what`s in the big red lake in baghdad ?

[madrchsod]

raw sewage,dead horses, garbage and this drains into the Tigris River


http://www.boingboing.net/2007/02/14/google_earth_helpful.html
Boing Boing: Google Earth: helpful for evading death squads in Iraq

[ixion]

1. holy crap... toxic soup anyone?

:puke:

[Taxloss]

2. Algal bloom, I'd imagine, or some sort of sediment runoff.

Are there any steelworks in Baghdad?

[Bucky]

3. Is that really real? No, it looks doctored.

What's the skinny here? The linked site says it's on the up and up. But can sewage get that red? I'd think sewage would become a rancid grayish brown. I'm still saying it's doctored.

[magellan]

4. Where do you get 'dead horses' from?

One of the comments mentions slaughter houses, but there's no specific mention of horses being slaughtered.

[madrchsod]

12. oops misread the article-thanks

[uppityperson]

5. more...

"The canal is indeed filled with raw sewage and trash. It's possible that it appears red in the photo due to either camera/film problems or someone may have dumped something in that particular section of the canal that day that changed the color. It's normally a nasty combination of grey/green.

Interesting bit of trivia about that canal by the way - the entire eastern half of Baghdad eventually dumps all its waste water sewage into that canal as it moves south, and then the canal joins up with the Tigris River outside of the city. Now guess where most of the people who live along the river south of Baghdad get their water supplied from?"

[uppityperson]

6. I just clicked my way through to the google map link, wow, check it out.

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=it&q=Baghdad,+Iraq&ie=UTF8&om=1&z=16&ll=33.395816,44.486926&spn=0.013096,0.024612&t=h&iwloc=addr
green stuff too.

[GreenArrow]

7. blood, of course,

blood.

[baldguy]

8. Tell me again why they hate us?

[C_U_L8R]

9. soylent green

errr ...red

[tocqueville]

10. the comment says it's salt

"It seems to be an area of salt production. As the water evaporated from the "pond" which has been isolated to contain water, the brine becomes more and more concentrated. Certain bacteria thrive here and tint the water. Cut and paste these coordinates to fly to another famous locality where you can see this phenomenon. >>> 37°29'37.33"N 122° 1'45.51"W MORE HERE"


check on Google Earth

it makes sense, I've seen that phenomenon on little scale in salt production areas.

[leftofthedial]

11. neocon body wastes

[kevsand]

13. Smells like a Sci-Fi Channel original feature...

...coming soon to a Saturday night near you...