Posted on 04/07/2024 2:24:40 PM PDT by Eleutheria5
Why shipping choke points like Panama are FUBAR and getting worse. Long, detailed explanation of all the problems.
(Excerpt) Read more at youtube.com ...
Because Jimmy Carter gave it away.
Perhaps a power plant, desalination plant and water pumping stations to keep the lakes full?
Ships have gotten WAY bigger, even bigger than the last time the Canal was widened, and the level of traffic keeps going up.
Perhaps it is time to see about the OLD PLAN of going through Nicaragua with a sea level canal.
The canal is dying because the US doesn’t own and operate it anymore. I remember well when Carter gave it away. All the intelligentsia were in favor of this, even William Buckley but the American people were almost unanimously opposed. This stupidity was one of the reasons that Reagan won in a landslide and the GOP gained control of the Senate and although the Dems still had the house but narrowly, they were quite intimidated by Reagan. So some good did come out of this folly. I hope that Trump will find a way to take back control. It needs to be done.
This is a possible solution https://www.freightwaves.com/news/mexico-aims-to-compete-with-panama-canal-by-using-cargo-trains
climate change?
The easiest and cheapest solution is probably to recycle the water used to run the locks. Or, the entire problem can be avoided by piping saltwater inland to run the locks, with only a minimal contribution from Lake Gatun.
Trump’s fault
That Mexico system seems pretty cool. I wonder if they could just put the whole ship in a dry dock and move the whole ship on rail tracks or something.
Depletion of fresh water used to level the locks. Big fresh water lake that citizens depend on for drinking water and agriculture, which hasn’t been filling up lately due to el nino. My first thought was, well then pump in sea water at the locks to level them. But that makes sense. Anyway, it’s a long discussion, explores the prospect of alternatives, gets into the history of it all.
Unfortunately, it takes the whole “climate change” thing as a given. Personally, I think we should be so lucky. If it were true, it would be wonderful. But I don’t think it is.
Thats what I would say! Never any problems when it was under our control.
The pacific and the gulf of mexico have different sea levels
As you note, the Panama Canal is powered by rainfall which goes into lake Gatun. It was on the edge of the traffic it could handle when I was there 1985 - 1989. The USA had built another big dam further up the Chagres river to provide more water by then. Creating Lake Alajuela in 1935 almost doubled the water reserve available from the rivers. From An Ecosystem Report on the Panama Canal: Monitoring the Status of the Forest Communities and the Watershed :
... Panama Canal Commission maintained detailed stream flow records for many years, and PMCC assembled data on the annual water budget of the Canal. Total rainfall over the 3300 km 2 watershed averages 9 × 10 9 m 3 of water per year, of which an estimated 4.6 × 10 9 m 3 would be lost to evapotranspiration (Leigh, 1999), leaving 4.4 × 10 9 m 3 to flow into the Canal. With current ship traffic, 37 per day, more than half of this water, 2.6 × 10 9 m 3 , is used to fill the Canal’s locks – 191 000 m 3 per ship. An additional 1.2 × 10 9 m 3 of water is used to generate electricity for Canal operations, and 0.27 × 10 9 m 3 is processed for drinking water to supply most of the Canal communities and parts of Panama City and Colon. The three large rivers feeding Lake Alajuela (Chagres, Boquerón, and Pequení, see Figure 7) carried a mean of 1.7 × 10 9 m 3 of water per year from 1970–1996. The three largest rivers feeding Lake Gatún (Gatún, Trinidad, and Cirí Grande) carried another 0.73 × 10 9 m 3 of water, so these six rivers contribute 2.4 × 10 9 m 3 , 54% of the Canal’s water. In 1982, a dry year accompanying a strong El Niño event, they carried just 1.8 × 10 9 m 3 , a 25% reduction. If the entire watershed suffered a 25% reduction, the 4.4 × 10 9 m 3 of water typically available would become just 3.3 × 10 9 m 3 , less than the 4.1 × 10 9 m 3 needed to fill locks, generate electricity, and produce drinking water. A good deal of this can be made up by drawing down Lake Alajuela and the Canal, but in extreme years this means the Canal is too shallow for the largest ships to transit. Clearly, the water budget for the Canal watershed is tight enough that changes in runoff or sedimentation caused by land use are a serious ...
Time to build a new canal through Nicaragua.
All of that. Nuclear power plant with plenty of back-ups, destination and pump them full again. We provide for ownership again and agreement to maintain, expand, etc
*Ships have gotten WAY bigger*
Ships are built with the Panama Canal in mind. Think those USS Iowa class battleships-108’ wide.
Next. As for giving it away it was a good idea. Stole it fair and square? Perhaps. We did what the French couldn’t do. Then we tried to prove it again in Viet Nam.
Last. An addendum gives us the right to take over the canal militarily if a civil action takes place in the country that affects it’s operation.
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