travelhighlights:

World’s 4th Largest Lake is Now 90% Dried Up : TreeHugger

“Not so long ago, the Aral Sea was the 4th largest freshwater lake in the world. Now, it’s only 10% of its former size. In what the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon is calling one of the most shocking disasters on the planet, the Aral Sea has literally all but dried up. So how does one of the most massive bodies of water in the world vanish?

A giant, Cold War-era Soviet project comes to town, that’s how. A project intended to boost cotton production in an arid region of Uzbekistan diverted the rivers that feed the Aral Sea away from their natural source. Without the rivers feeding into the lake, it has simply and steadily dried up over the years. And now, 90% of the entire Aral Sea is gone… “

P.S. Judging by some of the comments, people are not reading any of the text. This has very little to do with global warming and a lot to do with Soviet engineering projects.