Frogs in the forest: the new canaries in the coal mine 4

Comments View as Threaded

1. 

   gullyfourmyle Posted 12:33 pm
   24 Jun 2009

   As much as I support what Dr. Kerry Kriger is doing it is entirely misleading and wrong to state that he is in any way a lone voice raising alarms over the frog extinctions. Biologist Karen Lips brought the matter into public focus back in 1997 when she discovered populations of frogs dying practically as she watched in western Panama.Since then all sorts of scientists and activists have leapt into the fray and all sorts of theories have been advanced about why this is happening.Everyone seems to agree that the problem is an immunological disorder that allows the fungus to penetrate the frogs' mucus membrane.But rather than looking for what is causing the immunological breakdowns, the scientists are mesmerized (frog-like) by the fungus itself.In my case, I asked myself this question: What element or elements are common to each area in which frogs are going extinct?The answer to that was this: soil, water and air. In the cases of soil and water, the local composition is so vastly different from place to place as to apparently exclude them from contention.Air on the other hand is - air is it not? Well no it's not.If you look at a map of the world the soot emissions from aircraft offer the first clue as to what is going on: http://www.dlr.de/at/en/Portaldata/20/Resources/images/abt_tw/russ_ges_hires.jpgThe patterns of extinction are covered by aviation emissions.So just what is different now that didn't exist for all the billions of years frogs have been around?People, internal combustion engines, fossil fuel, emissions and the means to deliver the toxins to the site.Every internal combustion engine emits soot as a waste product. The chemicals that make up the soot number in the thousands and most of them are deadly. The flame you see on a candle is actually soot.While frog extinctions have been going on since the '70s for a variety of reasons, the extinctions accelerated right as Karen Lips made her discovery. Karen first made international news with her discoveries of many hitherto unknown species of frogs and toads in 1993. When she returned to the site in 1997 it was to witness the extinction of entire species minutes before she arrived. Frog and toad corpses were everywhere. That does not happen. Frogs and toads are prey species that don't get to die of old age. They are all eaten whole at some point. No corpses remain to mark the spot. But here was a place littered with corpses. Why? Karen's revelation rocked the science community to its core world wide.That location was very remote. No human contamination of any sort other than the air.So what was suddenly different about the air?My hunch was aviation fuel. So I asked my neighbour, a retired chemical engineer who worked for Texaco and was responsible for formulating aviation fuel. I asked him if there were any recent changes and at first he said no. But then he corrected himself and described how the fuel industry and the aviation industry had combined to reengineer aviation fuel. Texaco was the last to implement the changes and my neighbour was the one who had to implement those changes in the country he lived in at the time.Texaco was the last fuel company to implement the change-over and that was completed in 1989.Aviation fuel until the late eighties was kerosene. Fighter jets used a forumulated fuel called J4 or J8. Those fuels included benzene and a host of other deadly solvents.In 1973, automotive fuels formulations were revised to remove lead from gasoline and diesel. That was because lead was causing all sorts of public health and environmental problems. The problems were known since 1926. Instead, solvents were added to the gas wiithout proper testing. As a result, brain cancer rates skyrocketed and the automotive fuel industry was forced to cut back on the solvents with a view to eventually eliminating them altogether.The oil industry merely changed horses and added the solvents to aviation fuel in complete disregard to public health and environmental safety. When they did, that began a chemical assault on the entire planet of unprecedented proportions and unprecedented lethality that has been accumulating and gradually overwhelming the planet's ability to neutralize the toxins.Most people think of aircraft as people and freight movers. They are really the biggest pesticide applicators on earth.There is no such thing as a clean burn. So all aircraft, cars, trucks, boats, trains, buildings, lawn mowers etc. with an internal combustion engine running on fossil fuel emit raw fuel and soot as they fly. That raw fuel soot combines with other chemicals in the atmosphere to become a poison industrial coating that blankets everything on the planet as it falls. Our atmosphere is slowly being transformed from oxygen based to solvent based.There is no safe level for most of those poisons in our atmosphere.Legislation around the world allows for aircraft emissons on the basis that the chemicals degrade over a period of three days in soil and much faster in water. However when the legislation was written, accumulation in the environment due to constant reapplication was not considered. So planet wide, we are laminating the entire surface of the earth and everything on it with the chemical equivalent of nuclear fallout.The chemicals involved cause DNA damage. Not just in people - in all animate life. The chemicals are a what you might call a form of anti-life.I call the effect CHEMICAL WINTER. It's far more serious than Climate Change and Global Warming combined.The molecular structures of the chemicals involved are so microscopically tiny that they are known as transdermals. That means these chemicals (also known as Volatile Organic Compounds or VOCs) are capable of migrating through skin and into the blood stream without slowing down. Once in you, these solvents do what they were designed to do - transform what they touch into a liquid solution. A puddle in other words. Your organs don't work well in puddle form. Another description for those puddles is cancer tumor. These are powerful solvents and the only things they can't disolve is glass and some forms of igneous rock.For small animals like frogs, the impact of VOCs is much harsher than it is for us.When solvents land on skin as a liquid, there is an initial cooling effect as some of it evaporates. Then there is a burning effect as it starts eating its way through the skin. It does not wash off with water.I believe that when the solvents land on frogs, they are not threatened so they remain motionless in the same manner as slowly boiling a frog in a pot. That is essentially how Karen found them - like museum pieces or having flipped upside down in terminal discomfort as they suffocated to death.The fungus could only invade after the mucus membrane had been breached. The fungus has been around as long as the frogs have but it wasn't causing global extinctions. The only way for the fungus to be a threat is with man-made help.Frogs from the outset have been regarded as indicator species. As they go so will we - the canary in the coal mine thing again.The chemicals in fuel have been definitely implicated in all sorts of human health issues and the process by which it works was worked out and demonstrated by US Professor Martin Pall at Washington University a few years ago. He is the guy that linked the solvents to Agent Orange and Gulf War Syndrome as well as Multiple Chemical Sensitivity.When I spoke with him on the phone and described how I thought the process he had described would work in the natural world he had a EUREKA! moment right there and then. FROGS! was the first word out of his mouth.Then I described how that same scenario would play out in the human respiratory tract with respect to Asthma. He agreed that my theory was probably the correct one. Since then there has been no science to dispute that theory and another one that describes how some forms of brain tumors form.

   Permalink

2. 

   gullyfourmyle Posted 12:12 pm
   25 Jun 2009

   After reading the above you might be forgiven for thinking that scientists are falling all over themselves to prove the link between emissions and extinctions. You would be wrong.Biologists and Zoologists know next to nothing about emissions. They study life, not chemicals.This new thing about having species go extinct due to chemicals is a new one on them and like most people, they have a hard time accepting something said by someone who isn't even a professional scientist.Regardless, the scientists are begining to see how emissions work on a global scale:http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-06/wcs-wfc062309.phpWhen you read that article, try to think of what effect the conditions described will have on life five or ten years down the road. Wild animals don't have cancer surgery options. Can you imagine trying to remove cancer from a Tiger Swallowtail butterfly's caterpillar stage to ensure it will live to breed? What if the part you cut out turns out to be the wings on one side?In five or ten years time, there are going to be ecodisasters on a scale that will dwarf the honey be situation - another chemical winter effect. The disappearance of Mayflies from lower lattitudes went right by the scientists - they didn't notice one of the biggest game fish food sources winking out of existence. They are an insect that grows about 2" long and were an important source of digestable fat (energy) and vitamin pill combined for fish, bears, birds and frogs. When they hatched, they blanketed buildings and trees. They were completely harmless.Those of you who see seals near your homes are going to witness some truly ugly things as cancer takes its toll on seals. Turtles too.VOCs affect DNA. That sounds pretty impersonal doesn't it? The long form meaning of that sentence is that VOCs inhibit or eliminate the possibility of future generations of everything other than plant life and simple organisms. They do that by destroying genetic integrity - the ability of the genes to pass the physical, mental and character traits along to offspring.Once the next generation has been corrupted, it takes eons for that damage to be erased. The trouble is those contaminated species likely won't survive to participate - including us. We are the most heavily contaminated species on the planet since we are fossil fuel users and live in close proximity to the stuff. So close that the clothes you are wearing are off-gassing the chemicals as you read this each time you inhale. Your computer, desk and carpet are gassing you too.Then you eat the stuff courtesy of the pesticides the eat into your food before you do.There has been a lot of talk about the Apocalypse over the centuries. Well, this is it unless we figure out how to get oil and coal out of our lives first. Either way everything you thought you knew about planetary health is about to change for the worse.You can thank your local gas station and yourselves. I don't exclude myself. We are all to blame. 

   Permalink

3. 

   Tyler Durden Posted 9:21 pm
   25 Jun 2009

   Interesting post.  I quite agree that industrial society -- not just oil and coal, but everything industrial -- is toxic to life.  Whether this theory turns out to be correct is irrelevant, because if drilling, refining, and burning oil and coal don't cause this problem, they clearly cause other major ones.I also agree that humans must stop burning oil and coal ASAP, like yesterday.  But convincing people to give up their opulent lifestyles and conveniences has so far proven impossible.  My guess is that humans will keep doing what they're doing until they can't live on the Earth any longer, and global warming seems to be proof of that: while some people and countries talk about doing something about it, greenhouse gas emissions are rising in every country, despite the recognition that if unchecked this problem will become a great global catastrophe.  I certainly hope my guess is wrong, but I don't see any evidence that it is.

   Permalink

4. 

   gullyfourmyle Posted 8:34 am
   26 Jun 2009

   One of the major impediments to doing anything that actually works to curtail Climate Change, Global Warming or Chemical Winter is the fact that Natural Gas, Coal and Wood are used to heat homes and cook. They are all major contributing factors.As human population increases, the use of these fuel sources increases in lock-step. Climate Change, Global Warming and Chemical Winter are thus the prime indicator of human over-population. The only way to deal with these environmental problems is to drastically reduce that part of the human population that is producing the emissions. That is the populations in developed countries. We are the  problem.If the populations in developed countries were cut off from Oil and Natural Gas, our populations would decline immediately along with our emissions. The populations dependent on our technology and good will would collapse as well.That's what has to happen for there to be a quick enough response to the coming environmental disasters.I don't see that scenario happening any time soon so environmental disasters are going to increase in frequency and severity until our population is brought into line with ecological sustainability.You can tell the truth of this by how ignored this thread has been so far.

   Permalink