Cameroon Attempts to Avert Natural Gas Disaster. Did you follow this mysterious and disastrous catastrophe in 1986? Hundreds living in a 25 km radius of this lake, Lake Nyos, died mysteriously and suddenly. At first it was hypothesized that there’d been a release of volcanic gas, but it’s been determined that it was a high concentration of CO2 dissolved in the lake water which suddenly let loose when the lake’s stratification was disturbed by seasonal weather changes; people and animals were suffocated by the cloud of CO2. Now that the cause has been figured out, CO2 levels are being constantly monitored and are again rising ominously. An international team has just completed the first of a projected five “degassing columns” which siphon up the CO2-rich bottom layer of water and release its dissolved gas in a controlled fashion. I wonder if the local inhabitants appreciate the nature of the threat under which they live and the effort being engineered on their behalf. Environmental News Service