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.
Dear Master: Eugenio Hackbart
Congratulations: Excellent clarification.
As usual manner. Put the media in its place.
polar bear = penguin = hoax
Leon Brozyna……..ok
Bill Illis……………..ok
Pierre Gosselin……ok
best regards
Paul H Clark (04:35:08:
“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?”
Me too!. Err, I hate me too posts. I concur! Not good enough. I can add:
http://nzclimatescience.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=312&Itemid=1
I don’t know enough about the two sides, but it certainly seems like he resigned because nothing else has gotten their attention. I imagine his action is also meant to get the IPCC’s attention.
Well worth reading is his http://nzclimatescience.net/images/PDFs/warmingscam1505.pdf
Save the Penguins! [click]
Thanks for the post. I saw the article earlier and thought it didn’t pass the sniff test.
What’s needed is a legal war chest. When some clown lies to the media, sue them until they bleed.
“The Tale of the Tape” graph it seems that the anomaly is flipped around backwards. Am I crazy or what?”
There is some kind of error on the global ice coverage graph. They don’t update it every day. Give it a couple of days to correct.
And when the media fabricates things as they did in this case, sue the $#!# out of them as well.
Reply: Steve, implied profanity is frowned upon~Charles the moderator AKA jeez.
P.S. We should get together for a beer sometime.
The thing that strikes me as odd is the fact that the Penguins are going to a country known for its RAINFORESTS to escape rain. Guess they aren’t the brightest blubs then.
Morons read the Sunday Mirror, it is a tabloid, and morons write for it.
The article I read (picked up by yahoo) had biologist Costa saying AGW had impacted ocean currents and cyclones, and that’s why these weak swimming baby penguins are dying.
No attempts were made to correlate deaths with ocean currents or cyclones, of course. That would be outside of a biologist’s expertists, I guess.
Are there any recent population surveys of these penguin species? One reason for more of them washing up could be that there are more of them overall. As populations increase, I would expect to see the number of dead ones washing up on various shorelines also increase.
It’s not just the Mirror; CNN has just run the tease for this piece, so it will be on air soon. I wrote this to CNN.
To: situationroom@cnn.com
Date: Mon, 21 Jul 2008 14:57:04 -0700
Situation Room has reached a new low, seemingly, by running this story that is guaranteed to pull the heartstrings of unsuspecting and credulous digesters of American news Sausage, news content, liberally laced with propaganda and commercial advertising determined by their corporate masters. In running a piece of manipulative propaganda like this, which has already been refuted, and which has no supporting evidence; indeed an attempt at mass manipulation Eddie Bernays would have been proud of. That this station never acknowledges the level of serious debate within the scientific community even when such debate actually makes news, reflects incompetence and perhaps a more sinister agenda. Last weeks’ announcement from the American Physical Society rejecting the contentions made by supporters of the AGW theory wasn’t mentioned on this network which spends 24 hours a day stretching the definition of news like it was warm Bonomo taffy!
As far as I can tell the population of Adelie penguins is increasing overall at a rate of about 1% per year. There are places where the populations are decreasing and places where they are increasing. The greatest increase seems to be the Ross Sea area of Antarctica. In any case, the Adelie penguin is currently listed as being under “no threat”.
But implied references to being a deity are acceptable for the intelligent Creator of the site. 🙂
Also, Adelie penguin populations are stable or slightly increasing. I don’t know the past causes of infant mortality; they must be dying sometime, as I don’t see any on the highway.
“World population: estimated to 2 million breeding pairs. …
Archipelago’s population: 29 182 breeding pairs in 1984, 30 369 in 1990.
Threats: none. Population in slight increase (1% a year) almost everywhere”
http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/Penguins.html
“In the last 30 years, populations of Adélie penguins on the South Orkney Islands have fluctuated”
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/press/journalists/resources/science/sciencebriefingpenguins.php
(Why do they only mention one group of Adelies?)
An Inconvenient Truth alarmed us all with the heart-wrenchingly realistic drowning polar bear cartoon. Maybe An Inconvenient Truth II will alarm us with an equally heart-wrenching cartoon of rained-on penguin chicks.
Hmmm. When bodies of dead cold water birds/mammals happen to wash up on the beach here in Florida, we’re told it is due to “global warming”.
So they’re coming to Florida for refuge from the warm polar regions. All righty, then.
Apparently the Mirror did’nt realize this little piece from the BBC was meant in jest:
Never forget that Britain is a ‘democracy’, and every reader of the Mirror has a vote equal to that of every reader of The Times. I would think that when it comes to level of IQ, who would you target if you wished the government to hear a message?
I wonder what the learned biologist thinks happens to the penguins when they go for a swim in the sea. Perhaps seawater has some magic anti-wetting agent in it that we have not yet discovered.
NH artic ice nowhere near last years melt looks more like 1980 (when satellite pics started)
http://igloo.atmos.uiuc.edu/cgi-bin/test/print.sh?fm=07&fd=20&fy=2007&sm=07&sd=20&sy=2008
“How long does it take the Emperor Penguins to make their trek to/from the group to feed ?
The distance can be anywhere from 60 to 250 km depending on ice extension, and it takes them an average of a week, one way. Add to this a week to fish and replenish their fat supply so it can take them a good month to do the round trip. If the ice extends particularly far that year, the long turn around times increase the mortality among the chicks who cannot be fed enough in time. ”
http://www.gdargaud.net/Antarctica/PenguinFAQ.html#Where
Imagine that, global warming good for Penguins and they repopulate, then when you have a cold year like this year the excess dies off
Way back (like 1982-83) I was in a deep field party in Antactica. One of the jobs we did was count the Adelie penguins in the colonies around Inexpressible Island. From the work I did there, I can see lots wrong in the article.
Most penguin chicks die. The adults usually lay two eggs, but after hatching, generally only feed the bigger one. The predation by skuas is significant, as well as those who die because their parents get eaten by orcas or leopard seals. The birds don’t go in the water until they have lost all their down. Towards the end of the season, all the adults just abandon the nesting site. Those birds that haven’t got all their adult plumage just die on the beach (one sees them pacing backwards and forwards waiting for their parents or their feathers) so the water edge is littered in carcases, that don’t rot. I’d estimate the actual survival rate eggs to 1 year old would be less than 25%. Even so, the Adelie is one of the most common penguins with massive colonies across Antarctica. I believe their main diet is krill so overfishing shouldn’t directly affect them.There are a lot more threatened penguin species than Adelies.
I’d put the story down to another junk science beat-up.
I don’t really believe in global warming 0.0 It’s funny how even though global warming is just a theory and there are so many controversial stuff to it that most people believe that global warming is truly real. Well, I could argue against that, depending on what your perception of “global warming” is.
haha, thanks for the laugh. i needed that today, especially after, in recent weeks, hearing so many liberal environmentalist hippies bitch about how the whole damn planet is going to turn into a sea of magma because we use air conditioners and cars. really? get over yourselves and got hug a tree, for god’s sake, but quit ruining the politics of MY country.
This global warming is going pretty fast..now Antarctica??