The Dead Sea is Shrinking at Alarming Rate, a Record Low-Point for Earth

The Dead Sea is dying. Well, not dying but it's shrinking dramatically according to this article.

The good news is it will probably never dry up completely, the BBC said. As the water level drops, the sea’s density and saltiness rise. Eventually the rate of evaporation will reach a kind of equilibrium and it will stop shrinking. Just because the Dead Sea is not going to disappear entirely, though, doesn’t mean its shrinking isn’t a concern. During World War I, according to the BBC, British engineers scratched initials on a rock to mark the sea’s level of water. Now, those marks are on a bone-dry towering rock. BBC’s Kevin Connolly explains where the water level is now compared to back then: To reach the current water level you must climb down the rocks, cross a busy main road, make your way through a thicket of marshy plants and trek across a yawning mud flat. It’s about 2km (1.25 miles) in all. Local resorts are feeling the effects, too. At the tourist resort of Ein Gedi, when the main building was constructed, the water from the sea would lap against the walls. Now, the BBC said, the resort has to use a special train pulled by a tractor to take tourists to the water’s edge, roughly a 1.25-mile journey.

The farmers are affected, as well. But instead of retreating water lines, sinkholes are their foe. Sinkholes form when underground salt deposits are left behind by the shrinking Dead Sea. The land either collapses or dissolves when fresh water seeps under those spots, the BBC reported. But farmers, who grow tomatoes, bananas and watermelons, refuse to leave the land. Some sinkholes can be 100 meters (328 feet) across and 50 meters (164 feet) deep. Their numbers now top 5,500 around the Dead Sea’s shoreline. Forty years ago, the BBC reported, there were none. Each year, the number of sinkholes is increasing, and not in a predictable way.

“The number’s not linear,” Gidi Baer, Geological Survey of Israel, told the BBC. “It’s growing and accelerating. This year, for example, about 700 sinkholes formed, but in previous years the number was lower. In the 1990s it was a few dozen, now it’s hundreds.”

Oh well, so much for my Dead Sea retirement home...........Seriously though, these "events" concern me. All of the sinkholes, and animals die-off in the oceans, Arctic melting, etc has me worried. It feels like the Earth is giving signals of impending change. My opinion. What says ATS?

ecowatch.com...

a reply to: lostbook

5,500 sink holes some huge and deep wow!, that is going to be a very dangerous place to farm - if your crops don't suddenly disappear. Gidi Baer Geological Ssurvey of Israel gave the number t 700 but even that number is enough to be very worrying.

We have had a great deal of rain in Britain with lighting and storms. As an older person I don't remember the weather being this severe, so am worried that things are changing and although we seemed to be very stable with our grey skies and little sunshine for a long time, whatever is happened appears to me to be accelerating.

a reply to: lostbook

There are dry lake beds and places all over the world that used to be covered by water. The Earth is forever changing and in fact would be totally different if we were to come back in a million years. It simply isn't something to worry about.

We are only here for a blink of an eye. To worry over something silly like a changing Earth isn't worth your time

originally posted by: Metallicus
a reply to: lostbook

There are dry lake beds and places all over the world that used to be covered by water. The Earth is forever changing and in fact would be totally different if we were to come back in a million years. It simply isn't something to worry about.

We are only here for a blink of an eye. To worry over something silly like a changing Earth isn't worth your time

This current change seems to be accelerated due to man's activities. Can we at least try to slow it down?

a reply to: lostbook

Just as soon "try" to stop the tides!

Tired of Control Freaks

a reply to: lostbook

Actually, if you look up info on the Dead Sea, you'll see that over time it has fluctuated back and forth.

In fact, about 10,000 years ago it was lower than it is today.

It's basically a puddle of sea water that was left over from the Med, before the land rose and isolated it, surrounded by a desert climate (very little rain) that has little water (rivers) supplying it at all.

And that was 2 million years ago.

It's been slowly evaporating since, hence it's very high salinity content (over 32 percent), and why nothing will grow around it (and why it's called the "Dead Sea").

In fact, the only thing living in it is bacteria and fungi (way too salty for any other kind of life), and has been this way for a very long time. Long before humans showed up.

a reply to: lostbook

You mean something like this? My post - Shell Carbon Capture and Storage, the greatest Eco Con of 2011 where a company is re-purposing factory equipment to build a plant that sucks CO2 from the air.

Or how about this? My post - The GRAPHENE mega thread - because it's technology you need to know about! where they studied putting a CO2 capture system on the end of a natural gas power plant, electrolyzed the captured CO2 thereby splitting the O2 off, then create carbon nanotubes with zero CO2 emissions.

And then there are thorium reactors that will use up fissile material creating electricity in the process (I mention hooking one up to the plant sucking CO2 from the air).

And there is New Mini-Turbine is Capable of Powering an Entire Town which runs off a closed super-heated CO2 system.

Lot of things can be done. Just need the desire and money to see it through.

a reply to: lostbook

Wouldn't this concentrate the dissolved/suspended mineral wealth in the waters of the Deadsea, too?

I understand that that wealth is considerable.