Winter Will Never Be the Same

Out doing yard work today.
Growing things are about a month ahead of schedule.

Peter Sinclair in the Midland Daily News:

In the last week Michigan saw the highest February temperatures ever recorded, and brutal weather whiplash, as sharply colder air blew in and touched off powerful extreme storms more characteristic of April.

For Michiganders, it was yet another signpost of accelerating impacts of human caused climate change – which have already changed the way we live in Michigan, forever.

This winter will end as one of the warmest on record in North America. January was the 8th consecutive month of record warm global surface temperatures. But by mid century, winters like this will simply be the average.

The snow covered slopes, woods and trails where we’ve spent our winters, are waning, and unpredictable.

Fifty years ago, Midlanders had access to two large outdoor skating areas that we knew would be frozen through the long winter months. Cross country skiing was available for many of us not far from our doorsteps, as well as sledding, tobogganing, snowshoeing, and ice fishing.

Now those activities exist only as memories, brief opportunities for a week or weekend, or luxuries for those able to travel distances to experience them.

Paradoxically, Great Lakes that are more often ice free will evaporate more moisture, meaning intense lake effect snowstorms when temperatures are below freezing.

According to Dr Richard Rood of the University of Michigan, warmer temperatures mean that although snow, even heavy snow, will still occur, winters will be soggy and muddy, as rain becomes the dominant precipitation.

Tellingly, Yamaha announced last year that it will be exiting the snowmobile manufacturing business, which it has found to be “unsustainable”.

Impacts are being felt in all four seasons.

Insect pests that were formerly dampened by winter freezes, like ticks, are becoming more pernicious. 

Toxic species of blue green algae that would not have survived winter decades ago, now have a foothold in the lower Great Lakes – and even pristine Lake Superior is now seeing formerly unheard of algae blooms at several locations in summer months.

Michigan’s crown jewels, our coldwater lakes and streams, are changing faster than native species like trout and walleye can adapt.Those species are becoming more vulnerable to predators and struggling to reproduce.

Lakes like Torch, Crystal, Charlevoix and Higgins – and more than 300 other high quality lakes – will no longer be categorized as cold water lakes by mid century, according to a new study.

Summer rains are coming more and more often as torrential downpours, and communities will have to update expensive infrastructure to avoid damaging floods.  Michigan is a state with a high reliance on septic systems, which may be increasingly stressed,leading to health impacts on residents and increased pollution in waterways.

These extremes are bringing more pressure on insurance providers, potentially causing rates to rise for everyone.

Last summer’s toxic air quality from Canadian fires was likely not a one-off, as the conditions that sparked the fires remain, and Alberta has already declared an early beginning to fire season. 

The best time to address the underlying cause – unabated release of heat trapping gases from fossil fuel burning, was 30 years ago. The next best time would be now.

Fortunately, we need no new technology to move to a decarbonized economy – only the political will has been missing.  Governor Gretchen Whitmer has signed a suite of bills aimed at decarbonizing our economy by 2040 – a goal so ambitious it’s giving many folks some anxiety.

However, one comparison we might make is John F Kennedy’s pledge in 1961, to put a man on the moon by the end of that decade.

Although engineers understood the basic physics of the task, the specific equipment existed only in sketches. But, setting the goal sparked investments in new technologies, which opened up undreamt of new options, and eventually an ambitious goal became reality.

In life as in technology,  if the goals you are setting don’t make you a bit nervous, or demand you to stretch, perhaps you are not challenging yourself quite enough.

Our children are looking to us now to be bold, and reach deep, to preserve for them a Michigan, and a planet, as near as it can be to the one that we inherited.