Utah'll Tales
In 1847, when the Latter Day Saints (LDS) led by Brigham Young crested the Wasatch Mountain Range, they were able to see varying landscapes to the west. The view of this assembly was dominated by a massive lake which turned out to be the third largest body of water located entirely in the USA. I suspect during that first distant glance, they did not know the lake was filled with salt water. Past the lake was a huge expanse of white – it came to be known as the great salt flats or the Bonneville Salt Flats which were formed in the Pleistocene epoch (from 2.6 million years ago to 11,700 years ago) through the evaporation of Bonneville Lake. To the left of that LDS assembly a mountain range, later named the Oquirrh Mountains, was visible.
The crowd, assuredly, did not know what became known as The Great Salt Lake, was also a terminal body of water – in other words, water was fed into the lake by precipitation and the melt of mountain snows through various rivers, but the lake had no outlets. Since the mid-1980s, the size of the lake has decreased extensively and of course, the climate alarmists can only hang the culpability of the condition on one single issue.
However, science research journalist Kip Hansen with the CO2 Coalition looks at it from an objective angle taking into consideration all the factors that may be involved in the shrinkage. Is the lake drying up due to drought, or is the water replenishing the lake being used up or consumed before entry? While the climate change throng talks about a reduction in water from inlet rivers and streams, they provide no mathematical evidence, and furthermore, simply assert with a gratuitous fantasy that anthropogenic climate change is the major guilty party.
While water directly from the Great Salt Lake is not used in agriculture, farming is the largest consumer of water in the lake’s watershed. It accounts for 74% of the water destined for the lake. A chart of consumptive water follows:
According to MacroTrends the population of metropolitan Salt Lake City in 1980 was 677,000 rising today to 1,203,000. This is a significant contributor to the loss of water before it enters the lake, as well as evaporation from the lake, wetlands, marches, and exposed sediments. Further, in 1961 the Utah Land Board granted the extraction of chlorine, magnesium, potash, and other materials from the south end of the lake.
It would certainly appear that the Great Salt Lake experiences the same partisan climate change advocacy as Lake Mead, and to a lesser extent Lake Powell - all of them proven bogus. While the relatively lengthy, but many times precedented, drought in the western United States has been a reason for some water shrinkage, the snows of 2022-2023 will certainly give the condition a huge boot in the butt.
