UN's Ban Calls Aral Sea 'Shocking Disaster'

AP via Yahoo News ^ | 4 April 2010 | Jim Heintz

[edpc]

NUKUS, Uzbekistan – The drying up of the Aral Sea is one of the planet's most shocking environmental disasters, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Sunday as he urged Central Asian leaders to step up efforts to solve the problem.

Once the world's fourth-largest lake, the sea has shrunk by 90 percent since the rivers that feed it were largely diverted in a Soviet project to boost cotton production in the arid region.

[edpc]

They make it sound like this just occured. It's been happening for decades due to the irrigation projects from the pre and post WWII Soviet projects. But hey, look on the bright side: Uzbekistan did benefit from being a major exporter of cotton.

We'll get stuck paying the tab for any proposed restoration project with money we don't have.

[edpc]

[SpaceBar]

Absolutely agree with your post #1.

[ARepublicanForAllReasons]

It's coincidental that I was looking at my Google Earth map last night. I was scanning central Asia to check out the area where the fictional country of 'Kapistan' is supposed to be located in Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King.

I identified the Black Sea, then the Caspian Sea, but where was the Aral Sea? I couldn't find it. Now I know why.

Google Earth provides a global map based on recent satellite photographs.

[paddles]

The bad news is that Vozrozhdeniya Island is now connected to the mainland.

[Abathar]

It can be reversed if they let the rivers fill it again, but that isn't going to happen in our lifetimes.

[Abathar]

Exactly, who knows what kind of bugs are sitting there waiting to be spread when they just abandoned that research laboratory.

[mapmaker77]

It was not just over irrigation, right up on the northeast corner of what used to be the Aral sea is one of the Soviets nuc testing ranges.

[egannacht]

Communism: EPIC FAIL

[denydenydeny]

Basically another “stimulus plan” at work.

[FlingWingFlyer]

Won't the "melting" glaciers and polar ice caps take care of this?

sarc/

[chooseascreennamepat]

Bush’s fault.

[RC2]

Not to worry. They’ll blame it on global warming, tax us as much as they can, then let the rivers flow as normal and fill it up again. Then they will tell us “See, the taxes worked.”

[Waco]

So frigging what!!! It was those wunnerful socialists that permited it. Now, everyone at the UN,,,squat and say ‘’what color??

[gitmo]

So if you stop the influx of water into a lake, the lake dries up? Hooda thunkit?

[Jack Hydrazine]

Leftists don’t really care about the environment. It just becomes a another tool for the revolution - used once and then thrown away.

[TigersEye]

The face of the earth changes whether man plays a part or not. I imagine that lake bottom is some very fertile soil. Grow crops on it.

[edpc]

The sea's evaporation has left layers of highly salted sand.....

Not sure about the fertility of this land.

[Roccus]

The lake bottom is now salt flats.

[skeptoid]

August, 2009

Link to high-res at Wikipedia.