A broadcast by NBC News, titled “Ice fishing threatened by climate change,” claims that warmer winters, particularly the 2023/2024 winter, is affecting the ice fishing season due to supposed influences from climate change. This is false. Climate change does not make such localized effects in a short time, and it is well established that the warmer weather pattern this winter is a result of El Niño patterns in the Pacific Ocean.
The story begins stating:
NBC News’ Jesse Kirsch explores how warmer temperatures are impacting a winter tradition. Business owners near Minnesota’s Mille Lacs Lake who rely on the cold weather say they’re having a slow season.
The video then proceeds with interviews of ice fishermen and local business owners who are the bemoaning the fact that they are having a slow season. In the video they say “over the past 50 years Minnesota has lost 10 to 14 days of lake ice” but they did not back that up with any scientific citation.
First, it has to be said that any single winter having warmer than normal temperatures and the resultant less ice is in fact due to short term weather patterns not long-term climate change. It is well defined that climate change takes place over 30 years. As discussed in Climate at a Glance: Weather vs. Climate:
The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) defines climate as “…the average weather conditions for a particular location and over a long period of time.” To create a climate record, 30 years of weather data is averaged to create a “normal” climate expectation for a location or region. What we experience on a day-to-day basis are weather events, not climate events. Weather is not climate.
Therefore, the 2023/2024 winter is cannot be attributed to climate change unless it is indicative of a long-term trend, but no evidence of such a sustained trend is found in the record.
It is already well established that the warmer temperatures of the 2023/2024 winter are a direct result of a significant El Niño pattern in the Pacific Ocean, affecting much of the United States. For example this report from Fox weather details the connection in US just had its warmest winter in history thanks to El Nino.
The story goes on to say:
“El Niño played a large role in the record heat,” said FOX Forecast Center Meteorologist Cody Braud. “The pattern for El Niño typically means a strong Pacific Jet, which displaces the Polar Jet farther to the North. There are obviously other facets to the story, but this largely keeps the coldest air trapped out of the Lower 48.”
That is clearly a short-term weather pattern, not climate.
Contrary to this year’s pattern, back in the winter of 2019 it was significantly colder and Minnesota had one of their biggest ice fishing tournaments ever with over 10,000 people on the ice in a single lake. As outlined in this story in Men’s Health titled: “Ice fishing event expects enormous crowd, More than 10,000 people will gather on frozen ice of Gull Lake, Minnesota, for world’s largest charitable ice fishing contest Saturday.” The story includes photographs of the lake covered by thousands of people and ice huts.
More recently, in January 2022, ice was thick enough to support vehicles in addition to the usual fishing huts as the photo at this link shows.
Clearly, prior to the 2023/2024 winter ice fishing seemed to be doing quite well in Minnesota. One bad year is not evidence of climate change. This winter’s low and thin ice is a result of weather patterns this year that created a warmer winter in the United States, and of course, Minnesota.
It’s just as likely that next year Minnesota may find a record cold and a longer than normal ice fishing season next year because that is how variations in weather patterns work. Discussing this point, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration writes:
Some examples of this longer time-scale variability might include a series of abnormally mild or exceptionally severe winters, and even a mild winter followed by a severe winter. Such year-to-year variations in the weather patterns are often associated with changes in the wind, air pressure, storm tracks, and jet streams that enclose areas far larger than that of your particular region.
If Minnesota has a banner ice fishing season next year, it is doubtful NBC News will send a reporter to cover it and correct its story from this year. This sort of singling out of particular weather events is part of a troubling pattern in which the media tries to link virtually anything that might be thought of as abnormal weather to climate change even when no long-term trend is evident.
For the media, pushing the climate alarm narrative seems to be more important than reporting factually on a story.
Climate change also causes droughts and floods.
Bloodbaths too, apparently.
MSM hoaxes are being destroyed in mere hours now. It’s really annoying them.
It’s important that those hoaxes be destroyed in minutes, and embarrassingly, so that they quit publishing every click-bait bit of trash they get from freelancers and their own staff.
Is that Lake Wobegon that is showing the ice fishing cabins? Where all the children are above average? But somehow grow up to be idiots? Isn’t the State Bird of Minnesota the mosquito?
If all of the children are above average, but then grow up to be idiots – that is quite an indictment of the local education bureaucracy!
not genetic or environmental?
Having grown up NORTH of the Mississippi River, where I would have to drive south for an hour to reach the Gull Lake ice fishing tournament, I could take offense at your post. Unfortunately, I have to agree with it – particularly the part about the above average children. You can tell by the way they vote now that they’re grown up, that you are right. There were years where snow would hit the ground in October, and not melt until May. A year like this one would have been entirely welcome, not feared.
Grew up here in Minnesota. Vehicles on the ice is standard practice yearly. Oddity, your auto insurance will not cover accidents occurring on lake ice. Amazingly, the number of accidents that occur on the boat launch during the winter really spike.
What’s the posted speed limit on Minnesota ice? Asking for a friend.
Just last night, our NBC affiliate claimed in a news report that our sea level rise along the west coast was accelerating. There is no evidence of this and they did not present any. Apparently, NBC likes to broadcast opinion and then call it news.
Pretty much every media outlet has been broadcasting opinion as news for over 30 years now. Long gone are the days of actual news bulletins.
In remembrance of a reworded quote made on the ice.
“Media; can’t live with them, can’t shoot them.”
— Grandpa Gustafson, Grumpy Old Men
“To create a climate record, 30 years of weather data is averaged to create a “normal” climate expectation for a location or region.”
The “normal climate” idea is baloney. Just about every 30-year period is different to the previous one.
When weather data is averaged in the “climate” sense (30 years) the proper usage is to capitalize both the C and the N. Climate Normals.
This is an accepted defined thing since the mid-1930s at a meeting in Warsaw. It is a simple reference meant to satisfy a need for reporting and comparison. It doesn’t mean normal (small n) climate.
I do not read of people objecting to a score in a tennis match being reported as “30 Love” with a meaning that one player has scored 2 points and the other none.
30 years is much too short for climate but is politically convenient.
The climate today is no different than what it was like 100 years ago.
About 500 years would be about right, basically the span from Roman Warm period to the disaster of the 500s, to the Medieval Warm period to the Little Ice Age, and to our barely adequate Tepid Period.
Very nice, keep those rascals honest.
Is there anything that Climate Change doesn’t affect more than a butterfly flapping their wings?
northern minnesota had two of their best snowmobile seasons the previous two years. ice was so thick we needed auger extensions to get thru
I prefer a good fish story to ice-fishing. Just saying 🙂
I’m sure all the “progressive” retards in Minneapolis will eat this up. Meanwhile real people in MN will continue to harvest delicious walleye thru the ice for winters to come.
I lived on a lake in west central mn as a kid. I remember a lot of different
types of winters and ice. The worst by far was when we got enough cold to freeze
up with only 6″ of ice or so then heavy snow would hit. That would put a lot of weight
on the ice and make water come up around the edges. It was something you
couldn’t see on the surface If you rode a snowmobile down into the 3-4 ft of slush on the
edges it was a nightmare to get out especially if you were alone and at night and
it was -20F. Ice fishing threatened in Minna-snow-da? Ha that’s a good one.
Data for annual days of ice cover for Lake Mendota in Madison goes back to 1855 The average is 102 days with a standard deviation of 20. That makes the 95% confidence interval 62 to 142 days. Short ice fishing seasons are just as common as long ones. In any case all the serious fishing enthusiasts I know have a boat.
“. . . have a boat.”
On the ice? That’s really notorious.
Better outcome should the ice break through.
But I think he’s just alluding to the fact that when ice is thick you ice fish; when not (or if there isn’t ice), they’ve got a boat for that.
What about the cases where the ice is not thick enough to fish but too thick to boat?
Sounds a bit like the Yarra River, Melbourne, Australia. “Too thick to drink and too thin to plough,”
If Minnesota has an exceptionally cold winter next year…or heck, even an average winter next year…the climate doomsayers will attribute that to global warming as well.
There’s no weather circumstance that global warming can’t cause.
The CO2 molecule is an amazing entity–it can do anything.
Yes, paraphrasing, “Thicker ice is ‘consistent with’ global warming.”
LOL!!
This is yet another example of warmunist/media cherry picking. Sure, Minnesota may have had a warmer than average winter, largely due to one of the strongest El Nino’s seen in decades … but that same El Nino made the winter in Florida cooler and wetter than average. Indeed, our winter just ending was forecast to be that way largely due to El Nino. Our seasonal forecasts in Florida were in fact largely correct. That may have been the case in the northern tier of states.
What the warmunists and their handmaidens in the media don’t get, or rather don’t want to get, is that climate not only can be characterized only over multiple decades (whether 3 decades or some other arbitrary timeline), but also involves global distribution of heat energy and precipitation. If one part of the world is warmer than average today, it is certainly true that another part of the world is cooler than average today.
The amount of heat energy in our biosphere (oceans and atmosphere) does not change but excruciatingly slowly, unless there is a cataclysmic event like a meteor strike or mass volcanic eruption. What happens is heat energy gets moved around due to the characteristics mostly associated with oceans and ocean currents. That’s what the ENSO events are – periodic flips in ocean currents. The ocean heats or cools the air, not the other way around. Our atmospheric climate is a child of our oceanic system. And it flips and flops around, year to year, month to month, day to day, hour to hour … and that is “weather” not climate.
Ice-out in my area in central MN on average is mid-April. We are a month ahead of schedule this year. Funny they don’t mention the 3 or 4 times in the last 10 years when ice went out in early to mid May. Hmmmmm.
These two climate scientists are also Minnesota ice fisherman.
At the link below they discuss the science of climate change effects on ice fishing
It’s butt cold and I’m fresh outta beer! (youtube.com)
Ice out DATA, for Lake Minnetonka (Minnesota) exist for 169 years
Earliest Ice out was March 11th 1878
2024 was March 13th, no new record this year…
https://freshwater.org/media/ice-out-on-lake-minnetonka/
Ice fishing is a very human adaptation to the need to continue finding food even when the weather isn’t agreeable. If the winter trended warmer over time and ice fishing became more restricted as a result, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. It would increase the normal fishing season. It would increase the agricultural productive period and yields, it would reduce the energy needs for heating and it would make outdoor activities in winter far more accessible and enjoyable. The point is that whatever way the weather or climate changes, we can’t control it but we can always adapt. Unfortunately people who falsely claim to be practicing journalism will find the negative in every discernible change in the weather and ignore any positives. This is what we call propaganda.
In other news.. record crowd expected for ice fishing in Canada – during the warmest winter ‘evah’:
https://www.theepochtimes.com/world/canadas-largest-ice-fishing-tournament-anticipates-record-turnout-5610867?ea_src=ca-frontpage&ea_med=top-news-top-stories-0-large-0
I live on Lac Ste Anne Alberta. Just went of here is Lake Isle. A friend drilled through the ice to go fishing two weeks ago. The ice is so thick he had to use the extension to breach the bottom of it. It is at least 5 feet thick.
Last Sunday it was +15 C and the top of Lac Ste Anne was melting pretty well. So I took two grandkids for a drive the pickup through the slush out to Bird Island, about a mile offshore. There were fishermen having a great time out there. One cubit whitefish.
In another month we’ll pull the huts off and wait for the spring breakup. In the meantime it is heading to -15C and snowing hard.
There is no “climate change” we can see. Like Calgary, if you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes. If you don’t like the climate, move to Vancouver.