Making maple syrup in a hotter world

It's hard to take big-picture global temperature increases and bring them down to a personal level—partly because of that confusion between weather and climate, and partly because scientists simply have a better understanding what is very likely to happen in an averaged-out global system, than they have of how changes in that global system are likely to affect your backyard.

I like the way Climate Wisconsin is trying to bridge that gap. First, they use interactive visuals to show the local symptoms of climate change, like rising average temperatures and fewer days of ice cover of Wisconsin lakes. Then, they connect those symptoms to Wisconsin life. If these trends continue, what impact will they have on things like fishing, forestry, farming and, yes, the making of maple syrup.

It's a hard line to walk. The family featured in this video has recently experienced some of the worst years for making maple syrup in four generations. But, because weather isn't climate, next year could be better for them, even as the climate, overall, continues to warm. At the same time, though, climate change is likely to have long-term impacts on where and how well sugar maples can grow—and when, and for how long, their sap runs in spring.

I think this video and the related essay do a better-than-average job of making that distinction. This family won't be out of business next year. But, over time, climate change is very likely to make this work harder for them. The harder it gets, Wisconsin traditions associated with maple syrup making will become less common—and the 5-million-dollar syrup industry will bring less money to the state.

Also, I just finished re-reading Little House in the Big Woods, and it's fun to see how the process of maple syrup production has, and hasn't, changed since Grandpa Ingalls threw a sugaring-off party at his Wisconsin cabin in the late 1860s. Check out the taps they hammer into the maples. They look just like the Little House illustrations, but instead of draining into wooden buckets, the sap now flows into plastic bags.

Thanks to agroman for Submitterating!

Maggie Koerth-Baker is the science editor at BoingBoing.net. She writes a monthly column for The New York Times Magazine and is the author of Before the Lights Go Out, a book about electricity, infrastructure, and the future of energy. You can find Maggie on Twitter and Facebook.

Maggie goes places and talks to people. Find out where she'll be speaking next.

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jpollock

Just thought I’d add some information to the CO2 part of the discussion. Small producers will use the maple (or undesirable) trees in the orchard as the fuel source to boil the syrup. They will go in, collect up deadfall, maybe cut down an old tree and use that. The CO2 produced is provably all returned back to the orchard, because the orchard doesn’t shrink every year.

Large producers can’t do that, they need larger boilers, and gas is just plain easier.
El Zilcho

Maggie you seem to be amused by prodding the concept of weather not being equal to climate, I guess had you figured different.
JEM

Well, sugaring in Wisconsin may not have changed much, but in Quebec at my dad’s 28 000 tap sugar bush, they use pipe-lines instead of spouts with buckets, and a reverse-osmosis machine removes 3/4 of the water before the boiling starts. Much less gas is burned in the larger scale operations that are able to afford the newer equipment.
- Anonymous
  
  I’ve seen these sort of pipe collection systems in Wisconsin too, seems a lot easier to deal with than all the bucket hauling.
Rayonic

Alternate Solution: Move the operations further north. If you plan ahead, you can start buying more northern land now before the prices go up.
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Better plan ahead long enough, for the maple trees you’d be planting to grow big enough.
valdis

Burning giant piles of wood can be long-term carbon-neutral – if you’re being a good steward of the land and planting new trees to replace the ones you’re using for fuel. As long as each year, there’s enough new growth locking up CO2 as you’re releasing, you’re fine. The problem with fossil fuels is that we aren’t planting new dinosaurs fast enough to offset what we burn.
- Lobster
  
  I’m doing my part but I just don’t have enough land for a triceratops… yet…
Karnuvap

Here’s a short clip to help you explain climate and weather to those naysayers who don’t know the difference.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_profilepage&v=TQlHaGhYoF0
Ugly Canuck

Here’s a tune for you to be humming when you’re working in the sugar bush…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp7wnVnzyog

..but if you want to sing instead of just hum, here’s the song with the lyrics too:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_PGXwwHX3E

Sweet stuff.
robertval

Interesting, because maple syrup can be made as far south as Virginia. I ran across a video of some guy there making it the old fashion way:
http://www.maplesyrupsource.com/blog/vintage-virginia-maple-syrup/

So how is it that global warming is going to screw things up for the northern states and Canada?
Anonymous

So… Maple syrup makers are complaining that global warming is reducing their sap harvests. Yet they burn giant piles of wood to fuel the stoves that reduce that sap to a viscous syrup. (video at 2:05 shows them stoking the fire)

How eco-friendly is that?
Cry me a sappy river, hypocrites.

(Now i’ll give them eco-cred for line-drying their clothes and for the possibility that they might be replanting those firewood trees)
- Anonymous
  
  When a tree falls on the forest floor, the decaying process releases exactly the same amount of carbon as burning the wood in a stove. Deforestation is not carbon neutral but a family syrop operation that uses wood for their boilers absolutely is. Think of it like a kind of self sustaining microfarm. :)
5ynic

Thanks for the dinosaur planting line. Gonna get reused :)
maryn

My Mpls neighbor does a small business in the syrup his parents make in upstate NY. We bought it every year he offered it. Last year he didn’t even try, said they’d had a terrible low-yield year.
joe

I find ironic that the very industry that is threatened by global warming is. if you believe what the environmentalists are saying, helping to usher in global warming.

I tap trees and make my own maple syrup. My ration is not as good as the one in the video as mine was about 70:1 last year. Think about the amount of carbon that is created through burning wood, gas or oil to create that one gallon of syrup. Even at 40:1, tt is a lot! If I didn’t have free gas, I couldn’t afford to do it on my hobby scale.

Of course, I still question if it’s carbon or any of the other things going on that is causing the warming.

In the end, we will only quit contributing to the cause after we quit breathing and after we decay.
foster

Joe – They are contributing, but on a very small scale. We are all contributing and we should all make lifestyle changes to decrease our contribution. However, the larger systems (agriculture, energy, transportation, etc…) we have in place as a society pose a much greater problem and must be changed to address climate change and ultimately mitigate the impacts. What this video does is raise awareness that many cultural and economic activities are threatened by climate change.