Posted on 05/28/2005 5:56:03 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
By Jim Yardley The New York Times
SATURDAY, MAY 28, 2005
DUNHUANG, China At the bottom of the mountainous dunes once traversed by traders and pilgrims on the ancient Silk Road, Wang Qixiang stood with a camera draped around his neck. He was a modern pilgrim of sorts, a tourist.
He and his wife had traveled by train more than 3,200 kilometers, or 2,000 miles, from eastern China to the forbidding emptiness of the Gobi Desert to glimpse a famous pool of water known as Crescent Lake. They came because the lake has been rapidly shrinking into the desert sand, and they feared it might soon disappear. "It is a miracle of the desert," said Wang.
In this desert oasis where East once met West and that is home to one of the world's greatest shrines to Buddhism, the water is disappearing. Crescent Lake has dropped more than 7.5 meters, or 25 feet, in the past three decades, while the underground water table elsewhere in the area has fallen by as much as 10 meters.
An ancient city that once served as China's gateway to the West, Dunhuang is threatened by very modern demands. A dam built three decades ago to help local farming, combined with a doubling of the population, have overstressed a fragile desert hydrology that had been stable for thousands of years.
"I would call it an ecological crisis," said Zhang Mingquan, a professor at Lanzhou University who specializes in the region's hydrology. "The problem is the human impact. People are overusing the amount of water that the area can sustain."
(Excerpt) Read more at iht.com ...
Ping!
Toooooo many people.
Don't look at us, we gave at the office.
Signed,
Northern California
They should look at Colorado.:-)
Here in Michigan we've got more fresh water than the middle east has oil. Hehehe...
Northern Calif. where the feather river has been hijacked and sent south to fulfill the thirsty wasteful water habits of L.A.
Yeah, you will never run of water or ice.:-)
Should have asked a rancher about 'carrying capacity' before they jumped off the cliff with expansion plans. And, I wonder if tourists are demanding flush toilets...
Yep, that could be one heck of a bucket brigade.
It is helpful in such times to remember that the earth is not depleted of even a drop of water. It is simply moved around, as is the nature of water.
As we develop means for moving water over greater distances we will meet the demands we have for nature to supply us her unlimited bounty.
While I am on the subject, population growth can only increase as a factor of the ability of the system to create and nurture new life. Clearly we have not begun to approach any such limitations on our procreation. In point of fact world population is declining as a function of self-control and of disease related to our inability to mobilize resources to needed areas.
We are not running out of resources. We simply have not yet learned to fully mobilize the resources available to us.
Indiscriminate killing is the only answer.
Preferably, with chainsaws.
"Toooooo many people."
Some geniuses don't think there is such a thing as too many people. Even on this forum some enjoy explaining how there is plenty of land to support ten times the current world population. I don't buy it myself, even if people can live at such density I wouldn't want to.
"The problem is the human impact. People are overusing the amount of water that the area can sustain."
Naaaah, global warming, all Bush's fault.
Well said. Some might choose to argue with truth. I'm not some.
"Northern Calif. where the feather river has been hijacked and sent south to fulfill the thirsty wasteful water habits of L.A."
California agriculture uses more water than all the cities in Southern California. We grow rice in the middle of the desert (flooding fields with water). We grow cotton, another heavy water user. If that water were diverted to cities, there would be a water surplus in California for generations.
Such a density will turn many into psychos, while a majority of them will become neurotic.
Having private living space would be next to impossible.
But where would their food and cotton come from?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.