Acorns Disappear Across the Country 474
Hugh Pickens writes "Botanist Rod Simmons thought he was going crazy when couldn't find any acorns near his home in Arlington County, Virginia. 'I'm used to seeing so many acorns around and out in the field, it's something I just didn't believe,' said Simmons. Then calls started coming in about crazy squirrels. Starving, skinny squirrels eating garbage, inhaling bird feed, greedily demolishing pumpkins. Squirrels boldly scampering into the road. And a lot more calls about squirrel roadkill. Simmons and Naturalist Greg Zell began to do some research and found Internet discussion groups, including one on Topix called 'No acorns this year,' reporting the same thing from as far away as the Midwest up through New England and Nova Scotia. 'We live in Glenwood Landing, N.Y., and don't have any acorns this year. Really weird,' wrote one. 'None in Kansas either! Curiouser and curiouser.' The absence of acorns could have something to do with the weather and Simmons has a theory about the wet and dry cycles. But many skeptics say oaks in other regions are producing plenty of acorns, and the acorn bust is nothing more than the extreme of a natural boom-and-bust cycle. But the bottom line is that no one really knows. 'It's sort of a mystery,' Zell said."
Let me guess... (Score:4, Insightful)
...to what the majority of comments to this article will be related, given the delicious quotes like this in the article:'
Of course, these will be ignored on page two of the story:
I know it's not a popular sentiment here, but Beware the church of climate alarm [smh.com.au].
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Or maybe the squirrels had banked them in citi?
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Funny)
The squirrels are merely saving them. They know the apocalypse is coming. That, or they are planning an all out takeover of the earth. Are you ready?
Look! You've been warned! The hungry squirrel of the apocalypse rides!!!
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Funny)
Bees (Score:5, Funny)
The bees took them!
The solution is obvious (Score:5, Funny)
Big Acorn needs a bailout.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
They tried to put a lot of money for ACORN in the bailout, but the Republicans stopped them. Considering that a lot of the crap mortgages are ACORN's fault, it's only fair...
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Although I tend to side with the thesis of anthropogenic climate change I agree that there are too many alarmists who will draw an instant connection between occurances such as this and "global warming".
That said, I would have hoped that you could dig up some better references to support your post; Miranda Divine is an ignoarmus and Kieth Windshuttle has only slightly more credibility than David Irving.
...to what the majority of comments to this article will be related, given the delicious quotes like this in the article:'
Of course, these will be ignored on page two of the story:
I know it's not a popular sentiment here, but Beware the church of climate alarm [smh.com.au].
Maybe -- and I know it's a fool's hope -- the comments on this article can actually include speculation on what may be occurring beyond climate change alarmism?
However, I expect that "vicious and irrational" will win out.
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That said, I would have hoped that you could dig up some better references to support your post; Miranda Divine is an ignoarmus and Kieth Windshuttle has only slightly more credibility than David Irving.
It was more just that it was a very recent article (November 27, 2008) from a major media outlet, and very on point.
It's the content of the article that matters, no matter who the author; "People who are really confident [of their facts] relish debate," is still true no matter whence it comes.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:4, Insightful)
Au contraire, in an ideal world, or a close approximation (say a fully refereed journal) content can stand alone, but in any journalist outlet (especially from a so called "think tank") the content tends to be selective at best and is often down right fraudulent, now I admit that I haven't read the particular issue of Quadrant to which you refer but the journal definately sits in the former category and until I can see a fully referenced and sighted article from Mr. Windshuttle then I'm afraid his past transgressions will continue to weigh heavily.
And as for Ms. Divine, an article written by an actual journalist from the SMH could fairly be described as originating from a major media outlet, but her piece is an Editorial comment placed in the paper to stir the pot from the right, just as say a Philip Adams editorial will stir from the left, I quite enjoy Mr Adams' rantings, but I admit the fact that it is an editorial opinion and cannot be fairly called journlism
That said, I would have hoped that you could dig up some better references to support your post; Miranda Divine is an ignoarmus and Kieth Windshuttle has only slightly more credibility than David Irving.
It was more just that it was a very recent article (November 27, 2008) from a major media outlet, and very on point.
It's the content of the article that matters, no matter who the author; "People who are really confident [of their facts] relish debate," is still true no matter whence it comes.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the content of the article that matters, no
matter who the author;
Yes, but if the content incorporates more than facts widely known to be previously proven, and clear and verifiable logic building on those, evaluating the content is very far from trivial.
If you are unable to, or cannot be expected to, do a thorough vetting of all remaining claims in the content, then you are in reality really also being asked to _believe_ the author's claims of knowledge, and to _trust_ his judgement in handling it.
For that, reputation and past transgressions do indeed matter rather a lot.
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Yes, but if the content incorporates more than facts widely known to be previously proven, and clear and verifiable logic building on those, evaluating the content is very far from trivial. [emphasis mine]
The politically-driven global warming "skeptics" rely on the difficulty of verifying their claims. I recently spent most of a day chasing down and reading original scientific papers that had been cited as references on a professional-looking anti-global warming site. Without exception the papers did not reach the anti-warming conclusions the site claimed they reached. In at least one instance the paper came to the exact opposite conclusion and stated it very plainly in its conclusions section. Yet it was
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you think climate scientists don't relish debate, you obviously haven't been to a scientific conference.
What they relish, however, is honest debate by an informed opponent. As opposed to 95% of the so-called "skeptics" out there — like Plimer — who do little but repeat long-discredited misleading or wrong arguments. It's pretty much the same as the evolution-creation "debate". Evolutionary biologists argue all the time about evolutionary theory — witness the whole gradualism vs. punctuated equilibrium debate. But that doesn't mean they relish correcting creationist wackaloons, again and again, every time they drag out the same bad arguments. Bypassing the whole scientific debate in the first place by going straight to the media. The reason why creationists don't engage in real scientific debate is because their arguments are so poor they can't get published. Of course, they then cry that the orthodox gatekeepers are "silencing" them. Pretty much like most of the climate skeptics. There is legitimate scientific debate about, say, whether the equilibrium climate sensitivity to CO2 is closer to the lower or the upper end of the IPCC range. But you hardly ever see any of the real debate. Instead, you see the ridiculously wrong claims like "the geologic record proves that temperature is unrelated to CO2" or "all the global warming is an artifact of urban heat island contamination". It's a shame.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:4, Informative)
The best scientific introduction is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 4th Assessment Report, Working Group 1 (physical science). It attempts to be a comprehensive literature review of the mainstream science. It is all available online here [ucar.edu]. If you'd like to know more specifically about any particular issue, and are having trouble locating it in the IPCC report (e.g., if you don't know what keywords to look for), let me know and I might be able to provide more specific references.
The IPCC report is kind of dense and is a survey of the modern state of the art. If you're looking for more of a textbook sort of introduction to climate science, I'd recommend David Archer's book Understanding the Forecast. It's aimed at undergraduate freshmen, so it might be below the level you're looking for, but it's still pretty good at laying out a lot of the important issues.
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The problem is that there are only experts on one side of the argument. The global warming "debate" isn't honest experts shouting at each other - it is real experts being shouted at by PR propagandists who CALL themselves experts. Just look at all the so-called "Institutes" on the Web that look so professional and scientific when they claim to offer evidence that global warming is a myth. These are NOT scientific organizations - they are paid public relations firms posing as reputable independent researc
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Kieth Windshuttle has plenty of credibility. You don't have to agree with his interpretations, but he got the facts right. The reason he is so deeply unpopular with mainstream Australian historians is that he actually checked the facts, and found that most historians had gotten them wrong. He wasn't gracious about it either. I guess a lot of historians these days value a "correct" interpretation, over "correct" facts though.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
I emailed my mom who lives in Pennsylvania (which was mentioned in the article), and who owns 5 acres of oak trees (terrible for raking in the fall - these leaves decay very slowly and lay very flat - each missed leaf is a dead bit of grass come the spring). She also lives on the edge of ~100 acres of forest composed largely of oak.
She's a zoologist and not a botanist, though botany is a bit of a hobby of hers. This explanation sounds as plausible as any other, and more plausible than most.
So I think that alarmism about this is overboard until there's more information. That said though, environmental concern under the guise of global warming is overall a good thing - it's causing people to pay attention to the impact of their actions on the world.
Just like most main stream causes, the only way to maintain the public attention the cause requires is to either federally mandate the attention, or to engage in a lot of alarmism. The only way to get the federal mandate is to convince politicians that doing so is in their political career's best interest, so you need to engage the public with... alarmism.
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Oh, and...funnily enough I've found that climate change skepticism seems to be the prevalent sentiment here
SNIP, SNIP, FUCKING SNIP!! what are you an outlook user?
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
...the comments on this article can actually include speculation on what may be occurring beyond climate change alarmism?
That's the thing that kind of bugs me is that Global Climate change gets all of the attention at the expense, it seems, over other issues. For example, coal fired power plants. The argument usually boils down to green house gases and maybe air quality. But the issue of coal burning releasing mercury into the environment (why do you think predator fish are contaminated with the stuff?) is hardly ever brought up and if it is, it's just ignored.
Unfortunately, global climate change has become a very politically polarizing issue and it drowns out any sort of rational discourse. Which means, regardless of what needs to be done, it won't get done because folks will spend all their time digging their heals in to be "right".
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That's the thing that kind of bugs me is that Global Climate change gets all of the attention at the expense, it seems, over other issues. For example, coal fired power plants.
Coal-fired power-stations DO contribute to global warming. The down-wind mercury levels, whilst elevated, aren't high enough cause the well-known chronic toxity effects (google 'minimata' for the gory details), but they could (collectively) lead to TEOCAWKI. Which would be bad.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
So you have irrefutable evidence that global warming is due to fossil fuel combustion products and not, say, the output of the sun?
Yes, pretty much. Hardly anything is totally "irrefutable", but there is plenty of evidence which supports the link between warming and CO2, including the paleoclimate record, the observed timing, rate, and magnitude of the warming compared to the CO2 forcing (when other forcings are included too, of course), the stratospheric cooling fingerprint, the observed changes in the diurnal cycle, etc. All of those directly disagree with solar irradiance trends. The solar trend disagrees in rate, timing, and magnitude with the warming since the mid-20th century, although it explains a fair bit of the warming before then. So does the cosmic ray trend, for that matter. Solar warming doesn't lead to stratospheric cooling, it doesn't lead to the same changes in the day-night cycle as globally distributed greenhouse gases do, and so on. See Foukal et al., Lockwood and Frohlich, etc. Of course, your article doesn't bother to mention any of those inconvenient facts.
The whole "other planets are warming" is among the dumbest of all skeptic arguments. The climate of other planets has about jack squat to do with the Earth's climate. Some of them hardly have any atmosphere, none have water oceans, and so on. When you actually look at what causes warming on various planets, it's not even the Sun; Martian warming is attributed to a change in global dust storms, Jupiter warming isn't even global, Pluto warming is due to it being summer there, and so on. I don't know why people ignore the large amount of data we have on Earth climate and what causes it, in favor of much sparser data from planetary climates dramatically unlike our own.
The fact is that most of the global warming theories are based on poor evidence and conjecture.
Oh, that's a "fact" is it? What establishes this fact?
we shouldn't have irrational, knee-jerk reactions to the use of fossil fuels.
It's not an irrational, knee-jerk reaction, it's one based on over 40 years of scientific and economic study. The IPCC AR4 WG1 report summarizes the state of the science. Nordhaus's A Question of Balance is a good introduction to the policy side of the issue.
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I defy you to reference ANY such data that suggests a causal link from CO2 to temperature change!
What a joke.
I already gave a number of such examples, which are all cited in the IPCC report you claim to have read. Not to mention the basic atomic physics of the greenhouse effect.
I've read nearly everything the IPCC has published, and there is nothing there on this central point except assumptions and models based on assumptions.
Yeah, duh.
All of science is based on assumptions. Then you test the predictions of those assumptions and see whether they agree with what you observe. Then you test the predictions of alternate assumptions and see if they agree.
CO2 change rate FOLLOWS temperature change rate, after a varying lag that averages around 800 years.
... in the specific case of the glacial-interglacial cycle. You can't say the same for other paleo
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Insightful)
If the earth's temperature is being increased by the sun, then it's more important we do something about global warming, and quick.
All the bad stuff that's going to happen thanks to global warming doesn't magically vanish because it's being done by the sun.
If it's caused by humans, we just need to back off. As long as we don't hit the point where the ocean currents flip or the antarctic ice melts, we're okay.
If it's caused by the sun, we need to back way the hell off, back to the stone age, and even farther, perhaps with some sort of technology to shade the earth, and attempt to weather it out without hitting the tipping point in several of the systems that would push us past no recovery.
I.e., the car we're in just got a flat tire. Most people are arguing that it's because we're driving over a rocky road with bad tires, whereas you're arguing there's a sniper shooting at us. That doesn't make the situation better and somehow mean we can ignore it, that makes it a good deal worse and means we need to start panicking now.
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FOREVER!
Re:Let me guess... (Score:5, Informative)
Warming will cause an ice age. Because of "crucial heat exchanging currents." Got it.
Although that's an oversimplification, that has in fact happened many times in the past (e.g., Dansgaard-Oescher events). What happens is that warming causes more fresh water to be added to the North Atlantic, due to increased precipitation and ice melt, or freshwater pulses from draining inland bodies of water (e.g., Lake Agassiz and the Younger Dryas event). This disrupts the Atlantic thermohaline circulation which carries heat from the tropics to northern Europe. That region will experience strong cooling, although not all regions do. Numerous such cooling events are recorded in the geologic record, including plunging the regional climate back into an ice age shortly after recovery from one. However, it is thought that glacial climates are more susceptible to such events than is the current interglacial. Current estimates are that even if the thermohaline circulation shuts down, Europe will still warm, since the cooling there is counteracted by the large amount of warming necessary to trigger such a collapse.
Some of you have bought so heavily into this crap that you can't even tell how ridiculous you sound.
Some of you are so pathetically unaware of everything we know about climate that you can't even tell how ignorant you sound.
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"All for the greater good of the Earth, and it doesn't matter that billions will die because we just "backed off" and discarded all our technology to the point that tigers can eat us for lunch!"
What the heck is with this argument? I keep hearing it from anti-environmentalists. It makes no sense.
The point isn't that we should "save the planet" IN EXCHANGE FOR human wellbeing. Nobody's arguing that!
The point is that we should save the planet TO SUPPORT human wellbeing. Because we, y'know, live here? And rely
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Actually, it isn't [environmentmaine.org] ignored. You'll notice in that reference that the new Bush administration rules were struck down. That's hardly a surprise though, it seems like most everything they try to pass gets struck down.
Re:Let me guess... (Score:4, Insightful)
"However, I expect that "vicious and irrational" will win out."
Duh. You've already built the strawman you've outwitted.
It's idgits like you that poison the discussion by defining it as a contest between alarmists and anit-alarmists.
get bent.
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Maybe -- and I know it's a fool's hope -- the comments on this article can actually include speculation on what may be occurring beyond climate change alarmism?
Actually, they should include "are the acorns even really disappearing?", which is the correct response to someone who questions accepted science.
Throw in a reference to the "hyrocarbon cycle" and you'll be all set.
there's something alarmist (Score:4, Insightful)
About your apparent need to deny, out of hand, even a remote possibility that this or any other event is linked to anthropogenic climate change.
You appear to have decided a priori how things are, and seem to go into an intellectual panic when something comes up that challenges you understanding of thing. You're just as bad as you claim the global warming "alarmists" to be, worse perhaps. You're willing to cling to what a tiny fraction of people have to say about the topic because it suits what you want to hear.
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Actually its a normal occurence (Score:5, Interesting)
Every so many years the Oak Trees cut off production of acorns. It has been documented and studied somewhat. I remember reading a scientific article about it in my bio class. The thinking is that there is a codependent relationship between Oak trees and squirrels. The oak trees depend on squirrels for new oak trees (squirrels disperse and plant seeds and forget where some of them are) and the squirrels depend largely on the acorns for food. the Acorn production increases year to year, creating a population increase for the squirrels. (stable food = more babies, more babies that survive) This goes on until there is a population boom of squirrels. At about this time the oak trees halt acorn production, producing a mass die off of squirrels. From the human point of view this seems highly ungrateful of the oak tree. After all the squirrels are busy helping the trees reproduce and now the trees repay the squirrels by making them starve. But the thinking is that if the oak trees didn't do this the squirrel population would reach an equilibrium with the oak tree population's acorn production. Each and every (or nearly every) acorn would get eaten, and next to none of the acorns would result in new oak trees. This local population of oak trees would die out. So it is only the oak trees that are "underhanded" that survive and make new trees. It shouldn't be hard to find more information on this; probably under ecology literature.
Re:Actually its a normal occurence (Score:5, Insightful)
The AC is right. In grad school, my wife studied population genetics of coast live oak (quercus agrifolia), and she saw the same boom-and-bust cycles of acorn production. The boom years are known as "mast" years--not sure what the bust years are called.
This is just a normal cycle, and, as usual, the media's reporting of science is atrocious.
Re:Actually its a normal occurence (Score:5, Informative)
So I'm not the only geek in the world who takes an interest in trees after all?
I knew about mast years, and the following meagre years. This is a common adaptation to predation pressure or parasites. An extreme example of this are cicadas; predators don't live long enough for their population cycle to become synchronized with that of the cicada.
I'm curious what the synchronization mechanism could be. In my area (north western Europe), last year was a mast year ... for beeches, chestnuts and all four species of oak growing in my area. This fall I found only a handfull of chestnuts, no beech nuts and hardly any acorns.
While hiking in North Carolina this fall, I didn't see a lot of acorn remains either, but I attributed that to having been a bit late in the season.
I'm surprised and intrigued that the phenomenon appears coincided on both sides of the Atlantic this year. Are the cycles synchronized via some global (solar?) external trigger, or is this just coincidence? I always assumed it must be the weather, but that isn't even remotely similar on both sides of the Atlantic.
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I agree that no one should be jumping to attribute this particular event to climate change. Climate change is generally slow, and something that abruptly shows up in a particular year probably isn't climate related. If the acorns have been gradually disappearing over the past few decades, that would be another matter.
That being said, most of what Plimer says about climate change is misleading at best, and dishonest nonsense at worst. (But it sure does sell books, doesn't it?) Climate change is real and
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Anecdotal data point (Score:5, Informative)
Another anecdotal data point - Dallas Texas (Score:3, Informative)
Seems like there are plenty of acorns here.
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Here in my area we too saw a large crop of at least the large variety of acorns.
And a lone observer like you can dismiss it with an anecdote. Which is why people have to compare notes across wide areas ... which is pretty much what they're doing, if you read the article.
These are the kinds of things that we'll find Al Gore referencing if we're not careful.
Oh look, I just fed a troll.
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Oh look, I just fed a troll.
Like rats, they can live on garbage. You have to be careful not to try to drop a banana peel in their path, because it only makes them stronger. And by stronger, I mean more stupid.
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I look forward to proper "data collection" following. The fact that it has not occurred yet doesn't mean that the whole thing should be dismissed out of hand.
What thing? I'm just reading that some peoples' oak trees are producing less acorns than those people expected and that low acord production is routine. I think it should be dismissed out of hand. There's no evidence that there's anything to look into.
acorns going down hill for 2 years (Score:2, Informative)
In Boston 2 years ago we were walkign on acorns, last year was a lower year, this year barely an acorn can be found. makes walking a bit safer :)
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I can't believe how a little farmers' knowledge sends today's kids into desperate panic.
These editors think they are smart because they can program, yet a little thing like this requires PhD climatology research to explain to them. (And some sort of political action no doubt.)
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Having just walked across my patio barefoot yesterday, I can confirm that there are plenty of acorns in Maryland.
Weird... (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember one year growing up the Oaks in my backyard didn't produce any acorns, instead they produced these strange green globes that were soft almost like a grape except more spherical and speckled. When I split one open there was something akin to what cotton wood trees put out or dandylions, a soft fluffy thing. I wonder if the Oaks have a secondary seed production mechanism? Is that what I saw? that was probably 20 years or more ago so the memory is a little hazy. I wonder if the oaks are producing those things? or nothing at all.
Re:Weird... (Score:5, Interesting)
Those were probably marble galls (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oak_marble_gall); I find them a lot, too. They are produced in addition to acorns, though.
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Noo! Don't touch it!
Touch Fuzzy, Get Dizzy! :(
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From the acorn wiki: "The larvae of some moths and weevils also live in young acorns, consuming the kernels as they develop."
Perhaps your furry globes were the result?
The sky is falling! (Score:5, Funny)
This really puts a causality twist on that old chestnut.
Nothing new (Score:5, Interesting)
I have noticed this cycle in the Boston area over the last 20 years. The squirrel population will follow the acorn yield. Some years there are very few squirrels about, and the chipmunk population seems to boom. Then the squirrels will have a great year and have too many little ones. Some of the babies will end up on the ground, pushed out by the others.
Don't let your kids adopt them or talk you into taking them to a wildlife shelter. Believe me. All you have to do is put them back into a tree in a basket. The mommy squirrel will come find them and take them home by the scruff like a kitten.
Could be natural or something... (Score:2)
These sort of things go in cycles. This year was insane for the maple tree seeds (whirlybirds), they were everywhere in the midwest and Pa. Much heavier crop than usual. I know, I had to clean my gutters.
So if we had a heavy whirlybird crop, then we could just as easily have a light acorn crop that the squirrels gobbled up. Or it's aliens, one of the two...
Sheldon
Weighty (Score:3, Funny)
you can have mine... (Score:5, Funny)
I had what felt like a metric ton in my yard this year.
All over my state we have the typical ton of acorns.. Some are freaking huge compared to previous years.
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Acorn boom (Score:4, Interesting)
For the record, there was an acorn boom a couple of years ago that was responsible for an increase of Lyme disease. Apparently, when you get more acorn, you get more ticks the next season.
Plenty of Acorns in Northern NJ (Score:3, Interesting)
They can have all of ours down here in the South.. (Score:2)
Seems to be the same distribution as in years past in Georgia and South Carolina (visited in-laws in South Cack-o-lacky for the holidays...)
Near Dallas Texas... (Score:2)
I have acorns. Actually, depending on the type of oak tree, there are certain years when the trees do not produce acorns as expected. If you have several species that are not producing all at once, then you have an acorn famine. If you have the same problem next year, then we've got a problem.
I found them... (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.old-computers.com/club/collectors/ordis.asp?c=3664 [old-computers.com]
Credit Crunch (Score:2)
Remember all those adverts with an acorn that grows into an oak tree and some voice over about safe investments that flourish?
Yes folks it turns out the banks really were just investing money in acorns and have now created an "acorn bubble" which has driven all of the squirrels into poverty.
Simple explanation really.
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Yes folks it turns out the banks really were just investing money in acorns and have now created an "acorn bubble" which has driven all of the squirrels into poverty.
My understanding is that the squirrels are starving because we're making their primary food source (the acorns) into biofuel, which also accounts for the scarcity. Acorn-based ethanol, coming to a pump near you.
Ravaged Pumpkins (Score:2)
We had noticed that squirrels had eaten into almost every pumpkin put out on steps in my area and were stumped as to why we hadn't ever seen it before. This is an explanation.
Acorns? As in a nut, not a computer? (Score:2, Funny)
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Nah, don't worry... (Score:5, Funny)
Panic when the dolphins decide its time to leave.
Bumper crop in Southwest Michigan (Score:2)
We had them ankle deep in our yard, our squirrels are fat lazy and happy.
Must have skipped Indiana (Score:2)
It's cyclical and difficult to predict (Score:3, Interesting)
There are really two groups of oaks: the red and the white oaks.
The white oaks are generally preferred by most small animals (and deer!), as their acorns are lower in tannins and produced much more regularly (a good crop approximately every other year, and less difference between a good year and a bad year).
Red oaks have a less palatable acorn and can go up to 7 years between heavy mast years (with up to a 135x difference between a bad and a good year).
Oddly, with all the research done on the topic, there's little that can be done to predict a future crop, as cyclic production varies so widely and seems dependant on such a myriad of factors. In areas heavily dominated by oaks, we still even have to "wait and see" for a harvest... otherwise it's a game of roulette, and you might have such poor production you don't get a forest of oak back at all (but red maple is a whole other can of worms).
Sam
They're in my yard, dude, in Arlington County (Score:2)
Feel free to come pick them up (along with all the ()*#!@!@ squirrels).
sketchy incomplete anecdotal observations (Score:2)
leading to completely spurious hypotheses
let me throw my hat in the ring with an equally valid conclusion by saying COULD IT BE BATMAN?!
I know... (Score:2)
No shortage in DC (Score:2)
Complete BS. I live in the DC area too. Front of my yard was covered in acorns from just one 30' tree. The squirrels were having a field day. So were the deer.
Give them a few days (Score:2)
Wha? (Score:2)
I live in the Fairfax area of NoVA, and while I haven't seen the massive piles of acorns like last year, there's no shortage of squirrels running around....And they all look large, bushy-tailed, and energetic.
Haven't seen them in a few years (Score:3, Funny)
I haven't seen them in a while either. But my first thought was these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers [wikipedia.org]
Pay attention, Hollywood (Score:3, Funny)
No acorns near Minneapolis (Score:2)
This year -- Zero. Not a one.
OK, natural science geek here (Score:5, Interesting)
I chose trees as my area of natural science geekdom, because I couldn't stand those snotty birders who take a glance at a streak through the trees that an ordinary mortal couldn't narrow down to "bird" then say something like, "Ah, a Stimpson's downy breasted tit." Trees stand still long enough to put an identification to an objective test.
Oak species often display yearly variations in acorn production. This may be helpful in that you want surplus acorns from the point of view of squirrels; producing lots of acorns every year means you get lots of squirrels. Producing a bumper crop every three or four years and a small crop otherwise maximizes the number of surplus acorns you make.
I've heard some say that White Oaks (with smoothly rounded leaf lobes) have three to four year cycles and Red Oaks (with pointy veins that stick out past the end of the leaf lobes) are acyclic. I've also heard the opposite, that White Oaks produce acorns every year and Red Oaks have longer cycles of five or even six years. My own experience is that the White Oaks I know produce bumper crops ever several years, and the Red Oaks seem to produce reliably every year. However, individual trees often vary considerably from the normal habit of their species. In my experience the yearly variations in the Red Oaks I know are small, and the acorns produced are always extremely bitter, however some Red Oaks seem to produce acorns like White Oaks: sweet, and in bumper crops.
That said, the Red Oaks in my yard have for the last fourteen years produced healthy crops of extremely bitter acorns every year. I've lived in this house fifteen years and every year, like clockwork, there has been a night in early November where I've woken up to a continual refrain of "pok-pok-pok-tumble", as the oaks shed the bulk of their acorns in one day.
It didn't happen this year. This article made me go out an look, and the tree is completely bare and there is very little acorn debris around the tree or the gutters.
Weird.
Still, the Northern Red Oak species is reported by some as having long annual crop cycles, and nobody really knows what might trigger a good or bad year. It stands to reason that trees in an area ought to have some kind of climatic trigger for coordinating their production variations. Otherwise, the winner would be a tree that produces lots of acorns every year.
This could be a situation where a meme gains steam because somebody reports a mysterious lack of acorns, and then others (like me) run out and look at their tree and say, "good lord, there aren't any acorns." Chance are if we'd been paying attention, we'd have noticed that there is occasionally a year in which the trees don't produce many acorns.
It's still a weird feeling, though, to read this story and realize that my trees produced hardly any acorns this year.
If this is real, it may be trees responding to a common climatic cue, a cue which is not necessarily a sign of a widespread disaster (unless you are a squirrel). I'd hypothesize that they ought to have some kind of cue that helps keep the squirrel population in check.
There Are Plenty Here In McLean, VA (Score:2)
Since Arlington is only 15 minutes from here, I have to wonder what they're doing down there... there are plenty of acorns here in McLean, VA. For that matter, the squirrels have been highly active in this area, and I see them burying acorns all the time. Maybe they've stolen them all from Arlington?
It's a plot (Score:4, Insightful)
They all came here (Score:3, Interesting)
Plenty in some places (Score:2)
Outside of Raleigh, NC they had a bumper crop this year. easily 2 to 4 times the normal level. Enough that it came up in casual conversation a number of times.
In MD, the maple trees produced a lot more seeds than normal this year.
No acorns in NH either (Score:2, Informative)
Come to my house (Score:3, Informative)
We've got a bumper crop of acorns this year. I've never seen anything like it - my front yard is almost literally paved with acorn bits and pieces now. And we're less than 200 miles from the supposed VA dead zone in the article...
Warm weather last January (Score:3, Interesting)
I think a lot of these problems stem back to the ridiculously warm weather we had late last January. It was in the 60s and 70's for nearly a week. Fucked up a lot of my plants and killed many of them once it returned to normal cold a week or so later. I've talked to several people who've had similar problems this year with various plants likely due to that warm spell.
Someone needs to go outside and play (Score:3, Interesting)
There's a bumper crop of acorns on my property this year and last year there were almost none.
Why? Last year we had a late freeze followed by a drought.
The volume of mast crop always varies, but during bad years there's very little production. The people screaming and hollering about it need to go outside more.
So this educated fool has a "theory" about wet and dry cycles, does he? Any rube farmer or hunter out there can tell you that the mast crop is directly related to wet and dry cycles. Any botanist who doesn't know that already shouldn't be able to call himself one.
I guess it's much less fun to understand the workings of nature than it is to lay the blame on a favorite political cause.
Squirrels: (Score:5, Funny)
One long-term study already done (Score:3, Informative)
"LONG-TERM PATTERNS OF ACORN PRODUCTION FOR FIVE OAK SPECIES IN XERIC FLORIDA UPLANDS"
Study of acorn production across several species in FL from 1969 to 1996 http://www.esajournals.org/doi/abs/10.1890/01-0707 [esajournals.org]
From the abstract: We identified regular cycles of acorn production ... and found evidence that annual acorn production is affected by the interactions of precipitation, which is highly variable ..., with endogenous reproductive patterns. In contrast, acorn production showed no significant association with minimum winter temperatures.
No Pecans Either (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Oaks have male and female plants that use airborn pollenation techniques, but they will self pollenate or clone themselves if needed. I would look at chemicals or precipitation before looking at bees.
(for the Christers: perhaps God told the trees their children are no longer needed(/sarcasm))
I have heard reports in the past of hungry packs of squirrels attacking and eating cats and small dogs. I wonder if those reports will increase this winter.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Have a more open world view, moderators; the OP is referring to the arc linking all the episodes of series 4 of Doctor Who [wikipedia.org]. It's the first thing I thought of when I read the post, and is also why the article is tagged 'badwolf' and 'starsgoingout'.
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I blame the bees deserting earth like rats from a sinking ship. BEESSS!!
So long and thanks for all the acorns?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Not sure then how Rod Simmons is claiming New England has no acorns. Well, yes the answer to that is in TFA... he did all his research by reading newsgroups and BB's. I couldnt imagine a worse way to gather objective data, since no one would post normal or excessive acorn production, he doesnt compare newsgroup cha
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Not saying you are wrong, just that your single example is only enough to question the article, not enough to create a theory.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Most people don't realize this but we are actually still in an ice age. The planet goes through natural cycles of cold and hot. Our cold climate is warming, perhaps from anthropogenic disturbances but also perhaps from natural climate change.
Before industrial fossil fuel CO2 emissions, the Holocene has been in a very stable period, neither warming nor cooling, which is actually kind of unusual. Normally it would have been cooled slightly by now.
Sure the globe might be warming faster from CO2 but it will warm regardless we just might have accelerated things a bit.
Why should it warm regardless? As I said, if you go by past interglacials it should probably be cooling. If you go by this interglacial's earlier history, it shouldn't be warming or cooling much. Unless you're proposing that the whole ice age cycle was due to end this time around anyway. What eviden