The zero acorn problem

Well, here in East Texas we are having a bumper crop of acorns. I've never seen so many. The ground under some trees is completely covered with acorns. I speculate its because we just had a year of normal rainfall after several years of drought, and the trees are making up for lost time.
Some years are good for crops, some years are a bust. I bet its just one of those bust years for Virginia. Tough on the squirrels, but probably not a sign of global doom.

We have acorns in central Washington State. But it is more than a bit odd that there would be any 'zero acorns' or 'zero hickory nuts' regions.

If it will make you feel better, the squirrels on our Quad are in danger of obesity-related diseases. I see them staggering around with more acorns than they can handle. And, french fries and cookies too. They're cute, and students like to feed them.

Our Texas Garden Guru Neil Sperry said the other day that all nut trees (in this country at least) especially pecans and oaks, tend to have one very productive year and one lean or even non productive year. All the trees in a given area seem to match up their schedules. So, I bet the no acorn places will have plenty next year.

probably a lot of storm at the time pollination took place in the Virginia area. We have a small orchard and when a storm comes through and knocks out the blooms, they knock out the whole crop.

The good thing is that next year you'll probably have a bumper crop as the trees haven't had to put all that energy into growing nuts...alot of trees go through a boom and bust cycle...likely last year had a big crop and this one would have been weaker and got an extra knock-out punch from the weather.

Odd that there are no acorns in Virginia. Here in central Maryland I've been lifting them from the rain gutters in double handfulls. The squirrels are so fat they can hardly cross the road. My Dad says the oaks only produce in alternate years and in fact I remember having very few acorns last year. We still had more than enough squirrels.

The technical term is "mast year":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mast_year

It's not a catastrophe (unless you're a squirrel), at least not yet.

Deer and black bears also rely on acorns. Bears need the protein to help them get through the winter.

Well. We got both squirrels and acorns in W. Tennessee. Big ones on both. The squirrels here take my cats on regularly in fights. They want to eat them and the squirrels want the right to just be left alone.

My son was home for college break and told me to come quick I wouldnt believe it. Sure enough I run to the back door and look at the back yard. One of those fluffy acorn crackers and a friend were chasing one of my smaller cats across the yard. Its one of those wish you had a video camera things. I am ready for it next time because no one would believe it.

Revere, there has been a drought in E. TN, VA, GA, SC, NC and MD for about the last 4 or 5 years. If the trees dont bud due to lack of water they dont make the acorns. If they dont get it during their building phase they drop the immature acorn and try to last the season.

Its been raining like crazy there since mid-August up and down the E. Seaboard. Snow too. I looked at the drought report and its just about broken even in N. Georgia. So how about a revisit in the springtime on this one and lets see what we get. I would be very interested if the trees DONT bud out and more, what they do in the Fall.

My cousin is the dept head of Fisheries and Wildlife at Oregon. He has his doubts about the levels they are talking.

http://fw.oregonstate.edu/About%20Us/personnel/faculty/edge.htm

He is also a forester. Natural cycles can be interrupted anywhere along the way with a naturally occurring event. Ice storms, high winds blowing the buds off, anything that stresses a tree. But he also doubted that the lack of acorns would be as pronounced as is suggested. The mast year thing does happen but its rarely a tree event. He cited the plague of rats that follow a "mast year" event for bamboo. They feed on the flowers and you dont get acorns, you get millions of rats.

Here is the reference to that lack of acorns study.

http://it.moldova.org/stiri/eng/168983/

It's because all the acorns were out committing voter fraud. At least I think that's what Rush said. The radio had a lot of static.

The cycles of nature can be interesting.

Last year was a mast year here in the Sierra foothills. I have about a 1/4 acre lot with 22 oak trees on it. I had to celar up about 300 pounds of acorns last year. I didn't get all of them, Now I have hundreds of weedy oak saplings to deal with.

This season, hardly any acorns at all.

Cycles, cycles, cycles..,

in the parklands of se minnesota and forests of nw wisconsin where i spend lots of my free time 2008 acorns are very sparse but squirrels, bear and deer are doing ok raiding fields of black sunflower.

I live in Michigan, I haven't seen a acorn in at least 3 years. I asked my son who takes long walks to see if he had seen any. There just aren't any around. I noticed that our squirrels were much thinner than they had been. After the damage they have done to my gardens, I wouldn't mourn the loss of any of the squirrels, though.

Red oaks only have acorns every two years. White oaks every year.
If the reds have a bad winter or are stressed, they will lose the acorn bud for the next fall. White oaks lose their acorns every year and therefor are less pron to missing harvests.
We solved our lack of acorns problem by planting both kinds of oaks so we have acorns every year with bumper crops every two years.

gypsy moths have killed thousands of oak trees here in western maryland..very little acorns here..

Revere-I was wondering if you were going to comment on the "Emailgate" coming out of Penn State, and East Anglia in the UK. This is the one that I think a jury even in its most dimwitted of minds would indict some people presented with what I am reading.

I like you can read the information out there and this is getting into the realm of deliberately skewing data. If true it represents a conspiracy spanning at least 23 countries. 3 or 4 PM's resigned in Australia this week in disgust. I have read quite a few of these emails and started wondered if these guys have ever heard of habeas corpus.

I havent seen any of these emails that are copied or sent to/from to Al Gore but the smoking gun hasnt finished firing just yet. All that is needed in the US is probable cause and the Republican leadership is all over it ...Naturally.

I would rather them produce a finding and then let it be put before the AG and then decide whether to indict first as this affects everyone on this planet. If GW is a fact then we are simply waiting for the earth to turn for the end to come.

Better in my mind is to answer the simple question: Did they skew data to produce a "problem" that would net certain individuals millions and billions? How far up does it go? And here is the 64 billion dollar question... What did the President know and when did he know it? Which damned President(s) at that?
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Seems they now have a much, much bigger problem. They dumped the original data for their calculations but kept only the tapes that contained their GW conclusions.

My read is simple. Drop back ten yards and punt, get EVERYONE in on the action this time and before we spend one trillion to retool and build. Then lets get a real consensus from the biggest badasses on the subject, pro, con, neutral and then make a plan that doesnt play to peoples thinking that polar bears are drowning. They are, but its not from lack of ice... its the storms crushing them in ice flows.

I have never been an anti-GW person. Far from it. I have only requested them to PROVE IT . I am more than educated in weather data collection from Embry Riddle/USAF and for me it never passed the smell test. Even when caught skewing programs NASA went back and skewed it again and then tried to say it was a smoothing of the data. It countered the raw data for just simple syllogical reasoning.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6936328.ece

http://www.natice.noaa.gov/ims/loop/ak-1mo-loop.html

I reiterate now since my last time that the Ruskies say we will be down by almost 1.5 degrees by 2030. It would seem that they are holding their information a bit tight to their chests too. I do know that they have very, very few wind and solar projects underway so....Do they know something we dont?

For me, when it takes til September 28th of 09 to melt the ice out of Hudson Bay which was completely frozen this past winter, I think we might just want to "read the bill" before we jump for a change. We have done enough knee jerking for both sides of the aisle. Its time for the people to make their own determinations and plans. We cant trust any of them.

Its not climate change denial when the evidence is mounting that something was not right in this "idea" and how it was presented. But before anyone goes slapping the Reveres about their position on this, let me say something first. Reasonable people make reasonable decisions when presented with "facts". Those "facts" clearly pointed to a rising sea and air temp. I countered more than once about instrumentations, computer programs and in particular the bozo's who had control of the programming and that the facts didnt add up. The EU and Ruskies satellites pointed out more than once that areas they said were warming were actually dropping like rocks in places... Eg. the Arabian Sea, the Cape Verdes areas.

That programming was questioned before Obama took office by at least three senators that I know personally. Then there was an administration change. This isnt something that they can hide now if there is something going on. The peers will tear them apart and that would be Revere if in their minds they feel they were misled. So, pause before hitting the keys to explode on this issue.

Let us know what you think Revere(s).

Randy: As I explained to moldbug I can't afford to do it at this moment. But I am doing with it what I do with flu. Wait for the dust to settle as there is still much to be sorted out. If you want to know what the other side is saying (I'm not optimistic, but I offer it to you) you can look at scienceblogs.com front page. Some of my sciblings were involved and their emails are included. RealClimate also has the other side from what you are reading. Meanwhile my life doesn't have room for this at the moment. My wife's mother died last week and we are still coping with the aftermath. You can see more of my response at last week's Freethinker comment thread with moldbug and his followers.