SPECIAL FEATURES:
Email
Maple syrup: Global warming casualty?
The production of maple syrup requires long stretches of springtime cold nights and warm days. Global warming is disrupting that pattern and could knock it out for good.
Thu, Apr 09 2009 at 3:29 PM
Photo credit: Old fashioned maple sap boil- Flick user Mfour
I will miss maple syrup.
Maple syrup is made by boiling down the sap from sugar maple trees found in the northeastern U.S. and southeast of Canada. Forty five gallons of sap are boiled down in giant cookers to create one gallon of syrup.
When I was growing up in New Hampshire my dad ran a great little breakfast/lunch restaurant and would buy giant bottles of syrup by the case for $25/gallon (I have no idea why I remember that). These days you're lucky to find it for anything less than $60/gallon (and that's here in Maine) -- the price goes up the farther away you get from the trees.
The reason the price has risen so fast is because global warming is shortening, and in some times totally wiping out, the weather and temperature patterns needed to produce the maple sap. The sap starts running when we get cold nights and sunny warm days. Last year the maple tapping season was only a week in Quebec and many areas in New England saw little to no production.
I wonder if global warming will be real to people when they can't pour maple syrup on their pancakes. Let's hope that by then it's not too late.
Are you on Twitter? Follow me (@sheagunther) there, I give good tweets.
And if you really like my writing, you can join my Facebook page.
The opinions expressed by MNN Bloggers and those providing comments are theirs alone, and do not reflect the opinions of MNN.com. While we have reviewed their content to make sure it complies with our Terms and Conditions, MNN is not responsible for the accuracy of any of their information.
You might also like:
Sign in with one of these accounts to add your comment.
EDITORS' PICKS
Advertisement
TODAY'S MOST POPULAR ON
- Student science experiment finds plants won't grow near Wi-Fi router
- The 9 nastiest things in your supermarket
- Archaeologists unearth 5,000-year-old 'third-gender' caveman
- 15 famous people who mysteriously disappeared
- Jon Stewart explains the ‘Monsanto Protection Act’
- Is that snake venomous?
- 10 false facts most people think are true
- 9 habits that may do more harm than good
- 13 natural remedies for the ant invasion
- 15 houseplants to improve indoor air quality
NEWSLETTER
Advertisement
OH... I though the the production was down because the growers who I know can not sell enough to make money...... So they stop producing.
Please go out and find enough trees for 1000 taps, buy or lease the land, put up a building, buy the equipment, run the lines, buy the tanks, buy the pumps, cut 30 cord of wood, work your regular job, boil sap for another 10 hrs., prey the weather gets cold enough at night and then you will sell your syrup for $60,00 and you will think I should get $120.00 or more for this stuff.
I live in Waterloo County, home of the Elmira Maple Syrup Festival held the first Saturday in April. We had an exceptionally good sap run this spring and the quality of the syrup is fantastic. Global warming is a bit of a misnomer - climate change is a better term. Our area is forecast to have colder, snowier winters which we have experienced the past few years. I'd give a gallon of syrup for a little local global warming about now.
Assuming that you're in your early 30s or older, that matches up with inflation (60 dollars today was around 25 dollars in the early 80s.)
Source:http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
Not that global warming isn't a problem. With advanced farming technologies, that price should be going *down*.
So, if you can't afford maple syrup now as much as before, you're finance to blame, not industry.
So, when does it become a "trend"?
Please do some actual science and stop regurgitating propaganda.
We're still in a glacial interstadial. It's supposed to get warmer. Much colder and Canada loses its wheat crop. Fat lot of good maple syrup will do if you don't have pancakes, or any bread, to put it on.
As others have noted, the harvest last year and this were just fine.
Funny thing in farming. Sometimes the weather doesn't cooperate.
I grew up in upstate New York and the same thing is happening there. We used to tap our own trees and my mom would boil that intoxicating maple soup very hours..one of the most amazing smells in the world.
Don't waste your time trying to educate these deniers. They are funded by Exxon-Mobil, American Patroleum Institute or by the coal industry and get paid to challenge everything.
Epicycles, aether and an Earth centric universe were all "proven science" that the "deniers" challenged.
Creationists call their opponents "deniers," too. You're in good company.
I was promised 2010 would be the warmest year on record. The warmists guaranteed it. From all reports, their prediction was wrong. Does that make me a "denier"?
Let's assume I'm search engine illiterate and you provide the link for the correlation between global temperature and maple syrup output in gallons especially for years of 2008 to 2008 since this article has anecdotal data in that time frame. Don't forget, it needs to be adjusted for number of trees tapped. Good luck.
Great work. Can you please show the correlation statistics between global temperature vs. world output of maple syrup in gallons and cost of maple sysrup. I'd like to add it to my list of non-existent graphs that support knee jerk global warming claims.
Thanks.
Do your own homework. It's a google search away- maple syrup production has been down as temperatures have been up. You not believing in the data doesn't mean it's not real.
"Do your own homework" means "I can't support my claim."
You lose.
Amazing. It turns out it was warmer 1000 years ago during the Viking Era. Somehow, the world didn't end.