By: Mark Glennon*
Why were Lake Michigan and the other Great Lakes water levels near record lows between 2000 to 2017?
Global warming, we were told. Warming was evaporating the Great Lakes, Nobel Prize winning Al Gore said. Among others saying the same was Illinois Senator Dick Durbin. “What we are seeing in global warming is the evaporation of our Great Lakes,” he said, and asked the federal government for help.
Why were lake levels near record highs in 2020, causing extensive shoreline damage?
Undeterred by contradiction, it was global warming again, we were told. In fact, that’s when hysteria in Chicago about warming reached high tide.
“City of Chicago declares climate crisis after storms cause millions of dollars in damage to Lake Michigan shoreline” – that was an ABC News national headline. The claims from the City Council in its crisis resolution were as extreme as you can find on global warming. We had to end the “Sixth Mass Extinction,” it said, requiring “an emergency mobilization on a scale not seen since World War II…. Earth is already too hot for safety and justice.”
The resolution demanded a “just, managed divestment and phase-out of fossil fuels” and an end to “greenhouse gas emissions as quickly as possible to establish a zero-emissions economy.” And Senator Durbin again asked the federal government for help, this time saying global warming caused high water, the opposite of his earlier claim.
You can thank those policies, which were widely embraced in Chicago and elsewhere, for at least part of today’s high energy prices. But what’s a little pain at the pump when the “Sixth Mass Extinction” looms?
Now, Mother Nature once again hasn’t followed the script.
Lakes Michigan and Huron (which are connected and at the same level) alone lost 20 trillion gallons of water in just the last two years. Their level is down over two feet from the recent highs, putting them and other Great Lakes only an inch or two above average.
How does global warming account for that? A new explanation was described in a recent front page Chicago Tribune column: more variability in lake levels. “Climate change may be contributing to more pronounced variations” according to researchers, reported the Tribune. “This cycle of erosion and exposure is not new, it just appears to be occurring over a shorter period of time, scientists say.” The Tribune did not provide any support for its claim that “scientists say” that, but it is true that some do.
Let me be clear from the outset that I am not dismissing the possibility that variability in Great Lakes levels is increasing. I have little idea if it’s true. The point here, instead, is that this is yet another instance of climate claims changing when the facts don’t turn out to agree.
And there’s reason to maintain skepticism about the new theory.
For starters, is it really true that the cycle appears to be occurring over a shorter period of time?
Look for yourself at the Great Lakes levels since 1918. It certainly does not appear that variability has increased materially. Yes, there was an exceptionally big reversal between 2013 and 2020, but that that’s just one sequence, making it mighty thin evidence. And a particularly stable period seems to have occurred in the immediately preceding 13 years.
Maybe there’s another explanation for the big spike up in lake levels between 2013 and 2020. For that, there’s something called Occam’s Razor. That’s the principle that the simplest explanation is probably the right one.
What might that simpler explanation be? It rained a lot. That in fact was an explanation provided at the time by an atmospheric scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. “In a nutshell, the main reason is it really just has rained a lot,” he told WTTW. “Once [the soil] is saturated, all that water runs straight off into the Great Lakes rather than being absorbed into the soil and evaporated,” he said.
At least one scientist’s work I found does make a plausible case that Great Lakes water levels might be going up and down more than before. However, his claims are very modest and conditional, and he makes them without the hubris and hyperbole that we often see in climate scientists.
That’s Drew Gronewold of the University of Michigan. His video presentation is here and his paper that he discusses is here. Based on a forward-looking model and the premise that temperatures are higher and it’s raining more often, his paper concludes that the chances of extreme departures from average lake levels like we’ve had recently are 2.1% or 3% more likely than the historical norms under two scenarios he modeled. That’s certainly not much to worry about.
It’s also worth remembering that if you want to look much further back in history and over longer periods you’ll find truly whopping variations in Lake Michigan levels.
In 1989 salvage divers found something they didn’t expect 15 miles out from Chicago Harbor: tree stumps. The stumps were the remains of a forest that radioactive dating indicated grew there some 8,000 years ago, now 80 feet underwater.
But by 5,500 years ago, the level had surged to over 20 feet higher than today. If you are familiar with Ridge Road around Chicago, you may know that it really is on a ridge for the most part. That ridge was once the shoreline. If you live east of it and dig down far enough, you’ll find sand.
The Tribune article also says “Climate scientists agree that storms and weather events in general are getting worse.” No, there’s no agreement on that. It’s hotly contested. Among those who disagree is Steven E. Koonin, former Undersecretary for Science under President Barack Obama in the U.S. Department of Energy. His arguments to the contrary are summarized here.
It’s hard for us who try to keep open minds about climate issues. It’s hard because so many claims change as often as the weather, because thin evidence is so often exaggerated, because “global warming” so often morphs into the entirely different topic of “climate change,” because Occam’s Razor is ignored, because warnings of things like the Sixth Mass Extinction are absurd and because scientific consensus is often claimed where it does not exist.
Please, make it easier for us.
*Mark Glennon is founder of Wirepoints.
Audio and summary 
If this bill passes, say goodbye to local control over all Illinois parks and expect to see open drug and alcohol use, needles, no sanitation and fire hazards, but no ordinary park users.
When I was in school in the 90’s “they” said the poles would be melted by 2020. That’s right the global warming lie was drilled into our brains by state sponsored indoctrinators. Ice free poles by 2020, major cities under water by 2020. All BS and yet Illinois keeps rolling on. Nothing to see here folks! Someone explain to this Xer why my teachers were wrong. Surely they didn’t lie to me to advance a social agenda. I mean, the poles are ice free right?
The teachers “lied” because the major textbook sellers of the day stated the viewpoint you’ve said. Presumably the companies of that time were selling the legally approved viewpoint of that era. You seem to think teachers individually should have taught their own individual viewpoints? Now, really, does it make sense that they’d want to accept the potential legal liability and job security attendant to doing so? In short, you are looking at that time with perfect 20/20 hindsight and scoffing that teachers should have known the unknowable.
I’m still worried about the ozone hole! But then we fixed it or something, it was us, yeah!
https://www.pbs.org/show/ozone-hole-how-we-saved-planet/
Nice article Mark. But the leftists are going to believe everything involves climate change.
Are you aware that the Chicago Tribune? Had an article about the Army Corpse of Effing Engineering looking at installing “Speed Bumps” in the rivers below Lake Huron?
Too Slow down the outflow of water due to Record Low Water Levels!!!
Once again, man Fs with Nature and Nature Wins!
The Army Corpse of Effing Engineering is to help with Navigation, they are not Tasked to protect Homeowners nor their property!
Going to be a bomb sunset!
In 2017 we were at record lows in the Great Lakes! In three years we went from Record low to record highs???
This should be investigated! Did the Army Corpse of Effing Engineering affect the outflows along the Sinclair and Detroit Rivers?
Btw, I’d be happy to discuss this possibilities!
Also I have lived for 34 years on the shores of Lake Michingan. I spent three years installing and saving homes and cottages along the shores of Lake Michingan!
Some call me an expert on sand migration!
The simplest explanation is that the powers that be are running the same con that they have been running since the dawn of mankind. Using fear of the weather to control the actions of humans. Sun gods, lightning gods, being told droughts are punishment for bad behavior, and throwing virgins into volcanoes. I wish I could’ve been in the room when someone sarcastically said, “Why don’t we bring back Zeus to get people to do what we want”? Everybody laughed, but one guy or gal was like “wait. a. minute.” Yeah, jokes on us.
Not using “fear of the weather to control humans”, Jason. They are controlling the weather to control populations through catastrophes blamed on Mother Nature. Any discussion regarding the climate without acknowledging ongoing global weather modification programs is completely without merit. Perhaps you, Mark Glennon, and others would care enough to take a look at the mountain of data compiled by geoengineeringwatch.org to gain a deeper understanding of what is really going on. As one example, did you know that in 2015, an illegal federal gag order was placed on all NOAA & NWS employees? And yes, I should mention to… Read more »
The ultimate progressive hubris- their ideas can change the climate! Not surprising, since they believe they can and should control every aspect of life. For the good of humanity of course.
“The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.” – HL Mencken
Ive been doing some research into how we can incorporate gas-x into cattle feed so the cows will stop farting,my funding is being supported by AOC and the democrat party
The reality is that science has no idea why the glaciers melted 15,000 years ago and turned into Lake Michigan. Each time the glacier partially refroze it made a hill, today with names like palos heights, Arlington heights, mt prospect, park ridge, Barrington hills and so on. I ask climate science deniers – did caveman fires and saber tooth tiger farts melt the glaciers? They give me a look of disgust because they know that question alone destroys all climate change science.
I’m old enough to remember the grave threat of global cooling in the 1970’s. The planet will be so cold, we won’t grow enough food to feed everyone and millions will die. Then the zealots and charlatans pivoted to global warming a mere 30+/- years later. Vast swaths of land will be flooded, killing millions. Do catastrophic weather patterns pivot that quickly? Of course not. Then we discovered 20-25 years ago a group of lying, deceptive scientists suppressing facts and threatening other scientists who challenged their ideology. Once again, to resuscitate their manic desire for power, they pivoted again to… Read more »
Growing up in the 60s, there was the population bomb threat, not enough food to support the growing population. Then there was the ozone hole. And don’t forget the garbage scow that floated around with nowhere to dump garbage. We were told we would suffocate in our own garbage. Somehow, we dodged those crisis..
You forgot “The New Ice Age”!
Wow! Mark Glennon must have a lot of guts. Cancel culture seeks to destroy everyone with similar views. Scary.
I have been screaming about the nonsense of climate change for years.
Do you remember the near panic of Y2K? That was another hoax promulgated by the presstocricy. They are mostly idiots.
Climate change is the perfect crime. It can’t be proven or disproven. But it can be rammed down our throats by those who have entirely unrelated motives.
For more, see my ‘Pedaling the Climate Hoax’ series on YouTube.
COVID has taught most of us that much in science and and “expert” opinion is politicized, monetized and bastardized. That lesson should be applied to climate. Much of the prevailing climate orthodoxy is the product of a renewables/warming industrial complex.
This country is headed downhill big-time. We are learning that almost literally everyone of importance has an agenda that promotes some truths, some lies and some omissions. Is this the kind of society our founders had hoped to see? We don’t live up to their ideals, but that’s likely been the case from the get-go since mankind in the societal sense is eternally flawed.
I read where Al Gore made $100M from ‘global warming’ – lying to scare people pays well if you are of the proper politics it seems.
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/al-gore-runs-global-warming-racket/
10-4 on that Mark Glennon. It’s all a political show and or for profit. Pharma is Big Oil and profit for the masters.
We absolutely must engage critical thinking in all spheres (silos) against the tide of “general consensus”. This explains it in a unique way – it’s all woo woo.
https://boriquagato.substack.com/p/why-public-health-experts-never-want?s=r
Excerpt:hiding behind a process of “peer review” by friendly fellow woo-woo aficionados to exclude debate and criticism from outsiders and pantomime adversarial assessment is just woo on top of woo. it generates the appearance of fact checking but is really its antithesis. only the guild gets to decide what can be approved and spoken of and these bodies exist to defend ideology and careers, not to pursue truths and paradigm shifts”
I’m reminded of the old adage – “If you can’t dazzle them with your brilliance, baffle them with your bulls–t”…
Thats politics to a T…
Lots of douche baggery yo ho around on most of the big issues facing our nation, and the dominant reasons for it are corruption, a lack of critical thinking skills, and ignorance. Gas prices are higher. Yes, some of that is due to Biden and his policies, but it goes back before Biden. We haven’t built a refinery here in murica in over 40 years. We’ve been in bed with the Saudis since the 70’s. The Clintons and Bushes took Saudi money, as have many members of Congress. Our oil companies are making record profits, as are many of our… Read more »
Before we had horrors of Climate Change, we had something called Global Warming, and before that it was Global Cooling. The climate alarmists keep changing the name and the danger to reflect what the earth’s temperatures are doing at that moment. How can they effortlessly move back and forth between CO2 causing cooling to CO2 causing warming and few object to their conclusions? Just 23,000 years ago, Cape Girardeau south of St. Louis, was covered by a mile thick layer of ice. What happened to all that ice? The earth transitioned from a colder climate to a warmer one. The earth… Read more »
Also when the lake was at an all time low it was because of too many suburbs drinking Chicago water. Got to always listen to the scientist.
Ameya Pawar still thinks Chicago owns all the water in the Great Lakes.
Read the book Climategate which debunks all this crap. Your local library might have it unless the director is a raging socialist like my local library’s director.
My library must have a raging socialist in charge—no Climategate. That doesn’t come as a surprise. I have not set foot in the place since before the pandemic. First to demand masking, last to give it up. Imagine masked two year olds in there for Drag Queen story hour ! And after the death of George Floyd their website was filled with books about white oppression. I keep my library card only thinking I might have some emergency need of it. My husband shredded his.
***—“Climate scientists agree that storms and weather events in general are getting worse.”—***
C’mon Mark, it’s true…
However, they only asked TWO climate scientists & they BOTH agreed, so once again SCIENCE prevails…
Me thinks science operates much like politics, lots of bloviating with little substance…
They told us climate change caused more tornadoes. From 1916 to 1953, approximately 160 tornadoes were reported every year. After 1953, during what’s called the “modern period,” the number rose to more than 800 per year. Well there it is. Proof of our climate change disaster. Not really. The weather experts credit those higher numbers to improvements in tornado reporting, ground spotter training, and new radar technologies. There aren’t more tornadoes, we just got much better at recording their presence. According to the NOAA experts, there’s been no observed increase in the frequency of major tornadoes. Don’t we have more hurricanes every… Read more »
Well said, Joey ‘Zamboni’ … a name most often associated with ice! 😉
Liberals put their faith in government while conservatives tend to put their faith in God. It must be difficult sleeping at night thinking the future of the human race rests with people like themselves. Alternatively, religious people don’t expect this world (or the earth) to last forever in its current form. They anticipate something better will be provided.
FYI: As science advances, it tends to support the Bible.
Confirmation bias—we are all prone to it.
Pretty much corresponds to ice cover on Lake Michigan. More ice cover leads to less evaporation, which increases Lake level. It is several months delayed (of course), but is observed year after year. When the Lake level was going up, the ice covered a high % of the Lake surface. Recalling some nitwit on one of these boards claiming that the rising lake level was because the polar ice cap was melting and the over run was flowing into the Great Lakes. This despite the fact that the St. Lawrence seaway flows from the Great Lakes to the Atlantic. Anyone… Read more »
Yes, big ice years reduce evaporation. It might be more complicated than that, however. Watch that video by the U of Michigan guy linked in the article who says it’s not that simple because there are some countervailing forces caused by ice. It’s all quite fascinating, IMO, and very complex, which is why I am skeptical of the models.
Climate change—all about control, controlling you, not those who are transported on private jets and personal yachts to the various climate change confabs throughout the world. You, the little guy. It’s always about control of the little guy by the liberals/progressives who know what’s good for you.
“The idea that the current high water levels in the Great Lakes must be directly and primarily attributable to human-caused climate change is presently popular, but it ignores science and history.”
https://www.badgerinstitute.org/Diggings/Spring-2020/Lakes.htm
Too much lake water, climate change. Too little lake water, climate change. Average lake levels, climate change. Too hot? Too cold? Too windy? Too wet? Too dry? Climate change. The simplest explanation is a thing called the weather.
All you need to do to understand the idiocy of this is look at Dick Durbin’s claims. When the Lake is at the all time high, he says it is because of “global warming”. When it is at the all time low it because of “global warming.” As my youngest daughter told me when she was eight years old, “It’s not right to make up stories and then try to force other people to believe them.”
Not buying this climate change elephant dung. Never did.
First it was global warming.
Then the earth cooled down and the Polar bear population actually INCREASED.
So they rebadge it climate change.
Which to me is normal weather patterns.
What is happening with our climate is all part of the evolution of Earth. Natural over thousands of years.
We talk about fossil fuels and man made damage to the climate. Back in the 70’s we never had plastic bottles. Now we learn these bottles are polluting the seas.
Go figure.
The climate change zealots (Obama, Biden, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Durbin, and basically ALL the Leftist Democrats)who think destroying American fossil fuel based energy, and thus the economy, is needed because only they are virtuous enough with the Green ideology. As pointed out, these people are frauds and phonies. Rather Leftist Democrats are cultists (like the mask is a talisman for them), pursuing idolatry and are happy to use fascism to have their way. These Leftist Democrats are as evil as it gets.
Another good reason why any self respecting person should never pay attention to what Dick Durbin or the Chicago Tribune say. Almost always pushing an agenda and almost always incorrect. I don’t think internal combustion engines and power plants melted the ice 8,000 years ago. Great article to urge people to at least consider long term historical trends.
Yes, ignoring Durbin and the Tribune is definitely good for your mental health.
When I was young in the 1960’s, they told us we could all be wearing gas masks some day because of air pollution.
Climate change is just a theory just like evolution and the big bang theory.
Don’t forget the coming Ice age, predicted in the 60’s.
I recall global cooling being blamed for high Lake Michigan levels in the early 1970s, though I could not find a cite for that so I left it out of the article.
I always challenge zealots in Chicago who believe in man made climate change with this simple question:
“Right where you’re standing, 13,000 years ago, a mere blip in time compared to the age of the Earth, Chicago was under 1 mile of ice. How did the ice melt?”
Easy. Some Caveman politician starting talking and the hot air he spewed melted the ice as they do today.