When Cachet 2, a five-square-kilometer (2-sq-mile) lake in the south of Chile’s Aysén region, vanished in a matter of hours on the evening of April 6, 2008, Chileans reacted initially with widespread disbelief. Websites specializing in extraterrestrials were only too happy to attribute the phenomenon to a visit by aliens. But for ranchers who live along the Baker River and in the village of Caleta Tortel at the mouth of the Baker, there was nothing mysterious about the results of glacier-fed Cachet 2’s sudden draining. A surge of water swelled the Baker alarmingly, damaging roads, bridges and farms, and killing cows and sheep. The cause, it turns out, is global warming. Ever-increasing melt from the adjacent Colonia Glacier... [Log in to read more]