Blowhards

The big-tools for big-oil over at the McHenryCountyBlog were eager to pass along some big news:

Remember all the hype about Global Warming being the reason for frog and other amphibian deaths? Man made climate change was the cause. It turns out that man's actions may have caused the die-off, but it seems to be because man brought a species of African frog with a skin disease to the New World.
Frog Die-Off Traced to Fungus, Not Climate Change, Global Warming

Ha ha, the mass frog die-off has nothing to do with global warming. It's all because of some frog with a fungus and a Kenyan birth certificate that illegally got into this country. Therefore Global Warming is a media-fed hoax and doesn't exist. The end.

The McHenryCountyBlog is to Internet blogging what AOL dial-up is to 4G. So, no big surprise, what the McHenryCountyBlog reported as breaking news had been widely known for at least 4 years. According to The Sunday Times, from back-in-the-day in 2007 ...

Conservationists estimate that 170 species of frogs have become extinct in the last two decades and fear another 1,900 are on the way out. Many of them have been killed off by the chytrid fungus which is thought to have emerged from Africa to spread to every continent except Antarctica.
Deadly fungus threatens mass extinction of frogs

This of course doesn't dissuade the McHenryCountyBlog from pointing to the frogs as a straw-man proving that Global Warming is junk science.

Speaking of straw-men, hopefully yours was nailed down. Two days after the frog story, the McHenryCountyBlog reported a funnel cloud spotted in McHenry County:

* AT 455 PM ... NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DOPPLER RADAR INDICATED A SEVERE THUNDERSTORM CAPABLE OF PRODUCING A TORNADO. THIS STORM WAS LOCATED 2 MILES NORTHWEST OF MARENGO ... MOVING NORTHEAST AT 20 MPH. IN ADDITION ... A TRAINED SPOTTER REPORTED A FUNNEL CLOUD IN ASSOCIATION WITH THIS STORM.
In Case You Didn’t Have TV On

Will the McHenryCountyBlog ever connect the dots between Global Warming and funnel clouds before it's too late? Or is the McHenryCountyBlog to connect-the-dots what Pakistani Intelligence is to Osama Bin Laden?

Stay tuned!