This picture is my own choice – it is not related to the UK Mirror story
You have to wonder how the press allows stories like these to get published without some basic fact checking. I’m reminded of the recent CBS News story about “resonance” and global warming causing more earthquakes.
From the UK Sunday Mirror: Plight of the p-p-p penguins
By Richard Cooper 20/07/2008
This shivering penguin is just one of thousands close to death in Antarctica. Rain storms have killed tens of thousands of chicks – and scientists blame global warming. New-born penguins take 40 days to grow water-proof feathers. They can withstand snow, but if rain soaks them to the skin, they die of cold. Experts yesterday said 400 Adelie penguin chicks have washed up dead on Brazil’s beaches after migrating 2,500 miles to avoid the rain. The Emperor penguin – star of the hit film March Of The Penguins – is also under threat. Antarctic temperatures have risen by 3C in the last 50 years to an average of – 14.7C (5.5F). The penguin population has fallen by up to 80 per cent and, if the downpours go on, they will be extinct within 10 years. Dozens of migrant penguins are being treated at Rio de Janeiro’s Niterio Zoo. Biologist Erli Costa said: “This is all due to global warming.”
That’s the entire story, no other sources are given. But I did find the source Associated Press story here.
Interestingly, the AP story has no mention of “rain” or of “baby chick penguins”. There were mentions of other causes such as food supply and pollution as possible causes. It seems Mr. Cooper of the Sunday Mirror has the only mention of “rain” and “chicks” and “80 percent population decrease”. I think this story from the Falkland Islands may be his source for that number though.
Ok let’s do some fact checking to see if there is really anything going on in Antarctica causing an “80 percent population decrease”.
First lets look for a collaborating research story, how about the best organization on Birds, the National Audubon Society? Surely they’ll have this story. But a check of their web page at: http://www.audubon.org/ shows no mention of this.
Ok maybe Greenpeace? Nope, nothing there. British Antaractic survey? http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/ Nope though they have a nice picture of a penguins but no mention of the crisis.
At the very least, let’s check the temperature in Antarctica, It’s winter there. Here’s the temp map as of publication of this blog posting:
Click for larger image – Temperatures in degrees Centigrade.
Source: University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Antarctic Weather Stations Project
Hmmm. Warmest temperature is -6° C, it is rather difficult to get rain under that sort of temperature. Unfortunately I did not find an easy to decipher archive of temperatures for the last few days, but again given it is winter there, the prospect of above freezing air temperatures seems unlikely.
And then there is this statement from the story: “Experts yesterday said 400 Adelie penguin chicks have washed up dead on Brazil’s beaches after migrating 2,500 miles to avoid the rain.”
Huh?
But here is the clincher from the AP story:
Costa said the vast majority of penguins turning up are baby birds that have just left the nest and are unable to out-swim the strong ocean currents they encounter while searching for food.
Mr. Cooper, your story is all wet. The Mirror should issue a retraction.
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The article says they die if soaked to the skin by cold water. To migrate from Antarctica they’d have to swim in cold water. That doesn’t make sense.
What would make sense would be that the article is based upon the penguins flying to escape the rain. There would seem to be a failure of fact checking of some kind.
Here’s an article about the penguins washing up on the beach in Rio in Wired magazine, with an AP byline: http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/B/BRAZIL_DEAD_PENGUINS?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-07-20-16-35-43
It goes into a bit more depth, but doesn’t mention global warming at all. Rather, the two potential culprits this article fingers are over fishing and general pollution.
Adelie penguins breed in December. “In March, the adults and their young return to the sea.” How long have these chicks been flying to escape the rain?
Dear Anthony
I am astonished by this part of the article you reproduced.
“Experts yesterday said 400 Adelie penguin chicks have washed up dead on Brazil’s beaches after migrating 2,500 miles to avoid the rain.”
This is a complete absurd. I cannot stress in words how false this information is. I am a 71-year old man that has been working in weather forecast for decades. My initial graduation was Biology. Penguins always, I repeat always, came ashore in our coast during this time of this year. They migrate to seek food. Many are young and do not resist. They perform in a “food marathon”, taking “ride” in the Malvinas/Falklands sea current. This time of the year the current is stronger and closer to the shore. Many of them do not resist and are taken to the sand. Some come ashore already dead, but many are rescued alive and treated in centers dedicated to oceanography.
http://g1.globo.com/Noticias/Brasil/0,,MUL608271-5598,00.html
The great menace to penguins in or shores are fishing and oil spills from boats in the sea. There is one paper (in English) on their food patterns here in the coast of Rio Grande do Sul state, southernmost state of Brazil.
http://www.jstor.org/pss/1522046
Another paper (in English) also stress that the great menace to them are not environmental conditions in Antartica, but the human activity in the sea much farther to the north:
http://www.springerlink.com/content/nu7k320h102g8722/
The following is a very interesting article on the migration of the penguins and why so many die in the shores of South America:
http://www.ibrrc.org/penguin_network.html
Note that there is no mention to weather conditions in the south pole, but ocean pollution.
Global warming should bring warmer oceans. But what may be taking a toll in ththe coast of South America is a COLDER South Atlantic (in English):
http://depts.washington.edu/uweek/archives/2000.12.DEC_07/_article7.html
So, my friend Anthony, this is one more example of very bad journalism.
My best wishes to you and congratulations for your outstanding job.
Eugenio Hackbart
Chief Meteorologist – MetSul Weather Center
ICECAP Contributor
Sao Leopoldo – State of Rio Grande do Sul – Brazil
Satellite data only goes back 30 years, not 50, but in those 30 the data shows not even a tenth of a degree of warming – much less 3C! (data here). I guess things could have warmed in the prior 20, but that is fairly doubtful given that most of the world was cooling, not warming, in the 60’s and 70’s. Even the egregious GISTEMP shows only a half degree C warming since about 1950, and this data has been shown to be pretty suspect.
There are a couple of isolated spots on the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula which have warmed more than 1C over the past decades. This may be yet another example of the media extrapolating Antarctic-wide trends from this anomalous 2% of the continent (sort of like making judgments about weather in Denver from data measured in Key West).
I have to link this – the BBC April Fool video of penguins migrating to the Amazon
I can see a comic strip… A scene of several little baby penguins bobbing around in a churning sea. One of them says “I was born this morning…” Next panel: “Since then I’ve learned many things…” Next panel: “While I was in the middle of learning one thing or another, it started to rain.” Next panel: “We all ran very fast and jumped into the sea so we would not get wet.” Next panel: “Pretty smart, huh?” Last panel: “After all, we weren’t born yesterday!”
This is more than a reach. This is boardinghouse reach.
A few weeks ago. On American TV there was a claim of the south african penguin having to move to escape the raising tempertures.
If the South African penguin is in trouble? And GISS is correct. I’m not sure how they survived the warmer tempertures of the 30’s.
Maybe they want to pair up Chilly Willy and Maxie the polar bear again?
Fact checking?
Facts are inconvenient. The target here is to brinwash and cause the population to stampede in panic.
Facts! Those are just meaningless details. Who can bother with them.
For AGW alarmists every day is climate Halloween.
This is only going to get worse. Until the majority public rises up and explicitly states they are fed up with these stories, the lying propaganda will only continue to flow in at an increased rate that would make Comrade Stalin blush.
Anthony,
You must realise that the Sunday Mirror is written by cretins, for morons to read. I hasten to add that you do not fit into either category. The MSM in the UK is abysmally poor and I decline to read, let alone purchase such piffle.
Your work, and Icecap, Climate Audit, CO2 Sceptics etc., are all required reading and are often referenced at http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/ because we believe global cooling will topple the socialist EU cabal that is promoting the destruction of the western nations including the USA.
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2008/07/economic-suicide-pact.html
Regards.
Perry
I’m sorry, but this is The Mirror news paper. What are we expecting? I’m just surprised that the global warming was blamed on illegal immigrants or the contestants on Big Brother.
Just another “fact” from here http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/wildlife/penguins/index.shtml
Penguins are now enjoying a population boom. Their increasing numbers can be partly attributed to the over-fishing of baleen whales in the past which has resulted in a super-abundance of krill, a key species in the Antarctic ecosystem. In addition to krill, penguins feed heavily on fish, squid, and other small crustaceans.
Another alarmist headline which doesn’t match the text http://uk.news.yahoo.com/rtrs/20080701/tsc-uk-climate-penguins-011ccfa.html
Headline – Penguin population plunge points to climate havoc
Text –
Boersma said the decline appears to have begun in the early 1980s after the population at the site peaked probably at about 400,000 breeding pairs of Magellanic penguins between the late 1960s and mid-1970s. Today’s total is half of that.
The world’s warming climate is only one of the causes of the penguins’ problems, she said. They also are threatened by oil pollution, depletion of fisheries, becoming entangled in fishing nets, and coastal development that eliminates breeding habitats, according to Boersma.
Most scientists recognize 17 species of penguins, and they live in Earth’s southern hemisphere. Penguins are beautifully adapted to life in the ocean, residing in places as different as the warm Galapagos islands and icy Antarctica.
But many species have been experiencing population declines in Antarctica, Africa, South America, Australia, New Zealand and the Falkland Islands, Boersma said.
The number of Galapagos penguins, the only species with a range that inches into the northern hemisphere, has slipped to around 2,500 birds, about a quarter of its total in the 1970s.
Anthony. So as to encompass as many buyers as possible,the majority of newspapers in the western world have their headlines constructed for people with a reading age of twelve years. The UK Mirror has its headlines constructed for a reading age of ten years. This is with the hope that no small change is left uncollected. Distance between yourself and this rag does not reveal that everything in it, and I mean everything, should be considerd with these thoughts in mind. Every bird cage in Britain has its botton lined with a copy of the Mirror! (or should if it isnt!).
What?!! It’s not on the BBC? How’d they miss that story?
The penguins are dying!
The polar bears are dying!
The koala bears are dying!
Cute and cuddly animals everywhere are dying!
And it’s all because of global warming.
Facts? Why bother with facts? It’s a cute animal; it tugs at the heartstrings; it must be global warming; why else would animals this cute be dying?
Now, a warning notice for WWF et al ~ these false cries of alarm to score some immediate propaganda points will backfire on you when you’re in a fundraising campaign for a real crisis. People will become numb to the plights of animals after you’ve beaten the subject to death. I tune out every story about the plights of animals of all kinds; the subject is boringly predictable.
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In a similar vein, I imagine most of your British readers will remember the inhabitants of the south- east corner, namely Kent, being exhorted three years ago to plant their gardens with cacti, and without further ado, as that area was predicted on the back of a dry summer to become arid semi – desert, due to rampant AGW.
The area’s main reservoir, Bewl water, has subsequently never been below 50% full, and at the height of what passes for summer this year currently stands at 94% capacity!
Again, no apology or backtracking, just silence ………
Back to the penguins – could this all be connected to the story of the Emperors new clothes?
Perry
Is that sceptics.org? If so. Is there an english version?
Thanks
Dan
The Mirror isnt the only one. All (say that again -ALL) the newspapers and TV (The licensed media) are at it. They may all be morons and cretins but it does help raise the profile and legitimacy of the hacks to help them make more money and win prizes!.
One has to ask “where are the professional Skeptics in all this?”
Anthony,
Sorry – OT (again!) – but I see that Dr Vincent Gray has resigned from the Royal Society in New Zealand. This must have been a tough decision for him giving his long association with the Society. This seems important to me – do you think it’s worth running a piece on it?
Sorry for a non-scientific comment, but the pinguin refugee picture raise questions. Should US open it’s borders to the pinguins? Isn’t this a topic Gore shall add to his lectures?
I agree that the Mirror is probably as the “kvallstidning” ( = almost tabloid ) Expressen in Sweden (4th biggets Swedish news paper), and their pinguins:
http://www.expressen.se/1.1238161
http://www.expressen.se/1.1230350
However I’m not surpsiced if also the quality news paper print this. (It has had articles that Earth is like Venus and may be hundreds of degrees warm.)
Expressen also proved there will soon be Golf courses on Antarctica. Grass is expanding. See a picture with …pinguins:
http://www.expressen.se/1.1023305
(Sorry misspelling penguins. 😛 )
Not being a weatherman and all, but how does it rain when the temperature is -14 degrees?