Lingering Lake Ice Threatens to Spoil Minnesota’s Fishing Opener
Posted in Global Cooling on May 7th, 2008 by Dan McGrath
The Star Tribune reports some Minnesota lakes my still be frozen for the fishing opener. The ice remains on lakes longer than it has in over a dozen years.
By Doug Smith
With less than three days to go before Minnesota’s fishing opener, ice still stubbornly clings to some northern Minnesota lakes, leaving anglers to wonder if the hard water will be gone on their favorite lake by Saturday.
“We’ve had lots of people calling,” said Pete Boulay of the Department of Natural Resources climatology office. “Everyone wants a forecast. It’s just hard to tell. It probably will be a photo-finish for some lakes.”
It’s the latest ice-out since 1996.
Pioneer Press ran a similar story. Predicting ice-out is like “predicting what kind of winter we’ll have way back in October,” Jack Shriver of Shriver’s Bait Co. in Walker was quoted in the article. Perhaps he isn’t aware that climatologists already predict what winters will be like, not just a few months in advance, but for hundreds of years.
By Chris Niskanen
Lake Winnibigoshish, a walleye fishing Mecca in northern Minnesota, was jammed with ice floes Tuesday.
Bowen Lodge, which sits on Lake Winnie’s shores, is booked solid with anglers coming for Saturday’s state fishing opener. Owner Bill Heig is praying for warm weather.
“We have rain and wind forecasted — that’s what we need to get rid of the ice,” Heig said. “Our customers are very loyal, but if there’s ice on the lake, we’ll have to figure something out.”
For the first time since 1996, ice-covered lakes are threatening to keep anglers off some waters for the opener. Shorelines and some bays are open, but ice was clinging Tuesday to major northern Minnesota fishing destinations such as Rainy Lake, Lake of the Woods, Lake Vermilion and Lake Winnie.
With 1 million anglers ready to fish Saturday, the late ice-out is big news for many northern resort owners, fishing guides and bait store owners. It also has ramifications for Minnesota Department of Natural Resources workers, who are scrambling to install hundreds of docks this week, and officials with the Superior National Forest, which oversees the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
“We’re getting lots of calls. Everybody wants to know if they can get in (to the Boundary Waters),” said Mark Van Every, district ranger for the Kawishiwi District in Ely. “At this point, we can’t give a definitive answer.”
By Max Schulz
A new study indicates alarmist concern and a need to explain away the lack of actual global warming. Researchers belonging to the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC, reported in Nature (May 1) that after adjusting their climate model to reflect actual sea surface temperatures of the last 50 years, “global surface temperature may not increase over the next decade, as natural climate variations … temporarily offset the projected anthropogenic warming.”
By Dennis Avery
Chad Johnson has had enough of global warming hysteria shaping public policy and he wrote a letter to his state senator that has since been passed around to other legislators. His letter expresses the frustration of ordinary citizens. With Mr. Johnson’s permission, a portion of his correspondence is reproduced below.
The allegedly warming earth is in for about 30 years of cooling according to NASA, one of the leading global warming theory advocates.
Procreation is killing the planet, and traditional religion is to blame, Global-Warming cultists insist.First the industrial revolution had to go. Then it was to the wall with oil company executives, those malignant Carbon Interests. Next, SUVs were declared enemies of the planet.
The usual chorus of environmentalists and editorial writers has chimed in to attack President Bush’s recent speech on climate change. In his address of April 23, he put forth a goal of stopping the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by the year 2025.
In early 2007, two University of Minnesota economists forecast that biofuels would sharply increase food prices by 2020, leading to a steep rise in the number of empty bellies in the world.
The Minnesota Office of Energy Security and the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency announced that the final report of the Minnesota Climate Change Advisory Group (MCCAG) is now posted for public review and comment. Citizens can view the report and leave comments on the Office of Energy Security website at
The first Earth Day was celebrated in 1970. It was created by founder Gaylord Nelson, then a U.S. senator from Wisconsin. This year Earth Day will officially be celebrated on Tuesday, April 22, although many events are planned beyond that one day. It is estimated that 1 billion people will come together across the globe to focus on steps to better the environment.
The move away from coal-fired power generation in favor of wind and solar power is already impacting energy costs. Xcel Energy estimates Minnesota’s renewable energy mandates will lead to an average household electric bill increase of $300 to $400 per year.
Minnesota legislators concerned with reducing automotive emissions of greenhouse gasses have devised a drastic plan.
Having betrayed Republicans on all other key issues from education to immigration, the announcement that George W. Bush intends to introduce global warming legislation should come as no surprise.
Two independent studies announced in a press conference today find serious fault with a set of climate change mitigation policy recommendations being used by Minnesota legislators to craft economic, energy and pollution control policies.
In a wide-ranging hour-long interview on PBS, CNN Founder and billionaire environmental extremist Ted Turner let the cat out of the bag on the real goal of climate change extremists - depopulation. Pro-life activists who have attended UN environment meetings where such issues were discussed have often been the subject of ridicule and derision for pointing out that the massive movement behind global warming, retooled to ‘climate change’, works hand in hand with the culture of death with the aim of depopulation.Speaking on PBS’s Charlie Rose program on Tuesday, April 1, Turner stated plainly that next to nuclear disarmament the most pressing world concern is “global climate change” - which he said is caused by too many people. “We’re too many people. That’s why we have global warming,” explained Turner when Rose questioned his comment that we need to “stabilize the population.”
An explosion in demand for farm-grown fuels has raised global crop prices to record highs, which is spurring a dramatic expansion of Brazilian agriculture, which is invading the Amazon at an increasingly alarming rate.Propelled by mounting anxieties over soaring oil costs and climate change, biofuels have become the vanguard of the green-tech revolution, the trendy way for politicians and corporations to show they’re serious about finding alternative sources of energy and in the process slowing global warming.

