back to article Climate change blamed for rise of life-draining horrors*

Climate change could help parasites get nastier and nastier preceding a terrifying global epidemic, possibly. A study on frogs - yes, frogs - showed that they were more vulnerable to deadly fungus if the temperature changed unpredictably, which the researchers said could have a big impact on biodiversity and humans. "Given …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Simple

    Move to Madagascar, and close the ports.

    1. Pete 2 Silver badge

      Re: Simple

      But leave port 80 open

      1. Euripides Pants

        Re: Simple

        Nope, close port 80 and run everything through a proxy.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      So

      The human race is doooomed

      Dooooomed I say Doooooomed.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Mushroom

      Re: Simple

      No.

      "You. Close. EVERYTHING!"

      1. Neil Greatorex

        Re: Simple

        ^Lost-Carrier...

    4. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Simple

      Pandemic 2?

  2. Aaron Em
    Facepalm

    Another day, another scare story

    Kudzu and fire ants both head north as the temperature gets warmer, too. Having grown up with both, I don't care for either -- but neither do I feel the need to try to hold the entire planet in stasis, in order to prevent them arriving at my somewhat more northerly current latitude.

    It's recently been said that one of the stigmata of political conservatism is a desire to control everything, which supposedly grows out of a terror of change. Assuming arguendo that that's true, what then does it say about what motivates the brahmins of the AGW movement?

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

    2. asdf

      Re: Another day, another scare story

      Don't worry about the AGWers they seem to have very little power in any of the countries that matter. To be honest even if the people in charge suddenly decided we have a huge problem, based on how effective the UN and international diplomacy work (cough Syria) it would be a century before anything is done. Have no fear as we are going to get to see first hand just how serious this all is and not have to question if we over reacted.

      1. Aaron Em

        Re: Another day, another scare story

        Well, if we're going to have progressive super-federalism, then the least kindness it can extend us is to be glacially slow in its implementation, I suppose.

      2. ChilliKwok
        Meh

        Re: Another day, another scare story

        > Don't worry about the AGWers. They seem to have very little power...

        Are you kidding? These scaremongering loonies infest every branch of government: 99% of LibLabCon MP's, 100% of DECC, the Foreign Office, DFID, the environment agency and countless quangos from The Carbon Saving Trust to the idiotic Climate Change committee. Same in the US from Obummer all the way down..

        1. asdf
          FAIL

          Re: Another day, another scare story

          Only in the USA is a president who does nothing to curb the excesses of Wall St and uses the Homeland Security Department to go after copyright infringers for his corporate donors considered a socialist liberal.

        2. asdf

          Re: Another day, another scare story

          >These scaremongering loonies infest every branch of government: 99% of LibLabCon MP's

          Again I said in the countries that matter and to soften the burn a little in many ways this also includes the US. China and India with nearly half the world's population are putting out more pollution than the rest of the world combined.

          1. ChilliKwok
            Meh

            Re: Another day, another scare story

            Agreed, India and China haven't fallen for the green lunacy infecting Westminster and Washington. Perhaps it's because their leaders know that if they get energy or economic policy wrong, a public lynching is still a real possibility. Whereas our lot of useless troughers can shaft the country and still look forward to a luxuious retirement in the Lords or some cushy EU post.

            PS. By the way, CO2 isn't pollution. It's a natural plant food essential for all life on Earth. K thx bye.

            1. Aaron Em

              Re: Another day, another scare story

              ChilliKwok -- I really don't know if I can credit the idea that the Politburo with Chinese Characteristics fears being dragged out into the streets for a neck-stretching party...

            2. asdf

              Re: Another day, another scare story

              Pure CO2 is also an asphyxiant to humans. Your point? Yes whatever happened 250 million years ago that eliminated almost all life on Earth may have been natural but that doesn't mean we want it to occur again.

    3. Graham Marsden
      Trollface

      @Aaron Em

      "Assuming arguendo that that's true"?

      Assuming that it's not true because you seem to have nothing to base such an assumption on other than opinion, what does that say about your motivations...?

      1. Aaron Em

        Re: @Aaron Em

        I'm not sure I follow, Graham. Nothing on which to base the "assumption" that progressives argue conservatives fear change? Or nothing on which to base the assumption, which I made for the sake of argument, that progressives are correct so to believe? -- in the latter case, I'd note that that's why I pointed out I was only making that assumption for the sake of argument. (If you find words like "arguendo" confusing, may I recommend to you the Internet as a resource by which to discover their meaning?)

        Understand that, as a royalist, I have no dog in this fight -- if progressives are donkeys, then conservatives are not elephants, as they style themselves, but rather, to follow the sainted Dr. Dabney, jackasses. I like poking fun at both of 'em, but, honestly, conservatives being nowhere near any kind of real power, kicking them is sort of beneath me -- thus, my habit of taking pokes at progressives and progressivism at every opportunity which presents itself.

        1. Graham Marsden
          FAIL

          Re: @Aaron Em

          "Conservative" and "Liberal" are such broad and sweeping generalisations of someone's political philosophy that any assumptions based on them are nothing more than just other broad and sweeping generalisations and using those as a basis "for the sake of argument" is why I suggested that you were simply trolling.

          The fact that you then try (and fail) to score a cheap point by a sneering implication that I don't know what "arguendo" means (despite the fact that it was obvious from my reply that I do) appears to confirm this.

          1. Aaron Em
            WTF?

            Re: @Aaron Em

            Lots of people, other than myself, seem to feel that their political philosophies can be summed up in a single word. Who am I to tell them they're wrong? -- though I will note that, at least in the US, 'progressive' seems to have more or less replaced 'liberal' among the more serious leftists in the last decade or so. If memory serves, the real change was around 2004-'05 or thereabout.

            Hell, for that matter, I'm perfectly willing to sum up my own philosophy in a single word, though it's not one that sees frequent live use in the West any longer. (Honestly, a royalist? How old-fashioned! -- and an American one at that!) Sure, I could go into considerably greater detail as to what I mean by that, but it's enough of a handle to roughly identify my position on the National Assembly's old left-right spectrum -- or off of it, I suppose, more like -- and, for the sake of not boring the bejesus out of everybody with an exhaustively detailed position statement for which no one has either the time or the interest, that's good enough for me.

            Are you really arguing it's necessary I produce such a statement for political philosophies which not only are not my own, but which are espoused, in some cases quite ably, by more than three people out of every hundred thousand?

            In re: 'arguendo' -- Well, you did seem to have some difficulty understanding the meaning for which I used it, but I'll also grant that, because I find your attempts at shutting me up both annoying and presumptuous, there was certainly an element of the cheap shot about it. In a similar vein, may I suggest you investigate the uses of the humble comma? You having employed exactly one, in the entirety of your two most recent replies to my comments, I find there is a certain breathlessness to your prose which makes it frankly rather unpleasant to read. It's as though you feel the need to gasp everything out as fast as possible, for fear you'll be unable to get a word in edgewise -- a regrettable necessity at times in conversation, perhaps, but here, in text, there's really no call for it.

  3. Gerhard den Hollander
    Childcatcher

    Jurassic Park

    I've seen Juraasic Park, and know how dangerous frog DNA can be.

    I say, turn on the heaters, and kill all those frogs, before we get ravaged by hordes of velociraptors.

    Fungi for the win!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Jurassic Park

      Sadly, Australia for all its extreme heat still has killer frogs.

      Fools! You cannot stop the evolution of the Frog and the eventual wiping out of your puny species!

      When all are forced to lick the frog, Mick Jagger will be the first to die!

  4. Philip Lewis

    Migration

    I predict with a high degree of certainty the all species will naturally gravitate towards the most hospitable climate.

    The "stupid farmer" argument does not work on beings below us on the self awareness scale, sorry.

  5. Andrew Jones 2

    But presumably inexplicably no animal / organism / vegetation was ever affected when the climate got drier or colder? Or... maybe they didn't bother to test that?

    In any case - let's wait until they actually get results from more than one species out of the estimated 8.7 million before we go all Daily Mail with our headlines?

    1. Grant Alexander

      And wat about the possibility that increased temperature may kill off some of the existing nasties? Or that if the AGWers get their way and we cause another ice age that something that thrives in the cold goes rampant and kills off the polar bears?

  6. MrT

    "frogs - yes, frogs"...

    ... famously don't notice subtle changes in environment. Unpredictable, unsubtle changes tend to have them jumping out of the now-hostile environment.

    Ergo, all frogs will end up on the moon.

    'Reductio ad what-um', you say?

    1. ArmanX
      Thumb Up

      Re: "frogs - yes, frogs"...

      Reductio ad froggy? Or Reductio ad rana, if you want the Latin...

      1. Aaron Em
        Happy

        Re: "frogs - yes, frogs"...

        ...ad ranam, I think you'll find -- it's the dative case you're after.

        Now write it out a hundred times by dawn or I'll chop your balls orf!

        1. ArmanX
          Facepalm

          Re: "frogs - yes, frogs"...

          Oh, right... In my defense, it's my wife who speaks Latin, I only learned the roots.

  7. Pete 2 Silver badge

    Hands up if you're poikilothermic?

    > A study on frogs - ...if the temperature changed unpredictably, which the researchers said could have a big impact on biodiversity and humans.

    Last time I checked, my body was doing a pretty good job of regulating my body temperature - an advantage I share with all other warm-blooded animals. So to say that bad things happen to (cold-blooded) frogs when the temperature changes and then to say that this could be bad for people is one hell of a stretch. Climate change or no.

    1. Steve Crook
      Meh

      Re: Hands up if you're poikilothermic?

      What they're implying is that nasty diseases will move north and plague us because global temps have risen. The usual one that we're threatened with is Malaria WHICH HAS NEVER BEEN THIS FAR NORTH!!!!.

      Except arge parts Kent have had outbreaks of malaria for a long time, when it was (we are told) significantly colder than it is now. See http://malaria.wellcome.ac.uk/doc_WTD023991.html

      What is particularly funny is that this is the fungus that was killing the frogs years back before anyone knew it existed, and the decline in frog populations was blamed on climate change modifying the frogs habitat sufficiently that they were dying out. Then they found the fungus.

      This time they may be right, but how many times do you get to cry wolf before we're all entitled to be just a tad cynical when we hear this sort of thing?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hands up if you're poikilothermic?

        At least twice more.

        Besides, I think that Purelle and other hand sanitizers are really improving the extant strains of microorganisms for the eventual extermination of the human race with results like Ebola Zaire.....scary, huh?

        I don't think tinfoil hats are going to protect us.

  8. Eddy Ito

    Yes, yes

    What about the important questions like, how does it change the flavour? I imagine the first person who had their cheese turn blue was probably disappointed initially but with the right pairing and a little marketing made a little hamlet into a household name. I'll let you folks fight over whether it was a hamlet in England or France even if we all know it was really in Italy. <ducks>

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Money

    Is it time to make grant applications again?

  10. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
    Alien

    Still too chilly

    The natural state for this planet during the bulk of its history is to not have ice full year at the poles. During the bulk of this planets history, Antarctica has been at the South Pole, and has stayed there even when Pangea started breaking up 200M years ago and the other continents broke off and started drifting about. Yet during the bulk of this planets history, Antarctica has been temperate, not ice bound, and covered by temperate forests.

    Perhaps once the snow melts for good in Antarctica, I can move back into my summer house there. I wonder how much wear and tear it's gotten after 65M years?

    1. roger stillick
      Go

      Re: Still too chilly

      Yes it is... WIKI Azolla Event... we are coming out of the 3rd frozen Earth event... first one lasted 150 Million years... second one lasted 100 Million years... this last one is lasting 50 Million years and it is ending...

      What drives this is anyone's guess... but it is Earth correcting itself, and it appears the planet is getting better at self-correction...

    2. Pascal Monett Silver badge
      Trollface

      Re: "The natural state for this planet"

      The natural state for this planet is that it started at several thousand degrees Kelvin in a cloud of asteroid bits conglomerating together, and it is now in the process of shedding its considerable heat into the void of space.

      Therefor, barring being swallowed by the sun in several billion years, it will end up at the global temperature of 3 Kelvin, same as background radiation, in eons upon eons of time.

      So, basically put, there will be more ice on the poles before it all ends, mark my words.

    3. Dagg Silver badge
      Boffin

      Re: Still too chilly

      The problem isn't that it has happened before and will happen again. The problem is the rate is considerably faster than ever before.

      This is the problem, if it took 1,000 years to get 10 degrees warmer then not a problem, everything can adapt. The coral reefs can slowly start to grow further south, new plants can move into different ranges. The sea would rise slowly without excessive coastal erosion.

      But if it only takes 100 years to change 10 degrees then this causes big problems as the period to too short to adapt. The sea rise would be too quick to allow the coast to stabilise and this would cause the erosion.

  11. Anonymous IV
    Unhappy

    Doomed! We're all doomed...

    Is there anything else that CAN be said?

    1. Aaron Em
      Thumb Down

      Of course there is!

      Zero out of ten -- next time you try it on, at least make it look like you're putting some effort into it, why don't you?

      If you need an example of a proper troll, try this -- though I would note that, not only is that a little too tinfoil-hatty to make a genuinely effective troll (which suits me, as I'm out either to make a point or to entertain, and not to be a gratuitous asshole) but I also got it in a bit too late in the game to make any real hay out of it.

      Learn from my example; if you can't get your flamebait in as the very first comment, at least make sure it's in the top half-dozen, or no one will see it and all your effort will be wasted.

  12. Harry

    " if the temperature changed unpredictably"

    OK, so which days of the year does history show have never *previously* changed unpredictably?

    And how many frogs do you know that actually tune into BBC weather on a regular basis anyway?

    Global warming may only be a lot of hot air, but most of it comes from the so-called experts and not from the weather itself.

  13. Chuckl

    Boiling frogs again?

  14. Mitoo Bobsworth
    Pint

    Scientific method vs Sensationalism

    I posted this in a previous article - thought it worth presenting again - 10 minutes of your time.

    Physicist Richard Feynman explains the scientific and unscientific methods of understanding nature -

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYPapE-3FRw

    listen & learn.

    1. Aaron Em

      Re: Scientific method vs Sensationalism

      And for those who'd rather read than listen (or who'd rather do both!) -- here's Feynman on cargo cult science, which could be considered another take on the same subject.

  15. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    I love listening to that video.

  16. elderlybloke
    Happy

    One Day

    The News will say "Warming of the Planet is going to be better for xxxxx, and computer simulations show that we will all benefit from this , and will enjoy everlasting happness".

    It may be some time yet but I think it must happen-these warming is all bad-bad-bad stories are no longer interesting news..

    1. ArmanX

      Re: One Day

      Oh sure... and the next line will read: "April Fools!"

      Sensational wins over interesting any day. Who cares if you (read | listen to | watch) the news, as long as you've (bought | tuned to | changed to) their (paper | station | channel) long enough for them to make some money.

  17. NomNomNom

    let me just say it

    It's sad to see those dismissive of AGW trying to pretend the climate is some kind of non-issue. Some climate skeptics indeed believe that climate is intelligently designed to protect life, ie it will resiliantly buffer any changes man makes. This is a matter of faith of course (and indeed some prominent climate skeptics have signed declarations of that climate is god's creation)

    To be blunt, reality is that the climate system is the way it is due to cold happenstance of physics and chemistry. There is no means by which the climate factors in the needs of life into it's composition. We happen to be a certain distance from the Sun, atmospheric composition happens to be the way it is due to unplanned historical events, ocean currents happen to be where they are due to physics. None of this is due to any intelligent design.

    The reason life happens to thrive in these unplanned conditions is that life itself has struggled to adapt over time to whatever state the climate has been. The burden for survival is 100% upon life itself. Life clings to climate, climate doesn't cling to life.

    From this is should be easy to see that climate has no compulsion to prevent large changes and when those large changes happen life must adapt or perish. The faster the climate changes, the less time there is for life to adapt and the more likely life will perish.

    The biggest clue of this, and yet it often goes unmentioned in climate "debates", is the number of mass extinction events in Earth's history where most of the species of the Earth perished. What happened is that climate changed, due to pure coincidence and physics, and it changed so much so fast that life couldn't adapt fast enough to the changes in time.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Extinction_intensity.svg

    None of our CO2 records stretching back tens of millions of years show CO2 rising as sharply in Earth's history as it is today. CO2 a potent greenhouse gas and also impacts ocean pH. At least one past extinction event 55 million years ago is coincident with a rapid jump in atmospheric CO2 and a sharp drop in ocean pH followed by an extinction of deep ocean life. Yet that CO2 rise was slower than the current one.

    Those who dismiss the threat from rising CO2 and yet admit they don't understand how the climate works are just being reckless. CO2 levels are already breaching highs not seen on this planet for millions of years, and business-as-usual fossil fuel emission (with new fossil fuels from frakking and arctic exploitation) will push CO2 levels far higher still. The burden should really be on the climate change dismissers to prove life can adapt in time to the changes.

  18. Robinson
    Facepalm

    Fungus spreading?

    As far as I know, one of the main vectors for the transmission of frog killing fungus spores are frog investigating biologists.

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