Are the Great Lakes really inland seas? | Hacker News Reader

Are the Great Lakes really inland seas?

atlasobscura.com

148 pointssohkamyung217 comments

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 left a lifelong impression on me. When I was 16 I did an exchange with a family in rural Ontario near Huron, and the moment I saw the rolling green hills, the maples and oaks, the cyan waters of Huron lapping against the limestone, the heavy humid air, the wild grapes crawling on every fence, I was sold. In my early 20s I moved to Toronto for work, and I've been near Lake Ontario since. I'm an atheist, a materialist... but there's something deeply spiritual about the Great Lakes, powerful and intimidating like the ocean but more accomodating in their fresh water and the fact that massive as they are, they're more finite than the ocean. My wife participated in an archaeological dig down on some low flat lands near the shore, on a calm inland bay near here some years ago. The ceramic cookware, the copious fish bones, the arrowheads and fish hooks, it was fascinating how the lake has been giving rich life to people here for thousands of years; in fact so diminished now from what it was then when fish were more abundant.

They're pretty awesome, these lakes. I am not sure people who grow up next to them (like my kids) appreciate what they are in the same way?

I grew up in south west Michigan and absolutely took them for granted. After almost 5 years in Austin we decided to come back to Michigan with the birth of our first child. I missed the lakes terribly, just totally took for granted that not everywhere has fresh water surrounding them on all sides.

In this climate change age, being close to so much fresh water really helps calm my nerves knowing that I am in a spot that will be able to weather the changes better then most and possibly become a refuge for more people.

OT: So many folks find themselves moving “home” when kids arrive, for a variety of reasons. As someone considering doing the same I’d be curious to hear yours.

I spent last summer in the Midwest (on a lake) and I found it first comforting (no fire season!) and then distressing as the rains failed to come and smoke eventually arrived instead. One of the driest summers I can recall. P

My guess is the biggest reason is to be closer to friends, family, and/or community. Having help to raise kids is huge. And when you have kids, you begin to focus on the real important things in life, and the type of environment you want your children to grow up in, and speaking for myself personally, I wanted them around as much family and love as possible.

It's also easier to do this now with more remote work opportunities and with more tech hubs across the country now.

Yeah, one of my wife and I's biggest mistakes was staying here in Ontario and settling even deeper into our property after her mother passed away. We should have moved at least temporarily to Alberta where my parents are, because it's been so hard raising kids (and now teens) without any close support. And now we're kind of stuck here, so. When you have kids, having close and extended family nearby is worth more than anything.

Pick your poison. Last summer was great because the lack of moisture meant a lack of mosquitoes which meant more enjoyable outdoorsing. I went an entire trip in the boundary waters without using bug spray. Unbelievable!

I think every economic migrant I've ever met (myself included) talks about moving home realtively soon "I'm only here for 2/5/ < 10 years", but very few of us do because we become established, make new friends, acquire lots of possessions. Some DO move home for major life events like kids arriving (or leaving) but I don't think it's as many as you assume, it's just very notable.

I'm lucky enough to have two sets of family still back home, close enough to visit easily but far enough to make it meaningful and intentional. The desire to move back has weakened every year.

Sure, but before I left Google last year, it was kind of crazy to see how many ex-pat Canadian Googlers transferred from Mountain View to the Waterloo office. Something something, Trump, something something, COVID.

Lots of people returning to their home country when things got a bit crazy.

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.

> 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

A few thousand years is a long time. The lakes will be an essential treasure for the next 200 tumultuous years when water supplies become difficult.

Imagine what it was like here when the ice sheets first retreated. Niagara falls but times 100.

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.

Perhaps the missing component in understanding this is the time frame for draining Huron/Michigan into "River Erie".

So Niagara is slowly eroding and will eventually reach a tipping point where further erosion will increase the rate of outflow from Erie. The increased outflow will increase the rate of erosion which will increase the rate of outflow, and so on. Correct?

When this is happening, the rate of outflow from Michigan/Huron via Detroit and St Claire will increase, but erosion is not necessary for this to occur?

Say we built a dam on the Detroit River that keeps Michigan/Huron at its current water level. And then Erie turns into a river. Once that transition is complete, we destroy the dam. How much time is necessary for Michigan/Huron to drain? Is the timescale days, weeks, months, years, etc?

To be clear, I'm not saying that the draining of Lake Erie necessarily means that Lake Huron/Michigan or Superior would drain too. If that were to happen, the two events would be quite separate and likely separated by millennia. Lake Erie's water level will lower when/if the Niagara river erodes all the way back to to the outlet of Lake Erie, and Lake Erie will become a river, when it erodes all the way to the middle of the lake (actually the deepest part). Obviously, this event, should it happen at all, would be thousands if not hundreds of thousands of years from now, assuming that climate doesn't change such that the Great Lakes dry up, or that there isn't further geological activity/uplift. Would this draining of Erie result in a catastrophic flood when it does happen? I don't know, I suppose it depends on the erodability and topographic character of the outlet area at the time. But it is surely the case that the draining of Erie (i.e. the reduction in its capacity to store water) would result in an immediate but temporary increase in the flow through the Niagara river, as it conveys the regular flow from the upper Great Lakes as well as the additional storage loss of Erie. Once the river eroded to the deepest part of Erie, however, flow would resume to simply be controlled by the water delivered to the river by Huron. Would the river continue to erode to the outlet of Huron and result in a similar draining of the upper Great Lakes? I don't know, but I do know that would be over extensive geological time scales and that there is plenty of opportunity for climate change to have a great impact on this possible scenario--Erie draining is much more immediate by comparison. However, something that many Canadians like myself don't often realize, because we live in the country with the greatest number of lakes, is that lakes are generally not that common worldwide. They represent temporary landscape features that are reflective of a relatively recent (in geological terms) disturbance...in the case of most of Canada's lakes, a recent glaciation. Lakes eventually drain as their outlets are eroded down and fill in by sediment delivery from upstream. And the same will likely be true of all of the Great Lakes over a long enough time. There is nothing permanent about our landscapes and that's exactly what makes Earth so awesome as a planet. It's dynamic and varied and today's 'great' lakes can be tomorrow's dry desert plains. We may well be devastating this planet, and its ecosystems specifically, but in the long-view, we'll likely be nothing more than a blip in the history of Earth, and one that it will erase most evidence of after enough time. I don't know why, but there is something reassuring about that thought to me.

Thank you, that helps out quite a bit.

That will just make Lake Erie and Lake Ontario merge, more or less. Why would it drain Michigan at all?

This is old, but it's also possible that niagara falls just stops being falls and stops moving upstream: https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/gsa/gsabulletin/article-abs...

>> 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.

I live on the Huron River in southeast Michigan and like to tease my son that in a few thousand years we will have the falls in our back yard. He is somewhat skeptical but loves the idea.

If this is true ("only b/c of melting ice sheet; will dissipate in next few thousand years") then wouldn't we expect water levels to be continuously dropping? Seems more likely that they exist because rain/meltwater makes its way to the basin and keeps them filled (irrespective of whether or not they were originally filled with meltwater from the ice sheet 15kya).

I believe a lot of it is ultimately fed by hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of smaller lakes upstream. The Canadian Shield is dotted with gazillions of lakes, it's crazy to fly over it. And I think it's safe to assume most of those lakes are glacial remnant water, not sure if they're fully refreshed by rain and snow.

Then I would expect these upstream lakes to be shrinking as of the last 10-15kya.

I know it's the internet and facts are as real as birds, but just in case you want some: [0].

[0] https://www.lre.usace.army.mil/Missions/Great-Lakes-Informat...

That's a pretty unecsscesary footnote

The watershed(s) aren't crazy huge: https://project.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/watershed.html

(Like just as a gut check, much of the border of Wisconsin and Minnesota is a tributary of the Mississippi River)

Ontario is filled to record high levels now because the inflow exceeds what is lost to the St. lawrence and evaporation.

The depths of all the lakes except Eerie are below mean sea level. It would require a prolonged period of new orogeny for the lakes to disappear. Since that hasn't happened in a few billion years in the area, it's more likely that the sun will expand to encompass the orbit of the Earth and vapourize the entire planet first.

Hardly something that will happen in a few thousand years. But you never know.

Superior was around a lot longer than that. Regardless based on the extreme water height swings since the glacial retreat water level seems to now depend more on climate and what the outlets are doing than anything to do with the melt off from the last glacial period. With humans already having much to do with both of these what will happen to them in the long run seems strictly up to our choices.

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. This explains why Michigan can be either a republican or democrat state, most of the votes for state are fairly tied.

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

Man I also live in Michigan and I've spent every moment I can trying to get out. I mean, good for you for figuring out what you want in life and making that happen but you couldn't pay me enough to come back to this place if and when I leave.

Funny enough though, you sound very similar to my friend who moved back to Michigan from Portland also because of his first child, so who knows? Maybe there's something to Michigan for raising a family

I go swimming in the West short of lake Huron. It is by far the best water for plain old swimming I've experienced. It's a big body of water so nice rolling waves are constant. Yet, unlike some inland lakes there is no stagnancy, just clear salt free water. Huge sand bars, miles long a hundred meters or more from shore.

My wife and I are looking to buy a lakehouse/property up in Oscoda because we love watching the sun come up and swimming in the lake.

I grew up a five minute walk from Lake Erie in a small town several hours SW of Toronto near the Grand River.

Like people who live on the coasts it gets into your blood.

The summers really are something else. I don’t miss my home county so much, but I have a vivid image of the rolling countryside and summer drives listening to music. It’s a memory I tap into often.

These days I live in Dundas and if you haven’t made it down here yet I recommend it!

Oh, hi neighbour. I'm up north of Waterdown on 6 acres. Dundas is where we do most of our "town time." The archaeology dig I was talking about was @ Cootes on the RBG lands.

Go figure. Guess I'm preaching to the choir!

How long have you lived in this part? I caught in another comment that you're into poetry. Do you frequent The Printed Word here in town? We only moved into Dundas a little over a year ago, and I finally made it into that shop and could easily lose a lot of money there. A recent haul of mine included a first edition of The Old Ways by Gary Snyder—and there are many more gems!

It will be 10 years this July. Printed Word is a place I need to frequent more often, though I have been there a couple... expensive... times. Unfortunately these days I tend to fall asleep when reading, I can't dig into anything intense. :-)

I guess. I don’t miss them and always thought they were cold and smelly and didn’t make for great beaches. The weather around them is awful as well with long, bitter cold winters and summer days that are often extremely humid. You can’t really eat the fish out them either due to high levels of mercury.

Additionally the land around the lakes is nice but not spectacular. At least not for North America.

If I were to plan a trip to the general region and wanted wilderness then I’d pick the Boundary Waters I think.

You just went to the wrong beaches. There's plenty of sand or pebble beaches with very clear water and little organic matter, especially along Huron where the water is alkaline. It's just cold.

I always felt that if you want big sandy beaches you go to Lake Michigan, somewhere like Grand Haven or Ludington.

Same lake, just around the bend. I've never been to the western shore of Huron in Michigan, so can't compare to ours in Ontario. But along ours there's some lovely sandy beaches.

Erie can get pretty gross.

I don't know about the southern shore of Erie, but the Canadian side has Long Point, Rock Point, Port Dover, Turkey Point, and Burwell. They're all amazing and the water is shallow enough to be pretty family friendly as well as warming up quickly in the early summer.

Yeah I've been to those, Long Point in particular is amazing.

It's so gorgeous, and it's awesome that there's a big stretch of public beach with cottages on it (many of which are rentable) but then there's also the provincial park there that has a whole other section of shoreline— you have to pay to access it, but the bathrooms are nicer and there's more parking.

Shhh . . . no need to attract more people to Western Michigan. Let them continue to think it's nothing special.

I have been to a Great Lake one time (Lake Erie) and it made me sad. The shore had a bunch of dead fish all over it and it smelled very bad. The person i was with, an Erie, PA native, said that the water was pretty much "dead". Very antidotal but if left an impression on me.

I grew up in Erie—the invasive Zebra mussels have cleaned up Lake Erie a lot in the past couple decades. My understanding is that fish populations are doing much better now because of it.

Zebra mussels are actually quite destructive to the ecosystem, and quickly lead to waters that are choked with vegetation (because light can penetrate deeper into the water), and lacking the sorts of food consumed by filter feeders that form the base of the food chain.

There are some species of fish that prefer the thicker vegetation, but fish populations overall decline significantly when zebra mussels invade.

Erie is the worst of it because a) it's shallow b) it's warmest c) it is surrounded by intensive agriculture with underregulated fertilizer run-off. But there are actually some nice places along it.

Long Point on its north shore in southern Ontario is a fantastic beautiful beach.

You can eat the fish. They recommend not eating it more than once a week though.

Chicago local here, and Lake Michigan kitesurfer and surfer. The best swells hit when in the fall and spring, so you better have a good wetsuit. That said, since getting into the sports it makes me love the lake even more. You quickly get over the temp, and just get to enjoying the water. Its also nice to not have to worry about sharks! Some of the best surfing in the area is up in Sheboygan, WI, the Malibu of the Midwest.

I practically live in Lake Michigan in Chicago, because of my dog, and learning to embrace the cold means you get the beauty of seeing this huge, open expanse of water with nobody else around, because they are sane and are avoiding the cold.

https://perardi.info/photography/0.jpg

https://perardi.info/photography/9.jpg

great shots!

> You quickly get over the temp, and just get to enjoying the water.

Having grown up in Michigan I'd say it's more aptly put as "if you're one that can learn to live with the temperature the water can be a lot of fun" as certainly not everyone gets over it - even of those that often enjoy the water!

Never really cared much about the lack of sharks but I will say there is something special about having that "I might as well be at the ocean" scale of water without the damn salt.

I loved kitesurfing on Lake Michigan before I moved out to the gorge this year. I was out in Indiana and usually rode MC, Lake St and Wolf. I made some great friends and have some awesome memories of my time there.

This is more my experience too. I've lived in the midwest my whole life and honestly cannot understand it why people actually like it here. Maybe if you're really into winter sports I guess. For me, I can barely stand going outside for more than a few minutes for 5+ months out of the year.

IL local and fisherman here.

The beaches can have algal blooms which make it smelly some days, and of course there's the history of the dead alewives (but that's not really an issue anymore).

Most days the beaches are lovely, the water clear and nice smelling. The farther you get from big cities, the more true that is. I spent a week on North Manitou Island once. It was incredibly beautiful, like if Hawaii was freaking freezing all the time.

The fish near Chicago have some issues, but it's less Mercury and more PCB's and other toxins.

https://dph.illinois.gov/content/dam/soi/en/web/idph/publica...

I grew up in west Michigan probably about 40 minutes from Lake Michigan, but my favorite memory of the great lakes is similar to yours. While we were camping on Lake Superior a big storm rolled in, and I got to watch waves just roll right over a massive stone break water. The sheer power of that is certainly something to behold.

I know exactly how you feel. I lived two blocks from Lake Michigan in Chicago for about 5 years. Most mornings I would ride along the lake on the way to work, even though it was the wrong way, just to see the lake, feel the air, and spend a little time next to it.

This is beautifully written.

I couldn’t help noticing that as well! While reading it I was pining for lakes I’ve never seen in a country I’ve never been to.

Thanks, I think I'd rather write poetry than code for $$ these days, but, uh, that wouldn't pay my mortgage or feed my kids, so.

It's funny, because having grown up near the Great Lakes, the wide open land of the prairies and tundra appeal to me in a way that the geography of S. Ontario just doesn't. I like to see the horizon, and you just can't do that here, unless you're right on one of the lakes.

You take someone who grew up on the prairies and drop them in the mountains and they feel claustrophobic and constrained. I visit SK/MB and feel very uncomfortable because I can't ge tthe lay of the land without altitude.

We benefit & suffer from our infinite adaptability.

I was born in Toronto but grew up on the west coast, then the interior of BC and now in Alberta, and I'll never leave the mountains, but I loved summers on Lake Erie. Ontario cottage life is very different from western cabin life. The recovery of Erie is a huge accomplishment and while humans should get some credit I believe most of it is due to the size and resiliency of the Great Lakes ecosystem.

And if we're keeping track: I'll take a freezing glacial mountain lake over the humid heat every time :)

I mean, honestly, I like both. And being a skier these days I just wish I lived out west, and near my family. But we've put our roots down here, and I fear for the climate future of BC and the political future for Alberta.

I was in Jasper 3 times in the last 8 months. Almost flew out there for a fourth this weekend (closing weekend @ Marmot Basin) but I have gardening to do :-)

I live in Ottawa now, but I grew up in the GTA and spent most of my summers on Lake Ontario. You're right, there's something mystical about it.

Also, just wanted to share my favourite love letter to the lakes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MqkWnnPjzv0

For me, my favorite memories of childhood are around those lakes.

Fishing in a small row boat with my father near the break-water into Lake Superior, for example. My dad had to row furiously because we had drifted too close. It was a nervous couple of minutes as we inched away from rough water back to the inner lake. You don't take a rowboat out onto Lake Superior, Lake Superior takes your rowboat, and you.

I recall the stone beaches in Copper Harbor... No sand, just large rounded stones, smoothed by the constant beating of Lake Superior's icy water. In the summer, my sister and I would wade out on the stones and see what we could find in the water. It was freezing cold! But it was so cool to walk on stone instead of sand.

The sandy mini-peninsulas on the Northern tip of Michigan's lower peninsula also hold fond memories. Sleeping Bear Dunes, looking out across Lake Michigan. Clean air, seagulls hanging in the sky...

Lots of stories that remain like impressionist paintings and leave that taste of happy childhood memories behind.

Yes, the Great Lakes are pretty great.

> 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.

As a French guy, I have always associated the Great Lakes with Canada.

I had to look it up to realize that most of it is within US borders.

>> I had to look it up to realize that most of it is within US borders.

Not really. 4 of the lakes are on the US-Canadian border. Lake Michigan is completely within the US though.

Only Lake Michigan is within US borders, while the others are almost evenly split between Canada and the U.S.A., thus my irritation with the AtlasObscura piece.

I've never spent considerable time around the lakes, but I do have a Great Lakes experience that I think back to often. Right after college, I was floating in life a bit pre-grad school, and I took a trip from home (Pennsylvania) out to Vegas, to drive with my cousin who was getting stationed in Virginia, and didn't want to make the drive alone.

I connected through O'hare, and when flying into Chicago, being on the right side of the plane I got a great view of the bottom of Lake Michigan from the air. As we cruised along the southern coast making our approach, that distance between the two sides of the lake with Chicago on the East really stuck in my head, and I realized I now have a measurable mental image of a chunk of the earth's surface, that is large enough to be on a globe, but small enough to take in, and relate to things at human scale, like boats, or the buildings of Chicago.

I use that reference pretty often when looking at maps/globes and trying to get a handle of sizes and distances, like "Oh, that's just three Lake Michigans' wide".

European (and much smaller) version of the story - I moved to Switzerland to shores of Lake Geneva (Lac Leman for locals), from eastern part of Europe with much drier and colder climate.

Its blessing in many ways - the air is pleasantly humid, but nothing tropical apart from proper heatwave in summer (happens once every few years it seems). Humidity makes winter much more bearable (although it makes 0 degrees celzius properly cold), but its not too much and there are no mold issues. Lake is huge temperature reservoir - keeps the winter cold milder and summer heat lower. Its great for swimming in summer (water has easily 15m visibility, very sea-like experience). A lot of public access to it so you can swim for free or in worst case pay few francs for places with extra facilities.

I love mountains too, and the Alps are everywhere on south side, literally rising 1500m higher straight from the lake. On the other side, Jura mountain range is rather just hills but pretty (and more approachable for easy goers). On south-facing steep north slopes, beautiful Unesco heritage vineyards.

For somebody who grew far from any lake, from landlocked country and former communism that prevented any meaningful travel, I am 11+ years on vacation and still in awe (when I don't work).

Re: appreciation, yes. The Great Lakes are unique and amazing. The more you travel, the more you realize it. I love hearing from people who visited the Great Lakes and were like: I can't see land on the horizon! This is an ocean! But also, no jellyfish +1

Nice! I've lived on St. Josephs Island in Lake Huron and still miss nature every day. Crappy economy though.

Grew up in Michigan and I always describe them to people as "inland oceans." People in the south understand what it means to be 30 miles offshore in the Atlantic or Gulf, and it blows their mind to know that the lakes are so big you can travel far enough out in them to lose sight of land. They're "Great" bodies of water indeed, disrespect them while on their waters at your own peril.

I grew up around Chicago and ever since I get mildly indignant when I can see the other side of lake people describe as "big".

You can still see the other side when they're big.

When you can't, then you start getting into great territory.

You'll be interested to learn people occasionally cross Lake Michigan by Kayak. There's a pretty good article about a guy who did it:

https://seakayaker.org/safety-crossing-lake-michigan/

He also filmed it:

https://www.youtube.com/c/MotoMaximus/videos

(It's not quite as exciting as it sounds, watching the videos)

> disrespect them while on their waters at your own peril.

For sure. There is a long list shipwrecks, the most famous being the Edmund Fitzgerald.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shipwrecks_in_the_Gr...

"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 that for a while

https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/2017/04/10/g...

> 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.

There's an agreement not to:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Compact

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 world.

Right now the rich well watered soils of the midwest and great lakes region are being wasted on cash crop soy/corn rotation. Chipping away at the rich top soils for animal feed etc. There's a lot more that could be done here. This land is good for so many things... growing almonds in California? Grow hardy hybrid hazelnuts in the east. Cold hardy, disease resistant grapes make exotic regional wines with a unique eastern terroir and a long history, mostly forgotten. Bring back the apples orchards. The peaches and apricots. Re-open the canning and juicing plants. It's a shorter, mostly single season for most annual vegetable crops, but so much fertile land and water. And greenhouses add a lot of value.

We live in an age of profit pollution. Any farm doing this would be bought out by soy/corn growers, because the latter will be more profitable than the former. The same pollution is why your mailbox is full of wasteful garbage and your telephone line is harassed by scam calls until you stop picking up.

In large part farms doing this don't get so much bought out but destroyed with herbicide drift from cash crop farms next door. Not everywhere, but in major parts. And when you complain, the locals pitchfork you, because what are you even doing here if you're not growing corn?

I grew up in West Michigan in the farming country of Michigan, more specifically apple orchard/fruit orchard country. Michigan is the third largest producer of apples after Washington and NY. Also further up near Traverse city they produce a lot of grapes and cherries, and have some very good wineries. I think a big part of why there is not as much farming as the west is simply a matter of space, Michigan is large but nothing like the plains states.

> 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.

I should have clarified. It never left, but it became much less diverse.

And in the more northeast states, it actually left.

Would the energy used pumping the water from the quite low lakes, over the Rocky Mountains and Sierras to the west coast be less than a desalination plant?

Another option is just moving the water usage closer to the usable water.

Most likely only a little bit would actually be piped. You’d just stop water from entering one watershed and send it into another and let gravity do its work. You would lose more to evaporation; but that happens to water in pipes too if they’re above ground.

Would love to see the numbers.

It’s fun looking at rivers from the Rocky Mountains in California that don’t make it to the ocean anymore.

I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable.

Good point about the river re-direction.

> I recently proposed a transatlantic natural gas pipeline and people thought I was insane, but it would only be ~5x longer than the longest existing underwater natgas pipeline, which doesn’t sound impossibly viable.

Nordstream is 759 Miles. Newfoundland to Ireland is 1900 Miles!

Only problem is you gotta get the gas to the east coast on the americas, and that’s where a lot of the demand is already.

Though it makes you wonder what kind of gas fields might exist along the way. As it goes, we exploit the oil and flare the gas. Pffft.

I feel the transatlantic gas pipe wouldnt be viable just for the fact that Russian subs/ships would have a field day "accidentally" setting anchor on it and breaking it to keep their economy relevant.

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

...According to current US law.

Reading your comment, I wasn't sure if "compact" was a legal term or a geological one. Laws change much more quickly than geology.

And Canadian law. The Great Lakes Compact is an international treaty.

By act of Congress, not Constitutional amendment.

It could be repealed in a matter of weeks if Congress saw fit.

I know many people who would oppose removal of water from the region with weaponry. People deeply care about them, more than outsiders know

And that's all well and good so long as the law backs you up. When it doesn't, that then falls somewhere on a spectrum from felony to treason.

Yeah. I was just thinking that. I mean if the rest of the country decides that georgia and florida need our water, which is one of the more serious current proposals, then that's democracy. I'm from Wisconsin. Born and raised right on the shores of Lake Michigan. But the law is the law.

Our best bet is to do our utmost to ensure that the law stays the way it is despite whatever pressures there are from other areas of the country.

It’s not really worth it nor likely. Plenty of places in the US with excess water closer to the dry regions. Ie desalination in California makes more sense.

Do they also fight the Atlantic Alliance - a network of global seas whose task is to suck the land dry? In jest. A large part of runoff leads to the Arctic oceans = warm water = melts ice. Southern diversion would help the southwest. Since it is political, it will be delayed ad infinitum until there is only dry dust to pump.

We will desalinate in CA before we’ll come for the Great Lakes but if we came (and the United States must have ended) then that would be a petty resistance. Pipelines can’t be defended but canals are harder to break and then, once the pipeline is over friendly soil, breaking it will still only shed water into the West.

If you want to build the midwest a new sewer system, go ahead.

Or sell a poop-derivative from your midwest sewer for $17 a bag. Honestly, it's amazing fertilizer.

https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milorganite-32-lbs-Slow-Release-...

There's a "I drank your milkshake" situation with this. Find the area with people willing to sell out, and build there.

Politically brighter Congressmen might see such a repeal not as a one-off special event, but instead as a precedent for further "inter-state resource raids". Some of which raids could target their own states.

So - support for that repeal might prove scarcer than you'd think, from just looking at a map of drought-plagued areas of the U.S.

Also - burning needs for water tend to be sudden & immediate things. Vs. designing, approving, funding, and building the infrastructure to actually move large quantities of water long distances is more of a "decade-plus time scale" thing.

The great lakes water is simply channelled to the Atlantic. It would take an engineering project to divert 10-20% to the west. No hard tasks, just the creation of a sloped canal. In desert areas you could cover it with solar cells - also land based ones, to provide the pump energy over hills/mountains etc. Tunnels can be drilled where mounts are high. This water added to the west would revive it from the death spiral it is now in,

When you say "No hard tasks" I assume you mean that the engineering is relatively straightforward.

The surface of Lake Michigan is around 650 feet above sea level. Go 50 miles due west and you are at 800-900 feet elevation. The average elevation in Kansas is around 2000 feet above sea level! If you go southwest, it is naturally downhill - the existing rivers prove that - but you run into the problem that the water is heading south more than it is heading west.

It's a serious uphill climb to get that water out west. You don't need a sloped canal, you need a sloped tunnel thousands of feet below the surface!

We are familiar with pipes, pumps, siphons, canals. etc. It is engineering of a routine, but massive scale to perform a major shift like this. The question is cost? Water can be pumped with solar/wind energy. With major area on their way to become parched deserts - except for water. What is the Value of all California crops every year - that can go to zero every year versus the one time cost of a major water project = a spend once, plus maintain = get a permanent 'annual California crop every year' Water project, by their nature are long lived and low maintenance.

With how quickly, on-time, and within-budget California is managing to build the few-hundred miles of its touted High-Speed Rail system - that "no hard tasks" engineering project might take a century or few to become operational.

Also, you note "water added to the west would revive it from the death spiral it is now in". Ah... 100% of the average discharge rate from the entire Great Lakes system - including Lake Ontario, elevation ~400' below the other lakes - is only about 2/3 of the discharge capacity of just the Hoover Dam spillway. I'm thinking you'll need to divert the Amazon River (~25X the discharge of the Great Lakes) to meet the need.

I am not sure of your Hoover discharge figures. St Lawrence is about 17,000 cubic meters per second. Hoover is far far smaller about 3,300 cubic meters per second. St Lawrence is over 5 times as large. You may have mixed up cubic meters/feet?

At least from Wikipedia's numbers, 17K m3/sec. average flow in the St. Lawrence is only found below the mouth of the Saguenay River - far downstream from the Great Lakes, effectively at sea level (vs. even Lake Ontario is ~70m higher), and (from other sources) well downstream of the point where substantial tides and salt water intrude from the Atlantic.

I used the spillway capacity of Hoover Dam, rather than try to add up the total (diverted & un-diverted) flows of the Colorado, Columbia, Missouri, Rio Grande, Arkansas, Red, Sacramento, etc., etc. The point being that 10-20% of the Great Lakes water flow would be far, far too little to revive the west from its death spiral (to paraphrase user aurizon).

Well, the flow varies as you reach the source, being about 7,000 M3/sec as it exits Lake Ontario. In any event, my intent is to have a tolerable degree of outflow diverted from the great lakes, esp in flood years during the melt, when many downstream areas are flooded when the melt is compressed in time by 2 hot spring weeks. Aquifers can be recharged at many permeable perimeters points and the Ogallala aquifer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogallala_Aquifer Has a number of places in it's East and North East that can be used as recharge areas. As you see from the wiki, it has been drawn down for decades. Canadians are full of 'not one drop' fanatics - who would prefer to see it go to the Atlantic - flooding each spring, along the way - instead of helping the US drought. My feeling is the peak snow melt could be diverted to the South and West towards suitable recharge points to mitigate this drawdown - it will take years to build and years to work, but in the end it needs to be done. The forces of warming climates over the next 50 years could make the great plains into the Great US central desert - where nothing either lives or grow. It is a bleak prospect, but we screwed the earth and we must live through it - one way or another - wetter is better.

> Politically brighter Congressmen might see such a repeal not as a one-off special event, but instead as a precedent for further "inter-state resource raids".

You could say the same about Texas's abortion private bounty hunting bill. Doesn't seem to have stopped them.

That's because no other state has yet passed a law allowing that kind of bounty hunting of Texas political bodies.

Right, but despite that being the obvious response - California's already talking about doing the same approach against guns - it didn't stop Texas from doing the stupid thing in the first place.

The same may be true for water wars.

State vs Federal laws, though. Totally different game. States are much more limited in their ability to pass laws that affect residents of other states.

The fundamental point is "legislators of all levels make short-sighted decisions that will bite them in the ass later".

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.

You're forgetting Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Nevada, and Oklahoma (all in drought) have 12 votes in the Senate and 117 members in the House.

It would be a battle for sure.

It could certainly be changed, but it's actually an international treaty with Canada so it's a bit more complicated than that.

Things are going to get desperate enough that any legislation today will be but a distant and comical memory.

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.

While cute, interstate anything is the realm of the federal government. The moment water from the Great Lakes is needed elsewhere, it'll be sent there.

If you follow the case of the Parker dam, the conclusion of the Supreme Court was that it required congressional approval. It did not have that, but Arizona eventually allowed it anyways.

The full text of the decision is here: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/295/174

You can get around this and export it from the great lakes if your business is called Nestle and your pipeline from the lake to the bottling facility is called the groundwater table. Its still lake water they are drawing and selling.

Not really a deal breaker.

Due to the United States Supreme Court ruling in Wisconsin v. Illinois, the State of Illinois is not subject to certain provisions of the compact pertaining to new or increased withdrawals or diversions from the Great Lakes.[4]

Some day I will convince 16 million people to each dig a tiny bit of a canal on the northern border of South Africa. I hope that by simply plotting the perfect route for the water to travel, the natural erosion will finish my work for me.

That way the entire Northern Cape (deserty region) and the Southern Namibia (deserty region) will have a massive amount of water suddenly closeby, eventually changing the surrounding environment naturally.

The region adjacent to the lakes is not immune to drought. There were widespread crop failures a few years ago.

The Aral Sea might act as a warning. It was used for agricultural irrigation without concern for if the water could be replaced, and now barely even exists (https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Dan-Shaw-3/publication/...).

I live in Arizona. Most of our Colorado River water goes to agricultural irrigation. The drought is bad, but bringing in even more water from out of state wouldn't be an actual solution.

The article states that the Great Lakes were created by glaciers scouring the land, and while that is true, I think it more accurate to say that the Great Lakes were caused by a failed continental rift. The Midcontinent Rift System formed a billion years ago and almost tore the North American craton apart, but after 15-20 million years it stopped and faded. The rift filled with sediment that was easy for the glaciers to scour away.

The article links to another Atlas Obscura article about how the Red Sea is debatably a sea or an ocean, because it fills part of the East African Rift System. If we're going to refer to that distinction, then please also mention that the glaciers could scour out a lakebed because ancient geology created it!

Its all semantics of course but what the article doesnt mention is flow. I cant think of another sea that drains into a river.

Edit: in fact the word 'lake' is derived from meaning to drain ('leak' is similar)

The Bosphorus and Dardanelles, between the Black Sea and the Aegean/Mediterranean, are quite a lot like a river. There are both shorter and wider bodies of water that are considered rivers.

They don't have a one way flow though

Many rivers have tidal flows in their lower reaches. Maybe the Turkish Straits are just an extreme example of that?

Neither do the Straits of Mackinac

A lot of people argue that the Straits of Mackinac is just a very narrow section of a single large lake - in other words that Lake Michigan and Lake Huron are a single lake, not two lakes.

Yes, there is just a single lake comprising Michigan and Huron.[0]

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straits_of_Mackinac

I have always loved this song about a shipwreck on the Great Lakes. https://youtu.be/FuzTkGyxkYI

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 is also intriguing. To this day no one knows exactly how or why the Fitzgerald sank. The last radio message received from the captain said, “We’re holding our own,” and no distress signal was ever sent. Everyone onboard died.

It’s worth reading the Wikipedia page[2].

[1]: https://youtu.be/udZFnUb4Q6A

[2]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/SS_Edmund_Fitzgerald

29 people died half a century ago, and it’s not uncommon to run into one of their loved ones in a random bar? I am skeptical of that claim.

It sank in 1975. There could certainly be children of the sailors alive, and a spouse who was in their 30’s at the time would be around their 80’s now. That doesn’t seem far fetched.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Birthday_problem, and I presume "loved one" might include cousins, grandchildren, etc.

Maybe "not uncommon" was a bit strong, but it happens. What you have to realize is that these are very small towns[1], shipping is a big industry for the area, and a guy two generations ago can have a lot of grandchildren.

[1]: Check out the list of cities on Lake Superior on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_on_the_Great_La... The three largest are Thunder Bay (108,800), Duluth (86,600), and Sault Sainte Marie, ON (72,000). After that, the mean population of the remaining "cities" is 7,495. I grew up in Ashland, which at 7,908 brings the average up :)

> 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.

Those in the Rust Belt can visit the National Museum of the Great Lakes in Toledo, OH: https://nmgl.org/

They had an exhibit of finding and searching the Edmund Fitzgerald when I was there last.

The Edmund Fitzgerald sank in water shallower than it was long.

Gordon changed the lyrics at one point when additional information came to light.

There is a museum in Michigan dedicated specifically to the Edmund Fitzgerald. When I was there, I realized that they would play this song every other song; they'd play Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, then some other contemporaneous song, then Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald, then some other contemporaneous song, etc. And Wreck Of The Edmund Fitzgerald is relatively long compared to the other songs of its era, so it's probably playing in the museum about two-thirds of the time.

I could never work there. I'd go insane.

Don't forget to try the beer!

https://www.greatlakesbrewing.com/edmund-fitzgerald

Some decent scuba-wreck diving in the Lakes. I've scuba dived a few, one right off of U Chicago is snorkel depth, and one about 20 ft off of Evanston, IL.

Regardless, the Naval Aviation Museum has pulled a lot of airplanes from Lake Michigan: https://www.history.navy.mil/research/underwater-archaeology...

Are the Great Lakes really inland seas? Or are inland seas really just big lakes? Am I Chuang Tzu dreaming I am a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am Chuang Tzu?

It is indeed mostly semantics.

Interestingly (to me anyway) I was just following the news about Lake Powell being at a very low level, and noticed on a map just how "non-lake like" its shape is (even when at full capacity).... it just looks like a river and tributaries that are somewhat wider than they were before a dam was built.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Lake+Powell/@37.0518007,-1...

Meanwhile, why is Greenland considered an island and Australia a continent? Who knows. You have to draw a line somewhere.

Australia has 3x the land area as Greenland so the line is probably somewhere in between there.

True but it is all arbitrary. If there was an island twice as big as Greenland, what would it be called? And why is Europe considered a continent when it is more accurately just a peninsula off of Asia? And if we are talking seas, why is the Caribbean a sea when it is just a region of the Atlantic ocean? Even moreso for the Sargasso sea, which is a region right out in the middle of the Atlantic (it doesn't even have any land boundaries).

It's fuzzy rather than arbitrary, because the universe resists categorization. Australia is the dominant landmass on its tectonic plate, and it's relatively far away from other major landmasses. Greenland is a lesser landmass on the North American Plate, and it's much closer to the mainland.

Europe, Asia, and Africa are names people gave to the major regions surrounding the Mediterranean long ago. Later generations generalized the idea. First by using the same names for lands far behind the Europe, Asia, and Africa they were familiar with, and later by giving new names to separate landmasses. Whatever a continent is, Europe, Asia, and Africa are continents.

The main difference between a sea and a lake is that a sea is a part of the ocean. The Black Sea and the Baltic Sea are seas, while the Caspian Sea and the Great Lakes are lakes. The Caribbean Sea and the Sargasso Sea have names because people needed names for those regions. And because they consist of water connected to the ocean, calling them seas seemed appropriate.

It can be fuzzy and arbitrary at the same time.

It's certainly arbitrary that the Gulf of Mexico isn't considered a sea. (or various other "parts of the ocean" referred to as "gulfs" or "bays")

"The main difference between a sea and a lake is that a sea is a part of the ocean."

Ok, so you have decided that the Caspian Sea isn't actually a sea? Well I guess all bets are off if you can do that.... :)

The Caspian Sea is usually considered to be the world's largest lake by surface area. It's also considered a sea in specific contexts, where the underlying motivation is clear. For example, a recent treaty defined it as a sea, dividing it into exclusive economic zones of the coastal states. As a lake, most of the offshore oil and gas reserves would have been shared equally between the coastal states.

Plate tectonics is a fairly recent 20th century theory; I believe Australia's classification as a continent predates it.

I think it might be considered a continent because people were looking for a continent. Since Roman times, there was reputed to be a continent at the South Pole called Terra Australis. Captain Cook was looking for Terra Australis, but found Australia instead. They new they weren't at the South Pole, but they decided to call the place Australia anyway (Antarctica would not be seen until several decades later.) I suspect the continent classification was cast as soon as they started calling the place Australia.

> You have to draw a line somewhere.

You don’t have to. We could just call them all islands. Greenland? Island. Eurasia? Island. Rhode Island? Not an island, strangely.

There are only between four and seven of these so called “continents” (we didn’t draw a line, we drew like five). They’re not popping up very quickly, either. I say we just forget the whole business came up.

And even if you just call them islands, you'll run into ambiguous territory somewhere. Is Manhattan really an island? If so, then is Harlem River really a river? (and there are also islands which become part of the mainland at low tide)

BTW, the state of Rhode Island was originally "the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations" which made sense but was unwieldy. Now the actual island of Rhode Island is called Aquidneck Island.

The trick to avoiding running into ambiguity is to notice the way that fish avoid running into drowning.

I think you are onto something.

Australia has its own tectonic plate. Greenland doesn't. I'm sure that helps.

We are blessed in Ontario to have the first and second longest freshwater beaches in the world.

On Lake Huron’s Georgian Bay and Lake Huron proper respectively.

Nothing recharges your batteries like a day in the sun, by the great un-briny. A few clandestine cans of beer, a fruit salad and a little bit of the sticky green stuff: heaven.

The water is so unbelievably clear. And believably cold.

>> The water is so unbelievably clear. And believably cold.

According to a friend, it is the best shipwreck diving in the world. The lack of salt and cold water means 100 year old ships are still preserved in great shape, often visible from the surface. IIRC there is a glass-bottomed boat ride on Superior that goes over a couple of them.

I discovered while visiting Northern Germany that the word "See" (which is etymologically related to English "sea") can refer to either a lake or the sea, depending on the gender of the article that precedes it - masculine for lake: "der See", feminine for sea: "die See".

The result is a lake called the "Selenter See" that is a short distance from the Ostsee (the Baltic Sea).

Pretty confusing at first!

As usual the discussion pretends to be about the thing, when it's actually about the semantics.

The Great Lakes are measured, mapped, sounded and recorded. We know an awful lot about them, and that hasn't changed lately.

The discussion isn't about them. It's about the definition of 'sea' and 'lake'. Superior, Michigan, Huron, Erie, and Ontario are still there and whatever they are, they're doing it now.

While this article went into some of the details of the great lake s(seas?), I would love to read about the ecosystem and marine life in the great lakes and if they mimic the seas in any way. Anyone know a good resource about that?

Great Lakes and Michigan in particular are pretty underrated in the national consciousness in my opinion.

I also wish we’d stop lumping all of this stuff together as “the Midwest” and instead refer to it as The Great Lakes region.

All things considered, there's a sweet spot looming for the Great Lakes. Maybe in 100-125 years.

I'm not saying it's a not a wonderful area now, just that it's going to be epic fairly soon. For a while, anyway.

Are we meant to guess what you're hinting about?

Right about that same time fresh water will be like gold, and eventually the lakes will either be dry or drain into the sea.

I'm guessing they mean the climate will be nicer due to global warming. I've actually been thinking of buying property there in case my current home in the southeast ends up under water sooner than expected.

I encourage anyone who wants to read more about the history of the Great Lakes, in terms of human activity and wildlife, I highly recommend The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan

Growing up I'd go sailing on the great lakes, and occasionally a storm swell would kick up and cause a 25ft sailboat to buck like a bronco. The lakes sure felt like seas then.

No, don't touch the definition of this water source.

This appears to be the beginnings of social dialogue to get them reclassified so that they can be used "like a sea" instead of "like a lake", and therefore pump the water out of them as fast as they can make money doing it.

I hope we all start recognizing the manipulation of society over the past decades in media. They seem to start with this approach, ask a question and make people think without realizing the end game.

Then it escalates beyond control because no one recognized the dangers from an early enough point.

Interestingly enough the whole great lakes area was a sea, 400 million years ago. There are massive salt mines deep underground from those times.

Why would there be deep underground salt mines from 400 million years ago?

https://project.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/mibasin.html

Geologically speaking, I remember reading about some of them being revenant of post ice age seas like the Champlain sea. Could be a memory bug.

I think to call it a sea it must be huge and salty. The arguments against this in the article is that Baltic sea is "pretty fresh", so it actually is salty. They also say the Dead sea is a lake, which is logical because it's tiny.

If anyone can point to a sea that's not salty, I'd be happy to know. Until then, these are just lakes! Which is fine, because a sea is not better than a lake, and vice versa.

Re >> If anyone can point to a sea that's not salty, I'd be happy to know

Sea of Tranquility. Checkmate. (Okay, I'll show myself out...)

The Sea of Galilee is actually freshwater. But on the other hand lake doesn't imply freshwater, e.g. The Great Salt Lake.

A lake can be salty, but a sea cannot be fresh. The Sea of Galilee is a lake, just like the Dead Sea.

I think this is just because it's been called that historically. It's smaller than Lake Tahoe, so there isn't much debate about it being a lake.

> If anyone can point to a sea that's not salty, I'd be happy to know. Until then, these are just lakes!

That feels a bit circular. If you define sea as having to contain saltwater, then how could anybody point you to a sea that isn't salty?

Because language is defined by usage, if there was a body of water that is freshwater but widely agreed to be a sea then the parent commenter is agreeing to revise their definition to match.

It seems like a no-true-scotsman problem. The examples of seas that are freshwater are dismissed as not actually seas since they're freshwater.

I thought I'd go with the same method as the article, using examples. I dismissed all the examples the article has given, and asked for better examples where we call a fresh water body a sea. I think we haven't and shouldn't. It's already confusing enough.

Call all salty water bodies seas would be fine with me. But including non salty waters will only add to the confusion.

Well someone pointed out the Sea of Galilee (which is a lake, but then so is the Caspian Sea and the Dead Sea).

I think... you should've read the article.

I think the distinction should be easy in this case. First of all, the great lakes are sweet water, not just water with low salinity. But most important of all: they are not directly connected to the ocean. All oceans are directly connected to each other, a ship can change between them without using locks, but they are required to reach the great lakes.

No, seas are filled with salt water. I'm sure there are some more technical oceano-/limnogrpahical reasons to distinguish them too. Otherwise, they certainly seem like it especially when you're beyond the sight of land.

The article says a lot more about this.

The great lakes are filled with species of fish we associate with salt water, however.

Steelhead, Salmon, Lampreys, Goby, Sturgeon, Cod (burbot), Drum

They're dwarf seas

If they are seas, then how could they be "inland"?

Not salty, not seas.

So is the great salt lake a sea?

I'm no hydrologist, but Great Salt Lake can stay a lake if you accept that salinity is necessary but not sufficient for a body of water to count as a sea. In other words: all seas are salty, but not all salty water bodies are seas.

Edit: https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/differences-between-sea-...

> A sea contains only salty water, while a lake can contain either salty or freshwater

Not reading the article, not sure why you're commenting.

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