Lake Hopatcong, NJ Already Showing Effects of Global Warming
by John Lawrence, August 16, 2019
Extreme climate change has arrived in America. That was the headline in the Washington Post on August 13, 2019:
LAKE HOPATCONG, N.J. — Before climate change thawed the winters of New Jersey, this lake hosted boisterous wintertime carnivals. As many as 15,000 skaters took part, and automobile owners would drive onto the thick ice. Thousands watched as local hockey clubs battled one another and the Skate Sailing Association of America held competitions, including one in 1926 that featured 21 iceboats on blades that sailed over a three-mile course.
In those days before widespread refrigeration, workers flocked here to harvest ice. They would carve blocks as much as two feet thick, float them to giant ice houses, sprinkle them with sawdust and load them onto rail cars bound for ice boxes in New York City and beyond.
"These winters do not exist anymore," says Marty Kane, a lawyer and head of the Lake Hopatcong Foundation.
That’s because a century of climbing temperatures has changed the character of the Garden State. The massive ice industry and skate sailing association are but black-and-white photographs at the local museum. And even the hardy souls who still try to take part in ice fishing contests here have had to cancel 11 of the past dozen competitions for fear of straying onto perilously thin ice and tumbling into the frigid water.
New Jersey may seem an unlikely place to measure climate change, but it is one of the fastest-warming states in the nation. Its average temperature has climbed by close to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1895 — double the average for the Lower 48 states.
Lake Hopatcong is the largest freshwater body in New Jersey about 4 square miles in area. It was developed by damming and flooding of two ponds, known as the Great Pond and Little Pond, and the Musconetcong River, its natural outlet. As kids we used to go there to Bertrand Island, an amusement park that was located on a peninsula in the lake. It closed in 1983. A stone marker in the shadow of a community pool house is the only hint that Bertrand Island Amusement Park ever existed. Small SUVs and compact luxury cars sit in driveways where children and teens once waited to ride the Wildcat, the Whip and the Aeroplane Swing 90 years ago. You could take your girlfriend through the Tunnel of Love.
“The amusement park helped put the lake on the map as a resort,” said Martin Kane of the Lake Hopatcong Historical Museum. “You always had amusements at the lake, but never in a large format — in what we would call a modern-day amusement park.”
Now some of the beaches are closed due to toxic algae bloom. It's impossible to swim or drive a boat through the water. However, 2 days ago NJ.com reported that "It’s now safe to swim at 6 Lake Hopatcong beaches as DEP lifts toxic algae warning for part of state’s largest lake."
It turns out that my home state and county is a harbinger of global climate change having already reached the 2° Celsius limit that spells disaster when it's reached world wide. Right now only some hot spots have attained that limit which the Paris Accords warned would presage disaster.
Over the past two decades, the 2 degrees Celsius number has emerged as a critical threshold for global warming. In the 2015 Paris accord, international leaders agreed that the world should act urgently to keep the Earth’s average temperature increases “well below” 2 degrees Celsius by the year 2100 to avoid a host of catastrophic changes.
The potential consequences are daunting. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change warns that if Earth heats up by an average of 2 degrees Celsius, virtually all the world’s coral reefs will die; retreating ice sheets in Greenland and Antarctica could unleash massive sea level rise; and summertime Arctic sea ice, a shield against further warming, would begin to disappear.
New Jersey and nearby Rhode Island are the fastest warming of the Lower 48 states. Lakes don't freeze as often, snow melts more quickly, and insects and pests don't die as they once did in the harsher cold. Rhode Island is the first state in the Lower 48 whose average temperature rise has eclipsed 2 degrees Celsius. In Lake Hopatcong, thinning ice let loose waves of aquatic weeds that ordinarily die in the cold. This year, a new blow: Following one of the warmest springs of the past century, harmful bacteria known as blue-green algae bloomed in the lake just as the tourist season was taking off in June. Recently it has been reported that dogs have died as a result of drinking water where there are toxic algae blooms.
Republicans are rock-solid in Sussex County, outnumbering Democrats by more than two-to-one. Trump carried the county by nearly 30 points. So it's ironic that the state's largest lake, which sits on the border of Sussex and Morris counties is already experiencing the effects of climate change while Trump supporters, most of whom are climate change deniers, are totally oblivious. C'est la vie!
