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Aral Sea Disappearing
W33dz writes "The BBC is reporting today that the Aral Sea on the border of the former Soviet republics of Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan has lost half its size and 75% of its volume in the last 15 years. The article includes some stunning pictures from both NASA and the new European Space Agency's Envisat satellite.
This seems especially poignant since the US Government is hosting a summit on a proposed International Earth Observation System in Washington this month (BBC article). The meeting is intended to defend much of the Bush Administration's environmental policy and has an amazing guest list filled with the Who's Who of US politics."
I recall watching a documentary on a Soviet-era facility dedicated to researching and developing bioweapons. As of the late '90s, there were massive stores of anthrax and smallpox buried there, and some of it was leaking.
They mentioned that the sea was shrinking, and that would make it easy for animal life to transfer the deadly pathogens to the mainland.
Or make it easier for the terrorist bad guys to get their hands on it.
I think this is a bad thing all around.
no thanks
Just to clarify and emphasize why this is a big deal: Aral is not really a sea - it's a lake. A sea is a body of water that has direct exit into an ocean. A lake - doesn't connect to any ocean. Aral Lake is the second largest lake in the world - the first on is Caspian. Both of them are usually referred to as Sea because of their great size.
Just because I don't care, it doesn't mean I don't understand. Homer J. Simpson
In other news, the largest freshwater lake in the United States west of the Mississippi no longer exists.
Life's tough. Without the death of Lake Tulare, California would produce far less crops to feed the world. Without the Three Gorges Dam, China would have to build lots of fossil fuel or nuke plants.
It's always bad when we lose a valuable and unique ecosystem like the Aral Sea, but sometimes we humans must make tradeoffs. I have no clue whether the death of the Aral is an appropriate one, but I think we should not presume that the Aral's death is all bad. For example, do more people get fed by selling irrigated cotton that would have been fed by fishing?
The Central US will be running out of water in the next 50 to 100 years because of irrigation. Right now, farmers from Texas to the Dakotas get their water from deep aquifers. The problem is that these aquifers were filled by meltwater from the last ice age and are no longer being replenished. Within the next 50 to 100 years, that water will be gone. Plans are already being discussed to divert the Missouri, Mississippi, and Arkansas rivers so that their waters can be used to continue irrigation in America's breadbasket. This could have devistating effects on water supplies and ecosystems downstream.
Smeghead every day of the week.
...compared to the 1000 miles of streams that have been buried in West Virginia. Not to mention the 15%-25% of southern West Virginia's mountains that have been leveled causing the loss of 300,000 acres of highly productive hardwood forests.
All so you can have electricity for 3 cents per kilowatt-hour.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
We're going to divert rivers. We're going to alter the natural habitats of pretty much all life on the planet. Animal species will go extinct (unless we take the time to specifically preserve each and every one). We're going to change the mixture of gases in the air...
At some point, everyone is going to have to come to grips with this. The Earth can't support this many people and still exist in it's "Natural" state. The hard part is not screwing it totally up and ending up with a toxic environment.
Eventually, the land's all going to be either populated area (city / suburb), agricultural, or a managed wildlife "park".
You think wars for oil are bad?
Wait until there are wars for water.
People can live without oil. They may not want to (what would happen to the US without oil?), but they can. Water, however, is a different story.
I've seen an incredible number of stories about water, water shortages, fights over water rights and irrigation, and such in the past year. As the population of the Earth continues to rise, so does the demand for water. Many of the water supplies currently being used are already being used faster than they can replenish - and they're only going to get more use.
Eventually areas are going to start having serious water shortages.
The most wasteful country in the world in terms of water? No suprise, the US. The combination of all the endless golf courses, which is the #1 use of water in the US IIRC, and all those suburban laws, especially in areas they're not supposed to be growing such as the Southwest, and incredible amounts of water are being taken from rivers and aquifers for pretty silly purposes.
I wonder how long until serious money starts being spent on how to make cost efficient desalinization of ocean water, and better pumping to get the water from coasts to inland. Because there aren't going to be enough sources elsewhere to supply all the water needs at the rate things are going.
So much water on the planet, and still there seems to not be enough...
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
The Aral Sea used to be considered freshwater (the salt content was low enough to make the water drinkable) but because of its realitively recent reduction in size, the salt has become concentrated, turning the sea from fresh to salt water.
I am pretty sure that I've read that Lake Baikal is the largest by volume, which is arguably a more accurate way to measure the size of a body of water. It contains almost 25% of the world's fresh water.
Trivia: what is the claim to fame of Ryan Island? It's the largest island in the largest lake (Siskiwit) on the largest island (Isle Royale) in the largest lake (Superior) in the world. (Assuming you go by surface area and count only freshwater lakes, I guess.)
Constitutionally Correct
In a moving river, the water shallow and warmed by the sun, but in a large resevoir, it get's cold. The river water temp is therefore much colder downstream of the dam which screws with the wildlife.
Too bad Mexico can't sue the US over taking all the water before it gets to the ocean though...
Eat at Joe's.
Though now, I bet if you lived next to the stinky rotten fish and brine shrimp salt lake, you couldn't wait for it to go away. I wonder who owns the land after a lake dries up?
Eat at Joe's.