"They hold more than a fifth of Earth’s unfrozen fresh water" I read quite a few stories about the horrible drought in the west, and here I am sitting on a good part of all the usable water in the entire world. I can't help but think at some point a bunch of people are going to come for that water, in one way or another. Either by moving here, or trying to move it there. Some ideas have been floating around about tha…
Water from the Great Lakes cannot leave the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Compact prevents construction of any water withdrawal that will move water outside of the watershed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact
The attempted construction of that Foxconn factory in Wisconsin would have permanently diverted water out of Lake Michigan. It wasn't stopped by the Compact, just the horrible mismanagement of the project and political corruption.
I wouldn't bet too much on that. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-09-16/the-great...
It's a good article, and I think it's right that things could get much worse here. But it's missing the point, or avoiding it, that things are going to get much much worse in some other places, in particular the US and Canadian west. Record forest fires followed by record floods in BC last year were a bit of a taste of the future, unfortunately.
^This very much. I don't like pessimistic takes, but just based on the way everyone has handled climate change, things are going to be much worse for people not living in the great lakes region. And climate change is going to require cooperation from all the countries as well, and considering how well that goes even today I'm not holding my breath. If everything goes to hell in a hand basket and people start moving towards the great lakes regions en masse, then we will start figuring out how to preserve our great lakes. It could be too little too late, or it could require a massive effort the likes of the moon landing to fix the damage we could have prevented to the lakes if we had been diligent like this article suggest, but in my opinion the great lakes are the key at the end of all of this for a lot of people, and I'd rather have a few generational roots here for my family if that happens.
Water from the Great Lakes cannot leave the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Compact prevents construction of any water withdrawal that will move water outside of the watershed. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact
By act of Congress, not Constitutional amendment. It could be repealed in a matter of weeks if Congress saw fit.
Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Ohio, and New York have 97 votes in the house and 12 votes in the Senate. Good luck passing any legislation that sees major diversion of water out of these states.
> Either by moving here That's one of the reasons I'm staying where I am. > trying to move it there Being that they straddle the US / Canadian border, it's legally much more difficult to mass pump water out of them. Probably the main reason it hasn't happened yet.
It's legally forbidden by treaty of all the states and provinces that border them. For now. There's also little reason for it. There's plenty of rich farmland here to grow on. Agriculture should move back to this region, and growing practices and crops adapt for the colder climate. Growing heavily irrigated crops in the desert or semi-arid regions has many advantages but makes little sense in a water constrained worl…
> Agriculture should move back to this region
It never left, Illinois and Minnesota are the 3rd and 5th largest producers of staple crops (the other being California, Iowa, and Texas, respectively, and CA and TX are only slightly larger in production but massively larger in size). West of the Mississippi, ranching dominates agriculture due to the poor soil and dry climate.
Largely that corn and soy in the Great Lakes region is being used as animal feed for the ranches out west. They already have massive utilization of land area for the production of these crops.
The Great Lakes will eventually go away, but not for the reason you think. Niagara Falls is eroding its way upstream and will eventually reach Lake Erie, at which point Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan will all drain away downstream.
How would that work. Would the Niagara gorge suddenly be able to increase its capacity orders of magnitude beyond its physical limits? Would the Detroit and St. Clair rivers suddenly be able to deliver an increased flow into Eerie?
Yes, that's correct, it would increase its capacity by orders of magnitude, if not temporarily. The capacity of Lake Erie to hold water is set by the elevation of its outlet, which is currently about 174 m above sea level. Niagara Falls is a knickpoint in the Niagara river, and over time knickpoints in rivers are always smoothed out. This is why Niagara Falls is eroding upstream, and we spend money each year trying to minimize this. As it works it way upstream, it will eventually intersect with the outlet of Lake Erie (over geological time scales), and will start to erode the outlet elevation downwards to achieve that nice concave-upwards longitudinal profile indicative of a river in dynamic equilibrium. In doing so, it will reduce the capacity of Lake Erie quite significantly. Someone above stated that the Great Lakes are below sea-level, and that's true for parts of most of the lakes, but not Erie, which has a maximum depth of about 64 m. It will eventually, over the long term become a wide part of the long river connecting Huron and Ontario. By the way, there are plenty of precedents for rivers suddenly and temporarily increasing their capacity to handle a sudden increase in flow; Google 'channelled scablands' and you might be surprised. I often joke with students that I won't want to live in Missisauga on the shores of Lake Ontario, which I do currently, when this event happens. Of course, it's only a joke because we're talking about a very, very long time away. As for the Detroit and St. Claire rivers increasing their capacity to Erie, I'm not sure why that would be necessary. Flow through this newly created 'Erie River' would simply adapt to carry the capacity of water supplied by Huron all the way to Lake Ontario, just as the Niagara river does now. There's no need for upstream change. Just think, the St. Lawrence River has the ability to convey the entire water supplied by all of the Great Lakes to the Atlantic.
You live in one of the states where there is no squatter law and where you can legally shoot and kill someone for trying to steal your car. There is no maximum rifle magazine size. Castle doctrine for the win. Michigan has some interesting demographics. About half of the population in Michigan is concentrated in about 4-5 cities, the other half of the population are spread across much more area and more spread apart.…
I don't know why you are getting downvoted - as a lifelong michigan resident, the politics are weird and getting weirder. The Michigan Militia and their offshoots are still around and still scary.
Maybe because it’s not even remotely on topic and introducing polarizing, flamethrowing topics for absolutely no reason? Born and raised downriver, so I have to ask, why the hell are you apologizing for it? You know just as well as I do that there’s a lot more to Michigan than that take, and that’s coming from someone whose family knows the Terry Nichols family quite well.
Hey, a thread about the great lakes, let me shit on this person’s nice story and remind them nowhere is perfect! seems to be the only motivation, either that or stirring up political knife fighting. A flag is far, far more appropriate than a downvote
I have to say, I grew up on Lake Superior in Wisconsin, and it’s funny to hear the Edmund Fitzgerald referred to as just “a shipwreck.” In this area, the sinking of the Fitzgerald easily has more cultural relevance than the Titanic. In the small towns that surround Lake Superior, it’s not uncommon to run into someone who lost a loved one, so be careful making jokes in bars — and there are jokes[1]. The mystery of it…
> I have to say, I grew up on Lake Superior in Wisconsin, and it’s funny to hear the Edmund Fitzgerald referred to as just “a shipwreck.” How should one address it? The Great, Most Exalted, Venerable Shipwreck?
I wasn't intending to say that GP should have called it differently, nor implying that they weren't paying it "proper respect" or something. I was just trying to provide context as to the cultural significance of the event to the area, because I think it's interesting.
Seas or not, I love the lakes and the land around them, in the 20+ years since I moved myself here they've taken over my heart. I'm from the aspen parkland of central Alberta; thin trees, dry air, small muddy leach-infested kettle lakes, big skies, poplar and birch land. When I was 8 we did a trip across Canada, and I remember us camping by the shores of Superior when a massive thunderstorm came rolling in, and it le…
> Canada
Unlike you, the author of the AtlasObscura piece seems to have a blind spot to the other country in which almost all of the Great Lakes exist. What an appalling oversight.
> In this climate change age The Great Lakes only exist because the massive ice sheet melted and left the lakes as a deposit some 10-15,000 years ago. I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few thousand years the lakes largely dissipate. That said I grew up near the lake, definitely something that’s awesome to live near
The Great Lakes will eventually go away, but not for the reason you think. Niagara Falls is eroding its way upstream and will eventually reach Lake Erie, at which point Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan will all drain away downstream.
>> Niagara Falls is eroding its way upstream and will eventually reach Lake Erie, at which point Lakes Erie, Huron, and Michigan will all drain away downstream.
The Detroit river, lake StClair, and the StClair river beg to differ. In particular, StClair has a channel cut through it for shipping to be possible as much of it is less than 10 feet deep. Flow would increase, but I think they'd maybe add a dam and lock somewhere to stop it. But Niagara is a long way from that point, especially since diversion for power has dramatically slowed the erosion.