Will a dust storm pick up material from the Great Salt Lake and cause significant health concerns by 2030?
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8
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2030
34%
chance

This market is intended to predict whether or not the drying of the Great Salt Lake will both continue to occur and have significant negative effects to human health in the surroundings region (on a medium term timescale).

It is very likely the dust storm would need to meet the following requirements for me to resolve this as Yes:

  • Contains a large amount of (presumably poisonous, likely arsenic laden) material from the Great Salt Lake lake bed

  • Is expected to cause specifically attributable negative health affects (over the victims lifetime) to greater than 500 people and/or required more than $10,000,000 to mitigate the negative effects of (possibly through economic losses of Shelter In Place or Evacuation orders)

  • Recieved reporting by a major news outlet (respected news outlets in the SLC region count).

Please feel free to ask questions about how I would resolve this in various cases in the comments.

Currently, many major news outlets are reporting this is likely (unless significant mitigating actions are taken soon):

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/07/climate/salt-lake-city-climate-disaster.html

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/10/us/utah-great-salt-lake-dust-pollution-weir-wxc/index.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/salt-lake-city-could-be-plagued-by-poisonous-arsenic-laced-dust-clouds-if-great-salt-lake-keeps-shrinking/ar-AAYchwv

Mar 18, 6:09pm: Will a specific dust storm pick up material from the Great Salt Lake cause significant health concerns by 2030? → Will a specific dust storm pick up material from the Great Salt Lake and cause significant health concerns by 2030?

Mar 18, 6:09pm: Will a specific dust storm pick up material from the Great Salt Lake and cause significant health concerns by 2030? → Will a dust storm pick up material from the Great Salt Lake and cause significant health concerns by 2030?

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On a quick readthrough, I would guess that the ongoing example of [Owens lake in California](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Lake) will motivate preventative measures for the rest of the decade.

predicts NO

@LoganTurner Agree. I’ve live in SLC for a decade and public alarm over this scenario has been growing. There’s plenty of water from nearby snowy mountains to replenish the GSL, but too much is currently diverted for agricultural and other uses. I expect we’ll see that changed in the next few years.