We visited the drying Great Salt Lake, contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions

Even as we visited the Great Salt Lake, the saltiest lake of the Western Hemisphere, as part of our effort to see different places around Salt Lake City, better known for hosting winter Olympics in 2002, I was surprised to read two articles first in New York Times and then the website of the National Public Radio (NPR), an American public broadcasting organization, both of whom quoted a study to say the lake is "drying" and is "becoming a significant contributor to global greenhouse gas emissions that are causing the climate to warm."

Stating that "due largely to water diversions by farmers and Utah’s booming population growth, the Great Salt Lake has shrunk by almost half in recent years", the NPR news story quotes one of the authors, a scientist, as saying, "Human-caused desiccation of Great Salt Lake is exposing huge areas of lake bed and releasing massive quantities of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere."

"The researchers found that the drying lake bed emitted 4.1 million tons of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which would translate to a 7% increase in Utah’s human-caused emissions", the story says, adding, "According to scientists, 4 million tons of CO2 is roughly equivalent to the total annual emissions of 140 commercial planes."

We took photographs of the Great Salt Lake from our mobile, first from a spot situated about 15 miles away, where people were seen doing boating, and then a couple of days later along the Antelope Island, a state park about 50 miles away, surrounded by the lake. As we took phographs, we were unaware of the environment destruction the lake was causing.

Yet, the photos are more relevant in the context of what's happening with the lake.

Comments

Jay Somnath

Kanhaiyalal Maneklal Munshi This is what happened several decades ago, when I was a small school-going child. Every summer, accompanied with my mother, I would come down from Delhi to spend the two-month-long holiday at my maternal uncle’s place in the posh Panchvati area of Ahmedabad. Each weekend, my uncle would take us for a ride in his grand old black car. I think it was Chevrolet. I would wait eagerly for the weekend, as I had virtually nothing to do for the rest of the days. In the evenings, I mostly play in the open ground with the neighbouring children, but for rest of the time, as if, I was under strict, almost loving, control of my grandma, whom all of the children of the family called Baa. Especially after the dinner, which would be pretty early, she would make it a point to entertain us – mainly me and my cousin – by playing bezique. During one such summer, Baa decided to give us a strong injection of nationalism. She took in her hand Kanhaiyalal Maneklal Munshi’s well-kno...

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