"When the data doesn't match the model - the model is wrong."
OR.....the data is incomplete. How many new maple operations have come into existence during the previous 25 years? How about farming innovations that resulting in improvements in efficiency, and yield?? I didn't see that info on the graph? And where was the breakdown that illustrated yield/ per geographic locations within the maple belt??
No?
Well then, since the data posted is incomplete, then any conclusions drawn from it are highly suspect, to say the least. You want to know if the climate is changing? Really want to know? Then stop listening to the politicians who tell you one thing, and avoid the scientists who are claiming the opposite.... run down to the southern reaches of the maple belt, and check in with some farm families who've been sugaring for multiple generations. Ask 'em to show you "the wall"... the spot where their fathers and grandfathers have been writing the dates of "first run" and "all done" for decades. Take some graph paper with you and chart it out. You'll have your answer.
Whether one chooses to bring that graph paper back with them to show others, or quietly wads it up and chucks it into the firebox of the evaporator, will have absolutely no effect on what it plainly illustrates.
When I looked at the wall in the sugar shack of the Amish family that I get my syrup from, it showed the first run/last run dates had no correlation to the "climate change" theorists. And the writing on the wall went on for more than 25 years.
Yep. That's why you need to travel south. My friend, I've been to your home, just like you've been to mine. I saw in an earlier post today where you stated it was 17 degrees. It was 34 degrees down here at the same time. Anyone up there pull some BG through the ice this winter? We maxxed out at 1.5"... never wet a line. Did you know that for purposes of tracking maple syrup production, the IDNR divides the state into North and South at highway 40? The latest data I can access right now comes from 2020, when their production figures show 24,139 gallons made. Of that total, only 1706 gallons came from south of US40.
Southern Indiana is a world apart from Northern Indiana, as I'm sure you recognize. Now, I'm not suggesting that the end of Hoosier maple syrup is imminent. Far from it. There will be warm years, and there will be cold years... that's part of sugarmaking. But the evidence is clear to those of us in the southernmost reaches of the maple belt. Our maple seasons are trending earlier, and shorter. I tend to believe we are the canaries in the maple mines.
By the way, do you know what we southern sugarmakers call your region?........
Michigan! Lol! Hope you are well, Scott!
