These pictures from NASA are being called “the quiet Chernobyl.” It is the Aral Sea as seen in 2000 and as seen this year. The massive decline of water levels is particularly evident from the black line showing the shoreline in the 1960s. In the United States and other cities, the world is facing a water crisis that is being given relatively low amount of attention. However, pictures like these show vividly our self-destructive impact on the environment.
The once vast central Asian lake was devastated during the Soviet period due to a water diversion project in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Now here is the shocker stat: the Aral Sea was once the fourth largest lake in the world. It now hold less than 10% of its original water volume.
The destruction of the lake created in 2000 two separate lakes known the Small and Large Seas. Within 12 months, however, the southern lake was gone. Fisheries and other business have collapsed and the blowing dust from the exposed lakebed is now a health hazard due to the agricultural chemicals that polluted the lake. It has changed the local weather — the loss of the moderating water mass has made the winters and summers harsher.
These pictures are the work of the team for the Terra satellite studies.
It is a cautionary tale for all countries, including this one, of the cascading problems associated with environmental pollution and industrial overuse.
It hasn’t changed much in 4 years (Who Can’t See The Aral Sea).
Olly, JT is a card carrying, sky is falling, global warming, guy. The archives show that. But, the archives show there was little debate on the threads. And, and opposing view was stomped out by the weekend bloggers who patrolled the blog. So, we can voice our opposition freely. If you want to see just how ruthless the weekenders were just a year ago I direct your attention to just a 9/28/13 post titled, Duquesne University Professor. There are over 800 comments and you can quickly see how things operated here not long ago. So, we can register our complaints about JT or weekend bloggers. But, we need to be thankful for JT’s determination to open this blog up to varying viewpoints. He was close w/ some of these former weekenders. He took a stand and got a lotta shit. So, while I just spoke up about JT using scare tactics, I do so knowing I can speak my mind w/o fear of being gang banged like I, and the few other contrary voices were, just a year ago. I really hope you take the time to read the aforementioned post. I think what I just said will make much more sense if your do. It will also give you perspective when some wish for a return to the “good ol’ days.”
There were some good ol’ days. I am a positive person. On 1/25/14 mespo wrote one of his continuing series of Grace Under Pressure. Some weekenders had continuing series. This was the good series and a great post. I hope that mespo returns. He is needed here. I miss him.
Jim and Nick,
It’s at this point the dissenters of this piece will be castigated as Koch brothers acolytes. I live in SoCal and if any citizens in this country understand water (mis)management it’s Californians. Maybe Gov. Brown plans on using the high-speed rail to haul water because Lord knows its planned use makes no other sense.
Olly – I have to agree. A high-speed water train would be the bomb!
Nothing new here. The Owens Valley was decimated by Los Angeles and
William Mullholland. Here is what was once a huge lake in a beautiful valley. http://oceanworld.tamu.edu/resources/environment-book/Images/Owens-valley.JPG
Water stolen by the City of Los Angeles. http://www.pbs.org/weta/thewest/people/i_r/mulholland.htm
” Despite Mulhollands’s dire predictions of imminent water famine, once the project was complete, Los Angeles found it had no need to draw all the water it had the rights to from the Owens River. Indeed, during the eight years it took to build the aqueduct, the city’s population had more than doubled with no evident strain on the regular water supply. But while the city had enough water, the San Fernando Valley did not, so Mulholland began to squeeze every drop possible from the Owens River, draining the farms of the Owens Valley to make the lands owned by his financial backers bloom.
As they watched employees of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power destroy the dams and locks of their irrigation system, the residents of Owens Valley decided to fight back. Early on the morning of May 21, 1924, dynamite destroyed the Los Angeles Aqueduct at a structurally critical point. The city sent out private investigators and offered a $10,000 reward, but no one in Owens Valley would turn in a neighbor for what many considered an act of self-defense. The sabotage continued for months, and Mulholland received hundreds of threatening letters, but his only comment was that he “half-regretted the demise of so many of the valley’s orchard trees, because now there were no longer enough trees to hang all the troublemakers who live there.”
Yep DIre predictions!!!!!. Just like Global Warming, using an excuse to decimate the environment, wildlife and impoverish the people to enrich certain others.
People are always trying to frighten the sheeples in order to make themselves and their cronies rich. Windmills aka wildfowl Cuisinarts. Solar farms incinerating birds.
AND now the State of California is turning the San Fernando back into the desert it was and creating the next Dust Bowl by drying up the farms that Mullholland created with his stolen water.
Nothing new under the sun.
I would have expected such a biased piece to be reserved for the weekend crowd. Blog traffic must be down for this kind of red meat to be tossed in midweek.
Like I said, it’s all about marketing. Carbon instead of CO2, Climate change instead of Global Warming, etc…
This scare tactic headline is like the photo of the polar bear balancing on a small iceberg. The message is the poor bear is about to fall into the ocean because there is no more ice. Firstly, POLAR BEARS CAN SWIM A HUNDRED MILES! They are superb swimmers. Their bodies are built for swimming. Secondly, there’s plenty of ice. I doubt JT ever read State of Fear, by Michael Crichton. If he did, he didn’t get it.
Jim, Bingo! As is much of the water shortage problem in California.
“In 1961, the Aral Sea in central Asia was the world’s fourth largest lake. But massive irrigation programmes begun during the Soviet era diverted water from the rivers that feed it, reducing the lake’s volume to just 10 per cent of what it was and leaving large areas dry.”
It would seem it has less to do with global warming and Chernobyl and more to due from usage.
Jim, The headline is JT’s version of, “Don’t be late and end up in a crate.” Ironic both posts were made by the same guy, on the same day.
You need to join us in Arizona for our 100 and 1000 year flood events. 🙂 However, we still do not officially have enough water to end the drought. It will take a decent winter, which we expect to do that.
As an afterthought, since I’m sure I’ll be disparaged for that comment, I don’t believe in almost any govt controls, I’m a libertarian. But these poor, uneducated countries are ticking time bombs the more their populations grow & normally I would never advocate a position that infringes so heavily on anyone, but clearly it is dangerous to allow our earth to support an exponential population growth the way it is.
The point is here not whether the Aral Sea can be restored, but how to manage these things in the first place. Not going to be of any help to those people right now. It is (was) a shallow sea, and knowing its importance, should have been managed better. Doesn’t have anything to do with being green. We have similar problems here. The Ogalla is being used up quickly. Maybe instead of spending money to kill the strange hat-wearers of the week, we can tackle some real, pressing problems.
Water problems are mostly IMO an overpopulation problem, same thing with climate change. There are simply to many human beings on our planet to continue to support water usage for this many people, it’s time to seriously advocate strict population controls in many countries. In Niger I believe the average woman has 6.9 children!!! This is not the 12th century, it’s crazy!!!
Seems this event isn’t so unique. Another sky is falling story with the catchy Chernobyl buzz word.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn25620-history-shows-that-parched-aral-sea-can-be-restored.html#.VCv2-xbe58G
Gotta love the greens misleading title. They really are good a marketing.
Trying to avoid a tit-for-tat exchange, I think we can all agree there are challenges and threats posed by climate and weather that would could confront. These forces kill thousands and thousands of people and costs billions and billions of dollars a year. Unlike the spector of “terrorism,” you know the powers of the Earth will strike again. For sure. And there is much we can do. Plus, I bet a dollar for mitigation goes a lot further than the dollar in the defense industry.
Entertain that there is a problem with global warming coupled with miss use of natural resources, nah, that makes too much sense. Just the Koch brothers.
Desalination Project: California sees the writing on the wall.
Where the Pacific Ocean spills into the Agua Hedionda Lagoon in Carlsbad, Calif., construction is 25 percent complete on a $1 billion project to wring 50 million gallons of
freshwater a day from the sea and pour it into a water system that serves 3.1 million people.
5 Desalination companies to invest in:
We’re from Israel, and we’re here to help.
One desalination plant destined for public use is the $922 million, 50 million-gallon-per-day Carlsbad Desalination Project. Now under construction by privately held Poseidon Resources,
in partnership with Israel Chemicals (NASDAQOTH: ISCHY ) subsidiary IDE Technologies, Carlsbad aims to produce enough water to supply 7% of the city of San Diego’s drinking water needs.
And from the Caribbean, too.
A second company with the potential to slake California’s thirst is publicly traded Consolidated Water (NASDAQ: CWCO )
Bring in the big guns.
Two firms with even more financial heft could also come to California’s aid — France’s Veolia Environnement (NYSE: VE ) and America’s own General Electric Company (NYSE: GE ) .
Defense industry giant Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT ) — says it has developed a new technology for desalination that’s capable of filtering water “at a fraction of the cost of industry-standard reverse osmosis systems.
This is a major challenge going forward. Lots of thirsty mouths and industry. and when push comes to shove, people have to have water. Look at India and Pakistan, they still may come to a full on conflict over Kashmir for control of water. If you look at how weather and climate affects life and kills people, you would think it would be worthy of budgetary considerations like defense…. You would think…