As Great Salt Lake Dries, Utah Republicans Pardon Trump Climate Skepticism

The bed of the Great Salt Lake contains arsenic and toxic heavy metals, which can contaminate the atmosphere during dust storms if exposed to the open air by falling levels (Credit: AFP)

From his ranch on the shores of the Great Salt Lake, Joel Ferry has a front row view of climate change: a native of Utah, the Republican farmer has seen the water's surface area shrink by two-thirds in the past 40 years.

And as director of the western US state's natural resources department, he knows that the drying up of the lake is an "environmental nuclear bomb," threatening the existence of Salt Lake City and the homes of two million people living on its shores.