Longtime readers of WUWT may remember this story from 2008:
Nutty Story of the Day: “Global Warming” is Killing the Penguins in Antarctica
The root of this goes back as far as 2006, such as this MSNBC story:
Now it appears that assertion of a link between global warming and penguin deaths is dying faster than the penguins themselves. In what appears to be a manifestation of the observer effect problem in science (the act of observing changes the outcome) we have this article from the science journal Nature that says the act of tagging penguins so they can be tracked by researchers, seems to have a significant side effect on their life expectancy (mortality) and ability to reproduce. The article goes on to question a climate connection.
The cover page headline in Nature:
Flipper-banding reduces penguins fitness and skews climate data
Here’s a news story:
PARIS (AFP) – Tagging penguins with flipper bands harms their chances of survival and breeding, a finding which raises doubts over studies that use these birds as telltales for climate change, biologists said on Wednesday.
The metal bands, looped tightly around the top of the flipper where it meets the body, have long been used as a low-cost visual aid by researchers to identify individual penguins when they waddle ashore.
Foot tags are not used because of the penguin’s anatomical shape.
But, says the new study, the seemingly harmless bands affect the penguin’s swimming performance, causing it to waste more energy in foraging for food, sometimes with life-threatening consequences.
Publishing in the journal Nature, French and Norwegian scientists reported that they took 100 king penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus), selected at random on Possession Island on the Crozet archipelago, a sub-Antarctic group in the southern Indian ocean.
All were tagged with a minute, electronic transponder that was implanted under the skin, which can only be read by using specialist equipment placed close to the bird. Fifty of the 100 birds were additionally given a flipper band.
The team then recorded sightings of the group over the next 10 years.
Banded birds were 16 percent likelier to die than non-banded counterparts, and had 39 percent fewer chicks, they report.
“The picture is unambiguous,” researcher Yvon Le Maho told AFP. “Among banded penguins, the least-fit individuals died out in the first five years of the study, which left super-athletic birds.
“In the remaining five years, the mortality rate between the two groups was the same, but the reproductive success of banded penguins was 39 percent lower on average.”
Le Maho said he had warned many years ago against banding penguins on ethical grounds but was sidelined. Opponents argued that the birds were not affected by the practice or got used to the tag after a year or so.
The latest findings, though, are unequivocal, he said.
Entire story here
Here’s a video from Nature on the issue:
You can add “Penguins killed by AGW” to the trashbin along with the now disproven Frogs being killed by AGW hype.
Oh and let’s not forget the fact that the whole of the continent of Antarctica has been shown not to have any statistically significant warming (except in the peninsula, which may be affected by weather station issues, since most Antarctic weather stations are near a warm pocket of humanity, i.e. researchers) by our skeptical scientist friends Jeff Condon and Ryan O’Donnell.
Yeah, it’s all about the warming in Antarctica, it couldn’t possibly be anything else.
Next you’ll be telling us that air-conditioners and power generators for the Antartic scientists dwellings have skewed temperature data….oh you have already….
Mark Twang says:
“Are the penguins drowning like the polar bears?”
No, but they’re turning on one another.
Antarctic not Antartic…duh! Must get new glasses or new fingers…
Maybe the Penguins will start studying the Climatologists?
Maybe it was all the polar bears that are in the Antarctic killing and eating the penguins.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2011/01/01/more-than-four-feet-of-sea-level-rise-this-century/#comment-30723
The parallels to researchers spreading the chytrid fungus yet not taking better precautions is a sad tale. But I think in general most researchers try to be aware when they are having an adverse effect.
I am bothered more by the fact that while the ice loving Penguins were declining on the peninsula, where the warm waters of the polar front come closest to the Antarctic continent, The colonies of ice loving Penguins have tripled in the Ross Sea.
This paradox growing populations was mentioned in a recent article in Science on the state of our oceans, but simply dismissed, claiming that “our models say it will warm there soon”. So they then went on to hype only the declining populations.
Reminds me of the story I heard back in the mid 70s about an environmental contractor in the north west of Western Australia. Seems he had to do a fish count in some waterholes. Gelignite made it easy to count the bodies.
Anthony,
Thanks for picking this ‘tip’ up and running with it. Nice article!
REPLY: Gosh I’m sorry, I saw it on my Google alerts feed. Often many things arrive simultaneously via different channels, my apologies if you felt I used your tip without credit, that certainly wasn’t an intent. – Anthony
From http://www.sciencenews.org/view/generic/id/68666/title/Marking_penguins_for_study_may_do_harm
That’s huge! I’d imagine it also implies the penguins bring back less food
because they need some of the calories.
They usually arrive late? Perhaps “usual” isn’t El Niño.
Well in keeping with Smith’s first Law of survival (out in the ocean); to whit:- “There ain’t no such thing as 75% of Top Speed !”
Guess which Emperor Penguins the Leopard Seals will target, as catchable snacks on the hoof ?
You wanna bet me; that Jane Goodall, and her tribe of students; have NOT impacted the lives and behavior of the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee population. I’m not being critical of her; her “discoveries” have been mind boggling; but are they Chimps in the wild, or wily quick learners.
I can remember when we used to pop the lids off the top of Baja rock oysters, in our snorkel gear, and watch the Sergeant Majors dart in to scarf up the oyster out of its shell. Total training period for a new school of SMs; two oysters max; and then they would be gathered at the next oyster waiting for the magic screwdriver to pop the top.
So Heisenberg was right; in the act of studying our subject, we change its behavior.
It would be interesting to “band” about a million 14-year-old with with GPS and telemetry collars to see how many survive and reproduce within 15 years. Or maybe just make them wear khakis and polo shirts.
Re: ShrFnr@ur momisugly 3:07.
Oh! Come on! I just gotta know!
Overhyped? How? Your story that you link to says that the Sunday Mirror (hardly an authoritative source) seemed to be on its own in making the claim. It mentions an AP source (link now dead) which your story suggests the Mirror had got wrong. Your post here points to an MSNBC story which says something about global warming in a caption.
Overhyped? Is that all there is?
Reverse Hawthorne effect?
If penguins are dying because warming, how come they to mate and breed to a much warmer place tha the Peininsula? They go to the biggest breeding and mating place in the world, Punta Tombo, in Patagonia, where they share territory with guanacos (and toursits in shorts!). Just see:
http://www.patagonia-argentina.com/i/atlantica/puertomadryn/tombo.php
Or:
http://www.destination360.com/south-america/argentina/punta-tombo
“Punta Tombo is truly a unique and pristine part of Patagonia. This five hundred acre Argentina National Park provides a nesting ground for the Magellan penguin population. Each year during the warmer days of spring over half a million penguins come to the Patagonia coasts in order to breed. One of the greatest features to the Punta Tombo is that you can actually experience the walk along side the penguins and observe their intricacies first hand. It is the perfect spot for a curious eye. Become a part of the ‘march of the penguins.’ ”
Also: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/The-Magellanic-Penguins-of-Punta-Tombo.html
I seem to remember that someone was complaining that the increased temps caused more snow and ice and made it harder for some species to reach their inland breeding grounds.
@Nick Stokes
Well golly, Nick – Ididn’t have any problem finding the Nature site. What’s your problem?
“It observes a calendar with red-letter days, such as Earth Day; perhaps green-letter days would be more to the point.”
No, Earth Day is also on Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, so red is the appropriate color; remember, Green is the new Red
this is typical of AGW advocacy, as opposed to science.
It is no better than my going to Brighton, dipping my foot in the water, and then declaring on the basis of such an experience that the Titanic didn’t sink, since it couldn’t be felt underfoot. It would then be said that it was a fable to make a good movie, but ultimately would fall to pieces when checked against the relevant facts, and my declaration would be the fable.
AGW is indeed this sort of trap of assertion, followed by defence of it against relevant facts of the kind in question, but since it deals with a very partial and enclosed set of its own partial facts, can only defend them with rhetoric, as Trenberth does, than with the relevant calculations.
Surprisingly, the IPCC 4th assessment report doesn’t contain the necessary and crucial calculations (which ought to be in the section on radiative forcing) to prove the c02 thesis, and should therefore only be treated as conjecture, or a hypothesis at best.
It’s a real shocker The more I discover the angrier I get!
Banding kills birds it’s supposed to tag
Tuesday, 8 June 2004 Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2004/06/08/1127115.htm
They already knew way back in 2004, wing banding of king penguins problems has been reported before:
Discovery News – Jennifer Viegas (June 8, 2004, via ABC Australia): Banding kills birds it’s supposed to tag ;
Over the five years of the study, unbanded penguins fared much better than the banded birds.
They arrived earlier at the colony for courtship and breeding, produced 54 chicks versus the 28 counted for banded birds, and were more likely to survive.
Lead author Dr Michel Gauthier-Clerc, a French biologist with the Station Biologique de la Tour du Valat in Arles, said the flipper bands prevented penguins from swimming normally.
“The major problem is the increased energy cost for swimming that results from decreased hydrodynamic efficiency.
The drag created by the band made banded penguins work harder in the water. The effect could be critical when penguins forage in deep water for their main prey, lantern fish, and during the winter, when the birds must travel and hunt over long distances to build up body weight before they fast for breeding at the colony.
Over the course of the study, banded birds had delayed returns to the colony. In the final year, 36% did not make it back to the island.
Penguins Harmed by Research Bands
The bands that are used to tell birds apart affect the birds’ reproduction and survival, research shows.
Thu Jan 13, 2011
http://news.discovery.com/animals/penguins-bands-research-110113.html
And in another worrisome development, the flipper-banded penguins averaged 12.7 days away from home on foraging trips instead of 11.6. “One day or two days is a huge difference,” says ecologist and study co-author Claire Saraux of the University of Strasbourg and France’s CNRS research network.
Chicks back at the breeding site eat only when a parent swims home with food collected hundreds of kilometers, sometimes thousands of kilometers, away. And young chicks have to build up reserves to survive their first winter, when parental food delivery drops off to only a few times during the whole season.
Slower foraging fits with worries that flipper bands may be increasing drag on penguins during swimming, Saraux says. In a swimming test in a tank, an Adélie penguin wearing a band expended 24 percent more energy than an unbanded penguin.
“From an ethical point of view, I think we can’t continue to band,” Saraux says
So lady penguins apparently don’t like bling.
Just when you thought it could not get more obscene, wore ridiculous, and more utterly void of any logic and reason….guess again.
Stupidity is being bred into science…and it is an alarming thing to observe.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20110113/sc_livescience/globalwarmingdirepredictionfortheyear3000
The year 3000? LOL What is this, Futurama?
O my ******* ***!
What an embarrassment.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
Whoops….last post may have disappeared to spam. Thanks mods, for checking.
Chris
alan neil ditchfield says:
January 13, 2011 at 2:54 pm
WHY ENVIRONMENTAL FORTUNE-TELLING IS ACCEPTED
a.n.ditchfield
Excellent post! It deserves wide dissemination. Thank you.
I can’t help but wonder if the Japanese “Research” ships in the antarctic aren’t reducing the number of whales with their research efforts….
Spectacular opportunity for the headline “Scientists link global warming to low numbers of whales”…..What? You mean we killed all the whales to study them?
…Too bad, they were so tasty.