Aral sea has disappeared, will Caspian sea disappear too?

Question

• 3 votes
• Read all opinions

	Yes
	No

Answer 1

No, not unless they divert the rivers (principally the Volga) that feed it, like they did with the Aral Sea.

Answer 2

I hope not; that depends on how the littoral states and populations will deal with ecological (especially pollution and environmental depletion), economical (water and waste management), health, financial (oil industries, conflicts), and with them social and political problems. As far as the irrigating rivers are not diverted, the Caspian Sea can "survive", provided that they can deal with the pollution and health issues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caspian_Sea

Sadly enough, human activities (agriculture, dams, industries, overexploitation) to develop the whole region destroyed the natural irrigation basin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aral_Sea

Comments

@ Marianne:

You have put your finger on the real problem: Overpopulation with respect to available resources.

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7 billion in 2013 (14 years later), the image looks older. Have they predicted right?

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Yes, indeed, that includes overpopulation with regard to the available, natural resources and the living space.

But certain attitudes need to change ...

I can't answer with accurate figures - no one can. Regarding statistics, estimations and predictions vary, and there are still many unrecorded cases. I tried this link with the world population clock for an approximative idea: 

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#growthrate

You can also look into the different countries.

 (a smile for both)

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@ Dan:

Not quite, but close enough.  It has been estimated that the Earth can only sustain about 1 billion people indefinitely, at anything like a Western standard of living.

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@ Marianne:

Well, according to your source, we can expect the world's population to be 10 billion in 2055, and of course it might be more if anti-aging medical breakthroughs are made between now and then.

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@TheOtherTink

Actually, estimations vary much; if comparing "high", "medium" and "low" projections till 2100, there can be a difference of 10 billion people (between the highest and the lowest projection):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#/media/File:World-Population-1800-2100.svg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

As for a "sustainable" world population, opinions vary greatly, as do the mentalities regarding human rights issues ...

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@ Marianne:

Lol, so all the UN can say is that the population will be 11B +/- 5B in 2100, an uncertainty of almost 50%.

That makes realistic long-range planning difficult.

On the other hand, it has always been difficult/impossible to foresee what unexpected events would happen over an 80-year time span.

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@TheOtherTink

Yes, indeed - in spite of all the precautions and preventive measures, the "relative standard deviation" is a mere, average estimation of probabilities and the frequency of past events.