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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsWhen nature says 'Enough!': the river that appeared overnight in Argentina
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/apr/01/argentina-new-river-soya-beans<snip>
After a night of heavy rainfall, Ana Risatti woke to an ominous roar outside her home. Mistaking the noise for a continuation of the nights downpour, she stepped outside to look.
I nearly fainted when I saw what it really was, said Risatti, 71. Instead of falling from the sky, the water she heard was rushing down a deep gully it had carved overnight just beyond the wire fence around her home.
The sudden appearance of a network of new rivers in Argentinas central province of San Luis has puzzled scientists, worried environmentalists and disheartened farmers. It has also raised urgent questions over the environmental cost of Argentinas dependence on soya beans, its main export crop.
The roar was terrifying, said Risatti, remembering that morning three years ago. The land had opened up like a canyon. Water was pushing through as far as I could see. Huge mounds of earth, grass and trees were being carried along the water surface.
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More at link - read and weep
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)newly appearing fresh water, not disappearing.
Obviously they need some regulations on big ag. That roaming locusts mode of business is practically the definition of disastrous.
malaise
(269,157 posts)Most Expensive Weather Disaster of 2018: a $3.9 Billion Drought in Argentina and Uruguay
https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/most-expensive-weather-disaster-2018-39-billion-drought-argentina-and-uruguay
<snip>
A severe lack of rainfall during over southern South America during the summer of 2017 - 2018 has led to the worst drought in decades over portions of Argentina and Uruguay. According to insurance broker Aon Benfield, total losses are near $3.9 billion, making the drought the most expensive weather-related disaster on the planet so far in 2018--and the most expensive disaster in the history of both Argentina and Uruguay.
Hardest-hit was Argentina, where the Buenos Aires Grain Exchange predicted that the drought would likely cause an economic loss of $3.4 billion. Argentinas 2018 soybean harvest is expected to be near the record-low harvest of the drought year of 2009; both severe droughts occurred during weak La Niña events. According to EM-DAT, the international disaster database, the $3.4 billion cost of this years drought exceeds a $3 billion flood (2018 dollars) from October 1985 as Argentinas most expensive disaster on record.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)Droughts kill plants. Plant roots hold soil. One would think there must be some, or many.
Bernardo de La Paz
(49,036 posts)malaise
(269,157 posts)Baitball Blogger
(46,757 posts)When they started to develop land miles up river from where my aunt had a farm, we would get massive flash floods when there was rain in the mountains. The flood would come down angry and clay red.
Hortensis
(58,785 posts)once, after falling asleep in wonderful desert wilderness silence, when visiting friends. The violence of the noise was alarming even after our hosts told us what was happening because we couldn't see it. That wasn't a man-made disaster, though, and didn't threaten anyone's farms. It was an especially large runoff suddenly sweeping down a sand wash from big storms in nearby mountains that no one knew was happening. Better weather info these days.
DFW
(54,436 posts)But since the predicted disastrous effects didn't happen overnight, many preferred to claim the warnings were all speculative pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo--until they weren't. It's only a matter of time before Brazil has the same experience. The warning of the effects of de-foresting the Amazon Basin for agriculture's sake have been ignored for decades. When it's too late there, the scope of the calamity will make Argentina seem like a spilled glass of water in a restaurant. For now, of course, all the dire warnings are just so much pseudo-scientific mumbo-jumbo........
Humans are so fugging dumb.
SunSeeker
(51,694 posts)You fuck with nature, nature fucks with you.
malaise
(269,157 posts)and with more vengeance