Climate Prediction Fails, Great Lakes At Record-High Water Levels
It is a truism that any observed change in nature will be blamed by some experts on global warming (aka “climate change”, “climate crisis”, “climate emergency”).
When the Great Lakes water levels were unusually low from approximately 2000 through 2012 or so, this was pointed to as evidence that global warming was causing the Great Lakes to dry up.
Take for example this 2012 article from National Geographic, which was accompanied by this startling photo:
The accompanying text called this the “lake bottom” as if Lake Michigan (which averages 279 feet deep) had somehow dried up.
Then in a matter of two years, low lake levels were replaced with high lake levels. The cause (analysis here) was a combination of unusually high precipitation (contrary to global warming theory) and an unusually cold winter that caused the lakes to mostly freeze over, reducing evaporation.
Now, as of this month (June 2019), ALL of the Great Lakes have reached record-high levels.
Time To Change The Story
So, how shall global warming alarmists explain this observational defiance of their predictions?
Simple! They just invoke “climate weirding” and claim that the climate emergency has caused water levels to become more erratic, to see-saw, to become more variable!
The trouble is that there is no good evidence in the last 100 years that this is happening.
This plot of the four major lake systems (Huron and Michigan are at the same level, connected at the Straits of Mackinac) shows no increased variability since levels have been accurately monitored (data from NOAA Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory):
This is just one more example of how unscientific many global warming claims have become. Both weather and climate are nonlinear dynamical systems, capable of producing changes without any ‘forcing’ from increasing CO2 or the Sun. Change is normal.
What is abnormal is blaming every change in nature we don’t like on human activities. That’s what happened in medieval times, when witches were blamed for storms, droughts, etc.
One would hope we progressed beyond that mentality.
Read more at Dr. Roy’s Blog
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jerry krause
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Hi Readers and Roy,
At Roy’s site there have been 52 comments to this posting. One comment did call attention to the fact each lake has an elevation: “do know there are canal gates on Ontario and Erie.
Why not Google them? Here are the surface elevations:
Superior – 182 metres (600 feet)
Michigan – 176 metres
Huron – 176 metres
Erie – 173 metres
Ontario – 74 metres”
But no one had noted the locks between the lakes Superior and Michigan at Sault St. Marie through which the iron ore from the Minnesota Iron Range and the upper peninsula of Michigan pass to the steel mills along the shores of lakes Michigan and Huron.
I lived 30+ years on the MN Iron Range, so I am familiar with the problems (shore erosion) of abnormally high water levels of Lake Superior and assume the same apply to the other lakes. Hence, humans try to moderate the ups and downs of all the levels as much as humanly possible and this could be a reason why a natural cycle of these ups and downs is not obvious.
I hesitate to refer to magnitudes of oscillation between that of Lake Superior (very large relative to the others) and the other lakes because I cannot read the scales of each oscillation. But if we assume the scales are the same. The surface oscillation must be a greater problem for Huron-Michigan and Erie than for Superior. And it appears about 50 years ago, or so, something was done to ‘stabilize’ the level of Lake Ontario.
After studying this data I must direct attention to the periods 1920-1930 and 1930-1940. For we know the period 1930-1940 was characterized by abnormal high temperatures and a lake near my home in eastern South Dakota went dry. I had never read about that maybe it began to become dry during the previous 10 years. And I know during later periods the levels of small lakes (whose levels fluctuate naturally) in Eastern SD have oscillated significantly. It might pay someone of influence to look at these oscillates. For it seems few pay any attention to the data I have offered for the readers of PSI.
Have a good day, Jerry
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Don Farley
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There are two gravity diversions from the James bay watershed into Lake Superior at Ogoki and Longlac. The diversions, totaling a maximum discharge of about 30 cubic meters/ second were completed before 1950 and were intended to increase power benefits. Both diversions are turned off during high lake levels.
In the early 1960’s during extremely low rainfall and resulting low levels with high evaporation, and before climate alarmism, the Kieran’s Grand Canal Concept was proposed, which entailed the construction of a canal between Lake Superior and James Bay with power for the required pumping stations generated by a nuclear power station. A field and office study was conducted for a less audacious scheme which would double the above James Bay watershed diversion to Lake Superior. When the study was completed in 1968, the politicians looked at the scheme in horror. The Lake levels, at the time, were high with resulting erosion damage.
I have reviewed Henrik Svenmark’s research on the effect of the Sun’s electromagnetic radiation represented by sunspot numbers. High sun spot numbers- low levels; low sun spot numbers, like currently-high levels. The only place I did not find consistency was during the 1930s.
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Alan Reid
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I need a little help from my friends – as the song goes.
If the temperature of the Earth is 255k without greenhouse gasses and 288k with where does the additional 33k worth of energy come from? If you prevent heat escaping from an object it doesn’t get hotter. I can understand if the greenhouse gasses transfer heat from the Sun but not the other way round. I’m not a scientist just a confused old man who doesn’t understand how insulation makes things hotter.
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K. Kaiser
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We have experienced Lake Huron water level changes over four decades.
From a new 170-year record high in 1986 to a new 190-year record low, a few years ago.
( http://tides.gc.ca/C&A/bulletin-eng.html ). Since then, once again, its level has, once again, risen risen fast and may soon match or surpass all previous extremes since the beginning of the measurements, by now over 200 years ago, in the year 1818.
It’s definitely tough on anything at the water’s edge, especially in spring (with still 1 m, or 3 ft,) thick ice and rapidly changing levels (mainly from wind-driven surges), both up and down, during the spring melt.
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jerry krause
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Hi Klaus,
Your comment stimulated me to research the Great Lakes and their natural and artificial drainage which keeps their waters fresh.
Now, a friend had previously drawn my attention to Niagara Falls between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario whose lake levels have a difference of about 100 meters (300+ft) and told me that the water which falls during the daytime for the tourists is shut off during the nighttime to conserve the potential energy of any water which would naturally flow over and down the falls to the level of Lake Ontario during the nighttime.
Also, we should be area that the precipitation which falls on the land surrounding the Great Lakes might also fall directly on the surfaces of these lakes. And that much of land which surrounds the Lakes a little distance from the lakes does not allow for the construction of large reservoirs to store and slowly release any normal, or abnormal, precipitation which falls on the land.
And we should not ignore the ‘prevailing ‘ winds, which you mention, that could cause the lake levels themselves to not be level and thereby Impact ‘natural’ flows in the ‘natural’ rivers between some the lake and finally Lake Ontario and the Atlantic Ocean.
Just some information which should not be ignored.
Have a good day, Jerry
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K. Kaiser
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Hi Jerry,
Yes, to my knowledge at night time , the flow over the Niagara Falls is reduced from ~2000 m^3/sec to about half of that. That still leaves plenty of water going over the falls at night.
As the power is equally shared between the U.S. and Canada, the two large hydro power plants, (Robert Moses in the U.S., and Sir Adam Beck in Canada) use some of that power to pump up (low head) reservoirs nearby. These pumped storage capacities are only sufficient to increase power output for electricity demand spikes of short duration.
Cheers,
Klaus
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jerry krause
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Hi Klaus,
Thank you for the information (conformation). I believe the low head reservoirs is what Robert Beatty has proposed for Australia to store energy from wind and solar but it seems it is not solely for the peaks of electricity demand.
Do you have information how it is that Ontario’s level has remained, what I would term as, stable (normal’ for about six decades and Erie has not been below ‘normal’ for about five decades?
Have a good day, Jerry
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