Salt Chimneys

This week, with students in the streets and major environmental meetings taking place at the UN, we are looking at different images related to global warming and international climate action.

What does it take to wake up?

On this day of the international climate strike, that’s the question. One thing that did it for me was the story this week that the bird population in the US and Canada has declined by almost a third (that’s 3 billion birds) over the last half-century. (This seems due, in large part, to overdevelopment.)

The other thing that does it is the increasingly freakish effects that are coming from warming. Take this picture taken in Israel in early 2017. It shows formations in the Dead Sea, called “salt chimneys,” crystalizing around freshwater streams. It started happening with the drop in water levels, but nobody knows why.

The fact it looks like ice in the desert, though, is scary enough for me.

(-Michael Shaw)⠀
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Photo: Melanie Lidman/Times of Israel. Caption: As the water level drops, scientists discovered “salt chimneys,” salt formations that grew around underground freshwater springs. They are unsure why the salt crystalizes around the streams of freshwater, like these pictured on January 11, 2017.