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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This penguin flap may have some of its roots in a paper published in the July edition of the journal Bioscience by University of Washington biologist P. Dee Boersma. It appears the media; in it’s normal style, has cut and pasted from various sources and over dramatized the story leading to the current penguin press pile on.
National Geographic has a story about rain soaked penguin deaths at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080702-endangered-penguins.html .
The story was posted July 2 but refers to “a five-day stretch of torrential rains on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula” in January. I wonder if that story was mixed in with others to create the subject fiction.
A Google search for ‘”Jon Bowermaster” penguin’ brought up
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jon-bowermaster/antarctic-evolution_b_94933.html as a first hit which might deserve some discussion. It does further convince me that Antarctic discussions should be split into at least two regions – the peninsula and everything else.
Sorry. Did I toss my last post in the spam filter by putting in web address?
I’ll ask again without the address.
Perry
Is that web address sceptics dot org? If so. Is there an english version?
Thanks
Dan
Correct me if I’m wrong, but unless they changed the AP article, there is mention of GW as a reason for the baby jumpers..
The Penguins have to go much farther North than normal right now to find food.
Why, because the southern ocean is frozen solid at least 1,000 kms toward Brazil from Antarctica.
Last year, the sea ice reached South Georgia Island and is likely to do so again this year since it is already close.
I suspect that the “baby chick penguins” freezing in the rain comes from here (Note that the story refers to events in January):
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080702-endangered-penguins.html
The Mirror story looks like sombody has taken a bit of creative license and melded this with the AP story (that Anthony linked to in the lead post) to suggest that they are somehow linked.
Isn’t the Mirror roughly equivalent to the US ‘National Enquirer’? It looks like they are trying to emulate ‘The Onion’, an exceedingly funny ‘news source’.
Anymouse, lol at the vision of Penguins flying, especially Penguin ‘chicks’.
It can be anything, except the sun.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/07/080718215412.htm
Another could-have, might-have, maybe, perhaps, likely etc. story.
I think I found the sources at National Geographic. This is my first post here so I will try to get the formatting correct.
The first article looks to be the source for many of the Mirror’s numbers:
Adelie Penguins Extinct in a Decade in Some Areas?- http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071228-penguins-extinct.html
Notice the deceptive title? The use of the sensitive word “extinct” (when referring to animal species) qualified by the words “in some areas” makes it easy to misinterpret the point that the penguin colonies may be moving to different locations.
Some relevant quotes from this article:
OK, so they breed on land (important later).
Prediction of local extinction in 5 to 10 years. Dubious temperature change claim.
So an 80 percent decrease is claimed by Fraser, but only in one specific area in the last 34 years.
“The peninsula is undergoing warming that in the wintertime is almost 5.5 times the global average,” Martinson said. [There’s] got to be some other source of heat that’s melting the glaciers and raising the air temperature, and the most obvious source is the ocean.”
Despite lack of any evidence for these claims, even this guy thinks there are other abnormal heat sources peculiar to this specific area.
Wow, so the penguins are going to be OK? You had me scared for a few minutes there, Fraser.
On to our second article:
Penguin Chicks Frozen by Global Warming?- http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/07/080702-endangered-penguins.html
Ironic title, isn’t it?
Again, this is on the western side where we previously saw claims that the population has been decreasing for the last 34 years. And the rains were called “unusual”.
I can see how that would happen, if the parents were both out getting food (I don’t know the parenting habits of these particular penguins). But this is an “unusual” event.
There are other forces at work here too.
Here is another article that seems to be an extended version of the Mirror’s (possibly their source or they both used the same source):
The baby Antarctic penguins being frozen to death by freak rain storms- http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1034590/The-baby-Antarctic-penguins-frozen-death-freak-rain-storms.html
Both these UK articles seem to be a mashup of several different articles, taking many claims out of context.
Hmmmm!
I know a very easy way to get lots of funding.
http://environment.newscientist.com/article/mg19926653.500-satellite-cutbacks-could-leave-us-blind-at-the-poles.html?DCMP=ILC-hmts&nsref=news5_head_mg19926653.500
Anthony,
You perhaps shouldn’t have included recent temperatures in your debunk as clearly the chicks will have been born at the end of summer, when temperatures will have been a lot higher. These kind of mistakes are what the alarmists jump on to dismiss the arguments we make against stupid scare stories like this – we have to keep alert!
Apart from that, Sunday Mirror… you’ll be lucky to find a triple digit IQ anywhere near this rag, don’t worry about it influencing anybody important!
UAH Antarctic temperature data for June:
The Antarctic continent saw its third coldest June in 30 years, with temperatures averaging -1.53 C cooler than the seasonal norm. Portions of Anarctica south of Australia were as much as 5.5 C (9.9 degrees Fahrenehit) colder than seasonal norms for the first month of winter.
Mark, you say:
“The Mirror isnt the only one. All (say that again -ALL) the newspapers and TV (The licensed media) are at it.”
If you look at the up-market newspapers in the UK, I’d say The Independent is rabidly green, The Telegraph is pretty sceptical, and The Times doesn’t seem to care that much one way or the other.
That leaves The Guardian, which has a very large on-line readership (2 million plus, I think). As is befitting a lefty newspaper, its editorial position is green.
I’ll never forget the highly critical review its environmental correspondent gave to “The Great Warming Scandal” when it was shown on Channel 4 last year, before admitting halfway through the review that he hadn’t actually watched the program at all – if he had of, he said, he knew he would have been so enraged he would have thrown a flowerpot at his TV.
But The Guardian’s popular “Comment Is Free” blog is another matter completely. Last year, I reckon posters used to divide roughly 50 – 50. These days it seems it’s more like 60-40 sceptics to AGW-ers, if not more.
Wired magazine is getting into the act:
http://news.wired.com/dynamic/stories/B/BRAZIL_DEAD_PENGUINS?SITE=WIRE&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2008-07-20-16-35-43
Maybe?
http://www.desmogblog.com/something-strange-is-happening-in-the-coldest-driest-place-on-earth
Todd Carmichael is a 44-year-old entrepreneur and adventurer from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
For someone who has experienced “freaky weather” in the Antarctic up close and personal, reports this week that baby Antarctic penguins are freezing to death due to “freak rain storms,” came as no surprise.
Fellow explorer Jon Bowermaster had this to say:
Everyone talks about the melting of the glaciers but having day after day of rain in Antarctica is a totally new phenomenon. As a result, penguins are literally freezing to death.”
Of course all this brouhaha is over the West Antarctic Peninsula, most of which isn’t even within the Antarctic.
Re: Paul H Clark (04:35:08)
Here’s a link to the story of Dr. Vicent Gray resigning his membership in the Royal Society of New Zealand:
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=312&Itemid=1
He’s quite passionate in his presentation.
Anthony,
You mentioned not easily finding recent temperature data for Antarctica. The Weather underground website (wunderground.com) shows Antarctica temperatures and recent data can be accessed by clicking on individual stations.
Vostok is reporting -88F… I can’t imagine that weather.
I thought the penguin issue was due to Polar Bears holding summer penguin barbecues. I’ve seen the pictures on the web.
You have to wonder how the press allows stories like these to get published without some basic fact checking.
Do you? Really?
John Thorpe (06:44:21) :
The article in question claimed that the deaths were recent, so current temperatures is releveant.
Oh, those poor baby penguins. They are so cute and so pitiful.
How can you be so heartless, Anthony?
John Thorpe:
According to the story dated 7/20/08:
Anthony is merely quoting the story and illustrating the incompetence of the writers. It sounds to me from reading the story as if the events transpired, well, yesterday.
I know this is off topic. But I need some help with this. I was thinking about the photo that shows the subs at the north pole in may ’87 so I decided to look at the comparative images at Cryosphere Today. Wow am I confused now. For one thing, most images for the year ’87 are not available. Also I finally found an image for September 20, 1987 so I compared it to July 20, 2008. Well, I think it is pretty obvious that the ice extent now is much more than it was then. However when I looked at “The Tale of the Tape” graph it seems that the anomaly is flipped around backwards. Am I crazy or what? Any help appreciated.
My, oh my, how the assumptions pile up. It seems that no one in any of the press stories has considered the maximum sea ice concentrations in Antarctica this past year. If penguins tend to their young on land then have to waddle out an extra mile or two to get to a feeding ground then I can understand why they would flock to a new location.
This story reminds me of “The Climate Bureaucrat” story on Russ Steele’s site.
http://ncwatch.typepad.com/