Climate Change and the Shrinking Mississippi. HuffPost 20130109

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-guzman/climate-change-and-the-sh_b_2412743.html?utm_hp_ref=email_share
At the moment, the United States is in the midst of one of the worst droughts in American history. One consequence is that the water level of the Mississippi River has fallen to the point where the river itself may have to be shut down to shipping traffic. What would a shutdown mean? Well, consider that 60 percent of all grain exported from the United States travels on the river. Or that over a period of a couple of weeks the river carried goods through St. Louis that would fill 500,000 semi trucks. In other words, we have no workable substitute for the river.