Fishermen Throw In The Towel As Lake Chad Disappears - Was 3rd-Largest Lake In Africa - BBC

[hatrack]

Muhammadu Bello and his nine children used to depend on Lake Chad for their livelihoods. But the former fisherman became a farmer as the waters vanished eastwards from the shores of his village in north-east Nigeria.

Experts are warning that the lake, which was once Africa's third largest inland water body, could shrink to a mere pond in two decades. A recent study by Nasa and the German Aerospace Centre blames global warming and human activity for Africa's disappearing water.

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Nigerian fishermen who have chased the receding lake to Chadian and Cameroonian territories complain of harassment by tax officials and occasional clashes with locals. "There are constant arguments over territory between fishermen," says Muhammad Sanusi, a fisherman in Dogon Fili, another village which sprang up in the middle of the drying lake less than 15 years ago. "It's difficult to determine boundaries on water, yet the gendarmes always come after us and seize our fishing nets and traps and we have to pay heavily to get them back."

He says the arguments often lead to violence among the 30m-strong shoreline communities who are competing for access to water and pasture and some villagers now opt to seek employment in Maiduguri, capital of Nigeria's north-eastern Borno State. For the politicians, there is no arguing with the figures: 40 years ago, the lake was 25,000 sq km and the daily fish catch was some 230,000 tonnes; now it is 500 sq km with a catch of barely 50,000 tonnes.

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6261447.stm

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[htuttle]

2. It's going to create more deserts, too

Though the reason Lake Chad dried up is due to the same reason the Aral Sea dried up -- overuse for agricultural irrigation (coupled with less rainfall in that watershed).

[Double T]

3. THEY haven't invented a way to have water run uphill............

yet!

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

4. *Slaps forehead* Of course! Heat could NEVER cause evaporation of water! That's a librul lie!

Thanks for enlightening us, Einstein.

[Mikey929]

5. Hey

I'm not the one who said oceans will rise by 50 feet because of global warming and all the polar icecaps melting.

So which is it -- more water or less water because of warmer temps?

[asthmaticeog]

7. self-delete

forget it...

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

8. It's an inland lake in the middle of a desertic area, not an ocean shore!

So tell me: WHAT can possibly be the causes for such a disappearance? And if the cause isn't global warming, how does that invalidate global warming?

[Dead_Parrot]

9. It's the same amount of water

Just in a different place. The icecaps are melting into the ocean, making the icecaps smaller and the oceans bigger: Lake Chad is 280m above sea-level in the middle of Africa, so is hardly going to be affected by this.

It is affected by changes in rainfall from climate shifts, though.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

10. You are a more patient person than I am.

Are you a special ed teacher perhaps?

[Dead_Parrot]

11. I used to write a lot on an evolution/creationism site

It's makes wonderful training, especially in deep-breathing techniques. :evilgrin:

[Strelnikov_]

13. Actually, It's 200+ ft.

But, hey, by that point the human race is probably down to a couple of hundred million, so who's counting.

[piedmont]

14. what would you like on your Kraft food product?

http://www.kraftfoods.com/main.aspx?s=product&m=product/product_results&SiteId=1&CatalogType=2&SearchText=tombstone&PageNo=1

[asthmaticeog]

6. It's an inland lake.

In Africa.

I don't have any specific data on this so maybe I'm going out on a limb here, but I'm betting it doesn't have a lot of icebergs in it.

[kestrel91316]

12. Obviously homeschoolers aren't required to learn anything about

geography. I bet the person in question thinks the earth is flat, too.

Some days I am SOOOO embarrassed to be a human being. Sheesh.

[ramapo]

15. Stunning

Yet another indication of humans less than positive effect on the planet

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

16. Kick

Throwing concrete on trolls is fun, but awareness of climate change is more important.

[Xithras]

17. Lake Chad may not be a human impact event.

I thought it was when I first read about it. If you actually read up on the lake, however, you'll find out that it's completely evaporated at least 6 times in the past 1000 years. 10,000 years ago it was a couple hundred miles wide, but it shrank tremendously following the formation of the Sahara (which dried up many of its original water sources). In the 1870's the lake was so high that it was overflowing its basin into nearby rivers. By the early 1900's it was down to a couple of dry pools. By the 1960's it was once again flooding people out as it expanded. Now it's drying out again.

While it's possible that global warming has accelerated this drying period, this is an extremely shallow desert lake that normally dries out periodically anyway. Agricultural diversions are only a minor part of the problem...it's mostly low rainfall and high evaporation rates.