By Erica Hamling and Amber McDonald
Every Monday Great Lakes Echo runs video clips of random people answering questions that experts believe environmentally literate citizens should understand. In the last clip an expert explains the correct answers.
This week’s question is “How old are the Great Lakes?”
This week’s expert is Jonathon Schramm, ecologist and professor at Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich.
Schramm is also a post-doctoral researcher at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, where he studies different ways for students to better understand current issues in bioenergy and sustainability.
Bob M. I’m sorry, the earth is not young. I’m hoping in the last 4 years since you wrote that you have since revised your position.
They sent divers down one time to get samples of the standing forest of trees that is still there. the test said the trees are 8000 years old.
Scientists say there has been many ice ages but this cannot be true because the great lakes would have began after the first one and been there ever since. are we to believe the lakes dried up and flooded several times? You want proof for a young earth like the bible states well this is it. I believe the great lakes actually began 4800 years ago after the great flood of Noah remember the test of 8000 years. there were living trees there just 8000 years ago. something to ponder.
Why can’t you get a simple anwser? Just say how old the Great Lakes are.
And for those 12,000 years, Lake Erie would freeze, the ice would break up and flow into Lake Ontario. Then along came the New York Power Authority in 1964. They said “Hey, we can make 2% more profit if we just stop the ice flow all together with our “Ice Boom”. Sure it disrupts an age old process of sediment and nutrient transport. OK well maybe it does set the stage for all of natures creations to reproduce but they will get over it. Besides we have these 4 really thick volumes of environmental impact studies here that say it’s OK. (Not Really, just smoke and mirrors the ignorant people of Western New York fell for) Now just about 50 years later we have HUGE problems that nobody but me seems to care about. What? you ask. How’s about a slimy green Lake Erie rampant with botulism, Destroyed spawning beds from lack of scour, receding shorelines and disappearing islands from lack of replenishment and a collapsed food web in Ontario from nutrient deprevation. I am sure there are more but that should be enough to get your attention. Read more at my site http://www.bantheboom.com and send help. Thanks, Joe Barrett
I said 10,000 years old before I watched the vid.
Your expert said 12,000.
10,000 is close enough so I’m taking credit for being right.
Gary Wilson
About 12,000 years ago, and ‘that’ was the start of Global Warming.