Scratch another one from the list….
Michigan Lake Levels Not Changed By Global Warming After All
Reposted from “The Blog Prof” by Chris J. Kobus, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Oakland University, Rochester, Michigan
So much for global warming causing the Great Lakes to dry up. Lake levels are back to normal (whatever researchers defines as “normal” I suppose, since the data doesn’t go back that far) after decreasing some for the better past of the last decade. Even though global warming zeolots were quick to point the finger at CO2, the cause for the decrease was in fact – ice dams!
From the Detroit News today: Study: Ice jam caused Great Lake water levels to drop. From the article:
A steady drop in water levels in Lake Michigan/Huron over the first half of this decade resulted from natural causes, not man-made ones, according to U.S. and Canadian researchers, noting that the past 18 months of rising waters could be an indication the lakes are headed back to normal levels.
Researchers working for the International Joint Commission this week released the findings of a two-year study on the St. Clair River and the amount of water running through it out of Lake Michigan/Huron. The study was launched to answer questions by lake shore residents who had watched the steady drop of water levels in recent years.
Critics are already up in arms! I kid you not! Get a load of this:
…that’s not sitting well with members of the Canadian environmental group GBA Foundation, which funded its own study in 2004 which put the blame on human activity.”The fact that (the report) completely dismisses such an enormous increase in outflow and recommends that nothing be done about it is very disturbing,” said Roy Schatz, GBA’s founding president, in a press release.
They sure do get angry when humans are not pegged as the culprits, eh? Lastly,
The joint commission looked at changes in the Great Lakes between 1962 and 2006, during which the difference in the water level between Lake Michigan/Huron and the lower-sitting Lake Erie has shrunk by nine inches.
Researchers suggest three contributing factors:
• A change in the St. Clair River’s capacity, or conveyance, most likely created during a monthlong freeze of the river in 1984 that resulted in scouring of the river bottom.
• Changing climate patterns, including greater rain and snowfall in Lakes Erie and Ontario than in the northern Great Lakes.
• Shifts in the Earth’s crust, called glacial isostatic adjustment, that are the result of the planet’s rebound from the melting of glaciers 10,000 years ago.
So we’re still experiencing effects from that ice age 10,000 years ago! Can’t wait for someone from the IPCC to call for the firing of these researchers. Kudos to the liberal Detroit News for even giving this research a fair shake, albeit the News ignores the whole global warming controversy with respect to lake level decreases altogether. As a matter of fact, just two months ago there was resaerch presented in the press hypothesizing that global warming was causing less ice on the Great Lakes, for which I had this response:
Why do I label this as strange? Well, because I just wrote a post not long ago about how 3 of the Great Lakes have completely frozen over this winter for the first time in many years. (MI adds to anti-global warming evidence) The freezing of the Great Lakes happens about once a decade. The last time was in 2003 and before that 1994, according to Ice Service records, and it was 1982 before that. Nothing in the article indicates how these scientists reached their conclusions, or how the measurements were taken. … As for the lake levels, they are back to whatever researchers have defined as “normal:” Global Warming? “Harsh winters push lake levels back to near normal”.
UPDATE: The freep has a corresponding article to the news. Pretty much the same, except that at the very, very end, the freep holds out some hope for the global warming alarmists:
The study is continuing, looking at the long-term effects of climate change. If the upper lakes drop steeply in the coming decades, then it might be time to make man-made changes in the St. Clair River…
UPDATE #2: Here’s an article from the Detroit News in 2008 about how global warming will lower lake levels: Global warming may drop Great Lakes water levels from Thu May 29, 2008. Here’s a snippet from that article:
The report draws on science about global warming to make predictions for the Great Lakes, such as:
• Climate change will boost daily high temperatures between 5.4 and 10.8 degrees.
• Warmer lakes will mean less ice cover and lower water levels of 1 to 3 feet in the next century.
• Biological “dead zones,” where plants and animals can’t live, will spread.
• Intense storms will swamp stressed sewage treatment plants, forcing them to release raw and partially treated sewage into the lakes.
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Wow that photograph is awesome! It would be quite a sight to see one of these waves forming, but if a person was in the way I think they would be frozen solid!. (Could this be what happened to the mammoths found in Siberia?..)
It seems that predictions of empty lakes won’t happen soon, speaking of predictions; here is an interesting vintage article: http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast19oct98_1.htm
It seems that unlike now, back in 1998 Hathaway’s predictions were spot on!
So lake levels running low will be scratched off for sure,,but here is something you could add to the list : “Global warming causes solar predictions to go completely wrong, the sun refuses to co-operate; solar rebellion.”
Regarding the photo of the “frozen wave phenomenon”, the photo itself is among many taken at the Antarctic base of Dumont D’Urville by Tony Travouillon in 2002. The idea it was taken at Lake Huron is a hoax. Not that it wasn’t really, really cold this winter, but still, not quite like the Antarctic – yet!
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/antarcticwave.asp
This is the problem when you’re so arrogant that you’re sure of something of which you can’t be sure. You paint yourself into a corner you can’t get out of. Then, just to save face, you have to perpetuate the arrogance with another explanation that’s even less credible. Isn’t it just easier to play the science straight up, maintain your credibility and acknowledge you may not know everything?
Oh, … that might put a cramp in your funding.
Never assume what you’re trying to prove unless you’re just trying to prove you’re an idiot.
The “frozen wave” photo has been in circulation for some time and is fraudulent, at least in that it is not Lake Huron depicted. The shots were taken, I believe, in Antarctica and are posted on a website showing shots of some scientists’ Antarctic trip.
Hi,
are you sure that the frozen wave picture was taken in MI? I found a whole bunch of these pictures here, but they say it was Antarctica.
I read your blog every day, I would not want to see it with an inaccuracy.
Cheers
David
I’ve worked for the last 20 years or so for a company that runs boats in Lake Ontario. I can attest that the low lake levels we saw a few years ago are no longer. In fact, in the last few years they are higher than normal. It’s easy to see by the decline/incline of the shore ramps that attach to the boat. A few years back the decline angle from shore to boat deck was close to 35-40 degrees which caused us to drasticly reduce the weight of vehicles we’d load for fear that the weight could cause the boat to decouple from the shore ramp. Now, the decline is probably no more than 5 degrees.
Back when the levels were low, most of the passengers we’d transport were sure that GW was the cause. We don’t hear a peep out of any of them now.
You might want to remove the bit about “frozen waves”… they actually are from Antarctica.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/antarcticwave.asp
REPLY: Correct you are and I’ve alerted the author. – Anthony
According to Snopes the “Ice wave” picture comes from Antarctica, not lake huron.
http://www.snopes.com/photos/natural/antarcticwave.asp
Nice of them to continue to study while they predict changes only observable/testable 20 years into the future.
Ah, the warm feeling of endless grant money stoking the fireplace while the denizens freeze to death in perpetual waves of alarming hypnotic suggestions.
Isn’t there a name for the pre-occupation/obsession with fire?
Alex (09:26:20) :
It seems that predictions of empty lakes won’t happen soon, speaking of predictions; here is an interesting vintage article: http://science.nasa.gov/newhome/headlines/ast19oct98_1.htm
It seems that unlike now, back in 1998 Hathaway’s predictions were spot on!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yeah, right: “They [Hathaway, Wilson, and Reichmann] expect Cycle 23 to continue until sometime in 2006 when the next cycle, Cycle 24, should begin.”
If only they had left that last sentence out!
The real underlying problem is scientific hubris caused by the fact that modern scientists compare what we know today compared to what we knew 100 years ago (an impressive increase to be sure) instead of what we still don’t know (a much larger universe).
They are trying to apply algebra. If X + 2 = 4 then X = 2, and then shout down any idiot as an anti-science denier who dares to question such a painfully obvious truth.
The real problem is the premise that they really know the proper equation in the first place. Many of us believe the real equation that needs to be dealt with is much more likely to be something like X + 2/3Y – 4Q * Z/B = 2.
Re post-glacial rebound:
The way I understand this to be happening is that the rebound from the ice age continues but at an uneven rate as you go from South to North as one might expect if you think about it. The regions more to the North had more ice for a longer period of time. Rebound happens quickly at first and slows over time. The Northern regions lost its ice cover last so is currently rebounding at a faster rate than the Southern regions. What this means is that the crust under the lakes appears to be “tilting” or tipping from North to South. As this progresses, the shoreline recedes in the North and advances in the South. This is sort of like taking a saucer, placing some water in the middle and then lifting one edge.
So even without a net change in water volume, to someone on the Canadian side, the lake level will appear to be dropping but to someone on the US side, the lake will appear to be rising when it is possible that it is doing neither. Given a static water volume, due to post-glacial crustal rebound, the shorelines will recede in the North and provide concrete “evidence” to Canadians that the lake level is “dropping”.
This is going to be difficult to counter with logic and information because it is hard to convince someone that something they can see is caused by something they can’t see. They can’t perceive the change in elevation but, over the decades, they can directly see the change in shoreline.
Given the state of our education system these days and the fact that they tend to teach popular “conventional wisdom” over real scientific fact, we are quite possibly doomed. First you “dumb down” the population, then you take advantage of their ignorance in order to gain your agenda. Sad, really.
That doesn’t make any sense. If the St. Clair River is flowing that much more the water would need to go some where and that would be Lake St. Clair and Lake Erie so they would have high water levels. And then the speed the water is flowing is also a factor in how much flows. The water has risen quite high this year although little mention of that. This sounds like more junk science which seems the norm nowadays.
Just a coincidence that the last years have seen record snowfalls and rain?
From Windsor, Ont across from Detroit.
“Windsor just finished its third wettest April on record with 137.6 millimetres of rain and snow.
The city usually receives 85.1 millimetres of precipitation in April.
Much of Ontario had a soggy month.
“Southern Ontario, yeah. Central Ontario, yeah,” Environment Canada climatologist Sandy Radecki said Friday of the wet weather. “It was pretty bad.”
Radecki said it was the wettest April in Windsor since 1961 when the area got 153.4 millimetres of precipitation.
The record for April is 172.2 millimetres in 1947. The local records go back to 1941.”
snip
http://www.windsorstar.com/news/Soggy+April+Windsor+finishes+record+books/1555264/story.html
Graph of this season’s weekly ice coverage from the Canadian Ice Service.
It seems also as if IARC-JAXA shows that the Arctic is stubbornly refusing to conform to the AGW party line.
“Never assume what you’re trying to prove unless you’re just trying to prove you’re an idiot.”
I think that’s worth a nomination for “Quote of the Week”!
Or perhaps it should be reprinted in 6-foot high letters and pasted on the wall above every scientist’s desk.
Thank you, fellow Skeptic.
I hope this is not too O/T but am having a discussion in a different forum with someone about sea Ice. Most of what I learned is from here.
This person is using data from the NSIDC that shows declining sea ice extent, although I had another NSIDC chart that shows the ice catching up to the average.
He’s using this chart:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090406_Figure3.png
Am I missing something?
I’ve been following the progress/regress of the AGW movement for some time, and I can’t say that the name “GBA Foundation” rings a bell. I wonder, from where do they obtain their funding? ;->
I always thought it was funny that even as the level of Lake Superior was falling by a significant amount, the warmies were claiming that the reason that sea level rise was not showing up was because the water was being contained as fresh water behind dams.
The all time low water level RECORDED on Lake Superior was in the mid 1920’s, 1924 I believe.
I observed the lake level go slowly down for few years and then saw it come back up very quickly. Measured it against boat slips.
One storm event brought the level way back up in October 2006. Prior to that there had been a three year drought in Superior’s catchment area. Hence the lake level was dropping.
As the ice cover broke up this year, as in 2006, and the ice floes reached shore they were beautiful to behold. Pale blue/green in color. Absolutely magnificent.
Now if I was an AGW proponent I would be able to claim both the drought which reduced the level and the storm event that filled it up again as proving my theory wouldn’t I ?
My take ? Natural variation.
In other news, lawns are to become a sign of moral decadence due to Climate Change, says the telegraph Environmental Copy-Taker – err, I mean correspondent.
It appears we have some level of immunity to this intellectual virus. However, I do feel a little like Charlton Heston in Omega Man sometimes.
astronmr20 (11:28:10) :
He’s using this chart:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090406_Figure3.png
The graph he’s showing is not recent to this date. The trend in that graph shows a 2.6% / decade downtrend, or 26% / century. Doesn’t sound so alarming in that context. Tell him the Arctic will be ice-free in 2378 A.D.
Robinson (12:00:09) :
In other news, lawns are to become a sign of moral decadence due to Climate Change, says the telegraph Environmental Copy-Taker – err, I mean correspondent
Is this organization the equivalent of our National Enquirer? From the same edition:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/5255394/Alien-skull-spotted-on-Mars.html
How apropos that this article follows the article about the NY Times mess. A fine example to set for the perhaps soon-to-be late NY Times. It speaks volumes about WUWT that an error is caught, pointed out civily, and quickly corrected; it’s not hidden, ignored, or corrected in a day or two.
Hey, NY Times, you listening?
And interesting as well the snopes.com piece about the “ice waves.”
astronmr20 (11:28:10) :
“He’s using this chart:
http://nsidc.org/images/arcticseaicenews/20090406_Figure3”
If I understand that graph correctly, it is only for the months of March; the graph for April (including 2009) will already look different.
And please note that the ordinate does not start at 0, but at 13 millions sq km2; that has the effect of making the curve look much steeper.