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Lake Disappears into Andes

steveb3210 writes "It seems that what was once a 5-acre glacial lake in the Andes has mysteriously disappeared. 'In March we patrolled the area and everything was normal,' Juan Jose Romero from Chile's National Forestry Corporation, Conaf, said. 'We went again in May and to our surprise we found that the lake had completely disappeared. All that was left were chunks of ice and an enormous fissure.'" The current theory is that an earthquake opened the ground and allowed the lake to drain. Looks like global warming is off the hook this time around.

16 of 307 comments (clear)

  1. The lake will be returned... by Original+Replica · · Score: 5, Funny

    .... for One Hundred Million Dollars!

    --
    We are all just people.
    1. Re:The lake will be returned... by Cassius+Corodes · · Score: 5, Funny

      Damn water thieves.. and our water chip is broken!

      --
      Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
  2. Wouldn't be the first time... by Ellis+D.+Tripp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    that a lake disappeared into a hole in the ground:

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Peigneur

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  3. Global warming? by bronzey214 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Looks like global warming is off the hook this time around.

    Yeah, because global warming obviously leaves huge chunks of ice when it makes lakes disappear.


    Next time, the news without the hot-button bias, please?

    1. Re:Global warming? by TPIRman · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Mod parent up. For all those crowing about global warming in this thread, RTFA. There is no mention of global warming in the article. It's just an interesting story about a weird geological occurrence. The only reference to global warming was a harmless offhand crack from CowboyNeal. Lighten TFU, people.

  4. Garrison Keillor Did It by sciop101 · · Score: 5, Funny
    Magic Words:

    LAKE! Whoa! Be Gone!

    --
    The only thing new in this world is the history that you don't know.[Harry Truman]
  5. Re:"Looks like global warming is off the hook" by WrongMonkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, every unusual event can be safely assumed to be caused by global warming until there is evidence to the contrary. Who can deny that logic?

  6. I'm confused by TubeSteak · · Score: 5, Funny

    Lots of news organizations keeping selling this story as if there's a mystery.
    Well... What's the mystery?

    I mean, TFA explains it fairly well:
    1. earthquake creates a hole in the ground
    2. water goes into the hole

    What're the alternatives?
    That a herd of wooly mammoths drank up the lake?

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  7. you're all wrong! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I can't believe how horribly wrong you ALL are. This was caused by the natural phenomenon known as Chuck Norris. He got thirsty, drank the lake, and then punched the earth as a calling card to his greatness.

    Use your heads people, COME ON.

  8. Oh thank god... by spankey51 · · Score: 5, Funny

    If anyone finds an old leather-bound book in the fissure, please send it to:

    "Atrus, Son of Ghen."
    5 Riven St. Apt 233
    D'ni, K'veer. II DI KI II III

    (Note: I know the LCD panel on page 1 looks pretty, but please refrain from touching it...)

    --
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  9. what do you think caused the fissure? by weighn · · Score: 5, Funny

    Facts are irrelevant to doomsday cultists. Facts are irrelevant to anyone with an axe to grind.

    Japan: whales are the cockroaches of the oceans
    IIS marketer: Apache just has more websites running per server

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  10. Re:"Looks like global warming is off the hook" by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    What would happen if most herrings were red?

  11. In Other News by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    Mysterious New 5 Acre Lake Appears in Crawford, TX

  12. Flashback: Vanishing lake baffles Russians by Devar · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4566355.stm

    BBC News
    Fri, 20 May 2005 00:50 EDT

    Residents of a village in central Russia are trying to solve the mystery of a lake that disappeared overnight.

    Russia's NTV channel showed a huge, muddy basin where the lake once was, in the village of Bolotnikovo.

    "It looks like somebody has pulled the plug out of a gigantic bath," said the TV's correspondent, next to a deep debris-filled hole.

    Local officials in Nizhny Novgorod region say the lake was probably sucked into an underground cave.

    The name of the village - which lies about 250 km (155 miles) east of Moscow - roughly translates as "boggy".

    No Water

    The discovery was made by local fishermen when they arrived at the lake early in the morning.

    "I looked and there was no water. I thought: Oh my God, what's going on?" one of them told the TV.

    Rescuers were called out to search the uncovered lake bed to see if anybody could have been sucked under, but it is thought no-one was on the lake when the waters vanished.

    "It's very dangerous. If somebody is caught by such a calamity, the chances of survival are practically nil," fireman Dmitry Zaitsev said, pointing out that lakeside trees appeared to have been dragged down with the water.

    The lake's disappearance may have been caused by subsidence allowing the water to drain into a cave system or underground river, local official Dmitry Klyuev said.

    According to Mr Klyuev, several houses were swallowed up in similar circumstances 70 years ago.

    'Dark mystery'

    But more supernatural explanations were circulating among the villagers, including the influence of dark forces.

    Village youngsters said the lake had appeared during the reign of the feared Tsar Ivan the Terrible and had been "shrouded in dark mystery" ever since.

    "We used to go swimming there, but we were rather afraid of its depth, and there were various rumours. For instance people said there used to be a church there underwater," one girl told the TV.

    But one elderly villager sitting outside her house had another kind of force in mind.

    "I thought the Americans had got here," she said, laughing.

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  13. Re:"Looks like global warming is off the hook" by lego_boy_aus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Except the changes in CO2 far exceed any measurement from the last 800,000 years"...Interesting claim. I would quite like to know how they know the records go back 800,000 years, and how they claim these are the highest readings in the time covered by the records.

    From what I have researched, these records come from ice cores. However, a minor problem with ice is that it has a habit of meling above a certain temperature. Given that there may be 800,000 years covered by the samples, that does not prove that the earlies sample is 800,000 years old. how are we to know if it is not in fact 8,000,000 years old, but due to natural climate variations, a large proportion of the sample has melted in this time.

    So, without the dubious claim of having accurate readings for the past 800,000 years, we are left with the claim that the issue is the speed of the temerature rise. Strangely enough, there aren't all that many accurate temperature readings for the globe over 1,000 year old, and so all that can conceivably be claimed is that the current temperature fluctuations are the fastest in recorded history.

    And so we come to "Except that the invers squar laws say otherwise. Also, while increased over all, the earth continued to warm during a multi-years cooling period of the sun.".

    So from this we should be able to deduce that you believe that the sun is having no affect on temperature change here. however to claim thus would be to ignore evidence from at least 2 planets, where the temperature there has continued to rise. In fact, looking at our nearest neighbour, it seems that other than the sun, there has been no other possible cause for this temperature rise.

    Besides which, I seem to recall that temperatures peaked around 1998, and have been stable/dropping since then.

    Which leads on to "Science has looked at those and ruled them out pretty simply". Strangely enough, it seems that the only science that HAS ruled these out is the science dependant upon a "CO2 is causing this, what can we do to stop CO2" funding system. this is emphasised by the attacks on scientists funded by "big oil", and the way in which their studies are considered biased due to the funding source. However, no such claim of bias is levelled at those whose funding comes from organisations with a vested interest in keeping the AGW myth going, or those who would lose funding were it to be known that the change in the Earth's climate WAS natural.

    Additionally, ALL the research being done that shows CO2 is the cause of global warming is started under the premise that this is what is the cause, relies entirely on almost identical computer models, includes large "fudge factors"...and has yet to provide accurate results based on known information, even for past years. The only real exception to this has been where the models have succesfully produced results based on known information for a given year, but which fail entirely when information for a different year is used instead.

    Wouldn't it be nice if others as well as "big oil" did research where it was begun on the premise that CO2 is NOT the cause of the earth's change in temperature. Maybe then we would get some true research done, rather than propoganda to assist in gathering further funding. At present, any scientist wishing to do true research is hard pressed to find a funding source due to the "CO2 is the cause" lobby. This is the ONLY group claiming that the science is finished, and which is still dependant on "fudge factors" to prove this.

    An additional consideration would be that those who do research which "proves" CO2 is the cause are not willing to allow those who do not agree with this THEORY to look at their computer models, purely because they do not wish the degree they rely on "fudge factors" to be known. If their research was accurate and valid, they should be able to take their model and based on the same data (ie, CO2 levels, solar output, etc.) for ANY year be able to produce an accurate measure

  14. Meanwhile... 7-11 just sold their first petagulp by amchugh · · Score: 5, Funny

    Meanwhile... 7-11 just sold their first petagulp.
    Coincidence? I think not.