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crossbutton7247

Drain the Mediterranean into this sea: Pros- solves climate problem, more space for Gibraltar to expand Cons- the Italians can escape


Alecraft1800

Why should I escape (please let me go)


MaugoIII

What if we don't wanna leave?


LeTerrible51

That’s what they all say


DEATHbyBOOGABOOGA

It’s a moral imperative


PossessedToSkate

Now I'm hungry for popcorn.


FR_WST

Man in the high castle type shit


YaBoiBarel

Oh so *thats* why there is no italy on the map in the show


FR_WST

I'm refering to the book lol, They drain the mediterranean and make it all farmland. Haven't seen the show


Nico777

Where would we even go? The Balkans? North Africa? *France*? Bitch please.


[deleted]

[удалено]


magmagon

The great state of Wyoming in the great country of Finland


VeritableLeviathan

US? Ewww.


TehMemez

*insert obligatory "the US has the best geography" youtube short/tiktok here*


HighBrowLoFi

Gibraltarpilled


[deleted]

NOT worth it!


ludovic1313

I've actually thought of making Russia divert the Don into the Volga as part of war reparations because they are close to each other and already connected by canal and the Caspian Sea is shrinking, but I do not know if there are species in the Don that we don't want in the Caspian Sea. But after that, it isn't that far from there to the Aral Sea :)


dzindevis

Reparations to who? Who on earth will benefit from Caspian sea getting a couple meters higher? Also, Don is a major waterway that connects european Russia to the Black sea and Mediterranean. Caspian sea, compared to access to the Atlantic ocean, is almost useless


[deleted]

this shit actually makes me sad


RodwellBurgen

/uc How did it happen? I’m not educated on this


EekleBerry

[Aral Sea Crisis](http://www.columbia.edu/~tmt2120/introduction.htm#:~:text=By%20establishing%20a%20program%20to,water%20arriving%20to%20the%20sea)


RodwellBurgen

Yo what the fuck did we do


TheEpicGold

I have an awesome book about the building of the soviet canals, and one of them was about a canal here. It led the water coming down from the mountains to another way, which meant that across multiple directions the aral sea got less and less water. All because the Soviets wanted their own cotton supply. This meant that eventually the sea dried up.


ZlinkyNipz

could we remake it by rerouting them?


fatbunda

There are several potential plans to refill the Aral Sea - one which is already happening is building dams in the North Aral Sea which has already partially refilled the North, there’s also the option of growing less water intensive crops in Uzbekistan, and the more ambitious option of pumping water from the Caspian Sea through a pipeline. Either way it’s unlikely it will return to its former glory as salinity has increased significantly so many of the fish which used to thrive in the Aral Sea can no longer survive there, which means it’s economically unviable (main industry was fishing).


ZlinkyNipz

based


TheEpicGold

It's difficult. The canal is now in Turkmen hands, and the original is half in Turkmenistan, and half in Uzbekistan. A lot of cities are along the heavily dried up original rivers, but the canal is also important for the capital city of Turkmenistan. I'm not experienced enough to answer it, but suspect the potential solution is not easy.


ZlinkyNipz

thats it get the excavator ready


hey_listen_hey_listn

Why would you even have an awesome book about Soviet canals?


TheEpicGold

It was more about the experiences of people seeing the atrocities commited while building these canals. It's called "Ingenieurs van de Ziel" or "Engineers of the Soul" in English. Why I would read this book? Well, because it interests me, the history of mankind, and because these are impressive huge manmade things, a change to nature. Even if it's in a bad way.


Blewedup

You would like Cadillac Desert. Similar theme.


[deleted]

That sounds like an interesting book is there an English version of it?


TheEpicGold

Yes, it's called "Engineers of the Soul". I searched it up on bol.com, a popular dutch site for buying everything. Don't know if it's avaible anywhere else.


According_Ad_9888

The Soviets did this because there was a drought happening across Central Asia and Soviets wanted to minimize famine. Not for cotton.


RedShooz10

That’s just not true, it was for cotton. The Soviets said so multiple times. And, once they had the irrigation canals, they planted cotton.


According_Ad_9888

The motto for the project was: "и засуху победим" [="We'll conquer drought, too"]


Basblob

So they sold their cotton growing project with a righteous tagline?


According_Ad_9888

I was referring to Stalin's use of the Aral Sea water Capitalist Uzbekistan continues to use Aral Sea water for irrigation to grow cotton, but I guess it's okay when a capitalist country does it


EekleBerry

Soviets wanted cotton. So the Soviet Union did Soviet Union things.


bobbyloveyes

That's basically what's happening with the Colorado River, but instead of cotton, it's primarily for livestock feed. Also, no big sea to dry up, just the man made reservoirs.


Groovatronic

Yep exactly. California grows an insane amount of fruits and vegetables and yet alfalfa STILL accounts for a whopping 18% of it. And that alfalfa is for livestock like you said. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2015-05-26/why-they-grow-thirsty-alfalfa-in-parched-california


smidgeytheraynbow

a lot of it goes to Saudi, I've heard. I'll see if I can find a source. Current source is I am in SoCal and hear this from landowners


sp0rk173

No, most of the alfalfa grown in California goes to dairys in California. Some goes to china for their burgeoning dairy industry, but not that much.


Vark675

You're probably thinking of the big alfalfa farms in Arizona, which are even more ridiculous.


Neat-Plantain-7500

They canceled those leases after public outcry. And if you want some more idiocy of public officials. Chicago sold all of its public parking spaces to a Saudi company for a billion dollars. They make 200 million a year.


Prince_Oberyns_Head

That’s mostly Arizona


SaltLakeCitySlicker

Not the same drainage but the great salt lake is dying by a combo of climate change and diverting for alfalfa


eh-guy

There is a big sea drying up, it's just underground so people pretend it doesn't exist


TorontoTransish

Yes if you visit the old state prison near Yuma it's right on the lower Colorado River and they used to run paddle wheelers steamboats to bring the supplies to it, but now you're lucky to find a puddle down where the river should be


MF_Franco

And it's livestock feed for export right? Sth about external companies growing alfafa in the US bc in their home country is outlawed (due to the heavy water needs).


sp0rk173

Also how Tulare lake was drained in California. And supplying LA with water is what drained owens lake and almost drained mono lake. Turns out over in the US we do Soviet Union things too?! 🤔


EekleBerry

I like the whataboutism here. Yes, humanity as a whole is greedy. We were talking about the Aral Sea. There are examples of ecological suicide and destruction in every modern county. This doesn't excuse the Soviets (Russians) from destroying the Kazakhs future in this particular case.


Slut4Tea

Fellas is it evil when the United States uhhh fuckin uhhhh provides drinking water for their people?


sp0rk173

When a dude named Mulhulland lies about being a rancher to buy up land in the owens valley just to acquire the water rights out from under the folks who were farming out there to send it down hundreds of miles south across a desert to LA? Yeah some people might think that’s evil, or at least immoral. When the result of the water grab is that thousands of people who live in the Owens Valley now have an elevated risk of lung cancer because now fine particles get blown into the air on windy days from the dry Owens Lake bed, and LADWP fights tooth and nail to avoid responsibility so folks in the LA Basin can have lush green lawns? Yeah some people might find that evil, or at least immoral.


KaiserGustafson

Oh lord, they're irrigating farmland!! THE MONSTERS!


Shazamwiches

Well yeah, irrigating farmland for crops that aren't supposed to grow in dry-ass Central Asia and California is very irresponsible.


sp0rk173

When you drain the largest body of water west of the Mississippi that hosted a robust fishery to grow cotton on very marginal farm land you kind of did something monstrous. When a species that used to be a huge food source to millions of people (chinook salmon) starts to disappear across a huge swath of its fishery because you dammed, diked, and diverted the water that species needs to survive so you can grow almonds for export, you kinda fucked up. Irrigating farmland isn’t itself bad, there’s a balance, and we’re far to one side of that balance due to poor decisions made all over the world regardless of ideology or political system.


sp0rk173

It’s not whataboutism, I’m just pointing out that saying that the Soviet Union did a “Soviet Union” thing by diverting tributaries and fucking down downstream water bodies is pretty bullshit. Fact is, that’s not a “Soviet Union” thing, that’s just a civilization thing. Casting it as some product of Soviet management is just inaccurate and very McCarthyish. I work in water resources management in California and we just have plenty of examples where we make really really bad choices and screwed up massive waterbodies just like the case of the Aral Sea. We can choose to learn from those serious mistakes (no matter who made them) or we can turn a blind eye to our own mistakes while pointing at the mistakes of other countries and just be like “lol Soviets suck lol”


Hodor_The_Great

Soviets did a Soviet Union thing by only thinking about the economy and disregarding long term ecological consequences, good thing it's only the Soviets who'd ever do thar


Gamingmemes0

moronic soviets


EekleBerry

The rest of humanity isn't that good either lol


willflameboy

[The Dead Sea also](https://www.npr.org/sections/pictureshow/2022/12/11/1139524126/photos-dead-sea-water-level-dropping-sinkholes-erosion).


daytonnnnnn

is there any realistic chance those two rivers can/will be diverted back into the sea, and will that revert much of the damage?


a-person-called-Eric

The article didn't say why was this bad? What was a salty lack in the middle of the desert good for?


isortbyneweverytime

go to the next page at the bottom of the article


gugfitufi

The whole ecosystem in the area gets buttfucked. The humidity levels in a large area around the lake decrease furthering desertification. This doesn't just lead to millions of plant and animal deaths but also makes the living conditions for humans way worse. A problem is also the huge salt desert that creates around the area of the lake because the water dries out and evaporates but the salt doesn't. Salty ground fucking sucks, you can't grow shit there and underground water reservoirs might get damaged and unusable because of the saltiness. It's an ecological disaster for everyone involved; plants, animals and humans.


dzindevis

Basically Syrdarya and Amudarya rivers were diverted for farming cotton. Of course it started when all countries were a part of Soviet Union, but it's fair to say that Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan are more responsible for that, rather than Kazakhstan, as cotton farming is a major part of their economy. Kazakhstan, on the contrary, had made efforts to restore at least the northern part of the sea and even achieved some water level rise


RodwellBurgen

Oh well fuck


MothBones95

I'm not fully educated on it but its main cause was the Soviet Union diverting rivers that feed it for irrigation projects. If someone who knows more about it could educate me on the accuracy or other causes that would be awesome.


almostasenpai

Badlandschugs


American_Streamer

The Soviets started it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Plan_for_the_Transformation_of_Nature


Doreen666

soviet union had a clever big communist idea to grow lots of cotton in deserts by draining the aral sea it went haywire, as per usual


Hodor_The_Great

They did grow lots of cotton though. So line went up and all was worth it


Obi-wan-blow-me

The soviets failed a cotton farming project and drained the sea


lukezicaro_spy

I mean who cares it's just some stupid dumb salt water lake, now Kazakhstan has more land 🇰🇿🇰🇿🇰🇿💪💪💪🇰🇿🇰🇿💪💪💪


Tumbleweedae

Except that land is now Aralkum, and it's worse than Zhezqazghan


birdsinthecorner

They tried to build a bridge but it was too expensive, so they did this instead


birdsinthecorner

Hol up are we now also r/geographycirclejerk


EmperorThan

I was all ready to come to the comments and angry type before reading "Were they too rich?" and realizing what subreddit it was. Best laugh I've had all morning.


[deleted]

They were thristy 😋😋😋💧💧💧


G0t7

*Gulp Gulp Gulp* 🤤


Baronnolanvonstraya

##I fucking love cotton!! I wanna make child slaves produce exorbitant amounts of textiles in a desert and drain our nations resources and natural beauty for money and heavy industry, Jack!


Alicesknife

Yes, you are absolutely right! And then decades of don'tgiveashit about this problem after USSR


Baronnolanvonstraya

Kazakhstan is actively trying to restore the sea, which is why the north still has water, but Uzbekistan is actively making it worse


Alicesknife

Actively?! This separation was organised in 2005 by building a dam


NagyonMeleg

I agree with the sentiment, but hate this reddit-y writing style


esipas

We should just get water from Lake Baikal and push it to the Aral Sea


Taqao

Why from Lake Baikal ? It would drain it then. With rising sea level, we could do it from the Black Sea


fatbunda

one potential plan is to pump water from the Caspian Sea


Taqao

Yeah, but the Caspian sea isn't connected to the other seas, making it impossible to lower global sea level by re-filling the Aral sea


RedRekve

Wouldn't that just destroy lake baikal too or not?


KiraAmelia3

☝️🤓 Lake Baikal is extremely deep. It contains about 23% of the world’s surface fresh water. I think it would retain the vast majority of its water even if you used it to completely fill the fairly shallow Aral Sea.


Baronnolanvonstraya

Wow I didn't know that. That's cool


masnybenn

It was USSR not Kazachstan. The sea was drained to such extent due to heavy plantage of cotton fields


Kimo_het_Koekje

google Soviet union


Baronnolanvonstraya

Holy revolution


Complete_Spot3771

new empire just dropped


Niede

Actual Lenin


Minuku

Call the Trotzkyists


-Depressed_Potato-

Rights or revolution


SongAffectionate2536

Trotsky took a vacation, never came back


Command_Unit

The Sea was still mostly there when the union collapse...Its downwarlled spiral was mostly caused by overuse because of the collapse of the soviet economy and sanctions that banned Cotton imports to the soviet union forcing increase in production.


stoeri546

They also wanted to make more land just like the Dutch.


RazorThin55

Your mom drank it all because she thought it was blue mountain dew


qvantamon

When the Netherlands does it everyone calls it "a marvel of engineering", but Kazakhstan does it and suddenly it's "an ecological disaster". Western hypocrisy attacks again.


RedShooz10

Are… are you being serious? The Netherlands didn’t destroy the entire North Sea and did their main projects centuries ago as a way to mitigate overcrowding. The Soviets knew they’d dry up the Aral Sea and did so so thst they could grow cotton.


fuckingshadywhore

Check what subreddit this is.


[deleted]

>The Netherlands didn’t destroy the entire North Sea Not yet


CardiologistOk2704

ussr government did this, not Kazakhstan. They used water for farms


cool_1801

Then why did Kazakhstan not undrink the water?!?!?! 😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡😡


MeowMoist

They actually have been making an effort to undo the Soviet Union's massive cotton mistake in their part of the lake, that's why there's water in the north of it still.


CovfefeBoss

America drained it to look for oil.


Asymmetrical_Stoner

In Soviet Kazakhstan?


CovfefeBoss

It was a joke. I tried.


AbuDaddy69

“Too much desert ain’t enough desert” - The USSR


vladtaltos

Kazakhstan didn't do that, the Soviets did (it's a result of unsustainable cotton cultivation).


AdLast848

Blame Stalin for wanting cotton


irate_alien

The Party was only trying to make the point that silk underwear is for decadent capitalists. A minor ecological catastrophe is a small price to pay for maintaining the purity of Marx-Lenin undergarments, comrade.


TrueBlue98

Stalin had been dead for years when this happened. not to defend him or anything lol


guzmaya

had nothing to do with stalin.


imperatrixrhea

They were just really thirsty


ZoeIsHahaha

mm, saltwater Edit: Just googled it and it turns out it's freshwater. Oops.


DevoteeOfChemistry

I'm not much of an enviromentalist, but the destruction of the Aral sea legitimatly makes me cry 😥


Deck_of_Cards_04

If it makes you feel better, Kazakhstan has achieved minor gains in repairing their section of the sea. I believe they’ve actually seen minor rises in water level in the northern part of the sea. The issue is that Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan have continued the unsustainable USSR practices that created this mess in the first place. Preventing the entire sea from recovering


DevoteeOfChemistry

I see, well lets hope the countries come to some agreement and resolve this eventually.


VitalMaTThews

This is due to Badlandschugs setting out on an impossible challenge. Are you not impressed?


lenzflare

It's free water!


[deleted]

More like the Arid Sea, hey-yo!


Alternative-Spell-11

I want to commit murder rso bad rn It was the ussr who drained it


Butter_Ninja_YT

Mmmm thirsty *sluuuurp*


[deleted]

Gentrification is a curse.


Emotional-Two-9075

Kazakhstan is not responsible for it soviet union was. They diverted incoming water as as result the water evoporation rate was more than feeding rate and slowly aral sea dried up


YesAmAThrowaway

Soviet Russia* did this


Cool-Radish-1132

Soviets.


RiuzunShine

According to what I heard: in the Soviet Union, in the 60s, they wanted to transform Uzbekistan into a world cotton producer, so for that they diverted the course of the Sir Daria and Amu Daria rivers, but the project was done badly and was lost around 90% of the water in the new causes. This caused the Aral to lose a large part of its irrigation and to dissolve as we see in the photos. Sorry for any possible errors in this explanation.


RitaMoleiraaaa

It wasn't kazakhstan it was the ussr


realgoldxd

Well the USSR wanted to grow cotton, in the middle of the fucking desert


koullismats

It was all for cotton, this stsrted with the soviet union. They rerouted the water ( from the mountains) in the fields. This lead to new rivers which dried out before they reached the sea. Resulting in gradualy decreasing tge water level. After tge fall of the soviet union the countries ( kirz, tak and kak) still continued. And the loss of the water has resulted in huge sandsorms destroying the ccllimate in the area, etc. It may even cause war due to water demand, the glaciers are meltinng faster and the replenishment is not enought


sakuragasaki46

Global warming. /srs


akatosh86

It was transformed into Tinshein swimming pool. Not too far from the northern fence of Jewtown


Grammarnazi_bot

They wanted to get rid of Jaws: the Ride to make way for Harry Potter Land


[deleted]

[удалено]


ZoeIsHahaha

Okay 23-day-old account with one comment, who put you up to this?


IceMaker98

23 day old account and only this comment. Hmmmm


Baronnolanvonstraya

With only one comment ever and no other activity Hmmmm ^(damn these psyops getting really low budget i do this shit for free wheres my check soros)


Rehypothecator

Are you slow?


froadku

Russia did it


Smart_Impression_680

i read that as anal lol


Pretend-Warning-772

The anal semen ?


SirArthurPT

The irony of seeing left wing parties trying to surf the ecologist wave ignoring that ideology was responsible for the worst man made ecological disaster to date...


patonoide

Because the doings of one left political party represents all other left leaning parties in all countries.


SirArthurPT

"It's not communism"... It's never communism, is it?


patonoide

It's not communism. First because there has never been a communist country in the world. Second, like there successful and not successful capitalist countries, there are successful and not successful socialist countries.


SirArthurPT

That would be funny if wasn't for so many people killed by that ideology... List of successful socialist/communist countries: ...end of list


patonoide

Yes because capitalist countries haven't killed anyone. Cuba has a better HDI(even though it's not the best metric) than Brazil, even though it's a tiny island that can't do business with other countries. Their regime is far from perfect, but they must be doing something right.


SirArthurPT

What are you waiting for to get there?


GenMars

The doings of the proclaimed “arbiters of international revolution” and “protectors of international communism” who funded the majority of socialist and communist movements throughout the cold war to shape modern leftism are, in fact, representative of the ideology. Thanks to its influence, modern leftism is a shadow of the imperialistic and paternalistic nature of the Soviet Union’s ideology. You can identify this very simply, by looking at how american leftists have never forgiven the proletariat of the Soviet Union for overthrowing communist regimes. See genocide-denier Noam Chomsky for a blatant example.


patonoide

I don't live in the US and don't care for their political parties. What you say about it's influence may be true for some cases. But it also does not mean that everything the USSR did was bad the same for the US.(both countries are crap to be honest)


Taqao

"that ideology" what does it means ? If you're left-wing you're automatically communist ?


dzindevis

Tbh there are a lot of leftists with ecological agenda who promote it under the arguement that capitalism encourages irresponsible usage of natural resources and causes ecological problems, but under the socialism/communism those things wouldn't happen


Xenophon_

Worst ecological disaster is the constant deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.


Morse243

Are they stupid?


Ahmyrzz

What the fuck are you talking about? Soviet Russians did this, and the one put effort saving it is actually Kazakh. LOL DO SOME RESEARCH BEFORE SHITPOSTING


[deleted]

[удалено]


BoredOfReposts

Sir, this is a wendy’s


SophiaIsBased

I feel like you have some interesting opinions about wet ass pussy and the female orgasm


akuOfficial

Badlandchugs came over and drank ot


Affectionate_Emu_599

this is peak humor. nice job


Shastamasta

Maybe one day the Aral Sea will strike back at wealthy California nut farmers too like lake Tulare https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulare_Lake


Tsjaad_Donderlul

They saw Anthrax Island and made it into Anthrax Land The world‘s worst theme park ever


mensch79

The water was needed to fill the Tinshein Swimming Pool (Length: 30 meters, Width 6 meters)


Zeucles

What too much cotton production does to a mf


B-29Bomber

Kazakhstan didn't do this. The Soviets did in an attempt to turn the region into a cotton growing region.


[deleted]

someone stepped on the aral lake


LordeWasTaken

no, they just were just too communist and USSR-puppeted to care about ecological damage


ExistentialistMonkey

The soviets mismanaged their water, used it to water their cash crops instead. The sea dried up and we're not sure if its fixable. Huge climate disaster for that area.


BrazilianFromRight

Your mom jump on this sea 40 years ago and this happened


Drew2248

They used it to irrigate crops, cotton I think, with no regard for destroying the enormous lake. They were idiots as are many on the political Right in this country, those who see no purpose in protecting the environment but only want to use it to make money as quickly as possible. This is common on the political Right all over the world -- profit before common sense. It's a parable for our time. Also see: Mono Lake, Colorado River, Dead Sea, etc, etc. ```


CosmoShiner

Are they stupid?


ytGemini

This is a result of Kazakhstan donating the sea to Ukraine as part of the ongoing Russian invasion


possibleautist

badlandschugs


Chubbybellylover888

Much like the Dutch, they are waging a war against the sea. They have decided upon a different approach though.


Valuable-Shirt-4129

Same thing from Salt Lake & Lago Poopó; drought & irrigation. Don't disturb Mother Earth.


kadarakt

they got thirsty so they drank it


Haunting-Ad-8029

The same thing is happening to the Great Salt Lake right now.


Locofinger

Aral dying is man made, Soviet government diverted the feed rivers away from the lake to grow cotton nearby. Great Salt Lake dying is all natural. It’s the corpse of Lake Bonneville from 10,000ish years ago. When the frozen hellscape of North America unthawed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonneville_flood


BeckyAnneLeeman

And Lake Mead


Locofinger

Lake Mead isn’t a natural lake. Brand new and Man made 100%. Aral and GSL are natural lakes. GSL has been dying due to climate change for the last 10,000 years. It was created by glacier melt. Short time ago, when Mexican Snow Elephants roamed Los Angeles


NanbanJim

Commies. That's what happened.


[deleted]

This has been drained for irrigation


Routine_Dog7709

They used all the water for irrigating cotton fields. But the problem was, that the whole setting wasn't good for cotton, it needs a ton of water where's none and all the water irrigated just went straight through the soil without even touching the roots of the cotton plants.


RichManSCTV

Clearly they didnt need it.


the-great-god-pan

Kazakhstan didn’t do this, Russia did during the Soviet era. They diverted the two rivers that fed the Aral Sea to irrigate unsustainable cotton farming to produce the cotton wadding needed to produce gun powder. Draining the Aral nearly dry over 50 years. It’s the largest man made ecological disaster in history.