The Great Lakes and Global Warming

Alex Llewelyn,
From the Vice-Presidential debate. Looks to me like Palin gave a very sensible answer and Biden was clueless and inarticulate. She was hammered by the MSM for telling the truth, and Biden received high praise for perpetuating nonsense.
IFILL: Governor, I’m happy to talk to you in this next section about energy issues. Let’s talk about climate change. What is true and what is false about what we have heard, read, discussed, debated about the causes of climate change?
PALIN: Yes. Well, as the nation’s only Arctic state and being the governor of that state, Alaska feels and sees impacts of climate change more so than any other state. And we know that it’s real.
I’m not one to attribute every activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man’s activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.
But there are real changes going on in our climate. And I don’t want to argue about the causes. What I want to argue about is, how are we going to get there to positively affect the impacts?
We have got to clean up this planet. We have got to encourage other nations also to come along with us with the impacts of climate change, what we can do about that.
As governor, I was the first governor to form a climate change sub-cabinet to start dealing with the impacts. We’ve got to reduce emissions. John McCain is right there with an “all of the above” approach to deal with climate change impacts.
We’ve got to become energy independent for that reason. Also as we rely more and more on other countries that don’t care as much about the climate as we do, we’re allowing them to produce and to emit and even pollute more than America would ever stand for. So even in dealing with climate change, it’s all the more reason that we have an “all of the above” approach, tapping into alternative sources of energy and conserving fuel, conserving our petroleum products and our hydrocarbons so that we can clean up this planet and deal with climate change.
IFILL: Senator, what is true and what is false about the causes?
BIDEN: Well, I think it is manmade. I think it’s clearly manmade. And, look, this probably explains the biggest fundamental difference between John McCain and Barack Obama and Sarah Palin and Joe Biden — Governor Palin and Joe Biden.
If you don’t understand what the cause is, it’s virtually impossible to come up with a solution. We know what the cause is. The cause is manmade. That’s the cause. That’s why the polar icecap is melting.

Actual data
From the COE Detroit District Wed site
Deviation from long term average as of 8 March 2009
Superior -0.53 ft.
Michigan/Huron -0.90 ft.
St. Clair +0.23 ft.
Erie +0.33 ft.
Ontario +0.61 ft.

Jeff Norman (08:06:26) :
“A favorite AGW talking point has been predictions of disastrous effects on the US Great Lakes. ”
US Great Lakes? Your manifest destiny is showing.
Actually, no. The Canadian Great Lakes are expected to be fine, thanks to Canada being ahead of the US in Earth Friendly AGW policies. ;^)
On a serious note, the local news reports on the drifting ice depict it as dramatic and decidedly abnormal. SE Michigan is currently (as of this post) experiencing serious flooding in all three of it drainage rivers, due to record snow fall and rain. Local news also reports that the lakes are near, at or above normal levels.
It’s best to find local news reports to assess weather and climate events. While the AGW “scientists” can con the public on national/international media, it’s impossible, for example, to convince the locals that normal water levels are below normal.

gblittle,
I live on the Huron side in the thumb and you are right, the lake levels have been jumping all over the place during my lifetime. In 1986 (110 year record flooding) the levels were above average and caused much erosion.
It is humorous how every event on the planet is somehow linked to AGW during this current period. If you are from an earlier generation, 1964 saw record lows as well, then there was the dust bowl era which also revealed low Great Lakes levels. Just as it always has, the Lakes will recover and the cycle will repeat.
The problem with AGW prognosticators is no matter what happens, it must always be somehow linked to man causing it. Such nonsense.
For a short analysis and history of Great Lakes water levels, see:
http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/pubs/brochures/lakelevels/lakelevels.pdf

Back in the dim past of the 1970s there was a particularly bad year for devastating hurricanes and storms. My Grandmother blamed it all on Skylab.
Non scientific people rely on a tried-and-true algorithm for attributing cause and effect to “what’s new”. It works often and well enough for general problem solving, but without logic and reason it sees “Castles in the clouds” and connections and patterns where none exist. I suspect the same is true with warming and CO2 concentrations.

Phil. (19:39:24) :

whereas the NOAA data does show a ~1m drop in the timeframe mentioned.

Like it hasn’t happened before?
The graph you linked shows plenty of similar dips. Also, I’m used to looking at the data from US Army Corp of Engineers here.
http://www.lre.usace.army.mil/hh/GreatLakesWaterLevels/GLWL-CurrentMonth-Meters.pdf
It starts in 1918, so I’d never seen the pre 1900 data. Why the big, and seemingly permanent drop around 1890 in the graph you linked? AGW?

Despite the ongoing obfuscation attempts of some here, Lake Erie water levels have been generally increasing for the last 100 years.
http://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/data_menu.shtml?bdate=19000109&=0&=9&edate=20090110&=0&=10&wl_sensor_hist=W5&relative=&datum=0&unit=0&shift=s&stn=9063020+Buffalo,+NY&type=Historic+Great+Lakes+Water+Level+Data&format=View+Plot

2008 is the nadir of the 10 year long “solar winter.”
Greenland ice sheets are 100 times as thick as Arctic Ocean ice.
The Oceans are the flywheel of the climate.

Shawn Whelan said:
“Be more specific. How is the St. Marys river controlled?
How do they control the levels of the Great Lakes?
No dams that I know of.”
Lake Superior, at 602 feet above sea level, is the lake with the highest elevation of its surface. (It is interesting to note that with the exception of Lake Erie all the Great Lakes attain depths below sea level; were it not for topography constraints they would all be salt water.) By treaty with the US, Canada diverts small amounts of water into the Albany River/Hudson Bay watershed for hydroelectric power in the area around Lake Nipigon, which is a tributary to Lake Superior. However, the vast majority of Lake Superior’s outflow (around 60,000 cfs) goes down the St. Mary’s River. Sault Ste. Marie (“The Rapids of Saint Mary”) was a lengthy rapids at the east end of the Lake. During the Ice Age this outlet was sometimes blocked by ice and Lake Superior’s level rose high enough to make its outlet the Au Train/Whitefish River valley in central Upper Michigan. From the Whitefish outlet it flowed down Little Bay de Noc into Green Bay, thence into Lake Michigan via the Rock Island Passage. A bathymetry chart of Lake Michigan clearly shows the alluvial fan at the mouth of Rock Island Passage. See “Whitefish Fan” on this image: http://www.glerl.noaa.gov/data/bathy/lakemichnorth.gif
Anyway, with the construction of Soo Locks at Sault Ste. Marie in 1855 the rest of the width of the St. Mary’s River was dammed up with a low dam (about five feet high). These are called the compensating works and they have many gates to allow for excess water to be released down the river. In addition to the compensating works, the US maintains four locks with about a 23 foot lift, the largest, the Poe Lock, being 1,010 feet by 105 feet. The Canadian government also maintains a smaller lock across the river at Sault Ste. Marie, Ont. Consolidated Edison has a power plant in Soo, Mich., so there are many avenues available to control the outflow of Lake Superior. Nevertheless, the USACoE still sometimes cannot keep levels within the desired limits.
Lakes Huron and Michigan are, hydrologically speaking, one body of water. By far the largest source of water for these lakes is the St. Mary’s River, and the only natural outlet is the St. Clair River, at the south end of Lake Huron. Chicago is allowed some diversion of water into the Mississippi Basin through the Chicago River and Little Calumet River, both of which feed into the Illinois River. There are also navigation locks on the Chicago River and Little Calumet River to allow barge traffic on the Western Rivers to reach Chicago, South Chicago, and Indiana Harbor. As pointed out earlier in the thread, the discharge from Chicago is not significant compared to the flow in the lakes overall. A bigger factor regulating outflow in the St. Clair River is the Huron Cut, a dredged navigation channel at the mouth of Lake Huron. This channel increases efficiency of flow from the lake into the St. Clair. To a lesser degree the St. Clair Cutoff Channel by Squirrel Island at the mouth of the St. Clair River also allows greater flow through the whole system. On the other hand, with glacial rebound still taking place, the elevation of the mouth of Lake Huron is still slowly rising.
Lake Erie’s water level is more or less uncontrolled directly. There is no controlling how much water enters from the St. Clair (or its other large tributary, the Maumee), and the constriction caused by the Niagara River is uncontrolled, except that at night the hydroelectric plants on the Niagara River will divert so much water as to greatly reduce the flow over Niagara Falls. This also slows the recession of the Falls. There are also navigation diversions from Lake Erie in the form of the Welland Canal (to Lake Ontario), and the Black Rock Canal, which is the western terminus of the Erie Canal.
Lake Ontario is easier to control water levels in than it’s upstream neighbors. There are locks and dams that control pool levels at the mouth of the lake and also going down the St. Lawrence Seaway.
The short answer to the question is that yes, we have some control over the levels of two of the lakes directly and the other three indirectly, but that level of control is far from absolute. Also the alarmism that accompanied the recent (1998-2007) drop in lake levels far exceeded in extent and decibel level the coverage of the rebounding lake levels of late.

Lake Erie’s water level is more or less uncontrolled directly. There is no controlling how much water enters from the St. Clair (or its other large tributary, the Maumee
The St. Clair River flows into Lake St. Clair then into the Detroit River then into Lake Erie. The Maumee River flows directly into Lake Erie at Toledo, Ohio.
The Detroit River has been dredged to a level deep enough to allow large freighters to navigate and the dredgings piled in the middle of the river. There was many changes in the lakes that would not be allowed by the enviros today. With the exception of Chicago there is nothing in the system that actually allows man to control the levels.

Here is one study that makes the argument that man-made changes have increased the outflows from the great lakes contributing to their decline.
“Lake Michigan-Huron Water Level Decline due to Hydraulic Scour of the St. Clair River” Proceedings of the World Environmental and Water Resources Congress 2007 Tampa, Florida, USA,
http://scitation.aip.org/getabs/servlet/GetabsServlet?prog=normal&id=ASCECP000243040927000430000001&idtype=cvips&gifs=yes

Quote Bart Neilson
To say that outside of Chicago there is nothing that allows man to exercise some control over the water levels of the lakes, especially Superior and Ontario, is just plain ignorant.
Quote Bart Neilson
The forces that drive lake levels are too powerful to be fully controlled.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2009/03/ice-on-the-great-lakes—what.html