Liberal Talk Radio

USA Today — the much reviled “McNewspaper” of my college years — once more shows off its better side: a laudable “informed populism” that the President and certain members of his party and the media (paging Matt Drudge) would do well to emulate. The newspaper is taking climate change seriously, and is publishing a series of articles describing how (putative) climate change is impacting real people throughout the US.

Lake Superior, for example, is at its lowest level in over 80 years, and this is causing great consternation among recreational boaters and commercial shipping companies that make use of the lake.

The Edison Sault Electric power plant in Sault Ste. Marie, Mich., will operate at less than 50% capacity this year because its water flows have been slashed as a result of the low lake levels, the company said. That pushed the company to buy high-cost power elsewhere and increase rates.

Other problems:
• Cargo ships run partly empty, especially those that carry heavy materials such as coal and iron ore.

On a recent trip, the 1,004-foot freighter James R. Barker had to leave 7,000 tons of coal behind, so the boat would draft 26 feet under water, instead of 29 feet.

“We need more rain, and we need more dredging,” says Robert Dorn, senior vice president of Interlake Steamship Co., which owns the ship.

Adolph Ojard, executive director of the Duluth (Minn.) Seaway Port Authority, says cargo ships have lightened loads about 5%. For ships averaging $6 a cargo ton and making 40 trips a year, that amounts to about $1 million in lost revenue per ship, he says.

• Large beds of wild rice that grow in wetlands have gone dry. Wild rice beds in the Kakagon Slough of Bad River in Wisconsin have been hit particularly hard.

• Recreational boaters find fewer berths everywhere along Lake Superior. Smaller boats compete for fewer spaces. Owners of big boats not suitable for shallow water are sometimes forced to move on or spend the night in deeper waters.

• In Marquette, Mich., the water is so low, the city had to build two-step stairs for people to walk down to their boats. The landings are supposed to be level with the boats.

“It’s a mess. There’s not much to tell people with deep-keeled sailboats other than, ‘There’s no place for you anywhere,’ ” says Hugh Leslie, parks and recreation director in Marquette (pop. 20,714), the largest Michigan town on the lake.

The newspaper even takes a few baby steps towards debunking some of the conspiracy theories people have touted as alternatives to the global warming hypothesis. Along the shores of Lake Superior, for instance, many people believe that lake level fluctuations are the result of behind the scenes machinations aimed at keeping the downstream lakes (Huron, Erie, etc.) high, at the expense of the sparsely-populated north country:

Many people living near Lake Superior don’t buy drought or warm weather as the reasons for dropping water levels — a conspiracy theory is more popular. They say Lake Superior was drained through the St. Mary’s River to raise the levels of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan.

“It’s like the tide went out and didn’t come back,” says Dan Alexander, a commercial fisherman in Baraga. “We know what it is. They drained the lake.” The water is so low he had to find a new place to dock his 38-foot boat.

Calappi [of the Army Corps of Engineers] says it’s a myth that the Army Corps drains Lake Superior to help other lakes with presumably more powerful benefactors. He says the amount of water that flows out of Lake Superior is established by an international agreement with Canada. The water flow is regulated by how much water is permitted to pass through hydroelectric plants on the St. Mary’s River, which connects Lake Superior and Lake Huron and, indirectly, Lake Michigan.

Fascinating stuff. And if you click through on the link, be sure to read the comments. Climate change is right up there with black helicopters and the tri-lats in the hearts and minds of many … damn shame. Moreso when they (and we, along with them) get their just deserts for such willful ignorance.