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Acorns Disappear Across the Country
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."
...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.
...Squirrels seen reading books on logistics.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Here in the Hanover county north of Richmond Va, we had an early and massive acorn crop. It would be interesting to correlate some weather phenomenon to acorns (long drought in late summer = early crop, very wet spring = huge crop, etc).
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
And good riddance to the goddamn squirrwels.
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 :)
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.
This really puts a causality twist on that old chestnut.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
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.
If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
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
I bet they'll find a couple of really greedy overweight squirrels up in them woods.
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.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Hi
What has your bee popluation been like this year?
For problems, seek only the simplest solution, complexity brings with it more problems.
Could it be related to the Colony Collapse Disorder of behives? It sounds far-fetched to me too, but it may be..
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.
Fantasy: http://ferrisfantasy.blogspot.com/
I blame the bees deserting earth like rats from a sinking ship.
BEESSS!!
Every Autumn, my brothers and I get into a nice acorn fight at Grandma's house in North Jersey. There was no shortage of ammunition this year.
I see now that you have noticed the first signs of my little plot.
You may notice in time that they will not be the last. /capeswirl
Big Acorn needs a bailout.
I know this sounds bat-shit nuts, but there should be a significant drop in Lyme disease cases. It has to do with the life cycle of the tick and mouse populations- it sounds wierd as hell but it was backed up by field research. I think it was at the Institute for Ecosystem Studies- I just remember making fun of my mother walking around talking about acorn masts (the opposite of this year).
Seems like there are plenty of acorns here.
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...)
Loading...
They are all in the woods around UNC-Asheville and all over my back yard. No lack of Acorns here.
Are you SURE you know what an acorn is?
Pax Vobiscum
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.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
this guy's got em all
http://www.old-computers.com/club/collectors/ordis.asp?c=3664
"We live in a global world" - Harvey Pitt, former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman
Similarly there were hardly any hazelnuts about this year in NW Europe (pity, as I'm rather fond of them)
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.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
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.
I live in central Maryland, right in the middle of where this story is complaining about. My oak trees all had plenty of acorns, just a bit early this year.
Acorn is a long-forgotten, but actually tremendously influential company. Had Acorn not made the Acorn Electron, and subsequently the BBC Micro, I'm sure British IT would not be what it is today. Oh wait... this article is about a nut. Silly me, I thought I was on Slashdot.
Panic when the dolphins decide its time to leave.
THE HONOUR OF THE KNIGHTS - CC Licensed Sci-Fi Novel
Lots of acorns buried all over my back yard by a healthy looking squirrel population. If I'd of known they were going to be so valuable I'd of fought the lil bastards for them.
We had them ankle deep in our yard, our squirrels are fat lazy and happy.
Tons of acorns in rural Indiana. Couldn't walk a step in the brush without crushing a few dozen.
Flamebait
Serious inquiries only.
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
Feel free to come pick them up (along with all the ()*#!@!@ squirrels).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Cut the very center open, and there is a fly inside. The fly forces the tree to grow the ball out of leaf material.
leading to completely spurious hypotheses
let me throw my hat in the ring with an equally valid conclusion by saying COULD IT BE BATMAN?!
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'd blame Secret Squirrel
ya want acorns. come down to raleigh, i raked 4 trash cans worth from just 3 trees.
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.
They are probably off celibrating the voting win. Give them a few days and things will be back to normal.
I have three of them hanging over my roof so it was kinda nice not to have the 2 weeks of acorn mortar shelling we usually get every summer. I'll start worrying if the same thing happens next year...
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.
here they are: http://www.planetjune.com/blog/images/acorn1.jpg
I haven't seen them in a while either. But my first thought was these:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Computers
Erik Dalén
This sounds like the beginning of an M. Night Shyamalan movie.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
Find where the bees have gone, and you'll know where the acorns are
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.
This year -- Zero. Not a one.
I have plenty of acorns in my yard, and if someone really wants them, they can come and rake them up for free. :-)
Had to sweep the damn things out my driveway every few days before the leaves started falling.
I've killed several that have gotten into my attic. Pests.
They were right - the revolution did not get televised. It was posted on YouTube instead. All in 120 characters. SLOOSH!
I have more of my fill from 1 oak tree in central VT. It wasn't safe to go on the deck when they were falling. Deer also eat acorns. If my tree is any indication the acorn harvest is cyclical.
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.
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.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
i ate them all. sorry.
Right up the road from this story...as it says, no acorns this year from any of our large oaks. Last year we had so many that we had to use a snow shovel to remove them. I always assumed that fluctuation between years was simply the oaks' method of overwhelming the squirrels and such...produce many, many acorns some years, so the squirrels can't keep up and more survive, and not so much other years to keep the squirrel population down in preparation of the "boom" years.
In any case, all I know is that the squirrels around here (Silver Spring, MD) are so hungry that a) >noclean yogurt containers and such are being eating out of the recycling bins, and they are now eating the Rubbermaid trash cans...not the trash...the cans.
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?
libertarianswag.com
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. Sure the globe might be warming faster from CO2 but it will warm regardless we just might have accelerated things a bit. In terms of the grand scheme this was going to happen. The Devonian era or the era of 'man' has seen at least 80 known ice ages according to our fossil record. We've spent alot of time freezing our asses off but we've also spent alot of time baking them in the heat. When all of the ice is "gone" the planet will effectively reboot and start the process all over again. Once the oceans warm up to the point condensation will kick in, extreme storms, and then a massive cooling period. Dino's seen an asteroid kick start the global cooling process during the Triassic period (correct me if I'm wrong on that) and man likely will see global warming accelerate this process unless some other event totally blocks out the sun in the intern such as an asteroid, even a nuclear war, or a major tectonic occurrence could force the cooling period. The 'naturalists' will be stuck inside their box right up until their extinction occurs.
It's part of a plot developed by the squirrels. They want us to feel sorry for them, feed them, and invite them into our homes. They've become jealous of what the dogs and cats have, and they want in...
I thought this article would be in reference to the voting fraud outfit - ACORN.
How do you think Obama got elected?
Perhaps these folks never noticed that most oaks set seeds only every other year.
I don't know about where you guys are at, but we are having exactly the opposite problem. I'm in Mobile, Alabama, and I have heard MANY people comment on the HUGE amount of acorns we are getting this year. My wife and I tried to sit on the deck yesterday and watch the kids play, but every time a kid came buy we would get pelted. I raked the yard and after I was done, I had about 30lbs of acorns I had to get up with a shovel. I have noticed fewer squirrels around though.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
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.
Really weird. We have about 15 oak trees on our lot in Nashua, NH and we had noticed the complete absence of acorns this year as well.
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...
I had four big oak trees in my yard, at least 40 years old, and two of them died this year and one last year. We've had a wetter and overall cooler past five years of weather in this region. I had a tree guy look at my oaks and he said that there is a fungus called Ceratocystis Fagacearum (Oak Wilt) killing off oak trees in our area and there's nothing really can be done to stop it. It's a tree disease that is normally only around the eastern USA, but the cooler and wetter climate change we've had the past half decade has fostered the spread of the disease westward.
...
Oh, nuts.
My neighbors acorn tree dropped a ton of acorns last year but not a single one this year. I know the plural of anecdote isn't data - but it's still very strange.
...And when they came for me, there was no one left to speak out for me." - Martin Niemoeller (1892-1984)
At first I honestly thought he meant the Acorn Computer. Yeah, I'm that much of a geek.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
This is very odd, posted by the BBC three years ago today:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4489792.stm
They mention a lack of pine cones in the region may have been a contributing factor.
If there was a drop in the bee population, shouldn't we expect a correlative drop in seed production due to lack of fertilization?
Sounds to me like some degree of cause and effect. Glad to hear that many other areas are not showing a decrease in acorn production.
n/t
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.
Try in one area NE. Here in W. KY i have a couple of large Oaks and ive got a yard full of acorns. Squirrels are fat and happy. So this across the country is Bullshiat....just like this global warming is man made is BS.
. I love the sound of burning women and screaming rubber....
This year, I actually had the largest acorns that I've seen in my life cover my yard. I collected a large rubbermaid container's worth for the squirrels this winter.
There was an acorn shell that measured over an inch and a half in diameter! My car has dents in the roof and hood!
As hey! suggests upthread... people will go out and look now. As anecdotes roll in (due to natural variation) it will seem like a lot of people are seeing this same thing. After getting people worked up the OP can come back and reveal it has a hoax and try to link it to the global warming "hoax".
Next we're going to read about some lost walrus. Lets boost the tech content here instead.
> And it takes only one acorn to make a tree...
No. It takes several. Most know the biblical routine, but I'd say that acorn that would be enough to make a new tree will be eagerly devoured by an squirrel, which will nonetheless starve. Unless it germinates inside its dead body, that is... maybe I should write sci-fi... 8-/
And I can't believe there still is denial of:
a) human influence on weather and
b) evolution.
I went camping in SE Ohio about a month ago. While on a hike I noticed the trail was covered with a large quantity of acorns. Must be a regional difference.
[Insert pithy quote here]
It's no mystery.
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.
I live in St. John's, NL, Canada, and there's an oak behind my house that produced a perfectly normal amount of acorns this year.
Squirrels are just rats with good PR.
Squirrel!
Plenty of acorns in Houston. One would think IKE to have been a problem but perhaps it helped out.
Oak Tree Behaviour 101:
Periodically, often in response to an unusually warm and wet period, oak trees will have a mast year. In the mast year acorn production is immensely increased; reports often say exponentially increased, but in my anecdotal experience I'd say about triple normal acorn production. It's normal for the mast year to affect a region rather than individual trees (though you sometimes see it in isolated specimens too) and that's the primary reason to believe this is triggered by weather.
Effects on predators of acorns are reasonably predictable and work to the oak forest's advantage; squirrel populations boom during the mast and then bust the following year when the oaks are recovering from their unusually high energy expenditure and produce little or no acorn yield.
So; in summary: while it's certainly possible that climate change has triggered this particular event, it's normal for oak trees to have occasionally high regional acorn production fluctuations, and it's normal for the squirrels to be starving and freaking out when acorn production is low or nil. No need to panic.
Posting as AC because slashdot frequently refuses to let me be myself. Login, not logged in, still forced to post AC.
produced 4 large yard trash bags full of acorns just from the 400 sq foot parking pad which is located under its branches and perhaps covers 20% of the total area under its branches. While last year it produced about 5 to 10% of that.
I figure that this single tree produced between 400 and 800 pounds of acorns this year! Based on having to pick up the bags I shoveled them into from the parking pad.
The difference was a months long drought the year before and then this year we were consistently above seasonal average rainfalls through the entire year.
My other oak trees were also putting out acorns in heavy volumes this year in contrast to last.
When trees are feeling unstressed, they put energy into reproduction. When they are stressed, they focus on self-preservation.
I call bullsh*t on this one. There have been so many damn acorns around that the javelina are making a hell of a mess. Oh, wait, did you mean those ballot stuffing morons?
I own an orchard filled with nut and fruit trees so I thought someone who actually knew what they were talking about should reply to the idiotioc article. Nut trees, like Oaks, vary from year to year in their productivity. Weather does play a part in that (there are a number of other factors though). Last year we had a severe drought here in my area of Missouri and there were almost no acorns. The game wardens I talked to were hoping for a large deer harverst during deer season to minimize the number of deer that starved because of it. This year, however, we had more rain and the ground is absolutely covered with acorns and other nuts.
The guy who wrote the article may be in an area with low nut production this year as may many other people. But, that is not a sign of the end of the world. It has always been that way and it always will.
They think if they steal all the acorns, Obama will lose his charismatic powers.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
I think the missing acorns have been arrested by the FBI/DHS for alleged voter fraud.
Could this be due to the missing bees?
We've had a bumper crop this year of acorns, chestnuts, and pecans. Especially pecans because of the drought the insect population that normally eats them is way down.
I am Homer of Borg, resistance is - Ooo Donuts!
We get people who at least seems to have asked others vs a single you. If you were smarter you would understand the irony in your statement. A lone observer complaining about a lone observer.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I live in central Texas, and my in-laws have a place out in the hill country. We have gotten tons of acorns this year... more than normal. The d@$# things have been falling on the metal roof all fall, and it sounds like firecrackers going off all night. Theres so many acorns that some parts of the ground are covered an inch thick! No worries on a global acorn shortage... they still exist.
Plenty of acorns from the tree across the street from me. Oh and by the way its been a record cold year too .so dont belive all the BS that your being fed
Not just planetary cycles, we are at solar minimum(the least active time in the Sun's 11 year cycle). It is plain that this would have a great effect on those organisms that receive their energy from directly from the sun. It is obvious that this would have a greater effect in the norther reaches where less of the sun's received by the plants.
"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
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.
I need a rest between naps some days
Eh, at least it's only oak trees and their turn against squirrels...Just imagine if they decided to create some biological air borne agent against humanity!?
//Nothing to see here, please move along.
The article says they disappeared across the COUNTY, not the entire Country.
...I can't walk without stepping on them. Oaks and Sycamores are happy in Essex Junction, VT
maybe this has something to do with all of the bee's disappearing? http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/02/26/business/bees.php
The election's over!
What ever happened to all of the killer bees?
Every acorn in the entire country is on the one big tree that is over the roof of my house.
*thunk* Thousands *thunk* of *thunk* them *thunk*. The acorns hitting the roof are going to drive me crazy!
I've got some really fat squirrels out there.
Anecdotal, yes, but it does prove that not all the acorns are gone.
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
Last year I gathered Valley Oak (Q. lobata) acorns that were practically ankle deep from one tree, but then managed to kill ALL 152 of the seedlings that I was propagating for a project I'm working on. This year, that tree had NONE (dammit). The five-year-old Holm Oak (Q. Ilex) in my yard, OTOH, is having its first mast year. This is normal. Up on the family farm in Oregon, all the hickories seem to be producing normally. If this is widespread on the eastern seaboard, expect some major disasters right up the food chain. A squirrel's prime duty is feeding owls, &c. The deer also depend on acorns to prepare for winter, so this could be a very bad year. TFA seems to indicate an anomalous condition, which (I guess) is likely due to badly timed rain.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
Oaks don't always produce acorns every year..more like every other year. These anecdotal reports are made by ignorant retards. If you want some acorns just come to my house. I have plenty for all the world.
I live in Apalachin, NY - sort of an outskirt of the metropolis of Binghamton, NY. One of my oak trees this year produced more acorns than the 3 oaks in my yard typically produce in a year combined. It was absolutely amazing. We raked up buckets-full of acorns and acorn-related debris (left behind by our now amazingly fat squirrels and chipmunks) several times this fall.
We're hunkering down for what we predict to be a long winter.
From the age of 5-30, I grew up with an oak tree in our garden. It was perhaps 100-150 years old). Every year I lived there, it had loads of acorns. They fell and rotted, and/or were eaten by squirrels, but none ever germinated.
Then one year, about 5 years ago, it looked like every single acorn that hit the ground germinated. There were thousands of 1-2 inch oaks growing in and around the shade of the parent tree. It totally freaked me out. I've never seen anything like that before or since. I still wonder what was the cause.
The bees took them!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
The gall-causing thingies are different from the acorn-killing thingies. Excuse my nomenclature, I haven't studied them much, except incidentally, in the field.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I had to use a snow shovel to pick them all up. I never saw so many damn acorns. Bloody mess!
Here in Tulsa, none of the pecan trees in our backyard produced any pecans this year, though we had a bumper crop last year. They were big enough to be edible. I collected about 20 pounds but could have collected a lot more. The park near our house used to be a pecan orchard and it too has no pecans this year. I don't know why. I suspected it was because of the terrible ice storm we had last year damaging the trees, but someone told me that sometimes after a bumper crop they don't produce.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
Really?
I wish someone had told my oak tree it wasn't producing any acorns this year. Might have saved me the annoyance of sweeping my driveway weekly to get rid of the acorns crunched under my cars' tires every time one is parked.
Bet my parents would like to know this too - they say they've never seen so many acorns in their yard - a sure sign of a hard winter coming, my mother assures me.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Plenty of acorns on my property. They bug the crap out of me actually because they sprout easily and quickly turn into a root mass -> shrub -> tree in inconvenient places. I wish the squirrels and rats would get them ALL.
Last year we had a tremendous amount, this year none.
Regular Meta Moderators are not more likely to get mod points.
...here in Mid-Michigan and lots of fat squirrels.
it's all about cycles..
We have an average crop of acorns this year here..
But last year... we had more acorns and hickory nuts than I've seen in 5+ years.. some idiot wanted a variance to cut down an old growth hickory tree cause he was too lazy to sweep the nuts from his sidewalk... and threatened to sue the area if a family member tripped over the large amt of nuts in the future...
....meanwhile in northern California, I have been cursing at the excess amount of acorns dropping on my roof and hitting my door. There are too many for the squirrels in the immediate area to gather and I nearly slip to my death each morning as I step beyond my porch.
Perhaps this is some mysterious nature cycle similar to rain; it seems to drought in some areas while it floods in others.
Some guy is worried because he can't find his nuts? Am I supposed to care?
Seriously, though, it's no big deal; just that a lot of people all noticed, at the same time, that we don't have a ton of acorns every year.
These trees don't produce every year; sometimes their cycles align so that they all produce in the same year and you have an insane amount of acorns, sometimes they align so that few or none of them produce and you have, you guessed it, no acorns.
Take two sine waves of slightly differing frequencies, overlay them, and watch how they interact. Now, add them together and look at the result.
I've noticed a steady decline in acorn output in my area over the last few years. Because I also noticed a steady increase in acorn output in the preceding years, I'm able to hypothesize that this is part of a natural cycle and I'm not worried about it. If it continues next year, I'll worry a little. Two years from now, I'll worry a lot if this is still an issue.
Until then, it's part of a cycle.
Do people really worry 120 times per second (100 in some parts of the world) that their electricity has gone out? If not, I suspect we don't have to worry that our oak trees have gone out, either. Let's drop it before the price of nuts goes through the fucking roof; some of us have vegetarians to feed and nuts are a cheap source of good protein.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Anyone who isn't scared is not paying attention, IMHO. Mutating fungus scares the shit out of me. If the bee troubles get much worse, I think we can write off a significant percentage of the human population also. BTW there is some new red rust fungus bipping around western Asia that could very well doom the majority of the grain-dependent populations of the world as well. John Christopher wrote a book "No Blade of Grass" that explored that scenario.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
If you had ever eaten squirrel and sausage gumbo, you would know that this is a BIG DEAL.
Seriously, it is a big deal for squirrels and other wildlife depending on them from Ohio to Southern New England and some parts of Virginia, isolated reports from Texas and Arkansas. Could be a statistical fluke, some folks at the forum were reporting back-to back bad years. That could be a fluke, too. If it persists, it probably isn't a fluke.
What's wrong with identifying climate change as a cause? It happens naturally, too. Late Pleistocene climates were radically different from the present all over North America. If the apparent warming trend continues, it's going to get real different. If, however, they are a simple prelude to the reassertion of Late Pleistocene climate, expect things to get really, really different, and maybe pretty fast link.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
I hunt in south Georgia and this year's acorn "crop" on our land has been a lot more plentiful than recent years.
I'm in central Maryland and I can report there are plenty of acorns here (we have some oak trees at work, they drop acorns all over the sidewalks and parking lot)
http://www.news.ucdavis.edu/search/news_detail.lasso?id=8413&title=California%27s%20Bumper%20Crop%20of%20Acorns
I for one welcome our squirrel overlords.
Neutiquam erro
This year in the middle of NC we have more acorns than I have ever seen in my life. So many that I had to clear my driveway as it was difficult to drive in and out.
We've had news stories about how many freaking acorns there are this year in the area.
And now the Squirrels? Holy crap Doctor, where are you when we need you?
You are redundant and parent is funny? pfff..
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I'm sorry guys. This is my fault. I have two young children, and they find these acorns, stuff them in their pockets and bring them home. We'll bring them back--- we didn't know this would cause a panic.
But on a serious note-- my anecdotal evidence will counter your anecdotal evidence. I have seen many acorns here in Berkeley, CA and on the California Central Coast. In October we were playing with acorns in Madison, Wisconsin.
If you want to be taken seriously, do a methodical survey, and compare this year's results against last year's results. I've read that Oak trees will sometimes produce alot of acorns, and will sometimes only produce a few.
"Can of worms? The can is open... the worms are everywhere."
As mentioned by others the Bees are going too.. but one thing I've noticed is the lack of worms. I live in New England and when I was younger you'd always see tons of worms on the street/sidewalks after it rained. I haven't seen a worm in at least 5 years now.
Well said.
If you want your life to be different, live it differently.
I live on the Mississippi gulf coast and the acorns are a pain in the ass. There are so many falling on mydriveway and getting smushed by my suburban (oh horrors, he drives a suburban) that my wife has to sweep and hose it off every other day. And as far as I'm concerned, squirrels are tree rats.
All your nuts are belong to us
Look, you right wing nuts, Obama is the next President so enough with the ACORN stuff! Let's get to the REAL issues, like Global Warming!
Don't trust a bull's horn, a doberman's tooth, a runaway horse or me.
The only trace of the squirrels found was a hastily-scribbled note reading "so long and thanks for all the acorns".
I live in the west end of Toronto, and just last week I noted that there seemed to be more than the usual number of acorns underfoot in the blocks surrounding my house.
It could have been a dip in the consumer population. Normally most of the crop goes away to someone's larder, squirrels, jays, &c. If a Mast year overwhelms the locals, (or a particularly ambitious housepet) then they lay on the ground and germinate. It works out well since an acorn buried by a jay and left uneaten may be in a sunnier spot. There is a moth larva infesting the oaks on our family farm, and other than mast years, the only acorns that make it to the ground are non-viable. The jays, woodpeckers, and squirrels have skills- that is, I see them shake an acorn, and somehow discern what the insides are like. The ones they toss to the ground invariably have a worm or shriveled meat.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
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.
It's a shame, frankly, that this discussion got hijacked early on by a global warming denier, because the story itself is the real story here.
If you look at the linked discussion group, what you have is a bunch of people posting in a thread about how they see something happening local to them, and the same event happens across the nation. While a few other people chime in with the evidence that it's not happening near them, the conclusion is drawn that this is a "wide spread problem."
However, this is really just like support groups for bulimics, white power groups, child porn perverts, crazy people who think that fibers are growing under their skin, etc. (if you'll forgive the almost Godwin-invoking list of examples here).
What you have is a bunch of people who are experiencing something abnormal who, in the absence of the internet, would be forced to normally conclude that what they are experiencing isn't typical and go on about their lives. With advent of the internet, however, these people are able to cobble together into groups to share their experiences and convince each other that what's going on really IS a big deal. In the case of the above groups, they all convince each other that their deviant behavior or insanity is *normal*, and they all reinforce their normally marginal beliefs with references to other people experiencing the same thing.
You see this also with partisan politics or alternative medicine, where people create entire net *communities* of alternative reality where "mainstream" facts are replaced with an underground information economy of half-truths and self-deceptions. "Homeopathy cured me where modern medicine couldn't!" "Barack Obama is a secret Muslim!" "Bush and Cheney have set up a shadow government to take over if they lose the election!" (ca. 2004) "Aspartame causes toxic formaldehyde buildup!" (And yes, "Global warming is caused by the sun!" I can't resist getting *that* dig in.) Instead of true facts from science and history, you have entire alternative webs of "facts" that allow people to reinforce delusional beliefs.
The failure of the media here is kind of a side effect of the legitimization of bloggers who often eat up this kind of stuff. This is totally a blogger-type story. Some guy reads something on the internet and says, "zomg! did u here that? i gotta lj bout it!" and then brain-dumps some vapid rumor-mongering about how people are seeing starving squirrels and empty trees across the nation (as if it's the *entire* nation). Add an interview with a token local sciency-type person, and you've ratcheted up the "journalistic credibility" to bona fide newspaper levels -- at least for "science" "journalism," anyway.
Bah. This is a non-story. The story here is the story itself and how sad it is that this is getting reported.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
at least the dolphins haven't (yet) disappeared. Then we'd be doomed!
[so long and thanks for all the squirrels]
Those of us who think they know everything annoy those of us who do.
Details Here:
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/42363
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
I don't even want to park at a friend's house because she has so many acorns falling from her oak trees.
Sorry, but I'd like to mention: I planted a Holm Oak (Q. Ilex)in my Northern California yard a few years back. It's a Mediterranean evergreen, so it should do well here. I'd read that these had low tannin. Well, this was a mast year, so rather than save them all to propagate, I tried eating one fresh off the tree. SWEET! No leaching tannin like an Indian, I'll be harvesting these like a white man in a supermarket. The Bluejays seem to approve as well.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
They seem to not have to worry about surviving like those annuals - wonder why.
Here is something on oak pollination:
http://danr.ucop.edu/ihrmp/oak96.htm
"... Studies of other oak species have shown that the male flowers do not open and release pollen unless humidity drops below 45% for several hours. In 1998, many of the trees flowered during a period of rainy weather and subsequently produced no acorns. Amount of solar radiation received during the pollination period was positively correlated with acorn production in this year. We additionally found evidence that the size of the prior yearâ(TM)s acorn crop influences acorn yields. Trees that produce large numbers of acorns in one year may not have the resources to produce a large crop in the subsequent year."
Perennials are wonderful when it comes to soil erosion prevention but they just don't have to produce fruit to survive all the time, so they don't - selfish things.
Je me souviens.
People?! Really? The Republicans got rid of most of them. What was left just disbursed, after they got their man elected.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
Good summary
I found a free PDF version of the article, if anyone is interested.
From page 11: ... and with dry season rain three years previous."
"Acorn production by the red oak [turkey oak] had the greatest [correlation] with precipitation. Numbers of acorns per ramet were negatively associated with wet season (July) rainfall two years previous and with rainfall during the dry season (October through May) three years previous in each association where this oak occurred. Similarly, the combined acorn crops of [turkey oaks] from all associations correlated negatively with wet season (July) rainfall two years previous
"Acorn production of the white oak [Chapman oak] was positively correlated in at least one association with rainfall during the preceding late dry season (March) and negatively with rainfall during the preceding July. Acorn production by this oak in all associations combined was positively correlated with precipitation during the preceding dry season... Similar to [Chapman oak], the other white oak [sand live oak] showed a negative relationship with the previous year's July rainfall in scrub and a positive correlation with September rainfall one year previous ... when all associations were combined."
However, the paper found that sandhill oak and myrtle oak has a positive correlation between rainfall and acorn production. Even so, in the article they talk about strong rains this year in Washington, and there is a possibility that that might be related to the problem there. Who knows?
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Somewhere there's a squirrel who was ridiculed by all the other squirrels for stockpiling acorns last year... but who's laughing now?????
This phenomenon is not a mystery and it's surprising none of the naturalists interviewed knew what was going on, which I learned on a nature hike in the Catskills recently. The oak trees send out a hormone that allows a coordinated survival mechanism where they all withhold acorn production at the same time, and they do this in order to control the squirrel population. This has been documented in a study in Pennsylvania where students ground up a huge amount of oak leaves from an area that had no acorn production and dispersed the leaves in another area where then the following year the trees did not produce acorns. It's usually the following year where there is a huge bumper crop of acorns way beyond what the now diminished population of squirrels could not possibly consume.
I fully agree, so let me correct my "we the people" by narrowing it down to "we the people, with an education, an understanding(however basic) of the science behind the principles, and an ability to understand the science(a decent IQ)." I would point out that while we agree on 99% of this, I don't think one needs to be fully invested to realize that something major is going on here. There are so many problems, in every ecosystem, in every part of the world, that I think we can agree on the existence of a big problem. We can argue, or discuss the causation, however ignoring the problem is not an acceptable answer here. I for one have not read the IPCC report, only summaries, and I have not spent months and months devoted to studying the climate data. I do believe, however, I am educated enough on the matter to see a problem exists, and I believe we(mankind) are causing said problem; or at the very least, worsening it. Also, while I am a proponent of using one's own judgment, not proposing I know more or better than said experts, and would readily defer to those experts on the matter. I think, or would hope, my judgment would allow me to filter out those viewpoints that are not merited on data, and therefore flawed. And that is the crux of my first post: rational people should be able to evaluate the information experts provide and draw their own conclusions. We should be able to determine between those who(whom?) are working to solve/understand the problem in a scientific way, rather than those spouting nonsense based on emotion, religion, or oil company money!
Member of American Sarcasm Society - Motto: "Like we need your help!"
There are two squirrels that need a new home up here in the pacific northwest, I will warn you ahead of time that they like to build nests under the hood of cars, so it your car goes up in flames, like mine did, don't say I didn't warn you.
Live oak trees in S. FL. have dropped lots of acorns this year. Walk down my neighbors driveway lined with mature live oak trees and hear the crunch of acorns under foot.
Maybe the sunspot minimum has something to do with this up north. FL live oaks don't drop leaves in the winter BTW.
There are plenty of acorns in Brooklyn.
I can't imagine a situation where acorn production shuts down globally except for a city so polluted as Brooklyn, NY.
As far as I'm concerned, this is no cause for alarm. Now, if all of the sudden, all the bees disappear, well, then you've got something.
This whole story is nutz
"Computers are a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"
My father and I were just commenting over the Thanksgiving holiday that there are more acorns around his house and mine than in recent years.. a LOT more. Our squirrel population is exploding. We've been raking them up and throwing them in sealed garbage cans.
Maybe they should come to my house and collect them for the sparse areas? :)
I've lived in the same house (U.S., Midwest) for 24 years. We noticed this year that we hardly had a single acorn when usually they coat the driveway... I personally haven't come across one yet. Along the same lines, we have very few black walnuts too. I'd say less than a few percent of what is normal. So, after a quarter century of these same trees producing the same quantities, this year was a real surprise. Also to note: we have our first-ever gray squirrel hanging around our property. All of our squirrels have been light brown, decade after decade.
Nice smart-ass tag, but it's practically true, due to light pollution.
If you can't see the stars, they are effectively 'out'. Sad. Especially since we only need a tiny fraction of the night lighting currently used.
you had me at #!
My neighbor's huge old black walnut tree has littered my yard with a -ton- of walnuts every year I've lived here (7 years). Not only have there always been the large black squishy fruits but the squirrels make a real mess cracking them open. This year there have been very very few nuts - I've seen only a dozen or two. The squirrels seem to have moved on to nuttier pastures as I've seen far fewer of the furry little nuisances this year. I wonder if this is somehow related to the acorn shortage? Ponderous.
Though not an expert, I might expect that an acorn is a distant cousin to "traditional" corn, thus deriving the definiton "not-corn," or "a-corn," although their nonexistence in said specific instances might hint at some larger force at work. Clearly, it's all Nicole Kidman's fault.
"But seriously dude, what is that in the radiator?"
My personal yard oak tree put out plenty of acorns this year. Enough for me to smash and look at the little "cheese" in the middle and take some back to my dorm to throw at my boyfriend's friends.
Oops.
Could it be related to the missing bees?
Nope. We got Acorns, and Deer, and squirrels.
But for some reason i cant find any Oak trees.. THERE ALL GONE!
Go go Gadget Nailgun!
makes my dog happy... She eats them like candy.
The President of the Squirrels has announced his government's plan to buyout all the toxic Oak companies in order to stabilize the squirrel economy. When asked how the government would pay for this he responded "We have a national plan to look more cute and cuddly for the tourists to our great nation in order to increase our revenue for the year. This will allow us to buyout all these bad Oaks and ensure that our Acorn supply is not affected."
As far as the global warming thing, it can never hurt to be more enviromentally conscious, however we can't go completely nuts and shaft ourselves. There's a lot of things happening that not even global warming can just explain off in one shot. We're seeing record ice growth in the arctic right now ( http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/ ) but that's not exactly something you're ever going to see in the news. The fact of the matter is no one knows what the hell is going on. Should humans do their best to curtail enviromental damage, absolutely, and I don't think anyone would argue the point, but everything in moderation. If we went with some of the plans some of the global warming hacks (who are about as braindead as the PETA morons) want, we'd cripple our entire civilization and tank what was left of our economy (not that that would take a whole lot of effort at this point).
Hammy from the movie "Over the Hedge", Scrat from the movie "Ice Age" and their friends must have gone crazy and collected all the acorns across the US to their huge stores somewhere.
I Like Bacon!
I don't have oaks at our place but at the oak trees I know I didn't see any shortage and I would have noticed as I collected acorns since my goal is to have some here. Most likely it is isolated anomalies.
Personally,I have a sneaking suspicion this guy is involved http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/images/squirrel_nuts_1.jpg ..Squirrel Nuts
when logic fails, bullshit prevails
I call BS, since here in Arkansas, we had an abnormally excessive amount of acorns on all oak trees and a likewise ridiculous amount of hickory nuts as well.
If I remember correctly, birth weight and multiple births are contingent on a good acorn harvest.
The author of the story should drive a hundred or so miles southwest of their Arlington County. Around here the acorns, hickory nuts, walnuts and other tree fruit were heavily abundant. More and larger fruits than most anyone can remember. Last year and this year were both exceptional drought years in this area too. I'd assume that had something to do with it.
Last year we heard about pollinators (honeybees) mysteriously vanishing and this year there are no acorns (products of pollination). This doesn't explain anything though since most oaks will self-pollinate. It may be a contributing factor, however.
Only his tendency toward a dazed stupor prevented him from screaming aloud.
Obama won... no more need for ACORN at all. (ducks)
Usually I have a ton of squishy rotten apples in my yard right around Halloween, but this year I didn't have to pick up any.
I'm not sure if the Utah climate was just weird this year.
...I live in Australia, you insensitive clod!
;)
They called ACORN a fraud and a threat to democracy, with the implication that their next stop is Gitmo -- so naturally the acorns went into hiding until next year when a more acorn-friendly administration is in office. You geeks just over-analyze everything.
Development is programmable; Discovery is not programmable. (Fuller)
...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.
If by "Solar Record" you mean the sunspot cycle, it is in direct agreement with the increase in warming trends with the latter half of the 20th Century. The number of sunspots is 70% higher on average in the latter half of the last century compared to the first half, and even through comparable time periods in the 19th Century as well. As well, the number of days without sunspots is markedly lower throughout every cycle in the latter half of the 20th Century. Only this year, 2008, the sunspots are down dramatically, along with global temps. Will this be a prolonged trends? I don't know, and can't speculate, but I will be keeping an eye out for a continuing coincidence between sunspots and temperatures. Scientists are only now discovering the link between the solar wind generation and sunspots, as well as a possible mechanism between the solar wind and energy transference to the troposphere.
Impetuous! Homeric!
Lots of acorns in the woods on my mother's place. She lives in the Missouri Ozarks. I guess this is opposite of Chicken Little. "NO ACORNS FELL ON MY HEAD! The Environment's doomed!"
Was in northwest florida over thanksgiving (near destin,fl) , and the live-oaks had a ridiculous amount of acorns, so much that your shoes were cakes in acorn mush. Way more than I think I have ever seen, when growing up there.
meh
how this relates to man-bear-pig?
In areas where they are not finding any acorns, perhaps it isn't that none are being produced. Perhaps the boom of squirrel population along with an bust year of low production has produced such extreme competition for any food source that every acorn produced is quickly found & consumed. Maybe even a bit on the green side if the squirrels are desperate enough.
For all we know, they are consuming the young oak tree shoots too.
All your acorn are belong to us!
I don't think so. It's certainly true that acorn production is cyclic but this has been a good acorn year on my property in N California.
We have tons of acorns. I like the squirrels, and watch their behavior every year as the acorns become available and the squirrels start stashing them away.
There are so many acorns lying about that the squirrels aren't collecting them all; they're busily at work, but not making a real dent in the number of fallen acorns available. Crushed acorns all over the place.
Now what I _am_ worried about are the pecans that should have been profuse this year. The two pecan trees we enjoy every second year (usually) are absolutely empty.
I have more acorns than any region on the planet at this time. They are bombing my cars, my house, and I have a cushy layer of them to walk on in my yard.
My yard has such a bumper crop, that earlier this fall, a owl took up in the yard to kill all the squirrels who dared venture into my bumper crop.
Go figure...
"I've never understood why the group that believes we didn't do it think that means we can continue being oblivious."
That's because you haven't been listening. They don't think we "can continue being oblivious". They think something more like "our influence on the situation is insignificant" or "you there, with the ego, you're very funny".
All those ships we put in the ocean, they impact the tides, right? I mean, obviously, they displace water. Some of them displace many tons of water. Eek! High Tide! No shipping for a while! Hey, the tide went down, looks like we fixed it!
The alarm of climate change is based on the idea that positive feedback mechanisms will cause the climate to spin wildly out of control, that there's some "tipping point", and doom, doom, doom!
This is inconsistent with everything we know. Climate is dominated by negative feedback mechanisms. If you don't understand what I'm saying here, you don't deserve to participate in the conversation until you've come up to speed.
As for solar shades and other ideas.... Suppose we somehow managed to pull off something like that, and created a situation in which we have significant impact on climate. Who runs the thing? Politicians? A corporation? Majority vote, like the thermostat in the office? How secure is the system? What about maintenance?
Explanation: the dutch word for acorn is 'eikel' which also means the tip of a man's p*n*s, and is commonly used to refer to d*ckheads.
The !@#$!@#$ things were so thick under my trees I was scooping them up with a snow shovel to stop from sliding around on the ball-bearing like objects.
The far-reaching one : mayans where right, something terribly is coming for 2012 ... as most and most people are realizing
The not-so-irrational one : no one really understands the relationship between solar cycles and the living biota on earth ... saw one strangely correlated graph on Tufte's Vusual Display of Quantitative Information between stock market's movements and solar power's net intensity
The casual one : with all those strange and (biological effect-wise) untested chemicals released in the environment in the last half-century, it's no small wonder that nature as a whole (which started to be noticed a while ago with the frogs and other amphibians) is beginning to react
For the Mayan Calendar thingy, one could wonder why so many civilizations started their calendar count between 3500BC and 3500BC ...
Revelation 6:1-8, Sciuridae James Bible
And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see.
And I saw, and behold a white squirrel: and he that sat on him had a bow; and a crown was given unto him: and he went forth conquering, and to conquer.
And when he had opened the second seal, I heard the second beast say, Come and see.
And there went out another squirrel that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.
And when he had opened the third seal, I heard the third beast say, Come and see. And I beheld, and lo a black squirrel; and he that sat on him had a pair of balances in his hand.
And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts say, A measure of wheat for a penny, and three measures of barley for a penny; and see thou hurt not the oil and the wine.
And when he had opened the fourth seal, I heard the voice of the fourth beast say, Come and see.
And I looked, and behold a pale squirrel: and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him. And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth.
-
- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
Could it bee? What pollinates oaks? Perhaps a CCD-like ailment is happening to the oak pollinators as well. And, perhaps a CCD-related mechanism is responsible. Designer pesticides?! Thanks, Monsanto! (NOT!)
Self-importance and self-indulgence is the root of ALL evil.
It's potentially disastrous.
If you just assume that every bad thing that happens in nature was caused by global warming then you're most likely going to over look any solutions to the problem.
It's not a safe assumption.