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."

Comments

Re:Bush?

[mrami]

Sir, you are lacking in the uninformed reactionary spirit that made this land so great!

Pardon me?

[Otter]

This seems especially poignant...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.

Errr, not to nitpick but the Soviet governments that were responsible for the disastrous irrigation projects in Central Asia were led by Nikita Khrushchev and Leonid Brezhnev. The current Bush administration had very little to do with it.

Project Seabuster

[AtariAmarok]

This was when George W Bush was working for his dad on a secret CIA project back in 1986.

Not wanting to commit things to paper and have them get out through the Freedom of Information Act, the planning went around by word of mouth. Dick Cheney (fresh back from a mission to pollute the canals on Mars) wanted to tell Bush Jr over the phone to get rid of the CCCP (Russian acronym for USSR).

However, the phone cut off mid-conversation, and all Bush could hear Cheney say was "About Russia? I want you to get rid of the C..."

Bush took this partial instruction literally, and proceeded to eliminate the smaller of Russia's internal salt seas.

You think war for oil is bad?

[Saige]

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...