Mississippi Old River Control Watch, Aug,2021 - Ida

Science and Technology
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Looks like we’re on another Mississippi Old River Control Structure complex watch, seeing as tropical storm Ida seems to be aiming right at it (NNW of Baton Rouge). Guess it’s not a hurricane yet, though regarding the structures it’s not the wind, it’s the rain and water that threats.

There is a real physical possibility that if the structure is breached the river will proceed down the Atchafalaya River Basin, where it’s been wanting to go for a long time now. That would put an end New Orlean’s usefulness.

Boom another Anthropogenic Global Warming Roulette hit? One that would pack a real punch to our society.

But, thanks to humanity’s ability for obsessing over hair splitting trivia, in order to run out the clock, and not have time to focus on the reality unfolding in front of us, here we are.

We’ll keep getting blindsided, while the super brains remain smug within the lofty chatter of their beautiful minds.

{afternoon update:
This is an improvement over the earlier forecast since it’s pushing the system east of the Mississippi River. It’s the hurricane that comes up the Atchafalaya Basin, and up the backside of the structure, that’ll be most dangerous.}

For some background details:

Could Mississippi River change course? New research raises question, but Corps says plan working

LETTSWORTH — If you drive out to the middle of nowhere and keep going, you can see where the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is battling with the forces of nature.

At the confluence of the Mississippi, Atchafalaya and Red rivers, the Corps has erected towering gates that bend the flow of the water. Without human intervention, the current channel of the Mississippi River would slow to a trickle while the Atchafalaya would swell. …

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The place and the situation has had a geologic, & morbid, fascination with me since first discovering it while traveling to and around Houma in the mid '80s during some of those tramping days. It twas another lucky ride, I was wondering what in the heck was all that stuff out there, and he knew, plus he just loved the chance to talk about the Atchafalaya river story, and the ORCS structure to a kid that actually seemed fascinated.

Later in New Orlean I went to the library to check out the story and found out he wasn’t pulling my leg. What’s really nuts for me is to think that was nearly 40 years ago.

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If the Old River Control Structure Fails: A Catastrophe With Global Impact

Dr. Jeff Masters · May 14, 2019

As detailed last week in Part I of this series, America’s Achilles’ Heel: the Mississippi River’s Old River Control Structure, the ORCS was built to act as a bulwark against the Mississippi River’s natural inclination to carve out a new channel to the Gulf of Mexico. But as explained in Part 2 of this series, Escalating Floods Putting Mississippi River’s Old River Control Structure at Risk, the ORCS is under increasing threat of failure due to a build-up of sediment near the structure that is plugging the river’s channel and creating higher floods. …

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Friday, evening

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Saturday evening and the most professional spokesman so far.
It just occurred to me it was a week ago, right about now that we were pulling through a torrential storm system and arriving in Nashville.
I’m reminded, no matter where you go, there you are. :raising_hand_man:t3:

Meanwhile back to the preceding horror show. This is what Anthropogenic Global Warming promised to do. Please note the Gulf of Mexico deep water temperatures.

While malicious fraudulent Republican mindfuks do their best to sow paranoia, and confuse everyone in order to continue stupefying a sadly under-educated, apathetic public, at least till it comes ripping up their backside.

Then it’s: “I could have never imagined such a thing” - sorry babe that’s your own f’n fault. Thanks for helping ruin it for all our children and the world we are leaving them.

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Looks like Ida is going to head straight up the Atchafalaya River Basin.
This is going to be hideous on many different levels, and it’s a preview of what we people did to our own country, economy and Earth’s future.
Land temperatures are in the 80s, so at least that’s not as bad as could be. I say that because I’m also worried about how much of chance there’ll be for a significant “Brown Ocean” effect that continues feeding into the storm as it heads inland.

But, it’s not just the Old River Control Structure that in harms way . . .

Intensifying Hurricane Ida a significant threat to key infrastructure

Ida is forecast to hit the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans, site of three key ports, petrochemical sites, and a nuclear power plant.

AUGUST 28, 2021 Jeff Masters, Bob Henson

Likely significant damage to key industrial corridor

Ida is predicted to track over one of the most critical industrial areas in the U.S.: the industrial corridor between Baton Rouge and New Orleans. Not only is the region home to dozens of key petrochemical sites, and crisscrossed by important pipelines, it also has three of the fifteen largest ports in America: the largest bulk cargo port in the world, the Port of South Louisiana, which lies along a 54-mile stretch of the Mississippi River; the nation’s largest export grain port, the Port of New Orleans; and the Port of Greater Baton Rouge, the nation’s 10th-largest port. These three ports handle 55-70% of all U.S. grain exports to the world, supplied by barges moving downriver.

Going upriver, Mississippi River barges transport petrochemicals, fertilizers, and raw materials essential for the functioning of U.S. industry and agriculture, making the Mississippi River the lifeblood of the American economy.

If the ports of the Mississippi River are closed for an extended period of time, the entire U.S. economy suffers, with impacts to the global economy and world food supplies; world food prices, vulnerable to extreme weather shocks, in May of 2021 hit their highest levels since 2011.

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# America’s Achilles’ Heel: The Old River Control Structure

7:00 AM Sunday.

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Incidentally this is Kenneth Graham, National Hurricane Center Director. 1:30 Central Time Sunday.

(The National Hurricane Center gives an update on Hurricane Ida after it hit Port Fourchon.)
Oil, holding tanks, mud, pipelines, docks, storage and maintenance equipment.

I came across a concise, yet very informative news story from May 23, 2019, gives a lot of details about the Old River Control Structure:

Reports of the potential opening of the Morganza Spillway have surfaced, but what could this mean for areas near the Mississippi and Atchafalaya Rivers? We break down the history, and effects surrounding this rare precaution. …

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Looks like we got lucky with the hurricane dropping most of its water east of the Atchafalaya River and into the state of Mississippi. Also haven’t heard any horror stories from New Orleans and though the city is without power, it seems the backup power for their pumps must still be working or there’s be reports of flooding.
Although it’s the rain fall after the hurricane passes that will put the new levee system to the real test

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Of course, lucky is a relative term. Turns out a couple levees were over topped and not breached, so that’s a very good thing.

So America can wake up blissfully ignorant of the bullet we dodged.

Given general climate change there’s a new phenomena occurring more often that’s helping hurricanes maintain strength after coming on shore. I’ve heard it called the “Brown Ocean Effect”, but here they use “Brown Water Effect”.
The land gets so saturated with moisture, that especially when it’s hot, as in above 80° - 90°F that it continues feeding energy into the hurricane as if it were a warm body of water.

‘Brown water effect’ helped Ida stay at major hurricane status 8 hours after landfall

BY CHASE KARACOSTAS

AUGUST 29, 2021
A special weather effect was allowing Ida to maintain its “major hurricane” status more than eight hours after making first landfall in Louisiana, the National Weather Service said.

Louisiana’s marshes, which sit inland and have been especially warm this August, have created a “brown ocean effect” that is helping the storm keep its strength as it slowly moves inland, weather service meteorologist Hannah Lisney said.

By 7 p.m. Saturday, the storm had only downgraded to a Category 3, meaning it sustained winds of less than 130 mph. …

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The levee’s held, oil & chemical industry seems to have gotten by relatively unscathed, lots and lots of mop up, electricity will eventually come back and life goes on. It’s nice to have dodged the bullet and have a bit more time before we need to deal with the next big one.

It would be nice not having to resurrect this post for a long time. Still these massive infrastructures that we depend on are going to be tested with increasing regularity and intensity.

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That Ida just kept on dumping on us.

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But what goes on inside your head, shouldn’t lead you to pretend that the physical object isn’t an absolute entity in it’s own right -

Which is exactly what the fuzzy rhetoric of the Seth and Tegmark and Hoffman do - I mean they always introduce their subject with Physics Woo. Atom is all empty space, quantum effects of atom in two places means, I get to pretend I can be in two places, and that sort of down the rabbit hole entertainment.

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But, I actually returned to this post because of my fascination with the ORCS is unending and recently I became reacquainted with a YouTube series by a Loren Klein an award-winning science and social studies teacher from Louisiana and I figured I need to share it here, so others can get a better idea of what I’m talking about.

It’s probably the best introduction to ORCS and the situation with the lower Mississippi and the Atchafalaya river. The dude has also made a bunch of videos about Gulf Coast hurricanes and many other fascinating topics. His audio leaves a little to be desired, when out in the field, but hey, it’s still great content.

Old River Control Structures–Phenomenon Explained

all by Loren Klein

Morganza Spillway: Phenomenon Explained

History of Engineering Old River: Phenomenon Explained

Possible Mississippi River Channel Switch?–Phenomenon Explained

Historic Mississippi River Deltas–Phenomenon Explained

The Bonnet Carre Spillway: Phenomenon Explained

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[quote=“write4u, post:37, topic:7784”]

But that is not what we do. We do not create the actual physical object itself. We create the perception of that object ( in motion), in our minds, not in actuality.

[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:12, topic:8246”]

But what goes on inside your head, shouldn’t lead you to pretend that the physical object isn’t an absolute entity in it’s own right -

Which is exactly what the fuzzy rhetoric of the Seth and Tegmark and Hoffman do - I mean they always introduce their subject with Physics Woo.

Perhaps I was not clear enough, but I think you are misunderstanding what they are presenting.

AFAIK, no one that I have cited disputes the physical existence of anything, except for the thoughts created by your brain. Your thoughts have no physical existence.

The simple fact is that it is impossible to contain all that you observe in the limited area of your skull. We create non-physical life-size objects in our mind.

CC4 said;

Atom is all empty space, quantum effects of atom in two places means, I get to pretend I can be in two places, and that sort of down the rabbit hole entertainment.

That is pure theoretical physics about how data is distributed in the universe.
ORCH OR proposes that the brain is just a 3lb lump of fatty tissue folded in complex patterns. Tegmark proposes that these complex pattern have regularities which allows for the brain the experience emergent complex experiences such as thoughts.

As to the non-physical nature of the mind inside the brain itself, don’t forget that your brain received third hand information and makes a best guess of what your senses see or hear or smell .

It is your thoughts that are non-physical, that is not a mystery. You don’t create nano scale physical trees in your brain. You create a non-physical images (experiences) in your mind.

If you can understand Descartes’ Brain in a Vat, you understand how it all works in principle. How it works in reality is much more complicated , but the fact remains that the brain is already contained in a vat (dark empty skull) and must try to makes sense of what the input data from the senses actually mean. It does so by comparing it to learned memories stored inside the brain. This means that the brain can only make sense of the physical world, if it has learned to interpret its environment from experience since birth, which also the reason why every individual has his/her unique own experiences and the attractiveness of empathy, the ability to place yourself into another’s reality and say share the experience if a beautiful sunset .

Think how dull the world appears to persons with color-blindness. To some the brain can only produce the experience of a world in shades of gray. When the optic neurons in these people are “adjusted”, their emotional experience can be dramatic . Most begin to cry being overwhelmed by the colorful drama that reality can present when you optical senses are properly adjusted.

As you can see, reality presents itself completely different depending on subjective individual experiences. And remarkably you ca see the person’s mind begin to interpret the colors and create more comprehensive color shadings. This by just removing a few wavelengths where they overlap and separate the colors.

It makes me cry with empathy.

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I’m not being clear enough.
The introduction and all the Physics Philosophical Woo, is misleading and it echo’s in the sort of crazy Hoffman is peddling with such success.

I promised myself to listen to Tegmark’s book, but right out the gate his first chapter of “our mathematical universe” is appallingly deceptiveness with all his softening up his audience with that philosophical woo, which is actually an echo of western philosophy’s Abrahamic origins. We are not individual atoms and can’t do things quantum particles can do, down at the very edge of substance and energy, so why don’t they stop playing that film strip over and over? It’s pure delusion. What’s gained from it?

I wonder what’s the point of continuing with the book* after such a fancifully deceptive. You know, like what hope is there for any edifice built upon such disconnected rhetorical fancy dancing. *but I’m going to try to force myself, if not out of my own curiosity, then out a sense of duty to you for all your talking about it.

The general public cascading results can be found in the profoundly delusional thinking most people possess about our global climate engine and what we have done to it, and as can be seen in many other scientific, environmental, even sociological realms. Even in our inability to confront faith based lies.

People that are totally devoid of scientific fundamentals and critical thinkings skills, folks that find ‘provocative’ more compelling than ‘fundamental physical fact understanding’.

You like pointing out there’s a serious side to all that stuff.
My respond - sure among the professionals - but that world is confined to a small group of real experts dealing at the fringes of physical reality. Only the rare person understands this level of mathematics.

I’ll admit you most probably have a much better understanding than me, but I’ll be your no where near proficient enough to judge and of these formula’s on your own. We deal in the real physical middle world of our day to day reality and we’d all be better off had we spent more time understanding that - then making busy counting how many angels can dance on a pin head.

BUT SERIOUSLY NOW - THIS THREAD REALLY WAS INTENDED TO BE ABOUT SOUTHERN LOUISIANA AND FUTURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

This bubble gum philosophizing stuff has enough threads going in other places.

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[quote=“citizenschallengev4, post:15, topic:8246”]

BUT SERIOUSLY NOW - THIS THREAD REALLY WAS INTENDED TO BE ABOUT SOUTHERN LOUISIANA AND FUTURE OF THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER.

This bubble gum philosophizing stuff has enough threads going in other places.

Oh I’m so sorry. It was not an attempt to sidetrack or troll your thread.

I’ll respond to the mind thing in " [Microtubule network, the seat of consciousness?"(Microtubule network, the seat of consciousness?) in the science sub-forum