# Why the Frogs Are Dying



## Blort (Feb 5, 2005)

> *Why the Frogs Are Dying*
> Climate change is no longer merely a matter of numbers from a computer model. With startling swiftness, it is reordering the natural world.


http://msnbc.msn.com/id/15176444/site/newsweek/

Looks like the cover of this week's Newsweek is of interest. Still reading the article myself.


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## rozdaboff (Feb 27, 2005)

I have created a copy of this thread in the Lounge. I have also moved a couple of replies to this thread in there as well. If you have any comments about the article not related to the science it describes, feel free to post them in the Lounge. 

Thanks,

Oz


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

Interesting reading.. One thing I like to bring up in all the global warming debates is that no matter what is presumed we by no means understand the weather or weather trends of this planet we live on. Could this just a 100 or 1000 year trend... No one knows as there is not enough data to tell. I would also argue that the scientists that make some of these claims fail to admit that they really have very little proof to back of the gloom and doom claims they make. I remember a great Discovery channel show that was on years ago and the proved that global warming was directly related to where we take the temperature compared to 50 years ago. Then it was in a field and now its in a city or airport. In the show they ran tests showing the difference between the temperature in the country and the cities and it was almost exactly the same as the claimed global warming. Now that being said it may or may not be relevant to the article, but I think that many scientist look to prove things in relation to global warming. Much like statistics and how you ask the questions. So my point is that if you set out looking for a link between the decline and global warming you may find something, but is that the sole cause? Maybe not because only one angle was throughly investigated.

Ok now off my global warming rant, but I think we know very little about the weather in general and yet people love to make bold claims...

Now in relation to the issue I wonder if there could be other causes for the raised temperature in the region or if it could just be a issue of the fungus evolving itself. Maybe it was always around but like many other things is just evolving... Look at how our frogs adapt to our home made habitats.


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

I've been involved professionally as a scientist for about 30 years now. During my time in the field the subject that has gained the greatest amount of consensus among fellow scientists is evolutionary theory. Few other scientific topics or debates even come close to that level of consensus. Global climate change is one of them. But the critics of global climate change have been very affective at confusing the public about this consensus. Instead they focus on those areas within climate change research where there is no consensus and use those areas of debate and uncertainty to convince the public that the whole climate change thing is hogwash. Well it isn't. Here are the areas of consensus as I understand them. 1) The global temperature has been increasing since the late 19th century and the rate of increase is higher than any previous change that can be estimated indicates http://www.ghgonline.org/evidence.htm. Remember that glaciers that have persisted for 10's of thousands of years have dissapeared within a few decades. It's hard to chalk that up to a 100 or 1000 year cycle. There are other lines of evidence from ice cores that coraborate. 2) The concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have increased since pre-industrial times http://www.ghgonline.org/humaninfluence.htm. 3) Humans are emitting large amounts of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere which appears to be a major contributor to the rise in greenhouse gas concentrations. There really is no long any serious debate among scientists about these points. They past that point sometime in the mid 1990's. That's another thing the opponents of this idea like to do, parade ancient data and arguments that are no longer relevant.

What is still debated is the following: 1) Humans are responsible for global climate change. Although most scientists agree there is a "human signature" in the observed climate change, there is less consensus about how much humans are causing the observed changes. Although an overwhelming majority of the scientific community things that humans are the primary drivers of change. 2) There is no consensus on the consequences of climate change. In other words, predictive models about what will happen are all over the place because of the complexity of the systems and uncertainty about how they work. But almost all of the predictions are bad. They just vary in how bad and in what direction changes occur.

But the really relevant question is what do we do? Consider this. You are standing in the end zone of a football field and you look to the opposite goal and see a man pointing a gun in your direction. You have no evidence to be sure he is pointing at you or whether he intends to pull the trigger. Do you duck now, or should you wait until you hear the shot and have your proof? That's where we are now. We have consensus that things are changing. We have a pretty good guess that all the crap humans are pumping in the atmosphere is having something to do with the change. And we are pretty sure the change is going to mean something really bad for us. I think it is time for us to duck.

But this Nature paper came out last spring and is already being debated. As one would expect of a Nature paper, the science is very solid. The authors used multiple lines of evidence to build their case. And their conclusion was based on their inability to find an alternative explanation of the conditions they've measured in the cloud forests. I'm sure that as we speak, scientists are busy measuring and calculating away to figure out if there is some other way to explain what they've observed. Time will tell if they are successful.


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## kyle1745 (Feb 15, 2004)

Brent,

Very valid points, and don't think anyone could argue the human signature. We have had an effect on the plant, and will continue to do so. I could get into the whole population control ideas but they normally don't go over well, but another thing we should look at sooner than later. The issue I have is that we have no idea if this is a normal planetary cycle or not. For all we know the planet has heated up and then cooled down time and time again but we were not around to see it. The opposite thing could be as bad. If my memory servers we are closer to coming out of a ice age then coming into a new one so this could be all cycle related.

Im not intending to come across as someone completely against the whole idea of global warming, but yet play devils advocate a bit, because with things this large of scale, rarely does anyone fully understand it. Also being human I know things will not change until its too late. 

I think many times Scientists and the media over dramatize the issue to help promote their cause. Granted this maybe the only way to get funding or etc, but the reality is that many of the scary things they talk about may never happen and will never happen in my lifetime, my children's lifetime, and maybe not even their children's life time.

Now is the heat related to the frogs dying off? Im sure it is as the article states, but is there anything we can do? I doubt it as if it was caused by humans it is too late, and I would expect the time it takes to reverse something on this scale would take longer than it took to create the problem. Even if a couple of nations agreed, we can never get everyone to agree. Heck many countries are just now becoming industrialized and on a much larger scale that we ever were.


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## bbrock (May 20, 2004)

kyle1745 said:


> I think many times Scientists and the media over dramatize the issue to help promote their cause. Granted this maybe the only way to get funding or etc, but the reality is that many of the scary things they talk about may never happen and will never happen in my lifetime, my children's lifetime, and maybe not even their children's life time.


I think this is a general public conception of scientists and also believe it is incredibly false. I agree that the media tends t dramatize things. I also believe that a lot of advocates pretending to be scientists dramatize things. But scientists themselves are some of the most conservative people you will ever meet with respect to making claims. The whole process of science is to publish your results and interpretations so that your colleagues can attempt to rip you to shreds. So if you listen carefully to the real scientists, you will here things like, "our results are based on these assumptions...." or "the indications are that this could result in...." What they are saying is there is uncertainty behind thier results and they are trying to caution people that if their assumptions aren't correct, their interpretations could be off. In fact, real scientists are often criticized because they rarely take a strong position on issues. But this uncertainty has become an achilles heal that anti-science proponets have used to try to lampoon science. But in the case of global climate change, the scientists are truly frightened by what they see. These aren't the advocates that pretend to be scientists to drum up support for their cause. These are the real scientists who are reluctant to make strong statements and have never taken strong positions on topics related to their work before. I've never seen anything like this before but the people working in the field see evidence that is so strong and so troubling that they feel confident enough to speak out. As a scientist myself who knows and understands this community, this makes me sit up and pay attention because it ain't normal.



> Now is the heat related to the frogs dying off? Im sure it is as the article states, but is there anything we can do? I doubt it as if it was caused by humans it is too late, and I would expect the time it takes to reverse something on this scale would take longer than it took to create the problem. Even if a couple of nations agreed, we can never get everyone to agree. Heck many countries are just now becoming industrialized and on a much larger scale that we ever were.


I guess ultimately the sun will burn out in a few billion years and destroy the solar system so it is all pointless to do anything. I just don't accept that it is too late to do anything about it. Estimates are that if we act now we could avoid the worst of the consequences of greenhouse gas emmission and start bringing things back under control. The use of CFCs caused a huge hole in the ozone and people back then said you could never get the world to fix it. But they were wrong. Estimates are that in about 20 years the hole will be healed - decades ahead of earlier predictions. So big problems can be fixed, it's just a matter of having the political will to do it. And the fact that other countries are industrializing is precisely why we should work toward agreement now. It will be much easier for those countries to tool up with the right technology than to try to retrofit later. Just the other day I heard a report that several nuclear plants went online in China which caused their oil demand to drop significantly. If for no other reason I think the frogs of the world are worth our making an effort to save them.


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## stchupa (Apr 25, 2006)

The frogs are an immense part, but add it ALL up and what is it worth?, not only the living but what supports the living will be unsalvagable/lost as well.

Everything is expected (by us) to be done for us, people aren't told to speak by those who conduct them, so they don't and the past is forgotten

There's a strong branching of two but still integration of this country. They who are 'invisible' but create order and those who fill the void as being seen and a part, but won't say shit to save there own hide let alone a frogs. We signed it all away, well someone did.

People seem to forget they don't live on stepping stones.


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## lukebalsavich (Feb 14, 2006)

No one has commented on this in a while, so I thought I would add my 2 cents:

Pounds is an amazing guy. Devoting so much of his life to find out why these frogs are dissapearing.. Such cool stuff, He definitely deserves a thumbs up.

I really agree with bbrock on his comment, 

"But scientists themselves are some of the most conservative people you will ever meet with respect to making claims." 

As he quite correctly stated, Scientists cannot afford to make bold claims"... This is especially true with a phenomenon as controversial as global warming. 

I think that one thing that the article points at (also identified in the last couple comments) that is so incredibly important is that these extinctions do not appear to be the worst of what we can expect.

Over 100 probable EXTINCTIONS of anurans, with evidence pointing at climate change in the last couple decades.. and we can expect it to get worse...(ok who REALLY cares? Sadly mostly frog people.. will anyone quit driving to save a frog?)

World-wide changes in species interactions and increase in invasive-exotics, and we can expect it to get worse... (More people care, but hummers are so cool)

Our demands for oil (and burning that oil), power, and further industrialization of the developing world are only expected to grow. 

Frogs are just the canaries in the mine. 

Bbrock made a nice analogy of someone standing 100 yards away with a gun. I think this analogy is better than he even anticipated. Because if you were to actually wait for a shot, by the time you heard the shot, it would be too late, as the bullet travels faster than sound. Are we going to wait for 'the shot' in regards to climate change? I hope not.


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