So much for history, but what about the future?

In the US, the water levels in the Great Lakes have fallen dramatically. Fortunately, while predictions call for summer droughts, winter precipitation should be at or above normal, or so the theory goes. Hopefully, they aren't being overly optimistic.

I wonder what it will be like it Lake Superiors water level were to drop several hundred feet.

Do you think the general public would accept that something like this happened a hundred thousand years ago, so it is okay?

http://www.mlive.com/news/kzgazette/index.ssf?/base/news-25/119125560255690.xml&coll=7

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/environment/2007-06-13-lake-superior_N.htm

It's the first time in 81 years that the biggest and deepest of the lakes, with a surface area matching South Carolina's, has reached a new monthly low, Sellinger said. The Army Corps recorded Superior as also setting a record by a half-inch in August. But the NOAA lab had the lake at slightly above its record level then.

Either way, the lake's water level has plummeted over the past year and has lagged beneath its long-term average for a decade -- the longest such period in its known history.

All the Great Lakes, which together make up about 20 percent of the world's fresh surface water, have been in decline since the late 1990s.

Lakes Huron and Michigan are about 2 feet below their long-term average levels, while Lake Superior is about 20 inches off. Lake Ontario is about 7 inches below its long-term average and Lake Erie a couple of inches down.

Some more information on the shrinking Great Lake Superior that is something of a puzzle.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/science/08/03/superior.puzzle.ap/index.html

And some evidence that global warming is driving the long-term shrinkage of this massive natural reservoir.

http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19426064.100

Does anybody live around Lake Superior?

If we just deny that it is happening, will problems always go away by themselves?

Does it ALWAYS have to be global warming as the cause of everything? AGW may not be the only cause of the water levels dropping.
The below article seems to be a lot simpler answer for the water levels dropping than AGW. The best part is we may be actually able to do something about it

“Muter blames the St. Clair River. She says the water is flowing too fast through the river, in effect emptying Lake Huron, and above it Lake Michigan, and above that Lake Superior. ….
Over the years, people have interfered with the natural system around the St. Clair River. In the 1800s, locals cut through a sandbar that slowed the flow out of Lake Huron. They also mined gravel from the river bottom. And in the 1960s the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers deepened the channel when the St. Lawrence Seaway was built.

http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/09/06/stclairriver/?rsssource=1

Nahhh come on be serious...let’s blame the farting moose in Norway for the lower levels in Lake Superior!

Deniers like to point out that it was warmer when the dinosaurs were around. According to them, if the weather was good for the dinosaurs, then surely it must be good for humans.

These guys should do stand-up comedy. Seriously.

Several other cultures met their demise or were forced to move due to prolonged droughts in recent history. After approximately 1150 A.D. North America experienced significant climatic change in the form of a 300 year drought, which also led to the collapse of the Tiwanaku civilization around Lake Titicaca as well as that of the Anazazi in the Southwestern US.

Andrew,

I perused through your links and other than the 81 year reference to the previous record low in 1926 (how did that happen?), everything is in the usual AGW 30-35 year time span. It seems as though anything older than 35 years is ignored by the AGW crowd.

Andrew,

I almost forgot. Concerning your last link in the 2nd post linking AGW with the water levels in the Great Lakes, as usual, they have used their wonder models to make this absurd claim. So, this wonderful model has somehow provided absolute undeniable/settled proof that CO2 with its 0.22 correlation coefficient with temperature rise is responsible for the lower water levels. Do you think that the CO2/water level correlation coefficient is better than 0.22? (See if you can go back further than 30 years, ok?)

If one looks hard enough for "evidence" of something one will eventually find it even if it is not there. (I'm sure someone has quoted this before.)

I wish someone had written down every dramatic prediction made by the alarmist.. I think it would be amusing to compare the predictions against reality over the past 70 years. Now we have a blog posting about a drought that was a normal part of nature..and we get stories about lake Superior and human caused droughts. This blog needs more Patrick Henry.

Andrew,

Did you even read the article? Past climate change, prior to the invention of the wheel none the less SUVs, apparently caused man to leave Africa. Story after story of ancient climatic changes are reported, yet you turn around and immediately blame the most current climate shift (shrinking Great lakes) on humans in the same thread I'd like to point out.

This isn't proof that the shrinking of the Great Lakes is good, but clearly these events have happened before without humans exhaling too often.

Furthermore, it is solid proof that our earth, and us humans, are not so fragile as AGW proponents would have us believe. Dramatic climate change has happened many times in the past and yet the earth is still here and quite habitable. Humans have had to make many MAJOR adjustments to climate in the past, and yet somehow we remain the dominant species.

Perhaps if our ancient African ancestors had a fleet of SUVs, the population wouldn't have crashed so dramatically. Which brings me to the point that technology has increased our ability to adapt to major climate change. Our climate will continue to change and we will continue to find ways to adapt. That doesn't mean ignoring CO2, but it also doesn't mean mandatory CF light bulbs for all.

Andrew,

I live in the Western Great Lakes region, and 2 things come to mind.

1)Changes in large scale snyoptic weather patterns have caused a protracted drought across the Northeast Plains, which has extended eastward each year since 2000 or so. Theses patterns mirror changes in the Southern Oscillation, which if you follow the MEI has been on the warm side of the anomaly since 1999. Overall, favorable spring and summer rainfalls have been missing in the Upper Plains/Western Great Lakes for almost a decade.

2)Strong polar outbreaks, which normally plague this region from late December through the middle of February have been few. This means that much of the Great Lakes do not freeze over. In turn, when favorable wind conditions occur, lake effect snow squalls result. This reduces the lake level.

This past summer has seen the Plains drought extend into the UP of Michigan. Durng late August several forest fires occured.

Normally, during the Spring and Summer, when the polar jetstream drifts northward, the Great Lakes begin to see large outbreaks of severe thunderstorms and heavy rains. However, the last several years, the jetstream has remained far to the south or north. This was, overall a cool-dry summer. Dry being the operative word. Most of the precipitation remained firmly anchored in the Southern Plains and Southern Mississippi and Ohio Vallies.

There are weather analogs (fairly incomplete and young) which can explain or attempt to put together weather patterns which are seperated by large distances. My first bet is the Pacific's Southern Oscillation, which if you ask weather forecasters like Brett, have long term affects on mid-latitude jetstream patterns.

Since August, the Pacific has gone from El Nino neutral to La Nina. Many parts of Austrailia have seen the drought break there. It remains to be seen if the drought will break here. One thing that is strange about this La Nina event is its strength. Normally a strong La Nina event follows on the heels of an intense El Nino. Last year's El Nino was fairly weak and uneventfull.

I have a question. While
the Army Corps may regulate water going out of the lake, what about other drawdowns? I'm
not familiar with Great Lakes water withdrawls but i imagine the lakes are the drinking water source and thus susceptible to increased water usage?

With a drought condition could this not exasperate the situation? I know it does in Jersey because of overdevelopment and
when droughts occur here it really stresses the
reservoirs and aquifers (our primary source of water)

Being an archeologist Professor Cohen should be familiar with the Toba catastrophe theory and the human population bottleneck.

Andrew- When you product is unfounded skepticism, it doesn't make sense to highlight current and future problems.

JP,

Thanks for the insight and I appreciate everybody's comments as well.

I happen to live near Lake Ontario, which is currently running just a tad low.

Canada and the US have a commission that regulates the flow of water thru the St Lawrence and the Niagara Rivers since there are hydro electric dams on both of these rivers.

While folks along the upper lakes may be complaining that there is too much water flowing thru the St Claire river, I believe the flow is not greater than normal which is why Lakes Erie and Ontario are low.

The levels on these lakes could be raised by restricting their respective outflows. However, that would mean less hydro electric power and there will likely be much discussion on this by the commission.

The level of Lake Superior is a good indicator of climatic conditions for that region. Not sure how far back the records go, but it is at the minimum worthy of mentioning the situation.

If conditions continue to worsen over the next few years, expect to hear more and more of it in the news and the link to Global Warming and CO2 emissions.

I have no idea how bad it may become. However, as the one link indicated, it is not just less rain, but also greater evaporation due to less ice coverage. That is, there is a climate factor involved pointing to a warming consistent with higher atmospheric CO2 levels.

Not a time to panic, just difficult to ignore

Lowest Global September 2007 temp this century. Could someone explain this?
http://www.remss.com/pub/msu/monthly_time_series/RSS_Monthly_MSU_AMSU_Channel_TLT_Anomalies_Land_and_Ocean_v03_0.txt
Further evidence of cooling

I had a crash on the highway, it was my fault but naturally I was not blamed for all the other crashes that had occurred in the entire history of the road.

AGW fits this accident profile, AGW has put in more energy into a nature system causing droughts to be more severe, heatwaves to be stronger hurricanes faster and climates to change as we watch a chain reaction continue to make the problem much worse.

We can find examples of severe weather in earths history, but we cannot find modern human action present when the lesser natural events occurred so we should admit that today�s disasters are our responsibility and pay the excess.

I have a question that just will not go away and as yet has not been answered.

What evidence is there of human activity prior to the last Ice age?

Apparently humans have been around for 1 million years; let�s say in the evolved modern human state for only half that time.

The last ice age ended 12 000 years ago, the ice age itself had lasted 90 000 years and occurred after a period of 175 000 years of warm stable temperature.

So for this question I am only concerned with human history of 277000 years

Modern humans have developed most technologies in the space of the last 12000 years, all structures woven cloth and other evidence of ancient civilisations comes from this comparatively short 12000 year warm period.

My question is what advances were achieved by humans between the last two ice ages ending 102000 years ago?

.How do we know what humans were doing all those years ago? Perhaps they were driving wooden cars run on alcohol and buying wooden houses with currency made from leafs that only grew on special trees.

Whatever humans were doing in 175000 years we know they had longer to develop a more advanced technology.

I wonder what evidence of our civilisation would survive a 90000 year ice age followed by 12000 years as our species recovered our original number.

Perhaps the civilisation that developed between the ice ages used wood products for all technologies, causing a shortage of wood which over time caused climate change that led to the ice age that in turn destroyed all evidence that such a civilisation existed at all.

Any thoughts?.

Vincent,

I had a nice response for you, but lost it when when my computer froze up. Since I don't feel like writing it again, I'll give you the short version:

Lowest Global September 2007 temp this century.

You also could have said it was the lowest September temperature since 1994, but then again "this century" sounds much more dramatic.

RSS data is not the only data set out there. NOAA and NASA also use the UAH data, which generally exhibits less variability. The link below compares mid-tropospheric temperatures measured by both:

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/img/climate/research/2006/ann/msu2006-pg.gif

So far as trends go, I don't put much stock in "trends" that span seven years. The graphs linked above show how the (near) record year 1998 preceded and was followed by two years of negative anomalies.

Also, UAH data does not show that this September was cooler than any since 1994 as the RSS data does. According to UAH data, global temps were cooler in September 2004, 2001, 2000, 1999, 1997, 1996, and 1994 than they were this September.

Here's the analogous UAH data set:

http://vortex.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/t2lt/tltglhmam_5.2

I wouldn't say we have sufficient evidence for your cooling hypothesis as of yet.

Brett this is more accurate re: my previous posting

Ad verbatim from icecap "According to the new RSS MSU satellite data, September 2007 was the 7th coldest month among 81 months since January 2001. It has made it to the 9% of the coolest months of the 21st century so far. Their gadgets measure temperature at latitudes between -70.0 (S) and +82.5 (N) - about 94.5% of the surface if I compute well".

Simon-
Your theory is reasonable except for the fact that there were almost no humans around at that time. It has been determined through DNA testing that modern human "homo sapiens sapiens" developed roughly 200 thousand years ago. The neandrathals and other varieties of homo erectus lived in Europe as hunter gatherers for several hundred thousand years before that. According to Dr. Spencer Wells, the population after the eruption of mt. toba and the immersal in he following ice age fell to as few as two thousand humans in Africa, before the population exploded outward fifty thousand years ago.

"Out of Africa"/ Spencer Wells
"While Homo sapiens can be traced to around 200,000 years ago in the fossil record, it is remarkably difficult to find an archaeological record of our species between 80,000 and 50,000 years ago, and genetic data suggest that the population eventually dwindled to as few as 2,000 individuals."
National Geographic article, published in vanity fair.

The earliest known civilization are in the Sumerian valleys between the Tigris and Uphrates rivers. This is where humans first began to farm and attempt to domesticate animals. From http://history-world.org/sumeria.htm evidence indicates that it was in mesopotemia that the first civilation sprung up. Here the nomadic humans built a city, and stayed there year round. Eventually this spread across the area to Egypt and eastward into India. In all cases humans relied on a source of water, a river. The earliest civilatizations in Europe were in the Ukraine between forty and fifty thousand years ago.

While it is plausible that traces of cities or advanced technology could be wiped away with the ice and cold of the ice age. It is certain that fossils wouldn't be. There are such a limited number of fossils from prior to about a hundred thousand years ago, that it appears likely the population was very, very small. Certainly whatever groups there were needed to follow the migratory herds of animals and water to survive and undoubtedly didn't have time to doing much else. The neandrathals are deemed to be the first to use tools in a significant manner, and also the first to begin to use fire for heat and protection. Early humans were as much the hunted as the hunters.
As for the loss of wood contributing to the ice age, that seems rather absurd. Firstly just because trees tend to help keep co2 levels down, which seem to in the minds of most agw believers are the end-all be-all of the climate change theory, it would follow that by cutting many of them down, they wouldn't have helped lower temperatures.
Secondly from http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/stanley_ambrose.php
By: Dr. Stanley Ambrose, anthropology, University of Illinois.
Ambrose notes that it was the eruption of Mt. Toba roughly eighty thousand years ago that led directly to a five year volcanic winter and the long ice age following it. It was during this time that human population crashed to near extinction with only a few thousand surviving in the middle realms of Africa. By his estimates, coming from sources I don't know, temperature in reaches of China and Europe would have dropped nearly 12 degrees centigrade making the average temp roughly freezing. This in his words would have "completely eliminated populations living in northern Europe and China".

While I think you have an intersting theory, historical evidence based in DNA and fossil data seems to indicate otherwise. It would appear that any change in climate in the past had nothing to do with humans at all.

Regards, Elliot

Hi Guys,

Correct me if I'm wrong but the current lack of diversity in our genes was the result of the Toba Super eruption around 75000 years ago. That is pretty conclusive of our genetic record and geologic record. It actually almost made man go extinct.

See link
http://www.nyu.edu/nyutoday/archives/20/04R/Stories/Rampino.html

Vincent,

Are you being serious in your statements about cooling? What I mean to say, are you simply pointing out evidence that contradicts AGW theory of extensive warming? Or are you making that much more ambitious claim that , not only has the earthc not significantly warmed, but that it is in the process of significantly cooling?

i see the AGW scamsters r hard at work again today implying climate change is human caused...amazing, an article that theorizes drought, prior to the invention of fred flintstones co2 expelling suv, somehow proves us badguys r drying up the great lakes...hmm, volcano's influenced climate of the past and massive droughts occurred before fossil fuels were being consumed...however, you can bet your last carbon credit that today's weather is the result of us sorry, no careing, energy thirsty, humans?...methinks you AGW'rs have a monetary agenda...not only are we deniers but now we're comedians?...pardon me for saying, mr