Caspian Sea in danger of turning into environmental dead zone.

[Carl Brennan]

This is what is going to cause extinction of life on good ol' planet earth IMO. This topic is not even discussed anymore only cited as a BTW article in a fucking oil and gas journal.

There have been other dead zones in the Gulf of Mexico.

I want to see the look on peoples faces when the seacoast in an industrial area of the US is hit with one. The fascists will probably blame it on lazy environmentalists not doing their job.

I don't even know why I posted this.



http://www.gasandoil.com/goc/news/ntc42931.htm
Caspian Sea in danger of turning into environmental dead zone
28-06-04 The Caspian Sea, the largest inland body of water on Earth, is in danger of turning into an environmental dead zone, a development whose impacts would be felt throughout Central Asia and Eastern Europe, scientists told.
Five countries -- Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkmenistan -- surround the Caspian but wastes from Russia's industrial facilities carried down the Volga River provide the sea with the most pollution. The region's oil reserves are estimated at more than 200 bn barrels, which puts it in second place after the Middle East. Exploration and exploitation of oil fields account for another major component of the pollution.
In terms of oil, and from an environmental standpoint, Azerbaijan's oil facilities are among the worst in the world, Bahman Aghai Diba, a consultant on international law for the World Resources Company in McLean, Virginia, told. Azerbaijan has been using oil resources both within and close to the Caspian for about 80 years.
A rise in the sea's level also has been causing problems. For example, between 1978 and 1995, between 700 and 1,200 oil wells have been flooded in Kazakhstan, said Alexander Bolshov, a consultant for the Atyrau branch office of the Kazakh agency for applied ecology.
"Nobody knows an exact number of flooded oil wells," Bolshov told. Oil is leaking out of some wells, he added.
Oil pollution levels in different parts of the Caspian are between 1.5 times and 11.8 times the maximum permissible concentration, Bolshov said. Copper in the northern Caspian exceeds the maximum permissible level by 3.9 times. The zinc concentration, at a short distance away from the Cheleken Peninsula in Turkmenistan, exceeds the MPC by 7.2 times, he said.
Although copper and zinc are used as nutritional supplements, they are heavy metals that can damage living creatures at certain concentrations and tend to accumulate in the food chain. Along with seals, sturgeons -- fish used for food and the eggs necessary for the caviar industry -- are dyingin the Caspian in large quantities. The reason, Bolshov said, is migration of toxic substances up the food chain -- a process that tends to concentrate those substances in creatures at the top.
"Irreversible processes will start if water pollution reaches a critical level," he said.
The more money that has been invested in the oil industry in Kazakhstan's western Atyrau province -- on the northern shore of the Caspian -- the higher sickness rates have become, said Muftach Diarov, director of the Scientific Centre for Regional Ecological Problems of the Atyrau Institute of Oil And Gas.
"The main issue is the enforcement of the existing laws," Aghai Diba said. "The lack of agreement on the legal regime of the Caspian Sea is hampering the legal and enforcement efforts."

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. People (outside of Du and other progressive groups) generally just

do not care, OR they care to a mild extent but just don't really worry because it's not severe or real enough to them.

---------------------------------------------------------
Save this nation one town, county, and state at a time!
http://timeforachange.bluelemur.com/electionreform.htm#why

[Minstrel Boy]

2. What happened to the Aral Sea should have been a wake-up call

to the world. That it wasn't, doesn't make me optimistic for the Caspian's chances, or ours.

Scenes from the Aral Sea:

[Carl Brennan]

6. That's where the river feeding it was diverted?

[Minstrel Boy]

7. Not the river itself as I understand it, but irrigation took about 90%

of its flow upstream of the Aral, beginning in the sixties.

[BikeWriter]

3. That's both shameful and terrifying! n/t

[Carl Brennan]

4. Another link on dead zones and how it will happen

http://www.radioleft.com/article.php?sid=492

[shraby]

5. Azerbaijan is on the Caspian Sea

check out who is on the Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce. You'll be surprised.

<http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=US-Azerbaijan_Chamber_of_Commerce>

[Lorien]

8. Dead zones are happening everywhere, and spreading fast

in every major body of water. Seabirds in Scotland didn't nest or produce a single chick last year because of the massive dead zones that are quickly making food unavailable. The terrifying part of it is that ocean flora provides 65% of the planet's oxygen.

And people laugh when I say that we'll all be lucky to live another 20 years.

[BeFree]

10. 20, 50, maybe

I am what you may call an environmentalist, some call me a radical environmentalist. But the reality is that those who are destroying this free gift are the radicals.

Anyway, I've given up on saving this earth - as we know it. The earth will survive us, it'll just be very different, very changed. It will have far fewer humans, that's for sure.

Now, I'm not going out and polluting anymore than I am now, but the act of enviromentalizing the coming changes has convinced me that any further global hopes of saving what we now have is foolish. So, like you, Lorien, my sense is that we will be lucky to not see massive, human race altering changes in the next 20 years.

Making love is my replacement for my radical environmentalism. Who wants to make love?

[Lorien]

9. Now if only an issue like this would get as much attention on DU

as "the Twin's Gowns". :eyes:

[Karenina]

12. or women's crotches...

:eyes: :eyes:

[russian33]

11. I was born in Azerbaijan

Vacationed on the Caspian Sea every summer...it trully is (or was?) beautiful...and technically not a sea, but a lake. Sad what it's coming to though, really is.