Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Chris Turney, leader of the ill fated 2013/14 Ship of fools expedition to the Antarctic, which got stuck in the global warming while trying to retrace the Mawson Expedition, has been urging people to listen to his expert knowledge of Penguin colonies.
More than 150,000 Adélie penguins have perished in a single colony in Antarctica after the grounding of a giant iceberg.
The penguins used to thrive at Cape Denison in Commonwealth Bay, where strong winds blowing off the ice sheet kept a large area of water open near the shore.
But in December 2010 an iceberg bigger than the ACT grounded in the bay, trapping floating sea ice near the coast. The penguins now have to make a round trip of more than 120km to feed in the sea and since 2011 the population has plummeted from 160,000 to just 10,000.
According to new research co-authored by the University of NSW’s Climate Change Research Centre and published in the journal Antarctic Science, the colony could be wiped out within 20 years unless the sea ice breaks up or the iceberg, with an area of about 2900 square kilometres, moves.
…
“Iceberg doesn’t really do it justice,” Professor Turney said. “It’s like a small country, it’s enormous.
“As the planet warms you’re going to get more ice melting. The reality is, more icebergs will be released from Antarctica and just embed themselves along the coastline, and make the travelling distances for some of these colonies even further than they have been.”
Adélie penguins usually return to the colony where they hatched and try to return to the same mate and nest. Professor Turney said the Cape Denison penguins could face a grim future. “They don’t migrate,” he said. “They’re stuck there. They’re dying.“
Read more: Sydney Morning Herald
The abstract of Turney’s study;
The arrival of iceberg B09B in Commonwealth Bay, East Antarctica, and subsequent fast ice expansion has dramatically increased the distance Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) breeding at Cape Denison must travel in search of food. This has provided a natural experiment to investigate the impact of iceberg stranding events and sea ice expansion along the East Antarctic coast. As part of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition 2013–14, the Adélie penguin colony at Cape Denison was censused to compare to historic counts. Whilst some 5520 pairs still bred at Cape Denison there has been an order of magnitude decline in Adélie numbers in the area in comparison to the first counts a century ago and, critically, recent estimates based on satellite images and a census in 1997. In contrast, an Adélie population on the eastern fringe of Commonwealth Bay just 8 km from the fast ice edge was thriving, indicating the arrival of B09B and fast ice expansion was probably responsible for the observed recent population decline. In conclusion, the Cape Denison population could be extirpated within 20 years unless B09B relocates or the now perennial fast ice within the bay breaks out. Our results have important implications for wider East Antarctic if the current increasing sea ice trend continues.
I have no doubt a natural catastrophe like the Cape Denison Iceberg can have a severe local impact, and I’m not surprised that a lot of birds have died, given the abrupt onset of the disaster. But suggesting penguins “don’t migrate” is ridiculous; if that was the case, there would only be one colony in the whole world, or more likely, there wouldn’t be any penguins at all.
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“But in December 2010 an iceberg bigger than the ACT grounded in the bay, trapping floating sea ice near the coast.”
Note the subliminal (non) reference to a reason why his Ship of Fools was taken by surprise. He’s unwittingly transferred himself to the Adelie penguin colony and their (posited) plight. This iceberg is also the reason why Antarctic ice is expanding so much when the Fools were expecting a globally warmed coastline. You can see the psychological harm that was done to the guy with the Ripley’s Believe it or not hugest hubris in the world. He is cursed to keep writing the same story in every way he can to to try in vain to escape from his Foolishness.
So, old Chris(tmas) Turkey pops his head up above the parapet again after his toe-curling Ship Of Fools fiasco.
I’d have expected him to cobble together a study that was at least vaguely plausible. Perhaps this is his swan song.
It sounds like the problem is that it is too cold for the iceberg to melt. Or is the fool trying to say icebergs never happened before the warming following the LIA.
Actually that is the core of the observation, something lost on this dolt. The Antarctic iceshelf as wellthe continental ice mass is increasing.
.. and the southern oceans have been cooling.
Penguin colony A is decreasing, Nearby Penguin colony B is increasing. CAGW cientist does not know that colony A moved into colony B. Counting is not easy, they all look alike and put on the same damm suit every day.
David A says:
” Counting [penguins] is not easy, they all look alike and put on the same damm suit every day.”
I believe that’s one of the circles of hell, though I forget which one. You don’t get out of that circle until you count all of the penguins. If you get the wrong number, you have to start all over again.
It makes for a tough choice. Do you want the torment of fire and brimstone or do you want to count penguins for eternity?
A certain song comes to mind…
End the free money to these academic fools! There are just too many real problem on this earth. The only thing climate science has taught me is what a tragic waste of everyone’s money has gone on for 20 years.
This madness will only end when the free money ends. Period. You want to study something? Find someone to freely give their money to it. Without billions of dollars being taken from people and spent with no oversight and no value demanded back, this climate madness would be literally nowhere to be found. This just makes me so angry.
i will second that motion. in this day and age it is an absurd waste.
I agree, Dave. I used to think we were a modern civilization on the brink of wonderful things, now I feel more that we are still in the dark ages, ruled over by imbeciles and shysters. The scope of this abominable waste is too huge to ignore. Those responsible should not be allowed to skulk back into the shadows and get away with it. I fervently hope that the backlash, when it comes, will be severe. It will certainly be merited.
A.D. Everard commented: “…Those responsible should not be allowed to skulk back into the shadows and get away with it. I fervently hope that the backlash, when it comes, will be severe. It will certainly be merited.”
+1 “Those responsible” is debatable. The useful idiots and greedy ones are obvious but the facilitators are well hidden. I think the UN is “those responsible” with the support/direction of Socialist/Communist/Ist empire builders with the backing of wealthy Capitalistic individuals having ideology crisis.
Adelie Penguins are quite capable of establishing new colonies.
http://www.aukjournal.org/doi/pdf/10.1642/AUK-14-31.1
Thanks for the link.
But there too they write: … “ including 8 that we conclude have gone extinct.”
Someone should write Heather & friend and ask the basis of that “we conclude.”
Maybe a new colony moved on to an ice shelf nearby and the now missing ones said — too close, bye, bye.
So the embarrassment didn’t end his nonsense then?
For all I know, when he and his “tourist” shipmates got stuck in the ice they ate all the penguins. It might have happened.
Would have thought Christmas Turkey would have gone to ground forever after by now but, no, he just keeps sticking his head up…
Oh oh..Obama is going to try a recess appointment !!
http://video.foxnews.com/v/4754473099001/could-obama-make-a-recess-appointment-to-the-supreme-court/?intcmp=hpvid1#sp=show-clips
There were also a lot of icebergs around at the start of the last little ice-age. The Guardian was one of the ships in the 2nd fleet to Australia that hit one of them and ended up floating slowly to South Africa. Maybe today’s Guardian will eventually be sunk by the reality of the latest little ice-age.
The penguins on the Galapagos Islands north of the equator either swam there or were rafted on iceberg(s) … probably the latter.
Did you ever wonder why there are no dead penguins on the ice in Antarctica? Where do they go?
Wonder no more!!!!!!! It is a known fact that the penguin is a very ritualistic bird which lives an extremely ordered and complex life. The penguin is very committed to its family and will mate for life, as well as maintain a form of compassionate contact with its offspring throughout its life.
If a penguin is found dead on the ice surface, other members of the family and social circle have been known to dig holes in the ice, using their vestigial wings and beaks, until the hole is deep enough for the dead bird to be rolled into, and buried.
The male penguins then gather in a circle around the fresh grave and sing:
“Freeze a jolly good fellow.”
“Freeze a jolly good fellow.”
You really didn’t believe that I know anything about penguins, did you?
I am sorry, an urge came over me that made me do it!!!
I believe you’re going to hell for that one, littlespeaks. See above.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/02/13/chris-turney-penguins-dont-migrate-theyre-dying/comment-page-1/#comment-2144694
For-eze. Ho,ho, ho.
Thanks for the laugh. You’ve made my morning.
Make that: “You’ve made my mourning.”
The report relies on questionable philopatry:
From http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/07/01/blinded-by-beliefs-the-straight-poop-on-emperor-penguins/
“Believing Emperors are loyal to their breeding locations (philopatry), whenever researchers counted declining penguins at their study site, they assumed the missing penguins had died. However other studies had shown populations could suddenly double, and such observations challenged the notion of philopatry. “
British Antarctic Survey “top penguin expert” live on BBC via satellite phone yesterday (13 Feb, 17:25 GMT) downplayed the philopatry argument but still managed to blame the increase in sea ice on global warming.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0707r9q (from 25:38)
“As the planet warms you’re going to get more ice melting. The reality is, more icebergs will be released from Antarctica and just embed themselves along the coastline, and make the travelling distances for some of these colonies even further than they have been.”
Doesn’t all ice flowing from Antarctica’s ice sheets into the ocean eventually break off and float away? How is this increased by global warming?
Penguins killed by ice and snow ! Now I believe but can’t help but think was it exactly 160 thou or was it rounded .
So, how did the first Adélie penguin get there?
Or did they just manifest into existence at that breeding site? (from another dimension, perhaps).
Or have they been there since the beginning of time?
They never discover new breeding sites, so clearly all penguins at all individual breeding sites are, in reality, actually entirely different species of animal and not even related.
Is it my imagination or are academic scientists the very last people to understand that the world is a place where “shit happens” and there are “known knowns, known unknowns and unknown unknowns”.
Everybody laughed when Rumsfeld shared these words of wisdom with the world.
But plenty of people are late getting the message.
Also as the Buddha may not have explained, but certainly Darwin did – change is constant and inevitable, especially for wildlife, which has no postal address or property deeds. Are academic scientists actually living in a world of childlike discovery in which they marvel at the discovery of basic stuff that is plainly obvious to most of the other residents of the planet?
Obviously Chris Turney can’t be quite that stupid so I am inclined to suppose that he is simply looking for attention and money. He probably doesn’t really give a crap about penguins.
Where on earth do they train scientists now? Surely even a GCSE school kid will know that if the temperature is warm the iceberg will melt overall. What is more there will be plenty of places where localised melting allows sufficient area for them to feed. The existence of a huge iceberg that is not melting proves that any effect is not global but localised and one needs to examine where it started out from for a localised source of heat. I wonder why NASA chose never to provide updates for its file AMSRE_SSTAn_M-MOD_LSTAD_M which clearly shows that large localised natural events are providing much if not all of the global warming and the areas are nowhere near large human population or industrial areas. Could it be that reality is off message compared to climate science?
The B-9B iceberg came from the B-9 iceberg which broke off the Ross Ice Shelf in October 1987. It will be having its 30th birthday next year!
I severely doubt whether B-9 calved from the Ross Ice Shelf due to global warming since ice shelves tend to break up for mechanical reasons (storm/tide stress) as they progress further out to sea.
No large berg (>1,000 km²) has calved from Antarctica since 2002.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_recorded_icebergs_by_area
Chris Turkey, leader of the ill fated 2013/14 Ship of fools expedition to the Antarctic just keeps on giving and giving us bizarre stories. This latest Emperor Penguin tale is one of his best spoofs.
Adélie penguins
Perhaps Mr Turney is having difficulty getting over his recent trauma of being stranded by the ice, and projecting this trauma on the penguins?
The massive arrogance of this idiot “we got stuck in our own experiment”
I find it amazing that most people are unaware of penguins living in warm conditions – South Africa and Galapagos. They are not dying from heat exhaustion!!!!!!!!
professor turkey explains Antarctic ice science
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/AntarcticaCool.jpg
Some time ago the BBC conned poor Dickie Attenborough to stand on a beach in Antarctic and complain about the disappearance of the ice and the Adelies.
http://iceagenow.com/Glacial_Maximum_World_Map.jpg
So how did they survive the last ice age???
And notice how 90% of Russia including SIberia, was glacier free! This is proof that seeing how the climate works, to watch for Ice Age conditions, one simply looks at Hudson Bay, epicenter of all Ice Ages. If it doesn’t melt in summer, we are in an Ice Age again.
Think I know what happened here. If I was a penguin hearing biochar salesman Turney’s manic Tom Cruise laugh, I’d head off in the other direction too.
“As the planet warms you’re going to get more ice melting. The reality is, more icebergs will be released from Antarctica and just embed themselves along the coastline”
same old, same old me thinks!
” On January 2, 1868 the 1326 ton clipper “Mermaid” arrived in Lyttelton after an 89 day passage from GB and it was reported that, ” When in the vicinity of Cape Leeuwin, Captain Rose and his officers had an anxious time avoiding 30 huge icebergs.” Are icebergs seen off Albany or Margaret River ever these days ?”
” In February 1877, the “City of Auckland” was 1200 miles WNW of Cape Horn and ran into a patch of icebergs with fog which kept them all busy for an afternoon. How common would this be these days in summer ?”
” In 1893 (after arriving in Nelson in September 92), the iron sailing ship “Margaret Galbraith” was homeward bound around Cape Horn. Mr. N.H. Burgess the 2nd Officer reported that from three days north of the Falklands to about one weeks sailing north of the Falklands they were “among the ice,” which culminated with a days sailing past a single giant berg “40 to 50 miles long,” The account suggest the ship may have been only making 3 to 5 knots around this time, certainly at night one would expect them to throttle back. They had a close call on first encountering the ice north of the Falklands.
It may be partly by chance that the length of this iceberg was reported because the sailing people seemed more impressed by the height of ice encountered than the extent of any particular piece. The 40 to 50 mile long berg mentioned above was reported as being 1000 ft asl at the NE end”
” The 1000 ton plus iron sailing ship “Himalaya”, on a 109 day voyage from Liverpool to Wellington, departed 9, November 1894 and arrived 25, February, 1895. The captain reported seeing several icebergs off the Cape (of Good Hope) and then, “.. that from the Cape to the Crozets was a most trying time as icebergs were in sight for a distance of two thousand miles.”
The same “Margaret Galbraith” on a 123 day passage to Napier arriving 15, January 1895, was surrounded by ice for six days in the vicinity of 44 S Latitude and 25 E Longtitude.
Why on Earth does Turney bother? He’s oblivious to his total lack of credibility.
““They don’t migrate,” he said. “They’re stuck there. They’re dying.“
Really?
Adelie Penguins are migratory and after breeding do not return to their colonies until the next spring.
http://www.penguinworld.com/types/adelie.html
“Adélie penguins living at the far southern extreme of their geographic range migrate an average of about 13,000 kilometers during the year as they follow the sun from their breeding colonies to winter foraging grounds and back again.
“They’re definitely making a longer distance migration than we thought,” said Grant Ballard External Non-U.S. government site, lead author of a study recently published in the journal Ecology that examined the birds’ past and present migration patterns, and how changes in climate and sea ice extent might affect migration patterns in the future.”
http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/science/contenthandler.cfm?id=2230
Like I said, why does he bother?
It is all the fault of the penguins for not leaving him their new address when they moved. Or maybe they were running away from him, he bothers them too much.