Whys" but had never heard of the "3 Whys trap".

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#49

Post by CharlesW »

hinkley wrote: post #30
CharlesW wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> …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 understa…

Gotcha, thanks! AFAICT you coined "3 Whys trap", which is a great name for it.

Re: Shrinking Mississippi River Puts American Farm Trade at Risks

#50

Post by hinkley »

fredrikholm wrote: post #17
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…

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…

Here's a fun bit of chemistry I learned some time ago: the breakdown of cellulose and lignin produces water as one of the byproducts. Which stands to reason since photosynthesis consumes a good deal of water in the first place.

Those saprophytic fungi, which enjoy a nice wet environment to work in, are producing some of the water they need to work. When you burn this material instead, you send all of that humidity up the chimney with the rest of the gasses (and a little extra from the surroundings due to evaporation from the heat).

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