So I love the Ol' USA, but my posts lately have gotten a bit domestic... Us Americans, we can be a bit self involved.. put 20 guys on the moon, create the Super Bowl and Southern Bar BQ, and all the sudden the rest of the world don't exist. We do fix problems when we get around to it, and our true freedom of the press, with a few warts through it may have, and our love for the Internets, this system of tubes, makes for easy blogging about just about any endangered hog nose snail, and boondoggle public works to fix a problem we never should have had in the first place under the sun.. Believe me, I understand.. but I do want to bring in some exotic elements here..
The world is a big place, and as we are learning more and more, it's environmental problems are interconnected, so I feel a need to write about a piece of potential hope someplace else, someplace exotic, someplace complicated.. and I'm not sure it gets any more complicated than the Middle East. Although Jordan is a relatively uncontentious little place, so this story might be kind of cut and dry, and well, distantly hopeful after all.. but ah the setting, what a complex pile of sand it is...ah, Israel, The West Bank, the Dead Sea, lowest place on Earth, extension of the Great Rift Valley, but if the Rift Valley was the Cradle of Human life, than the areas around the Dead Sea do kind of compete for being the cradle of Human Contention.. but nature is neutral to all that, nature either has no opinions, or just kind of wants to survive... we project almost everything else onto it, from needs to value, but it's fair to say that given that, the Dead Sea is kind of a cool place.. well, not cool, it's pretty damn hot.. lemme see.. Dead Sea Weather Report...
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-july-13-2006/emotional-weather-report
well, that's kind of it, but this is a bit more specific.. congrats on the record by the way, Middle East!
http://www.google.com/search?q=dead+sea+weather+report&aq=f&oq=dead+sea+weather+report&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8
So all other problems aside, the Dead Sea, a bit like the Aral Sea now famously, is shrinking, rapidly, and it's not a natural occurrence..
what is happening is that an Israeli firm set up a Salt Works on the south end of the Sea complete with some big evaporation pans, actually, more like a potash mine, and it has dropped the level of the sea precipitously... 1 meter a year in recent times.. there is an eerie photo I once saw of a hotel from the 60's that used to be beach level, but however is now like 30 feet up, but I can't seem to find it, perhaps the hotels that do exist somehow managed to get rid of it, but here is some data:
http://saveoursea.org.il/?p=329
http://www.h2ome.net/en/2011/03/the-blue-peace/
http://guyshachar.com/content/blog/2011/live-dead-sea-photos-from-a-winter-day/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead_Sea
scroll down to the environmental bits if you want to skip all the history..
Anyhow, so it's coming apart, turning into the Salton Sea or the Aral Sea, one of those disasters that you hear about but few go to see, but oddly, about a million people a year go to float there, it's kind of a pass time in Israel, go down and turn your hair all kinky.... they just keep building the hotels closer and closer, and tearing down the old ones, or now they are even splitting the salt pan level from the northern part of the sea so they don't have to move the hotels,
http://www.restorationplanning.com/deadsea.html
The Dead Sea Works, the company that evaporates most of the water, allegedly went on a huge 'Greenwashing Campaign', to displace blame, but their production goes on as usual
http://www.iclfertilizers.com/Fertilizers/DSW/Pages/BUHomepage.aspx
and no one has done anything about the falling sea levels, yet..
There was once a proposal to create a ditch from the Mediterranean, then somehow siphon the water over the mountains and down to the sea..it was supposed to cost about 2 billion dollars, but it never took off.. there was a lot of controversy in Israel, where survival is always placed first, and money is always purported to be tight... despite a fairly good environmental record amongst the Israelis, who love to plant trees anywhere they can.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediterranean%E2%80%93Dead_Sea_Canal
But they also love to and need to farm, and they are like California, siphoning water from everywhere.. I have seen the Jordan River at it's source, the outflow of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was supposedly baptized by John the Baptist, and it's a nice enough spot, but it's not a big river.. I was able to do a full crawl up it, and there are a few rope swings, but it only comes up to ones chest at deepest, and is just 30 or so feet across..if it ain't for Israel being so small, and the history surrounding the Jordan being so big, trust me, you never would have heard of it.. There are thousands of bigger rivers around the world, and I saw the extent of the agricultural use even just at it's source..
So what to do...well, across the sea in Jordan, the quiet little kingdom by Middle Eastern Standards, a bit like Oman, that actually has a caring monarchy and some charm, there is a need for water, and although the merits of desalinization are questionable, if they have an appropriate place to discharge the briny water, and they can produce the clean water with renewable energy, since the sea level is going up it's not like the Ocean will mind too much... are you thinking what I am thinking.. well, Jordan is:
http://www.jrsp-jordan.com/
http://www.haaretz.com/news/national/is-the-red-sea-dead-sea-canal-about-to-become-reality.premium-1.494217
http://static1.dot.jo/uploads/repository/f7fd77c82e35fa4eb17b311b0bc092d498b864c2.jpg
http://jordantimes.com/article/implementation-of-jordan-red-sea-project-to-begin-early-next-year
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/the_dead_sea_is_dying_can__a_controversial_plan_save_it/2551/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Sea%E2%80%93Dead_Sea_Canal http://static1.dot.jo/uploads/repository/f7fd77c82e35fa4eb17b311b0bc092d498b864c2.jpg
So there is controversy, no doubt, but something has to be done, and I will admit that if you can't halt agriculture, or get them to stop using the evaporation pans, which would be the biggest help, this project just might do the trick..hopefully with a little environmental vetting.. it ain't perfect, but they are a long ways down a bad road, and there aren't many options to just turn around...
There is some funny power to this story, as with each minute that passes, the area around the Dead Sea sets new lows for the world... I'm just talking about altitude, of course... but let's try to raise the level a bit here, shall we folks..
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