re: Louisiana's Disappearing Coast

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Ok so we have 4300 and 5700 years

One of you frickers didn’t maths right

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I thought the same thing. I think he made a mistake with this part:

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Multiply by (1/1.5 hours)*(24 hours/day)*(365 days/year) = 5,840 acres/year.

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1.32/1.5*24*365 actually equals 7,709 acres/year, not 5,840.

Using 7,709 acres per year gives 4,346 years, compared to 4,351 years by my math. The rest of the difference is just rounding errors, and the fact that I used 364.75 days/year.

Better than the guy who thinks there’s are 1,760 sq yards in a sq mile. Hint: if there are 1,760 yards in a mile, then there are 1,760^2 sq yards in a sq mile...

She needs to take her Premarin. Clearly she hasn’t been well lately.

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Can someone explain to me in layman's terms why marshland turning into the gulf is bad? Isn't this all uninhabitable land anyway?

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it's our storm surge barrier during hurricanes. Without it, the storm surge goes into inhabited areas

Can regular ole people citizens go to the lab and see this model in action?

It’s a man-made problem.

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Except Louisiana coastline isn't disappearing because sea level is rising,

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Wrong. There are multiple causes of land loss in LA. In no particular order:
1) edge erosion of shorelines from wave action
2) subsidence
3) sea level rise
4) salinity intrusion

Each type of marsh (saline, brackish, fresh, etc) is sensitive to different stresses. Saline and brackish marsh can deal with salinity intrusion but not periods of inundation from the combined effects of subsidence and sea level rise. Fresh marsh can deal with inundation but not salinity and so on.

You can argue all you want about what drives sea level rise but the gages in Pensacola, Grand Isle, and Galveston have very long periods of record and leave no doubt that sea level is rising.

Seas rise, inundate saline marshes, they die, their roots disappear and leave mud flats, waves take care of the rest. Boom, land loss.

At which point we would be hiring every single dredge Great Lakes, Weeks, Orion, you name it has to offer running 24/7/365 in order to keep the nav channel clear. I’m not saying it’s not an option, but it’s not as simple as blowing the levees this moment when billions of infrastructure is set up to run under current conditions.

That sounded kinda harsh. If you’re interested, there was a study/program called Changing Course of something like that a few years back that discussed exactly what you’re saying. Basically, mouth of the river at Belle Chasse, with a nav channel running straight south from around Point a la Hache area. Problem is, you and I will likely be dead before any of this happens. The infrastructure changes and costs will be astronomical and obviously the planning. Time scale is generational. I don’t overall disagree with you. It’s just not gonna be overnight obviously.