Aral Sea

[antred11]

Governments and corporations ... these two can fuck up anything.

[JoelT23]

what is the song at the start?

[makemap]

Draining the water before it can build back up, this is the side effect of too many people in one area. Be warned, the more people that less drinkable water your going to have.

[dagis2]

@makemap FYI is was the sovjets who directed the main rivers feeding the sea to get a bigger cotton industry. it wasnt the locals drinking it all away.

[qwhite56]

agricultural diversion it wasnt jus russians it was everyone tht immigrated in tht particular area

[STHFGDBY]

Man made disaster by the Shameful Russians..

[NextStarfish]

Fascinating video - used it in a recent blog post on the Aral Sea

[TheYaom]

hey money matters more right? FUCK HUMANITY

[zzzzzvol]

-What can we do, comrade?If this had happened at USA, capitalism guilty, but since happened at Soviet Union....

-Shhh! All we need to do is to type Bush,USA, or anything else at comments and everything will be fine.

[AndrewSH2012]

Chuck Norris drank the Aral Sea dry

[TrapnestShinigami]

@AndrewSH2012

no

asshole

Also Chuck Norris is gay and Bruce Lee beat the crap out of him in a film.

[33grass33]

Someone tell me the name of the song at the beginning please? Heard it ages ago on kidulthood and it's really pissing me off! Cheers

[peter0lejar]

@33grass33

its cinematic orchestra - all things to all man

[33grass33]

@peter0lejar Cheers!

[Rafaelighty]

This is just terribly sad. Mankind will destroy itself...

[MOPEDER01]

It is really sad and an ecological crime that one of the largest inland seas has been drained of it's water.

[CLANEFFECT]

in 2016 aral sea will disapear .

[S70184]

--> watch?v=KlAppbq1nIE

[paolocallito]

4/

If we want to reverse the situation first the population of these 2 countries must apostatize completely from Islam. Only then we will have a real chance to save the Aral Sea.

[docrock66]

@paolocallito This comment is so arrogant, soviets drained these two countries financially and intellectually. These countries are running out of money and are still paying it off to IMF. This debt was left after the fall of USSR. Look at the whole picture before you judge their religion before previous factors. Turkey is a Muslim country and its 16th economy in the world so is Indonesia and Malaysia.

[paolocallito]

@docrock66 / 1

"soviets drained these two countries financially and intellectually."

I never denied that that the Soviets blocked the economical development of the Eastern blockstates.

Have you asked yourself why most of the Christian countries from the former Eastern block are doing much better than both Muslim countries Kazahstan and Uzbekistan?

You say that the disappearing Aral Sea is entirely the Soviets' fault.

[paolocallito]

@docrock66 / 2

Do you know since when the Soviet Union has ceased to exist? Since 1991! So both countries had 20 years time not to correct the situation entirely but at least to make significant improvements.

"Turkey is a Muslim country and its 16th economy in the world so is Indonesia and Malaysia."

Turkey has 73 millions of people and is just 16th: not very impressive.South Korea has only 48 millions of people and is 12th.

[docrock66]

@paolocallito You are right but everyone has right to live the way they want to live. Some Americans and Europeans might think that people who live in tribes are savages however to them that's all they know and are very happy and productive in their hunter gatherer societies. Its when civilized worlds buds their hands into these nations that's were Aral sea goes dry, AIDS happens and blood diamonds collect lives of 1000s of innocent kids.

[pepeazul2002]

@docrock66 look up the Salton sea. happening here in our backyard

[paolocallito]

@docrock66 / 3

The best indicator to see the economic strength of a country is the GDP per capita PPP. According to the World Bank Turkey here is just at rank 51! (Indonesia: rank 121; Malaysia, rank 50).

You claim to live in Belgrade. Looking at your profile nothing is written in cyrillic which is a sign that you are probably a Slavic Mohammedan. That explains also why you are siding such a barbaric, evil, fanatic and ignorant country as Turkey.

[paolocallito]

@docrock66 / 4

Turkey is such a hellhole exactly because almost the whole population is following this fanatic and terrorist cult from Arabia.

[paolocallito]

3/

Because both countries are Muslim countries! The vast majority of the people of Uzbekistan (90 %) and of Kazakhstan (70%) follow Islam which produces only barbarity and makes people retarded.

Islam discourages entrepreneurship and education and so it is no wonder that the situation of the Aral Sea is getting worse and worse!

[paolocallito]

2/

Many of the canals were water leaking because they were built were poorly. The shrinking Aral Sea was no surprise for the Soviets since the 1960ies.

But now we are in 2011. The Soviet Union doesn’t exist anymore and both Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan are independent. Why is the Aral Sea even shrinking more? Why weren’t these 2 countries able to stop the disappearance of this lake?

[paolocallito]

1/

It is incredible what happened to this lake since 1960. The Aral Sea has today only about 8% of the original size!

There is no question that the former Soviet Union has a great deal of responsibility on this ecological disaster. From the early 1960ies until the dissolution of the Soviet Union they diverted the 2 main rivers feeding the Aral Sea, the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya, to irrigate the desert in order to attempt to grow especially cotton.

[NeptuneAralSea]

Anyone who is interested in saving the Aral Sea, please post a comment on my Channel to increase activism! Together, we can save the sea!

[Kazachstan4x4]

Watch out my new videos from Kazakhstan

[81shakeer]

Save Earth , Save Aral Sea

[MasterOfPeng]

yeaaahhh!!they say ,,luxembourg`` in an english video!i am from luxembourg,but i thougt that no one would know this country!!

...poor aral sea...

[dazhibernian]

I have a solution, we ship a shit load of icebergs from the arctic into the Aral sea, they melt and make a new sea, and we be decreasing worldwide sea levels rising with global warming, killing two birds with 1 stone!

[sweetywolf09]

@dazhibernian That does sound quite nice haha yeah the arctic waters are the only fresh waters without salt that's very cool (:

[ilovelowez]

What have we done...

[N33DL3R]

This was neither the work of capitalism or communism. This disaster is the pure result of human stupidity and shortsightedness.

[Mekelba]

The people who disliked this video dislike that the Aral Sea is depleting.

The people who liked this video support restoring the Aral Sea.

[XTHEDARKMAGEX]

@Mekelba So only 2 people out of 111,000 dislike that the Aral Sea is depleting. logic fail.

[markxxx21]

The aral sea was never freshwater. It was/is salt water

[MrPingasPower]

Never trust Commies with civil engineering projects. First came the usless white sea canal, then the destructive diversion of water for irrigation from the Aral sea.

[MuseToYourEars]

It's not really a paradox. It's just very ironic and sad.

[peterpikeras]

And... this is why I am studying environmental engineering :D

[dydx09]

Capitalism and greed at it's finest.

[MuseToYourEars]

@dydx09 Yes absolutely. Sickening.

[uninterestingentity]

@dydx09 *facedesk*

The aral sea was destroyed and irrigated by the Soviet Union for Christ sake.

[dydx09]

@uninterestingentity Nowadays both; back then, greed.

[uninterestingentity]

@dydx09 *sigh*

The Aral sea is being restored.

[dydx09]

@uninterestingentity Yeah; feels great that it is being restored...a little.

[pa87901]

What is happening to the rivers that fed the Aral sea now?

[heisenfeis]

Very cool :D

[emmen091]

very sad



[norbertsited]

there's a common phrase.... there are two things that we can't measure in life, the universe and human stupidity!!!

[MuseToYourEars]

@norbertsited

Do you mean this quote by Einstein: “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.”

[wizardhacker1]

and i feel sad about them i wish i can help but i cant



[wizardhacker1]

it was a good teaching my teacher want us to know this and now i know a lot of stuff now ty

[kristian2meter]

so sad the animals have to suffer under the humans......sad to see the effect of who we act, like we owned the planet earth.....

[carbonfuel12]

@kristian2meter What do you mean by that? The planet will carry on long after we are gone for billions of years, we havent owned the earth at all. It has suffered allot worse in the past, and hundreds of species of plant animal and insect become extinct everyday regardless of our actions because of natural selection.

[vintagedesert]

So sad. We shouldnt be able to affect our planet this way.

[bucknut8604]

Communism at it's finest.

[KCourtz]

It's actually quite sad :'(

[360Nomad]

The Aral Sea is all the worst case environmental disasters happening in the same place in slow motion.

[TehWench]

Problem, planet?

[TheJohhnyrotten]

This should be on the main news EVERY NIGHT, not on some obscure corner of you tube.

[MuseToYourEars]

@TheJohhnyrotten So should a lot of problems in this world. But the news only covers dramatic, exciting, recent events. Or else the news could be 5 hours long.

[Kalleballe240395]

HATE EVALUATION thumbs up if u with me xD

[frtw4428]

To save the southern part of the Aral requires restoring the Amu Darya's flow back into the sea. Cotton production can still be managed by utilizing the large man-made lakes (resulting from irrigation run-off from the lousy canals made under Communism) to feed the crops (and keeping the water clean). Fully restoring the Aral Sea is crucial to the health and economy of that region. This is not a pipe dream: it can become reality if the government and its people cooperate.

[Peppepoppldoppl]

humans dont evolve anymore. humans only live off of what we accomplished over hundreds of years ago.

who said humans are perfect?`

[Komnenit]

The Soviets are to blame

[SirMildredPierce]

OOOOPS

[dkendon]

What is the music at 1.20-2.00?

[SuperInline6]

My name is borat, Im from kazakstan!

[SAIBABA00]

i dont knw at these rich musicians like bono,madona didn't contribute their money hare,,the gov is trying thir best ,(it seems),,but an outside AID IS NEEDED

[a6km]

Well they reckon there is Oil so better to get rid of the sea and then drill or ?

[spib65]

Most of you are going on about who messed it up!.

So who's going to fix it then?.

I don't suppose any of the people who are exposed to this shambles care a toss about the soviets/Republicans etc etc.

As the man in the film said it's amazing what can be achieved with human hands.

The trouble is the above 'party's' end up sitting on theirs mostly.

Seen it all before.

[muzasbar]

This is the worst ecological disaster that the humanity had ever seen... and it's all our fault

[CoreyStudios2000]

@muzasbar then we must fix it quick!

[abdlloh]

@CoreyStudios2000 i am afraid too late to fix it.It takes 150-200 years to fill the sea If 2 main rivers that use to flow to the aral sea are not diverted to irrigation channels ! Now country relies on heavily on cotton, agriculture so on.If they don't take any water from rivers for agriculture purposes 100 000s of people will be left jobless. Possibly millions.The problem is Soviets didn't use the water wisely,didn't care anything for the sake of cotton that produced by diverting the water.

[CoreyStudios2000]

@abdlloh its never too late. Lets just build a canal between the aral and the caspian sea.

[viagemixtlan]

@CoreyStudios2000 it may not be too late, but we are still destroying the earth. we haven`t stopped yet to try to fix it. i think when we realize what we are doing we will be too far lost to do something, and the earth will not recognize us anymore.

[viagemixtlan]

@muzasbar this is exactly the picture of our future... a land out of balance for us to survive

[CoreyStudios2000]

its not too late. This was due to weapons testing and pollution made by the soviets. we need to get people to fix this mess from all over the world and keep the aral sea from vanishing.

[chostovs]

Karl Marx said it all....

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce

The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison.

[RDM1860]

Humanity, the Improver of Worlds: Check out AfricaTour on youtube.

[PhantomSephiroth]

I think this is evidence that we CAN drain a water source to the very last drop.

[tHeWasTeDYouTh]

this is so very sad, why must humans destroy our planet. We can use its resources but why to such a drastic extenct

[mobius1aic]

Good to see that Kazakhstan is pushing to restore the northern portion, with success too. It's only too bad Uzbekistan won't get off it's collective ass.

[kingerz]

Humanity, the Destroyer of Worlds

[Hilldebrand]

@kingerz  or lack of*

[viagemixtlan]

@kingerz relax, pretty soon we will be no more. we are arriving at the end of our species, and the planet is gonna get better after we leave.

[HarrisonMilburn]

@kingerz Soviets* the desrtoyers of worlds!!!

[Moebiu24211]

@kingerz

We can not destroy the world ... we only destroy ourselves!

[MuseToYourEars]

@Moebiu24211

How can we not destroy this world? No, we ARE destroying the world. "The world's rainforests are currently disappearing at a rate of 6000 acres per every hour. It is estimated that one million sea birds and 100,000 marine mammals and turtles are killed every year by plastics that have been thrown or blown into the water."

[Moebiu24211]

@MuseToYourEars

Yes and that will cause the end of humanity and maybe most of all life one day...

But the Earth will get well again in some milleniums... Even if the whole planet is nuclear polluted there will be life again one day....

[ZackAttack261]

@kingerz communism

[realistromeo]

45,000sq km bigger that belgium, netherlands and luxemborg combined!? since this area is central to many great anceint civilizations one needs to look here NOW! there has never been a place where land has been so rapidly reclaimed from the waters LESS THAN 60 YRS. one needs to find the ancient river beds and lake bottoms and you may find ancient CIVILIZATIONS! this could be a major blessing in disquise for these poor people, start digging. REMEBER THE SPHINX was burried in sand, so think!

[Starshina89]

@realistromeo fuck you do you think peolple is in need of finding old ruins, what about water for life?

[realistromeo]

@Starshina89 Its going to take more than water to fix the problems, true i would like to see things back to where they were over there also, but with such heavy polution, DDT,pesticides,and heavy metals i dont think the land would be the same for a generation or 2 before it would even begin to resemble what it once was.

I was merely suggesting that there might be another bright spot in this gloomy part of the world, it may provide income for those poor people somehow.

[newnewpoint]

i wish there was something i could do...

[ThePowerWithinMe]

Did it all evaporate? Was it cut off from it's source? This was the forth largest fresh water sea in the world and now it's a desert? How is this not MAJOR news for the world to look at? Is the water just gone or was it diverted to some other sea or ocean? The people in charge of this planet (you know, the ones that like to dictate to the masses how to live) should lose their positions and have people put in their place that know a disaster when they see one and try to do something about it.

[vexviper]

@ThePowerWithinMe For 50 years Soviet leaders diverted the rivers which feed the sea to irrigate cotton. And when it became clear that the land wasn't suited for the thirsty crop the planners simply increased the use of hazardous chemicals. The Soviets government drained it. And the Soviet People are really pissed. But now the rivers have been diverted back to the Aral Sea and it's starting to fill up again. But it will take years for it's aquatic life to return.

[ThePowerWithinMe]

@vexviper The rivers have been diverted back? Well that is good news even if aquatic life takes a while to come back. I wonder if anything was recovered from the ships that went down from years ago?

[metridium]

... 1100 Islands... bloody hell. If you look deep enough you can see this as the tail end of the dust-seed hitting the Caribbean year after year.

[Terminal2k1]

Communism wounded my country...now my city is dying

[Bllackguard666]

Damn, I would love explore the abandoned ships, there!

[ThePowerWithinMe]

@Bllackguard666 That would be so much fun. I want to explore the whole sea bottom, ships...

[RgeraR]

baszátok kuma mamikátokat

[KaraBurkit]

people have to restore the whole sea. soviet idea give water to aral from siberian rivers, like irtysh and ob was really good, but... now it's too less money. kazakhstan and uzbekistan are too poor countries to restore whole sea. if ussr woldn't fall in 1991, the sea wold be restored now - i'm sure.

[Starshina89]

@KaraBurkit bullshit, the ussr government (kreml) is responsible for this, now who would charge them to hold their promises if the union collaps? the whole communist idea is based on pseudo bullshit which has no guarantee.

[bobloveeurope]

I loved it..a real good feature to understand a huge man-made disaster..Thank you

[singularwave]

Toxic dust storms blowing across a former sea bottom. Welcome to our sci-fi world.

[ueberRegenbogen]

And some insist that humans are too insignificant to affect climate.

[cruxan007]

lake chad in africa is another wake up call..

[cruxan007]

to many people sucking up all the resources.. aral sea is a big wake up call!!

[sivaddivad]

so precious our earth

[thewiredrabbit]

Thank God we saved Mono Lake in California from the same fate. This is just terrible.  Sad.

[ptaaffe]

Wow, this video is suddenly getting a lot of viewers in the last few days. Possibly due to the recent MSN story ?

[palletapatio]

el lago de chapala tambien se esta secando.

[shellius]

This is a crime. People should be prosecuted and held responsible for crimes like this.

[sidarta1979]

Fucking human kind!

[mraint85008]

they should use the equipment that they used to make irrigation and use it to bring the water back tho the lake. if ppl can built a damn to stop the water and control the flow of water entrance. they can build one that can bring it back from the ocean to the lake.

it looks like a beginning of a zombie movie with the infection dust and the music

[recyclinbin]

this shit is happening here in America, the Ogallala Aquifer will be dry in 25 years

[aboxofjosh]

I like that two Cinematic Orchestra songs are used in this: "All Things To All Men" and "Breathe"

[normalais]

It's not just Aral sea. I think Baltic sea is also in big trouble. Soviet Union never paid any attention to pollution etc, and they polluted the crap out of the Baltic sea. The fishing industry is pretty much dead, and even if you catch some fish, probably should not eat them since they likely contain toxic chemicals. And it the pollution will not go away anytime soon, if ever.

[ptaaffe]

@normalais The Soviets messed this up. That's what a combination of central planning, lack of democracy and lack of a free media will do. And it is the West that ends up providing much of the research, money and technology to clean it up.

[normalais]

@ptaaffe Soviets messed it up because they were a bunch of ingnorant braindead bafoons like the republican party in USA

[Starshina89]

@normalais at least republicans didnt dry up a whole fucking sea!

[normalais]

@Starshina89 yeah but they destroyed the economy and fucked up foreign policy with pointless wars and torture.

[singlaprety12]

@Starshina89 republicans...no im sorry you cant blame another political party for a tradidy of human hands.

[ericgcollyer]

@normalais kind of like individuals who make broad sweeping statements about entire civilizations or political parties...

[normalais]

@ericgcollyer US government (especially the GOP) are controlled by corporations. And corporations do not care about stuff like environment, if destroying it means higher profits. That is not a generalization. It is a fact.

[ericgcollyer]

@normalais I wasn't commenting on your logic. All I was saying was that it is stupid to make broad sweeping generalizations about large groups of people. There is so much diversity within those groups of people that generalizing makes you a "ignorant braindead bafoon" (which should actually be "ignorant brain dead buffoon")

[normalais]

@ericgcollyer No, there really isn't. There are people who gladly sell everything, including our health and environment, to special interests for higher short term profits, and then there are people who don't.

[ericgcollyer]

So the ONLY people who will do this are the Soviets, the Republicans, the US Government, and corporations? (Never mind the fact that arguably the most environmentally friendly president was a Republican (Richard Nixon or Teddy Roosevelt), there have been HUNDREDS of books published by soviet environmentalists, corporations donate millions of dollars a year for environmental research, and the US government comes up with expensive environment saving programs like cash for clunkers)

[normalais]

@ericgcollyer That's funny. Teddy Roosevelt would be called a socialist today if he ran in a republican primary. Soviet performance on the environment was absolutely horrible. But of course in a 300 million people country there were many who cared about the environment. And the modern republican party wil choose corporate profits over anything else. That is what they call "business friendly". Bush didn't even sign the kyoto treaty.

[ericgcollyer]

@normalais But then again, what do I know? I am an Environmental Science graduate with an MBA and JD, who is a registered Republican. I can't possibly understand anything about the environment, or how businesses affect it.

[downtownford]

@normalais right, b/c republicans just ruin everything

[romedeiros70]

@ptaaffe I wish you were correct, but we in the USA have done the same thing many times over. The Colorado river is being sucked dry, but the pain is mostly felt in Mexico, so we pretend there is no problem. That is far from the only river, and many other parts of the natural system have been greatly affected.

[ptaaffe]

@romedeiros70 Thank you for the comment. I thought about Colorado river also. My only counter-argument is that if enough people agitate and bring pressure to bear, there is a possibility we can do something about it... the Soviet system would not allow that. The Central Asian republics don't seem to be much better, but at least they seem to recognize the problem and will hopefully be able to do something about it.

[ptaaffe]

@romedeiros70 Colorado River is a good point though. I am definitely learning something from the discussion with the commenters on this video.

[romedeiros70]

@ptaaffe I wish you were correct, but we in the USA have done the same thing many times over. The Colorado river is being sucked dry, but the pain is mostly felt in Mexico, so we pretend there is no problem. That is far from the only river, and many other parts of the natural system have been greatly affected.

[MonkeyJigObama]

If you go to St. George, Utah you cae see where a huge ocean used to be.

Lookit you wimp Libs, this is my planet and I will use it anyway I want and I have never recycled anything in my life and I never will!

[dillywilly]

@MonkeyJigObama go f yourself, this is not your planet, it never was and it never will be d.i.c.k.

[dillywilly]

@MonkeyJigObama go f yourself, this is not your planet, it never was and it never will be d.i.c.k.

[normalais]

@MonkeyJigObama lol that's real smart. never recycle anything. LMAO. Don't ever flush your toilet either. Only wimp libs do that. rofl

[normalais]

@MonkeyJigObama ps. this is not your planet. and speaking of wimps, which one of us wants to spend a $ Trillion a year on the military because a few freaks in caves somewhere scare them? Liberals won both world wars and korea. Conservatards have NEVER won a war against another country.

[pryorka82]

People are right to say no one cares about central asia because this has been going on for so long and no one said much of anything about it for the last three decades. It could've been stopped back then, but now all that can be done is lessening the impact. Those pesticides by the way were already in their fish they were eating so that was unrelated to the sea drying up. It was their fault for using the pesticides in the first place.

[PatwMartin]

Hey ptaaffe,

Go visit the New River in SE California flowing extremely polluted and full of TB and see for yourself firsthand.

Do your research before popping off.

[ptaaffe]

@PatwMartin: My point is that the video does not provide the data to back up its claims. Like a lot of other people, my attention was held for the 10 minute duration of the video. There is enough time to work in a bit of science and supporting data, but the creators of the film chose not to. It raised more questions in my mind than answers

[joejoeirish]

doesnt look too bad as a land area now.. the pestisides are s different issue that has nothing to do with the dring up.. the narrator really likes to pile on a bunch of extraneous stuff. the net of amount of water on earth is the same... if you want more aral sea0 dig a canal or let the rivers flow or STFU

[ricex210]

Lessening the impact...because everyone quietly realizes that nothing can be done to reverse it. The northern sea is making progress, but the Uzbekistan government can't be arsed about the southern half. This has been happening for decades, but only now, when it's too late, does the craven western media take notice with feigned horror and outrage. Why? Because it's central Asia, the world's big punchline, and nobody can be bothered to give a shit. Disgusting.

[moose2llama]

Political Leaders need to step up and remove the dams which are causing the shortage of water. Perhaps its not to late to reverse this error in human destruction.

[ptaaffe]

Unsubstantiated claim at 5:55. "The catastophe has caused an epidemic of tuberculosis ". How can pollution cause TB ? That's an infectious disease. Could also do with a chart at 9:17 to support claim that summers are getting shorter but hotter.

[TypoFootage]

@ptaaffe Google "Tuberculosis Aral Sea"... we are a part of an intricate ecosystem, our actions always have consequences, even if you find them tolerable. The unsurprising part is when our effects on the ecosystem directly influence the economic system.

Then Google "aral sea effect on summer". You'll have to do some reading, but all the answers are there. I know we'd all feel better if a magic wand could make our actions inconsequential, but no such thing exists. We have to live better.

[normalais]

@ptaaffe It is never as simple as losing "the fishing industry". All of these elements are much more far reaching in their long term effects. Which is why the average simple minded conservatard who seems the world as a simple black-white picture doesn't understand it.

[cmslothouber]

@ptaaffe look up silicosis to understand why this causes TB.

[cmslothouber]

@ptaaffe look up silicosis to understand why this causes TB.

[gammaaries]

Planting trees and vegetation to halt the process is truly an outstanding effort. Hopefully not a futile one :-/

[Frankuzb]

Very sad video

[MrBrozinsky]

yeah, i agree. I heard somewhere that there are different possible solution to make possible the coming back of the sea at its original place, but they're too much expensive

[bemanos12345]

nice video