Because of the near hysterical tone, my attention was drawn to this piece by an "educational consultant" (not quite sure what that means) named Alyssa Robins. She maintains that frogs will soon all be extinct because of a fungus caused by Global Warming:

it has now been determined that the chytrid fungus, which causes a potentially fatal disease in amphibians, has exploded over the entire region and has led to the near-extinction of this and other species of frog. But why the overgrowth of chytrids?

Global warming! You know, that nasty enemy we keep hearing about that "those alarmists in the media" blame for killer hurricanes such as Katrina. Well, now we know that global warming not only threatens our beachfront property, but also has changed weather patterns just enough to make it ideal for a certain fungus to grow.

This fungus likes it not too hot and not too cold. And global warming has proven very obliging. Warming has increased night-time temperatures (or length of time it's warm at night) as well as the amount of cloud cover, thereby increasing the number of days it's not too warm. VoilÀ! Very good for chytrids. Very bad for harlequin frogs.

Amphibian species all over the world are facing extinction for similar reasons - which suggests that the world we share with them is increasingly stressed and less and less capable of the rich diversity of life it has held for millions of years. Hold onto those children's books. Your children are less likely than you were to get to see frogs by any creek bed. Keep your memories alive, cause you'll want to tell your grandchildren what it was once like to be able to play around outside near a stream and actually catch a frog.

The only confirming source Ms. Robbins cites is a January 12 Nature Magazine article (cited in many many articles like this one) ascribing the outbreak of the chytrid disease in Costa Rica to Global Warming-induced cloud cover. This is said to cause lower daytime temperatures and higher nighttime temperatures -- conditions said to be ideal for fungal growth:

Warmer temperatures increased cloud cover over the tropical mountain which the scientists believe promoted conditions to spur the growth of the chytrid fungus that kills frogs.

“There is absolutely a linkage between global warming and this disease — they go hand-in-hand,” said Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa, a University of Alberta scientist and a co-author of the research.

“With this increase in temperature, the bacteria has been able to increase its niche and wipe out large populations of amphibians in the Americas,” he added in a statement.

That's starting to sound like absolutism, if you ask me.

The problem with this central hypothesis is that it might very well be absolutely wrong. That's because the cloud cover data appear to demonstrate a reverse correlation:

The authors cite a warming of nearby ocean waters as driving local warming, but they find that daytime temperatures are in decline while night temperatures are rising. What causes the warming to be preferentially divided into the night, with an actual daytime cooling? Pounds et al. suggest that this is a result of an increase in cloud cover related to global warming (and, in particular, oceanic warming). This is a testable hypothesis. It was not tested.

Figure 2 is global cloudiness as measured since satellite records began, taken from the International Satellite Cloud Climatology Project (ISCCP) site (http://isccp.giss.nasa.gov). This is generally an era of planetary warming. Cloud cover increases from the beginning of the record in 1983, through 1987, falls from 1987 to 2000, and rises again slightly after 2000. The overall correlation between warming and cloudiness is negative. (Latter emphasis added.)

Isn't it more likely that this fungal frog disease was, like many diseases, introduced, and that the frogs have not adapted to it?

Not only does the World Climate Review blog cite sources to this effect, but the CDC published a study arguing the same thing:

The sudden appearance of chytridiomycosis, the cause of amphibian deaths and population declines in several continents, suggests that its etiologic agent, the amphibian chytrid Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis, was introduced into the affected regions. However, the origin of this virulent pathogen is unknown. A survey was conducted of 697 archived specimens of 3 species of Xenopus collected from 1879 to 1999 in southern Africa in which the histologic features of the interdigital webbing were analyzed. The earliest case of chytridiomycosis found was in a Xenopus laevis frog in 1938, and overall prevalence was 2.7%. The prevalence showed no significant differences between species, regions, season, or time period. Chytridiomycosis was a stable endemic infection in southern Africa for 23 years before any positive specimen was found outside Africa. We propose that Africa is the origin of the amphibian chytrid and that the international trade in X. laevis that began in the mid-1930s was the means of dissemination.

Next they'll be saying AIDS is caused by Global Warming. Surely a correlation can be found. Hasn't the rate of AIDS infection in humans increased at least as fast as the rate of chytrid infection in frogs? Sure, the Global Warming denialists will say that AIDS spread from Africa, but I think there's got to be "absolutely a linkage" to be found somewhere between AIDS and climate change. (What? I should change the title of this post? Never!)

Frogs and humans need to be saved now from Bush's Global Warming -- before we all croak!

In other important news, I see that President Bush and most of his cabinet have been indicted by the Bush Crimes Commission in New York (headed by such notables as Harry Belafonte and Scott Ritter), and a leading witness who testified against Bush was General Janis Karpinski, former abu Ghraib Commander.

The indictments are here, and include the following:

Indictment on War of Aggression
Indictment on Torture and Detention
Indictment on Global Climate
Indictment on Global Health
Indictment on Hurricane Katrina