Josh Marshall asks:
Have we been wrong about frogs all along?
Yesterday I did a post with the oft-mentioned story of how a frog will sit still for his cooking when put in water that is slowly brought to a boil.
But TPM Reader EG wrote in yesterday to tell me that about a year ago he ran this story past a respected frogologist (actually, the word is apparently ‘herpetologist’ but that sounded more like a doctor they might have on call at the local Planned Parenthood clinic) and the frogologist said this simply isn’t true.
As the water heats up, the frog starts to wig out. And if he can bail before the boil, he will.
Can anyone confirm this? Is the frog anecdote wrong? And if this story isn’t true, how much more must we be in the dark about?
I sat in on a seminar at Colorado College in 1998 by a frog-ologist doing something along those lines and although I don’t remember her name, the research definitely seems relevant. Her exact work involved finding out whether and how frogs that were repeatedly heated adapt physiologically to surviving really hot water. The answer was that pre-heated frogs survived significantly longer, although I don’t remember the exact physiological reasons why. Regarding the question at hand, frogs definitely freak out no matter how slowly you heat the water. What’s up with the urban legend, then? I have no better idea than anybody else.
If you need a poignant epigram about creeping tyranny the Niemoller poem always works (When the Nazis came for the Communists…) although it has obvious Godwin complications. Any other ideas? Let us know in the comments.
Brian
I dunno. I guess you can always take a lesson from the folks at Greenpeace.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! I’ll be DAMNED if this ain’t the exact same form of PR that is being employed by the global warming hysteria-mongers.
This shit is priceless, man.
demimondian
Since, technically, a herpetologist studies reptiles, and frogs are amphibians, herpetologist don’t study frogs. (Or newts, salamanders, or any of a number of other creatures which are neither fish nor snake.)
However, yes, frogs do jump out long before they boil.
demimondian
Jesus, Brian, are you *that* attention-starved? Climate change “hysteria mongers”? Oh, wait, the scientists who’ve carefully studied the issue…they’re biased, right?
Oh, I know — you’re the alter-ego of Bob from Pacifica. Right. Sorry, you’re teaching the (non-existent) controversy.
Ryan S.
In Brian world.
climate scientists = Greenpeace.
srv
Now that “conservatives” are all trying to jump out of the pot and call Bush a liberal, let’s get rid of the boiled frog meme and replace it with the “boiled conservative” meme.
tBone
All signs point to “Yes.” [/Magic 8 Ball]
Brian
I believe that Global Warming is an issue worth paying serious attention to, but not from people like Al Gore or Laurie David, who position their arguments in hysterical terms. I can’t take them seriously, but on the other hand, I don’t know who I can take seriously on the subject. It’s too politicaly charged, unfortunately.
B
What’s up with the urban legend, then?
Absence of urban frogs? It’s actually pretty ignorant. Frogs are incredibly sensitive to temperature, oxygen, barometric pressure, pollutants, sound, etc. I’ve seen them run for cover 5 minutes before a hail storm.
BTW herpetologists do study amphibians.
n.o.l.t.f.
It’s too politicaly charged, unfortunately.
Really? Huh. I wonder why it’s politically charged…Maybe because of tools like yourself who can’t listen to Al Gore because, somehow, you think he’s too hysterical on the subject (how, exactly, Mr “I Take it Seriously”?) You don’t think it’s ironic, it’s the stable, balanced folks like you who’ve been calling him not at all poltically charged names like “Ozone Man” for the past 15 years?
The only person you can take seriously on the subject is someone who’ll agree with your preconceived notions, which eliminates not only Al Gore, but 99% of all reputable scientists who aren’t on a corporate payroll. But thank Christ you ‘take it seriously’.
canuckistani
So you’re willing to risk allowing an environmental catastrophe to occur because you think the people trying to warn you are shrill and hysterical? Does the evidence they present matter at all? If I told you not to eat rat poison, would you sneer at me for being a liberal and gobble it down, because I hate America and my opinions don’t deserve respect? By the way, don’t eat rat poison. It’s bad for you.
Tony Alva
I know our diplomatic relationship is a bit strainded, but since when did we start dropping Frenchmen into boiling water?
srv
You know, from now on, I’ll always picture Brian as the frog in the boiling pot while he ribbits “Clinton did it too”
Vlad
A watched frog never boils?
John S.
I hate to resemble one of Brian’s usual strawmen by quoting Mao Tse-Tung, but the man had Brian the Frog pegged:
He thinks too small, like the frog at the bottom of the well. He thinks the sky is only as big as the top of the well. If he surfaced, he would have an entirely different view.
Brian
John S., here’s an example of someone thinking big:
Yes, big thinkers you folks are. Not a single, solitary response that wasn’t thumb-sucking or putting words and thoughts in my head.
The problem with the Left, if you’ll allow me to say, is a practice of promoting propaganda in a very brazen fashion.
Global warming = end of all life during our generation; Abu Ghraib = gulag; lost election = rampant voter fraud; marriage amendment = GOP making an attack on the Constitution (NYT); hurricane tragedy = Bush is a chimp who hates the brown people; SCOTUS nominee = an attack on the uterus of every American female; nuclear power = armageddon around the corner; no WMD = BUSH LIED!!; with the consent of Congress, phone call data tracked for patterns in an effort to track enemies = unchecked wiretapping by Executive branch.
The rhetoric, the conspiracy theories, the hyperbole……all in an effort to sell something by inflating it with falsehoods. The GOP has it’s faults, that’s for certain, but if the Left can’t get a handle on this sort of behavior (after all, you’re the Reality Based Community, right?), it’s doomed.
The Easter Bunny
When they’re as shrill and hysterical as you, you’re goddamn right. This is about our depleted rabbit pellet rounds, isn’t it? Well, hey, if you didn’t want your land contaminated for the next 100 years, maybe you and your little friends shouldn’t have blown up Santa.
You’ve got some big brass ones to be posting here under that name, by the way. Don’t think I’m not watching you.
Perry Como
Indeed. Now that the adults are in charge we can take care of the important issues like an amendment banning gay marriage and another to ban flag burning. Quite the deal for a mere $8,356,776,604,649.
Gary Farber
Y’know, I get that he’s sorta trying to be kidding, but while I admire a lot of Marshall’s work, he really comes across as an idiot here.
Mostly for having this be news to him this week. It’s not like he couldn’t have looked into it before, but how credulous do you have to be to believe folk legends like that, anyway?
But, then, I remember when Marshall couldn’t find Maariv.
But, as well, much as I respect his work, Marshall always drives me crazy by, well, I wrote about it here.
But let me stress: he does great work, otherwise. I wouldn’t be annoyed, otherwise.
CaseyL
The wingnuts can’t deal with the fact that they had things all their own way for the last 6 years and everything they believed turned out to be false and everyone they supported played them for the fools that they are.
The only thing they hate more than being wrong about everything is the people who were right. They especially can’t stand anyone whose opinions are informed by factual knowledge.
Their venom naturally extends to Al Gore, who’s been keenly aware of environmental issues only since, oh, 1980. How dare he stack his 26 years of involvement on that issue up against their crank-science-come-lately opinions?
Brian
Casey,
Gore himself said, in the past couple weeks, that it is acceptable to stretch the truth in order to scare people into paying attention to global warming. No appeal to the facts that even he says there’s consensus on. If there’s consnsus, why stretch the truth? The matter should be settled, right? I am not picking on Gore. I am picking on his, and the Left’s, tendency to use scare tactics as a matter of practice on every subject. I posit that this is not a way to win new voters, enough to win an actual election.
Perry Como,
We both know these amendments have no chance in hell of passing. But if an amendment, and amendment, did pass, it would be with overwhelming support, and therefore worth every penny to get that much consensus. It’s called our system of government, something that many here are always patting themselves on the back for supporting, but always quick to dismiss if mere conservatives are behind it.
Brian
Here’s another example of how the Left’s rhetoric is getting the best of them. They’re so flippant about it that it takes something like a joke about assassinating the president for the media to even take note.
MAX HATS
On the Brian note, this is from The Corner:
It makes sense when you consider that liberals hate life. We even call it pollution!
Perry Como
If I think it’s a good idea coming from conservatives, I’ll say it’s a good idea. But both of those suggested amendments are just really fucking stupid. And since we both know that they have no chance in hell passing, it’s blatant, unabashed pandering. Which makes it even that much more stupid.
The Republicans have had their chance and they have been an utter failure. I don’t really care for the Dems too much, but someone needs to act like a grownup.
radish
<snarl> And we would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for those meddling kids…
Man, if this is what Goldberg thinks “ain’t altogether crazy” I’d hate to see what qualifies as full-bore batshit schizo.
Jules Siegel
Brian Says:
Gore himself said, in the past couple weeks, that it is acceptable to stretch the truth in order to scare people into paying attention to global warming.
He never said that. Please show us the exact statement, in context, if you feel that you are correct.
Parahalo
‘Gore himslef said’ Let there be earth and there was an earth. Let there be space and there was space. Let there be warming and there was warming. Let there be animals and there were animals. Let the frog boil and it did.
Ben
I think what’s really disturbing is apparently there’s a scientific research project built around heating up frogs, repeatedly, until they die.
KCinDC
News flash: It’s not really possible to spin straw into gold — or for that matter to have a “Midas touch”. Please discontinue use of these metaphors immediately.
Also, ostriches don’t really think they can avoid predators by hiding their heads in the sand. So stop using that one as well.
In future, all metaphors must be backed up by peer-reviewed scientific research before use. Thank you for your cooperation in this matter.
Thbit
There is a slight flaw with the tests of frog-boiling. I suspect that the frogs were standing directly on the bottom of the pot, which in fact heats up very quickly, singing the frog’s toes and causing it to jump out. A proper test of the gradual heating hypothesis would make sure that all areas touching the frog increased only gradually in temperature, perhaps by using a double-boiler.
WJ
Tony Alva Says:
“I know our diplomatic relationship is a bit strainded, but since when did we start dropping Frenchmen into boiling water?”
Tony, I don’t know who you are, but that is funniest post I have seen. I just had to acknowledge that flash of comic genius.
Deano
I’m old enough to remember the last ‘global climate catastrophe’ that just happened to be “global cooling”:
— Science magazine (Dec. 10, 1976) warned of “extensive Northern Hemisphere glaciation.”
— Science Digest (February 1973) reported that “the world’s climatologists are agreed” that we must “prepare for the next ice age.”
— The Christian Science Monitor (“Warning: Earth’s Climate is Changing Faster than Even Experts Expect,” Aug. 27, 1974) reported that glaciers “have begun to advance,” “growing seasons in England and Scandinavia are getting shorter” and “the North Atlantic is cooling down about as fast as an ocean can cool.”
— Newsweek agreed (“The Cooling World,” April 28, 1975) that meteorologists “are almost unanimous” that catastrophic famines might result from the global cooling that The New York Times (Sept. 14, 1975) said “may mark the return to another ice age.”
— The Times (May 21, 1975) also said “a major cooling of the climate is widely considered inevitable” now that it is “well established” that the Northern Hemisphere’s climate “has been getting cooler since about 1950.”
So which is it? Warming or Cooling? Or neither? Or both? We don’t have the science yet to really know.
Gore’s mentor at Harvard, Dr. Roger Revelle discovered that atmospheric CO2 levels were rising and *could* potentially contribute to higher temperatures at a global scale. Regarding global warming, Revelle has also stated that the science is “too uncertain to justify drastic action.” (S.F. Singer, C. Starr, and R. Revelle, “What to do about Greenhouse Warming: Look Before You Leap. Cosmos 1 (1993) 28-33.)
I think it is wise to be a bit skeptical of claims about the Earth’s weather given it’s overwhelming complexity and our paltry knowledge, inaccurate measuring systems, and the propensity of some to propagate half-truths as prescience.
My personal opinion is that there is as much proof of global warming today as there was for global cooling thirty years ago.
Sawyer Jordan
Paying attention to the influence we have on the Earth would be a good first start. If it takes scare tactics to get us there, so be it. We have to start listening about how we’re poisoning our planet: conservative, liberal, politically undecided or even indifferent. Someone–or something–will have to live with the results of our continued indifference as a species to the perpetual shitting we do in our own nest.
KCinDC
Deano, do you have a comparison of peer-reviewed journal articles about global cooling versus global warming? You can find articles in newspapers, news magazines, and popular science magazines that say just about anything and are based on only a single study.
And anything a bit more recent from Revelle? Thirteen years is a very long time in science.
AST
This fable has been one of my pet peeves for years. It makes no sense, but has been repeated so often that people assume it must be true. It fills a rhetorical need in that there are some situations where we are lulled into complacency and fail to notice the danger slowly building up around us. But the frog myth isn’t one of them. Any organism with nerves will respond to heat and cold, and seek a state of comfort.
Only people are so stupid as to ignore their own pain receptors.
AST
I’m also reminded of another story, this time about crabs. It’s said that if you place one crab in a bowl, he’ll crawl out, but if you put two in, they’ll keep pulling each other back in and so they’ll remain trapped.
It sounds suspicious to me, but it’s also a useful little parable and will probably never die.
Justin Lancaster
Deano,
You should be aware that you are perpetuating something known as the Cosmos Myth.
For DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE visit: http://home.att.net/~espi/Cosmos_myth.html , which includes Singer’s deposition, under oath, and other damning tidbits.
Balling, Michaels and other long-time agents of the energy industry contributed directly to the drafting of the Cosmos article; but, in fact, Revelle did not.
Revelle’s criticizing of a galley proof does not constitute “co-writing” the Cosmos article. His belief that warming in this century will fall in the range of 1-3 degrees Celsius, noted on the galley proof, was not reflected in the paper. Revelle was hoodwinked. Perhaps more severe terms should be applied.
Since publication of the Cosmos article, S. Fred Singer has confessed to being sole author of the major points of the paper, including the constantly quoted conclusion, by virtue of his solo publication of the material in ES&T journal.
The Cosmos Myth is a nasty piece of business, hatched for the purposes of discrediting Al Gore, inter alia. This was an insidious masterpiece to publicize industry propaganda under the scientific reputation of Roger Revelle, and it was followed instantly by a SLAPP libel suit to suppress effectively the protests of Revelle’s closest colleagues. These industry agents have gotten the public to swallow the Cosmos myth for over a decade. Anyone with an ounce of integrity will help set the record straight.
In his recent movie, Gore may have made some of his points with dramatic flair, but as a journalist he should be allowed such license. He does not profess to be a scientist. As a scientist close to this issue,however, I can assure you that Gore’s movie gets it mostly right: humans are spiking a dynamic, non-linear, meta-stable fluid system with heat, forced by a 30% change atmospheric carbon-dioxide concentration and various fedbacks.
To show yourself the possibilities, take your frog out of that pot of water on the stove, and just put some vinegar and milk into the pot instead. Now, turn on extremely low heat and begin to study the dynamic system. Then crank the heat a tiny bit. See ANY changes?
Is anyone telling you it’s impossible to crank up a 200 mph hurricane in the Carribean and Gulf of Mexico?? How about a 250 mph storm??