[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
[00:00:00] Speaker B: The Daily Gazette Company presents the weighing in podcast, the show that brings you inside the Daily Gazette's feature news column. Now here's your host, writer of the weighing in column, Andrew Waite.
[00:00:12] Speaker C: I'm Andrew Waite. Thanks for listening.
So for the second year in a row now the Walleye Challenge, which is an annual ice fishing tournament on the Great Sakandaga Lake, draws 2000 contestants typically, and then as well as family and friends and just a huge event in Fulton county, that ice fishing tournament had to be canceled because the ice isn't thick enough. So they're still going to gather. They're still going to have a party and have a raffle, but they are not going to hold an actual ice fishing tournament. And like I said, second year in a row, it's a familiar story. We've seen the ice castles in Lake George that have struggled for two years and this year had to be reimagined as a kind of light show. And then we've seen polar bear plunges that don't require any cutting into ice but just people jumping from the shore because the lakes are thawed. And I think we probably all have our own examples of this. I live near a pond, and it's been, in the past two winters, I've only been able to ice skate on that pond once. So with the canceling of a major event in Fulton county, like the Walleye Challenge, I wanted to check in with a climate scientist who could talk about what this all means, put it into context. So I chatted with Matthias Viewey. He's a professor in the university at Albany's department of Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences, and he's been studying climate change for the past 30 years. And so here's what he had to say.
[00:01:41] Speaker A: This has been a pretty mild winter here in upstate New York.
It's obviously an El Nino year, so maybe that factors in. But here it's now the second year in a row that they've had to cancel this walleye classic ice fishing tournament on the Great Sakondaga Lake. What are you making of this current winter? Specifically?
[00:02:04] Speaker D: Yes. So I agree with, you know, the El Nino event probably added some extra warmth.
And we're seeing this not just here in the northeast, but as you probably know, the last year and continuing now into January, this was the warmest year that we have seen on our planet since we have observations.
And that wasn't just true for the year overall, but every month was a record warmth month after month after month. So what you're telling me about this ice fishing event. It's consistent with the trend that we've been seeing for a while.
So I have to say I'm not really surprised.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: Yeah. And what do you make of that trend as a climate expert?
[00:02:58] Speaker D: Well, what I make of it is it's a sign of our warming planet, which is caused by release of greenhouse gases, long lived greenhouse gases, carbon dioxide, methane. And if we just look at the observational record in the northeast, winter temperatures now are already two degree, three degrees fahrenheit warmer than they were in the earlier half of the 20th century. And this will continue. It's going to get warmer, and winters are warming faster than summers and nights are warming faster than daytime. So it's really the cold extremes where we're seeing the most rapid rise. And that affects things such as the freezing over of lakes.
Go ahead.
[00:03:48] Speaker A: No.
[00:03:51] Speaker D: I was just going to add to this that we have in some places fairly long records of ice out and freeze over dates on lakes and rivers, because historically, knowing these dates was important for trade, shipping routes and so forth. And we know that these lakes and rivers freeze over later in the fall or early winter, and the breakup date moves earlier and earlier into late winter. So the overall time that lakes and rivers are frozen becomes shorter and shorter.
[00:04:34] Speaker A: Yeah. And so one of the things you focused on is winter recreation, too. Right. And just the changing mean, obviously, this is an ice fishing tournament and it's in an area where there's also snowmobiling, which just hasn't been able to happen this year. So what do you think?
Does winter recreation have a future in places like the Mohawk valley? What do you think it looks like?
[00:05:02] Speaker D: It depends on the timescale that we're looking at, right. I mean, climate is very variable. It varies from year to year. So the fact that this hasn't happened in two years doesn't mean it will never happen again. We'll have cold winters again. But this variability is superimposed on this long term warming trend. So in the long run, it's going to get very hard.
And there are some studies that have looked, I don't know about ice fishing, but there's some studies that have looked at the viability of ski resorts in the northeast, for example, from a climate, but also from an economic perspective.
And most of the lower lying ski resorts, they're not going to survive. Those that may survive are those high up green mountains, white mountains, maybe in the northernmost Adirondacks, where it still may be cold enough in the night to make snow, but many of the other ones will disappear. And I'm sad to say this because I'm really an outdoor person and I love skiing. I love winter. My heart breaks looking out the window, not seeing any snow. It's terrible. And I go skiing a lot in the Adirondacks.
There's a really nice skiing place just north of Sakandaga Lake, actually near Northville called Lapland Lake. It's just a wonderful place, and I go there a lot. And they've had a hard time this winter, too, with not good conditions.
[00:06:24] Speaker A: And so when you say that there is not a long term future for skiing in the northeast, what kind of timeline do you think we're looking at?
[00:06:32] Speaker D: So I wouldn't say there is no future at all. I think we have to distinguish a little bit depending on how far north and how high up in the mountains these places are.
But it will increasingly just be artificial snow and not a lot of manmade skiing anymore.
But that's sort of towards the end of this century.
And of course, the other thing I want to add, so I don't sound like just a doomsday scenario here.
We have options, right? There are a lot of uncertainties in these estimates going forward, and it very much depends on what we call the emission scenario that we will follow. So how are we going to produce energy going forward? And when I say we, I really mean not here in the northeast, but on a global scale.
Are we going to really push renewables? Are we going to be able to really replace burning of coal, oil and natural gas with renewable energies on a large scale in the coming decades? That's really the challenge that we're facing. But if we can do that, then the future is not as dire. Right.
The main goal is to limit global warming to two degrees celsius. That's sort of the goal that at least the politicians have drawn a line in the sand, and it's still possible to do that.
[00:08:06] Speaker A: Well. And so for people who are just kind of hoping this is a lean year, it's a mild winter, next year is going to be colder, et cetera. I mean, it sounds like that's a possibility, but what do you say to someone who's just like, sort of holding out hope that winter returns to the northeast here?
[00:08:26] Speaker D: Yeah, I'm very sympathetic to that, and I'm always hoping, too. Right. I always look at the long range seasonal forecasts, and I do think there is a chance that next year will be better because we might switch from an Elino into La Nina, and that would certainly help a little.
Know don't sell your skis or your snowmobile or your ice fishing gear quite yet. You're still going to have nice winters here.
It's just if you think at the opportunities for future generations, right, our kids, our grandchildren, they really are going to grow up in a different world, and they're not going to be able to experience all those things that we had the chance to do.
[00:09:16] Speaker C: So clearly, this mild winter is an indication of something, even if it doesn't mean that winter in upstate New York is entirely a thing of the past.
But what is clear is that the time is right now to make a change. And maybe canceling a major tournament like the walleye challenge is the kind of thing that can open some eyes. So here's the piece I wrote about.
[00:09:42] Speaker A: That.
[00:09:47] Speaker C: Thousands of people were supposed to ice fish during this weekend's annual walleye challenge on the Great Sackandaga Lake. Instead, for the second consecutive year, the fishing competition has been reduced to a raffle and a big party in Fulton county.
Organizers are mulling whether to continue the 15 year event going forward. We can have a raffle any time of year, but we want people to fish, event co organizer Henry Beaver Ross told me this week. So we might leave it up to all the contestants and ask them what they think. Of course, the ice fishing portion of the walleye challenge was canceled because the ice is simply not thick enough across the 29 miles long reservoir. While most bays have sufficiently deep cover, the middle of the great Sakandaga has spots of open water, said Ross, a 57 year old Mayfield resident. We don't like to make that call, Ross said. We get upset when we can't have the fishing part of it because that's what it's all about. Sadly, the walleye challenged has suffered the same fate as many winter events across the country. It's been a lost winter in the midwest, with record high temperatures exacerbated by the El Nino weather pattern, leading to canceled pond hockey tournaments and melted dreams of ice sculptures, according to the Washington Post.
Much of the northeast experienced a warmer than normal January, ranking among the 20 warmest januaries on record, according to the Northeast Regional Climate center. And in the greater Capital region and Mohawk Valley, nordic skiers have had to search far and wide for terrain, while snowmobilers have seen their typical weekend plans run aground. Ross said this is the first year since boyhood he hasn't taken his snowmobile out of the trailer. Last year, he logged only 24 miles, while in past winters he'd traveled the equivalent of two thirds of the way across the country in the last five years. It's gotten worse every year, Ross told me. During winters of late, we've seen Lake George's ice castles reimagined as a light display, and polar bear plunges haven't required organizers to drill through frozen water. Brave participants need only scamper into thawed lakes. The weather has been so volatile, one day it's 50 degrees and the next it's 17, said Fulton County Sheriff Richard Giardino, who is warning people to take extreme caution on the county's 44 lakes. He said his office has responded to two snowmobilers going through the ice on the great Sacandaga this season, with no injuries reported. As you're asking me these questions, I'm thinking, so how does this all fit into global warming? And I don't know, Giardino said. But scientists such as the university at Albany, climate researcher Matthias Viewey are clear. It's a sign of our warming planet, Viewey said. He's a professor in the department of Atmospheric and environmental Sciences who has studied climate change for more than 30 years. If we just look at the observational record in the northeast, winter temperatures now are already two to three degrees fahrenheit warmer than they were in the earlier half of the 20th century, and this will continue, Viewey said. As winters warm faster than summers and as nights warm faster than days, cold extremes see the most rapid rise, and that affects things such as the freezing over of a lake, Viewey said. While winters will still vary from one to the next, the trend is toward milder, shorter seasons that, without mitigation, will significantly alter what northeast winters look like by the end of the century. The climate is very variable. It varies from year to year, so we'll have cold winters again, Viewey said. But this variability is superimposed on this long term warming trend. So in the long run, this is going to get very hard. That means winter recreation like skating, ice fishing and snowmobiling is likely to look very different, too. As an avid skier, that prospect bums out. Viewy downhill resorts will increasingly rely on man made snow. As an indication, Winter Olympics have been competed almost entirely on the manufactured stuff for the past decade, and in the northeast, winter enthusiasts are likely to need to travel to ever higher elevations or latitudes to find the adrenaline rush or big catch.
It all adds up to a great deal of uncertainty for places like the Mohawk Valley and the Adirondacks, where local economies complement robust summer tourism by marketing themselves as cold weather destinations.
It goes up and down, so there are lean years and there are fat years, and you have to be able to sustain those businesses through the lean years, said state Assemblyman Robert Smollen, who not only represents the region but also worked as executive director of the Hudson River Black river regulating district, giving him a strong familiarity of water levels and ice moves. For now, Fulton county will continue to tout its traditional icy offerings, according to tourism coordinator Carla Colby, who said she didn't have data quantifying the plunge in winter tourism as a result of the season's mild weather, Colby said people remain optimistic even about the current winter. I think people are still hoping for one more good storm, but it's out of your control and nothing you can plan on, she said. You just have to look ahead and hope that if it's going to be like this, that we're going to have a great spring. But at some point, wishful thinking ceases to be enough. We have to recognize that sweeping changes are needed to limit the emissions of greenhouse gases that are warming our planet. There's no doubt that human beings affect the climate. The question is how much so and what should we do about it, Assemblyman smallen told me. Scientific experts are more certain. As Viewey noted, we need nothing short of a global push for renewable energy sources to replace the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. That's what it will take to limit global warming to two degrees celsius, which is a bare minimum international climate policy target. It's still possible to do that, Viewey said. But it's going to take broad buy in, not misguided skepticism. As Viewey said. In the end, what really hits home are the local impacts. We can talk in the abstract about how many degrees warming we're seeing, and that doesn't mean much to most people. But if it affects their daily lives and if they can actually see and feel the changes, that is usually more of a wake up call. The ice fishing tournament is off again. It's time to rise and shine.
That's it for this week's episode of the weighing in podcast. As always, I can be reached at
[email protected] so you hear something you agree with, disagree with or just want to share some of your own thoughts, please don't hesitate to write. Thanks to Zebulon Schmidt and Jeremy Kloe with Openstage Media, who are the technical directors, and Aaron Pilaya, who handles marketing for this podcast. I'm Andrew Waite. Take care.
