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.
“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.”
There is that one show, Big Cat Diary, though I don’t think it’s being filmed anymore. None of the big cats shown had collars or tags; instead the film makers used many spotters driving around searching within the animals’ large territories. The hosts/researchers could recognize the cats by sight. Hard enough with lions, but they also followed cheetahs and leopards.
Here is another global warming claim that can bite the dust. The twentieth century warming is unexplainable. Really, there is a twenty year warming period. 1978-98. Check it out in the record. They can’t explain a twenty year trend. One that is hardly important since it doesn’t meet the definition of climatically significant.
I am going to add a comment on the theme “When wildlife biologists are toxic to the animals they study”. I would like to see some transparent and open research published on this topic.
From my own experience as a geologist, working in the Canadian Arctic from 1994 to 1998, I was shocked to learn how many of the wildlife biology studies being done in the area were conducted. We had two helicopter pilots working for us who said they were so much happier working for geologists becasue they found the work with the biologists very distressing. They said geologists were much more respectful of the wildlife, i.e. we went out of our way to NOT disturb the animals.
One pilot told us stories about how every couple of years the biologists studying an endangered species of caribou on the island would hire a net gunner. They would ask him to fly with the skids of the helicopter at just-above antler level and chase down the poor critters so they could fire a shot-gun loaded with a net at their antlers, trip them up, and then land beside them so they could change the batteries in their radio collars and take a blood sample. According to the pilot, some of the animals had to be destroyed if they broke a leg when they tripped. This same biologists made a lot of noise about how these caribou were under threat by ‘industrial development’ when exploration geologists sought permits to do some prospecting on the island where he studied the caribou. Meanwhile, the local Inuit still routinely hunted these caribou and he didn’t seem to have a problem with that.
As geologists, we always tried to give these poor critters wide berth as it was clear that they were spooked any time they heard a helicopter, so we would always fly high and pick our landing sites away from them, often adjusting our work locations to stay away from the caribou. (We did this for polar bears too – though more to save our own skins then theirs). And while I am not a wildlife biologists, I did notice a distinct difference in the reaction of the muskoxen on the island. They didn’t seem to give a rat’s a** about us and didn’t seem disturbed to have us nearby on foot, or be at all concerned at the sound of the helicopter. They didn’t even do their defensive, (standing butt-to-butt with antlers out) maneouvre, I’m not sure if that’s a difference in the species, or the fact they they had lucked out and not been picked for study by a wildlife biologist.
Another pilot that we worked with had spent a few weeks with a bunch of bird biologists before he came to work with us and he was quite distressed at the technique these biologists used for capturing the birds, i.e. they put up a big net, and had him “herd” large flocks of the birds, with the helicopter, into flying into the net. He found it quite upsetting as many of the birds broke wings, or necks, getting entamgled in the nets.
Ever since those summers I have wondered about the ethics of some of the wildlife biology research techniques, and if some of the approaches are really justified. This story of the banding of the penguins, and the influence of the observer and their research techniques, on their outcomes, is one that I think bears a lot more research itself in the wildlife biology community.
tty: …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)…
Motivations? You want to bring up “good” motivations as an excuse for bad behaviors? Careful there, sport. Pandora’s Box and all that. Shall we delve into the real motivations of government and quango scientists who abuse science and the wildlife they study? Because I can if you really want to. I doubt the wye byes would approve, however.
Let’s stick to outcomes and leave putative motivations out of it. Unless you really want to get down in the mud.
Epistemology alert!
In this thread one person claimed that most penguins live on islands that don’t have mammalian predators, but others talk of the mammal called “sea lion” eating penguins.
Someone suggested that the banded penguins were those that couldn’t run away from humans but another said that King penguins let humans walk right up to them and touch them (surprising, given that most aware creatures are at least wary of unknown things).
Which claims are theory, which are fact?
It seems that some people need to take a lesson from the New Yorker magazine, which claims to go to great lengths to check facts in stories. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/02/09/090209fa_fact_mcphee Note skepticism is practised, and even experts goof up. (The link is to an abstract, full article can be purchased. Issue date is “February 9 & 16, 2009”, a single issue.
Imagine the cost of that checking.)”
mariwarcwm says:
January 14, 2011 at 2:14 am
“Poor penguins! Leave them alone. Those ugly metal bands must get really cold out of the water …. conduct heat from the penguin’s flipper and possibly interfere with circulation.”
________
They don’t do your insides any good either. Try swallowing a dozen banded ones for lunch.
Ain’t it funny how nobody seems to notice that tagging animals subject to predation cannot fail to impact upon the predator. (Ooh, them little transmitters are crunchy though.)
“because of the penguin’s anatomical shape”
I wonder what other sorts of shape they might have?
WRT snipping items that might offend the
idiotichumourless, surely the addition of a smiley would indicate the nature of the content, enabling those unable to appreciate it at least to understand why (and enabling the rest of us to enjoy it)?“Try swallowing a dozen banded ones for lunch.”
Look out soon for a report on how AGW is affecting leopard seals…
I trust you would not have reservations if I placed a part of Another overhyped global warming claim bites the dust | Watts Up With That? on my univeristy blog?