Climate change.... Yes, something is happening. But what, and why? Our level of scientific discovery has gone faster thanks to technology in the past few years. As soon as we discover something, we discover something else. For example, we know of cycles we didn't know about a few years ago. It all affects the credibility of science voices who can't seem to say anything nowadays without new evidence saying something else. That's just a fact of life no one thinks much about. However, I think we can safely say we don't know everything. We do know this much:
1. The climate has always been changing, along with everything else on earth. Rapid changes have occurred before, with catastrophic results to life. Nothing on earth ever stays the same.
2. Climate change predictions come from computer models. This past winter some really great computer models failed to give us accurate forecasts for *tomorrow.* Yay, computer models...
3. By the rules of science, until something is proven 100%, it's still a theory that is open to *discovery* I say discovery in place of "discussion" because science doesn't care what our opinions are. Discussion produces laws of society but we don't have the authority to write scientific laws. They are what they are, before we even know about them, and all we can do is discover them. Pure science does not recognize, "proof beyond a reasonable doubt."
American law does. Don't confuse American law with science.
4. Human psychology says we respond to the hand that feeds us, no matter what position of honor we're in. Therefore, it's important to consider the source(s) from which we take our information.
- All government agencies are paid by politicians who have the power to cut budgets or increase budgets.
- Private media outlets answer to advertisers and/or the big companies that own them.
- Public radio and TV get money from the government, the audience, or both. If it's "audience only," then we must consider the general views of whoever the audience is.
Humans have (in the past) made statistics and science support almost any personal view they ever wanted to promote. We humans have an inner desire to control one another. Before we accepted science, people were using religion to control one another. Now we have science in addition to religion; why wouldn't we use that in the same way? The main idea is, "I don't like how you think and act, and I love how I think and act, so I'm going to force you somehow to think and act how I think and act." It's human nature.
Your best bet for learning unbiased science is to take it upon yourself to understand the natural process for exactly what it IS, outside of whatever your opinions are. We think we need someone else to tell us, but we forget that at some point in history, someone had to learn it by discovery and observation. We have it in ourselves to do that, if we want to. Newton did. The Wright Brothers couldn't study "aeronautics engineering" in school, because no one had invented it yet. In order to invent the airplane they had to study birds and the flaws of previous man-flight attempts.
If you want to understand how air moves around the planet you can start by looking at smoke and steam flow, the next time you have a bonfire or boil water for pasta. Look at water flow in the lake, see how waves tumble objects around, and remind yourself that air is a fluid too. See how hot and cold air, dry air and steamy air interact and move around in your home. Get a home weather station, keep records, take notes, and occasionally review them to see "bigger pictures." Study the process for what it IS, and then look at unbiased, real-time information like satellite and radar imagery, etc. I might add that you can learn a lot about weather by studying fire.
(Disclaimer: Do not light fires without the permission of your local fire department.
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I'm not saying that's all you'll need to learn, but if you trust other humans 100% to be your teachers without independently observing and learning, you're probably unknowingly accepting a few of their own statements of self-interest along the way. Even the most unbiased humans can still be wrong ("This ship is unsinkable," they said. "That volcano is dormant," they said.)
As for the idea of a record late iceout (this thread's topic,) I say it's possible, and it won't say much about climate change if it does, any more than the record early iceout of a couple years ago did.
That is because the lake ice requires conditions beyond "just temperature" in order to form or melt.
The ideal conditions for thick lake ice include:
1. Very dry air in fall, with clear nights. Cloudy days are helpful by shutting out sunlight, but the dry air is the most important.
2. Very cold November or December, with snow *until the lake is actually frozen.* Snow chills the water but insulates the ice once it has formed.
3. CALM conditions for actual ice formation. Wind has a history of delaying ice-in and mechanically forcing iceout.
4. Very cold with clear, calm nights, without much snow until the ice has thickened substantially.
5. Tons of snow from February onward. This insulates the ice from the rays of the sun which become more direct in February. The days become noticably longer in February, too.
6. Melting and refreezing of snowpack on the frozen lake adds thickness to the ice. It doesn't form a high quality layer but it still counts because it still has to thaw in spring.
7. Cold days in spring help keep the ice thick. This past month it even grew a little.
For early iceout, it helps if the lake ice doesn't have much snow on it. It also helps if there's a lot of wind to flex the ice pack constantly. Sunny days and cloudy nights from February onward help to weaken it.
Once there is open water, it warms up much faster if the air is humid than if it's dry. I've seen 90-degree days fail to raise the water temperature simply because the air was so dry at the time (west wind, fire weather warnings, no burning allowed... that kind of day.) A 70-degree day with a 65-degree dewpoint does a lot more to raise the water temp than a 90-degree day with a 32-degree dewpoint.
The two biggest factors in starting iceout, (by my observations) are sunlight and water level rise. Sunlight heats up the land and the rocks, which in turn melt the ice back away from themselves. Water level rise literally lifts the ice away from the shoreline by making the lake bigger than its icepack. Once the ice has lost its grip on the shores, it starts to melt faster.
Once it starts to melt, we need a lot of sun and wind to make it go quickly. Warm temperatures obviously play a role, but a record warm spring isn't going to melt thick lake ice in a hurry without help from wind and sun.
This winter we got most of the factors that produce and retain thick lake ice. We haven't had our usual wind, either. Usually at some point during the winter we hit 50 mph, or even 60 mph
at this station. We've been no higher than 39 mph so far this year.
Unless we get a huge storm with 2-3 days of 40+ mph wind and gusts over 60, and more than a day or two of record warm temps, a May iceout is likely this year, and a record late iceout is possible.