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.
Is it possible that the male penguins saw the band on the wing and think the females have a physical flaw and wont take them as a mate?
@george E. Smith, January 13, 2011 at 5:08 pm:
“So Heisenberg was right; in the act of studying our subject, we change its behavior.”
Yes indeed – especially when the study subjects are animals. as your ‘oyster study’ illustrates so perfectly, animals are quick to learn, because e.g. getting food ‘for free’ or cheaply will increase their fitness (less energy spent on searching) and thus their success in reproduction.
Any zoologist studying animals in the wild must constantly be aware of the law of unintended consequences …
tty says: January 14, 2011 at 12:30 am There have been large scale studies on the effect of banding of nestling birds which have shown no significant effects compared with unbanded nestlings.
I call bull on that. Cite your alleged sources, tty. Except you can’t because they are imaginary or else utter crap.
As part of the procedure the USGS-BRD wye byes also band palila chicks with brightly-colored leg bands. When the mother bird returns to the disturbed nest (if she returns), she sees the foreign object and flicks it out, Of course the band is attached to the chick, and out goes the chick, too, which cannot fly and plummets to the ground.
The researchers call such chicks “jumplings”. No sh*t. The wye byes’ twisted thinking is that the baby birds jumped out the nests on their own because, get this, once the chicks have been exposed (by the wye byes) to the great big world outside the nest they want to fly free, even though they can’t fly yet.
The dinglebrained wye byes believe themselves to be Dr. Doolittles who can communicate with the animals. They claim to know what the baby birds are thinking.
So with great compassion and sensitivity, they fetch the jumplings off the ground, climb the ladder, and put them back in the nest again. Back comes the mother bird (maybe), and out go the jumplings again. This is such a common, repeat occurrence that the USGS-BRD wye byes developed a “protocol” to deal with the problem. No sh*t. The protocol requires the jumpling fetcher/replacer to put their hands over the nest for five to ten minutes until the jumpling “calms down”. What really happens is the mother bird abandons the nest permanently. The protocol-treated jumplings no longer jump to freedom (they didn’t in the first place); they just starve to death (if they don’t die immediately of shock).
100% mortality results. It has been measured although not reported. The wye byes are loathe to report the actual outcomes for fear they will be sh*t-canned post haste.
To be fair, I observed these things 15 years ago. I cannot say that palila chick studies still go on today. Although, the very same wye byes are still employed at the very same facility at Volcano N.P., and they still publish palila studies which are still absolute garbage “science”.
Some othe species being extirpated by toxic government wye byes include the alala (the Hawaiian crow), northern spotted owls, Mexican spotted owls, snowy plovers, marbled murrelets, and sage-grouse. Those are ESA listed or candidate species and so pull a lot of research funding, unfortunately for the poor animals as well as the poor taxpayers. Non-listed animals, when they capture the attention of wye byes, are treated even more harshly. Museums like the Smithsonian have ancillary warehouses full of dead animals in formaldehyde vats.
I could write a book about the atrocities committed by wye byes. Maybe I will someday, even though it is a completely depressing topic.
“Jeremy says:
January 13, 2011 at 2:46 pm
Also, Disney herded the lemmings off the cliff to demonstrate that lemmings commit suicide.
…but of course, everyone loves Disney, they could never harm animals.”
They pushed the lemmings off a table in the studio, with a broom.
Now, that’s what I call science.
Funny. If someone watches Discovery or Animal Planet, they’d notice that the most dangerous trip for Antarctic penguins is the walk from the ocean across the sea-ice to the rookery & back. The longer the walk (the more sea-ice), the fewer make it. The Antarctic sea-ice has been at near-record levels the last decade.
Aha! AGW must cause more sea-ice, killing the penguins!
The irony is staggering: GWers claimed that the penguins would adapt to being crippled even though they believed that changing the environments temperature by a fraction of a degree would be deadly. If you think my description of the banding is “over the top”, read the original article. Banding a penguin can cause a 24% reduction in power. Reducing power by 24% should cause about a 31.6% increase (1/0.76) in swim times for a given distance.
Here’s why it is a valid comparison. If you take a look at the 2010 Ford Ironman World Championship results, the winner did the 2.4 mile swim in 51:36. The fastest physically challenged (amputee) time was 84:04. http://c0024956.cdn1.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/2010/10/2010-Kona-Results.pdf
Translating that into hard numbers, removing one of a world class athlete’s limbs causes a 63% increase in time. Banding a penguin can cause about half the effect of chopping off a limb.
How are we supposed to trust any data from scientists who assume that crippling a penguin has no effect, but changing the temperature by fractions of a degree will kill it? Obviously they don’t understand the concept of control groups. I wonder what experimental conditions would be out of ethical bounds for these “researchers”???
I can’t help posting this, regarding King Penguins, from Harry Hill:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg0vizpfB7k&fs=1&hl=en_GB&color1=0x3a3a3a&color2=0x999999]
I saw this article before. However, I have to wonder at the small sample size. Since only 50 were tagged each way, the statement that “16 times more likely” seems to be sloppy science again.
I can see where the banding would alter the birds swimming and be detrimental, but that is about the extent of the claim they can make.
Mac the Knife says:
January 13, 2011 at 4:39 pm
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
Anthony,
That wasn’t the way I intended that to sound, I guess. I’m just delighted that you provide a forum and the historical perspective necessary to create such excellent articles documenting the malfeasance et.al. of the ‘global warmers’. Like many others in the workaday world, I see bits and pieces of it, and chime in as time allows. You see the larger picture and the history behind many aspects of it. Your excellent writing provides enjoyable fact-based reading for degreed professionals and laymen alike. The knowledge, technical skills, and thoughtful submissions of the many other contributors attracted to your tolerantly managed open forum set the bench mark for all other blog bosses to emulate.
Sincerely – Thank You!!!
Always a mystery to me that while the Inuit have to beach their boats well away from their hunting grounds and the Canadian Forces are to avoid these entire areas in absolute terms but the WWF and such have no qualms nor troubles approaching in aerial conveyances that would scare the @ur momisugly#$% out of domesticated animals exposed from birth to a cacophony of heavy farm machinery?!?
It was “Global warming” that killed them, was it? Unless they all swam off to Russia or Philadelphia in the northern summer, I suspect it could only be local warming that could affect these penguins.
Then again, it wasn’t even that, was it? We all know how penguins enjoy the cold so much that they all huddle together to share in each others’ fun. They hate the cold, but they’re better suited to it than most other species – hence they dominate on the shores of Antarctica. If it was too hot (ha!), they’d go for a dip in the frigid waters.
If you were to go to a nightclub wearing a tweed tank-top, your pulling style may be somewhat cramped too.
I you think about it, this proves that Global Warming affects penguin survival. We even have the figures!
See – because of Global Warming, there is copious funding for the banding of penguins and other critters to see if their survival is impacted by Global Warming. In fact, because of the banding, their survival is, indeed, impacted by Global Warming.
QED
PhilJourdan says:
January 14, 2011 at 8:49 am
I saw this article before. However, I have to wonder at the small sample size. Since only 50 were tagged each way, the statement that “16 times more likely” seems to be sloppy science again.
PhilJourdan,
Please re-read the original article. It says (and this is a direct quote):
“Banded birds were 16 percent likelier to die than non-banded counterparts”
16% – not 1600%
The eco-whackjobs are bad for everyone including penguins. I like the way some of the people responsible for killing off half the penguins are trying to say their penguin tags are better than the other tags and not responsible for the penguin genocide.
Will the Hague prosecute this atrocity?
I picked up the 23 Dec Nature last night and there is a article about the imminent extinction of Adelie penguins http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7327/full/4681034a.html blaming the AGW loss of ice and human-caused food chain distruption as the causes.
There is an 18-20 year growth and retreat cycle of Antarctic ice which (approximately?) matches the Southern African drought/flood cycle (presently near the wet peak). The authors do not mention where Antarctica is on the melt/thaw cycle. The last great “Ice is Melting” scare stories from the south were about 20 years ago so I presume it is at the end of its melting cycle now.
Yvon Le Maho writes, “…I have shown that an increase of only 0.3 °C in sea-surface temperature in the marginal sea-ice zone leads to a 10% drop in the survival rate of king penguins.”
Good thing that the waters around Antarctica are only heating at a rate of 0.4 C/100 years and from the look of it http://i39.tinypic.com/dza246.png the rise is both temporary and meaningless in terms of natural variation.
Interesting that the warming of oceans seems to have basically come to a stop. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/04/05/march-global-sea-surface-temperatures/
Love this blog. First a snip for humor that “might be misconstrued” (and I too would like the opportunity to miscontrue it), then a Frank Zappa link. With mostly thoughtful discussion and good science inbetween.
jaymam says:
January 13, 2011 at 3:32 pm
Is this the beginning of Nature actually publishing real science again?
Once again here is proof that scientists who may be expert in their field, in this case penguin research, lack common sense in their use of flipper tags.
I’ve always wondered whether tags of any kind affect wildlife, but assumed that the scientists had checked that out. Now they have.
It seems to me that the “affect on wildlife” is the actual capture (together, in many instances, with the added “tranquiliser dart”) in the first place. That is pretty likely to be traumatic and thus have some effect on the wildlife captured!
Papa Bear says:
January 14, 2011 at 9:27 am
Papa Bear – Thank you for the clarification. I had misread it. Still the low sample size does not really lend itself to any conclusions, but 16% is more reasonable than 16 times.
“Mike D. says:
January 14, 2011 at 5:03 am
tty says: January 14, 2011 at 12:30 am There have been large scale studies on the effect of banding of nestling birds which have shown no significant effects compared with unbanded nestlings.
I call bull on that. Cite your alleged sources, tty. Except you can’t because they are imaginary or else utter crap.”
This is a subject where there has been a lot of research. If you are really interested you might start by reading:
Hockin, D., M. Ounsted, M. Gorman, D. Hill, V. Keller, and M.A. Barker. 1992. Examination of the Effects of Disturbance on Birds with Reference to Its Importance in Ecological Assessments. Journal of Environmental Management 36(4): 253-286.
It is a review paper. It lists about a dozen studies on the effect on birds by disturbance from scientific activities.
Here is another (partial) literature list on the subject:
http://web4.audubon.org/bird/iba/iba_resources/References/Disturbance%20Literature_April2007_NC.pdf
Or you might just Google “investigator disturbance” (which is the term usually used) + “birds”. You will find hundreds of papers on the effects of investigator disturbance on just about every conceivable bird. Most deal with the effect on breeding success. Whether they are all crap I will leave up to your judgment.
I would however like to point out that most ornithologists have chosen their subject because they love birds, not to make money or a successful career (which is practically impossible).
“PhilJourdan says:
January 14, 2011 at 8:49 am
I saw this article before. However, I have to wonder at the small sample size. Since only 50 were tagged each way, the statement that “16 times more likely” seems to be sloppy science again.”
Have You considered a purely practical matter? The banded birds are easy to find (that’s why the bands are used), but to find the birds with only a transponder you must get to within a couple of meters of them. I think it is pretty good to manage to keep track of even fifty birds like that, even though King Penguins are extremely easy to approach.
PhilJourdan:
The scientists involved in the study have been against banding of penguins for quite some time and performed the study to prove it was adversely affecting them so it’s not really surprising that they chose to band just 50 rather than a few thousand.
“Crispin in Waterloo says:
January 14, 2011 at 9:53 am
I picked up the 23 Dec Nature last night and there is a article about the imminent extinction of Adelie penguins http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v468/n7327/full/4681034a.html blaming the AGW loss of ice and human-caused food chain distruption as the causes.”
Adelie penguin numbers increased dramatically from the 1950’s to the 1980’s, possibly because of decreasing competition for food from the whales which were practically exterminated in the same time-frame.
It has been known for some time that they are decreasing in the Antarctic peninsula. Perhaps partly because whale stock are recovering in this area where commercial whaling ended first, but probably mostly because of warming climate. Adelie penguin colonies are known to move north and south with changing climate and have indeed been used as a climate proxy (probably one of the better ones), see for example:
http://people.uncw.edu/emslies/research/Emslie%20et%20al%20Geology%202007.pdf
“Yvon Le Maho writes, “…I have shown that an increase of only 0.3 °C in sea-surface temperature in the marginal sea-ice zone leads to a 10% drop in the survival rate of king penguins.”
This I find profoundly unlikely since essentially all king penguins live near the Antarctic Convergence, well north of the marginal sea-ice zone. I think there is only one colony south of latitude 60, also king penguins are rather stationary birds, usually staying fairly close to the breeding colonies. Many of them probably never even see sea-ice.
I had no idea they were collaring felines. I don’t have collars on my cats. It’s too dangerous.
Domestrics cats can be (and sometimes are) strangled by thir collars and these people are collaring wild ones?
I’m disgusted. I also think it’s ethically wrong.
In the old days researchers took the time to KNOW the animals by sight. Actually I wonder how much animal observation they actually do nowadays. Not much I don’t think.
Elise says:
January 14, 2011 at 12:02 pm
tty says:
January 14, 2011 at 11:58 am
Elise and TTY, I am not advocating killing more birds in the name of anything, I just made an observation. Given both of your objections (difficulty in tracking and the predetermined conclusion), they probably did as best they could without inflicting additional hardships and death on the birds. I appreciate both your comments as I have learned more about the incident (and about reading things more carefully).
It brings a warm feeling to my heart to see scientist that do not have to justify there findings with CAGW.
Maybe there is hope yet.