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."

Comments

I blame the internet -- weird experiences united.

[Valdrax]

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.