Free Republic

A little over one year ago, The New York Times and USA Today were reporting that the Great Lakes hit all time lows in water levels. According to those reports, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan were 29 inches below their average measurements taken since 1918. Scientists warned communities that they could only expect more tragedy with the Great Lakes. With a lack of rain from climate change, they told everyone to expect levels to continue to drop.

MARQUETTE, Michigan (AP) -- Deep enough to hold the combined water in all the other Great Lakes and with a surface area as large as South Carolina, Lake Superior's size has lent it an aura of invulnerability. Superior's level is at its lowest point in eight decades and will set a record this fall if, as expected, it dips three more inches.

GALVESTON — A U.S. Navy submarine that can roll on wheels across the ocean floor will leave Pier 40 today on a weeklong expedition to search the deep for evidence of ancient human habitation. The Navy's only nuclear-power research vessel, the NR-1, will carry scientists looking for signs of early humans who may have lived on a coast that 19,000 years ago extended 100 miles farther into the Gulf of Mexico than it does today. If scientists on the expedition, dubbed "Secrets of the Gulf," find evidence that humans roamed those ancient shores, it would push back the earliest known...