Colder Winter Hurts Maple Industry

This is a great example from Climate Skeptic about why when you only look at "why is warming bad for humans" you often forget that cooling can cause problems, too. If you stick to "warming is bad!" you may as well ignore any data about change in the other direction, and those total costs should be weighed when considering legislation to alter climate.

A year ago, stopglobalwarming.org was concerned that warmer springs would kill the maple syrup industry:

...the way I feel, we get too much warm. How many winters are we going to go with Decembers turning into short-sleeve weather, before the maple trees say, "I don't like it here any more?" ...

"It appears to be a rather dire situation for the maple industry in the Northeast if conditions continue to go toward the predictions that have been made for global warming," said Tim Perkins, director of the Proctor Maple Research Center at the University of Vermont.

But as Climate Skeptic points out, colder than normal winter has hurt the maple industry:

Moore said that at least 75 percent of his 5,000 trees are unreachable this week, still buried in snow. "I have trees that still have 3 feet of snow around them," he said. "It’s not looking good right now. "Eric Ellis of Maine Maple Products of Madison, a company run by the Lariviere brothers that taps 50,000 trees in northern Somerset County, said the season in the north country hasn’t even begun. "It’s a week to 10 days late." Ellis, like Moore, is concerned that it may get too warm too quickly.

Of course the argument is going to be that human CO2 causes larger and more pronounced climate variation which could potentially be proven. To do that, climate scientists would have to take a break from changing temperature records and focusing on warming to do the research.