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Aral Sea Basin Almost Completely Dry
An anonymous reader writes: In 2000, NASA began taking satellite images of the Aral Sea in central Asia, which was once the fourth-largest inland lake in the world. At that time, there was an expansive eastern basin, and smaller basins to the north and west. In images recorded just last week, we see that the eastern basin is completely gone, and the western basin just a thin strip of water. The local fishing industry has been devastated, old ship graveyards now rest on dry ground, and salt-heavy sand is being blown around the region, causing health issues.
Most of the lake's decline is attributable to human intervention: "In the 1950s, two of the region's major rivers – the Amu Darya and and the Syr Darya – were diverted by the Soviet government to provide irrigation for cotton production in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, starving the Aral. It has been diminishing ever since, with the sea level dropping 16 meters between 1960 and 1996, according to the World Bank. Water levels are believed to be down to less than 10 per cent of what they were five decades ago." Low levels of rain and snow didn't help.
Most of the lake's decline is attributable to human intervention: "In the 1950s, two of the region's major rivers – the Amu Darya and and the Syr Darya – were diverted by the Soviet government to provide irrigation for cotton production in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, starving the Aral. It has been diminishing ever since, with the sea level dropping 16 meters between 1960 and 1996, according to the World Bank. Water levels are believed to be down to less than 10 per cent of what they were five decades ago." Low levels of rain and snow didn't help.
I don't think this particular story is a harbinger of that. Rather, I think it's a story of monumental stupidity caused by a totalitarian government that didn't bother looking forward, and was too eager by half to waggle their technological penises in front of the world.
The rivers feeding the Aral Sea haven't dried up - just that most of it got diverted to other uses, and the Aral Sea was the unfortunate loser in that bargain.
I don't disagree that yeah, potable water is going to eventually be a problem as climate slowly shifts and population grows. The climate and population growth are debatable and mostly unknown as to rate, direction and cause, but change they will.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Why do you declare it a fuckup? They diverted the water, and now have farmland where before they had desert. That was their plan. If you're telling me that they wanted farmland in the desert as well as the Aral Sea to stay the same, then yes it was a fuckup. But I don't think that was the intention.
The water will still be there, but it will be used to benefit people and the organisms we value. There is a finite volume (*) of life the earth can support -- what we're down to is how it ought to be divided and the choice we are making is that the only organisms worth anything, are people, cows, pigs, chickens, and corn. Our population problem is an extremely unpopular topic, but by ignoring it, we will eventually destroy all the interesting biodiversity we have in the world in exchange for a monocrop of people, along with the very few organisms people tend to value, and the diseases and parasites associated with those.
(*) by weight if you will(**), not individual count.
(**) differences in body composition make "weight" not exactly accurate as some things have greater density due to the use of different minerals (hard shells or bones as a percent of body mass for example). What can be said is that there is a finite amount of stuff on the earth that can be mixed up in different ways into a finite total amount of life. The question we should ask is, what is a smart or wise percentage of that total, that we humans and the plants/animals we value, should comprise.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
you value farming over nature?
that is so wrong.
nature is so much worth than farming.
As an environmentalist, that's so incredibly simplistic, I'd almost call this post an attempt at parodying environmentalist positions. Luckily I'm aware that people who sometimes agree with me do so for simplistic reasons.
Organized, structured, large scale farming does less ecological and environmental harm than the people those farms would feed instead scrounging for food or running ad-hoc microfarms. Not to mention the human costs to those changes, like malnutrition and economic loss.
Now, if we pave every forest, turn every grassland into grazeland for cattle, and net every fish in the ocean, we've fucked up. We've fucked up badly. Good environmentalism is about being stewards who recognize our planetary ecosystems are irreplaceable and providing incredible value to us as a species, as well as the unique and unmeasurable quality that each species and ecosystem represents that can never be replaced once gone.
No one is saying you can't worship nature as some manifestation of perfection, just that we'll take it as seriously as we take any other religion.
Not to be too contrarian, but before we declare this an unmitigated disaster, shouldn't the cost of the destruction of the Aral sea be measured against the benefits of provided by the water that used to flow into it?
I have no idea of the numbers, but if we're talking about the 100,000 people having their livelihood destroyed and their environment destroyed so that millions can proper elsewhere, that might seem to be a fair trade-off to the government.
After all, I'm a North American, so unless I'm a huge hypocrite and also view North America as an unmitigated disaster, I have admit that the prosperity of my nation has only been achieved by the wholesale destruction of many others (the Native Americans).
There are *always* trade-offs. Unless we've got an accounting of both the costs and the benefits, who's to say the Aral sea decision was a failure?
Yup, this is what you get when a short-sighted totalitarian government messes with the water cycle to enable farming in a desert, consequences be damned.
Come to think of it, California is what you get when a short-sighted democratic government messes with the water cycle to enable farming in a desert, consequences be damned.
Let's face it, environmental concerns wasn't really on any government's radar until the 70s. (And a lot of countries still try to ignore them...)