Louisiana Sinking?!!?!?!?! or in the process?

Question

I was watching a show yesterday on the History Channel i think, and they were talking about how louisiana is sinking?!?! and its sinking like a football field a day?!?! and they say it will be in about 70 or 90 years the buffers of louisiana will be totally drowned in water?!?! is it true? or what? i also have seen stuff about this on the discovery channel and a bunch of other things. and they say its sunk about 2 feet since the last time it was measured in 1970.

Answer 1

unfortunately, the history and science channels tend to show programs that are neither history, or science.

mind you, they do some really nice programs, and i do watch them.

they also do some very speculative programs that tell people's fears.

get over it everyone, there is no Lock Ness Monster.  or bigfoot.  and the government is not hiding aliens found in New Mexico.  conspiracies would be fun to think about --- if there weren't so many people that assume that they were real.

that said, even when they're telling the truth, sometimes they give a biased picture.

this is one of them.

clearly, the mississippi delta is eroding.

that is, material is being washed away.

not sinking, being washed away.

now if you're standing there, it seems like it's sinking.

and people could say that.

as far as  "sinking like a football field a day"  what they probably mean (i didn't see the show) is that that much area of the delta, on average, is being lost.

what they do is average out a year or 5 or 10, and see how much of the outer area is no longer above the ocean, and on a daily average, it calculates that surface area that equates to a football field is lost.

not sinking, just not there, protecting the delta farther inland.

it does not happen all at once.

if i had to guess, Katrina was responsible for several such years of erosion.

on typical days, there isn't any at all.