Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach
Well, once again we’ve proven that Mark Twain was right when he observed that “A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes.” … but the response time of the truth is getting better. Three days ago guest author Eric Worrall, in a post called Chris Turney: Penguins Don’t Migrate, they’re dying!, highlighted the claims of the oft-wrong-but-never-uncertain Chris Turney, the leader of the Ship of Fools antarctic expedition. Turney claimed that 140,000 penguins had been killed by climate change. However, since then the penguin forces of science have mustered to defeat his defeatism.
Figure 1. Proof that if you google it, they will come. This was “penguin” plus “storm trooper” … Image Source
I say the response time of the truth is getting better because a mere three days later, Discover Magazine says fugeddaboudit … their best guess is that the penguins never heard of Chris Turney, so they simply migrated.
It gets better. You remember when Leonardo DiCaprio famously thought a Canadian chinook wind was evidence of climate change? The article shows that Turney’s circumpolar ignorance appears to be equally profound, viz:
“I don’t think any of us anticipated what we saw: the ground was littered with dead chicks and discarded eggs. What had been until recently a noisy, raucous colony was now eerily quiet. It was heartbreaking to visit,” study co-author Chris Turney, of the University of New South Wales Australia, told Live Science in an email interview.
But LaRue counters that Adélie penguin colonies always have dead birds scattered around because the carcasses don’t decompose in Antarctica’s dry, cold climate. Researchers have discovered mummified penguins and seals that are centuries old.
Science roolz!
Sunny today, rumors of rain tomorrow. Here, on the California coast north of San Francisco, already we have the mares tails and the mackerel skies that are the forerunners of a storm in the mariners’ rhyme. Here’s the view from my front door looking up at the redwood trees …
Mackerel skies and mares tails
Make tall ships carry short sails!
What an astounding, wondrous planet we live on, resplendent in sunshine and in rain alike.
Best wishes to everyone,
w.
frog
Your Latin translation (decimat) is undoubtedly correct; however my dictionary also shows Decimate: Kill, destroy or remove a large part of (something).
Habla usted contemporary American English?
Yes, that’s the modern usage, but it has a defined, specific, and clear meaning that has been lost.
It’s even more annoying since we still use the Deci prefix.
What you term the “defined, specific, and clear meaning” is undoubtedly useful for the 37 people in the world currently completely focused on discipline of Roman legions (I admit there is value in this).
However, it’s been a few hundred years since the rest of us actually tried to to this to our armies (we make ’em stand in line waiting for unaccountable & incompetent VA bureaucrats to “help” them).
Think of shrink, green, solar, auto, gas, batter, and hooters – these and thousands of other lovely words have gained multiple meanings…so it’s okay to have multiple meanings.
If we remove the deci prefix from decimate we are left with what? Something penguins seem to be still capable of.
When constructing a robust misrepresentation it must contain obvious elements that can not be denied.
Oh Dear!
Noun-Verb Confusion yet again!
Perhaps the viewers would rather salivate on the largest Penis aircraft the US Air Force ever built using contractors, mostly white and protestent. Ha ha
In English, every noun can be verbed, and nouned verbs a fabrication too…
When I was young, NASA was doing some research with them and I had the privilege of seeing one flying near what is now called Johnson Space Center. It was unreal to see something that huge flying overhead. It was trailed by multiple fighters. Thanks for the memory.
It is heartbreaking to see what climate change has done to that redwood, all the lower branches have fallen off.
Turney is one of those hype-types whose appeal to the emotional runs amok. I enclose an image of the Dramatic Turney, a screen dump of his fantastical interview about the Ship of Fools’ mission. That narrow-eyed, pursed-lip-jutting, build-for-the-punch-line expression so often employed to great effect by actors. Actors. Did I mention Actors?
http://www.bolerhead.com/turney-drama-face.jpg
Similarly, Bamboo-bicycle-flim-flam-flannerying drama, by Christiana & Moon:
http://www.bolerhead.com/Figueres-drama-face.jpg
Out of place but funny.
“Embarrassed’ man, 26, found shivering on a building ledge after being abandoned there by his mates in a late-night prank Man, 26, was left stranded on the fifth story of the Bureau of Meteorology Building, Melbourne Australia. He was trapped on an eight-meter high ledge overnight.
Official story “He was climbing with friends when they removed ladder as part of a prank”
–
The real reason was that he was outside the window to confirm the Melbourne weather for the BOM whose computers had been playing up.
Unfortunately a cleaner closed the window leaving him stranded until the morning.
Those doubting this fact should check the extreme weather events predicted for Australia by BOM later last night due to the communication mix up.
Twitter reports that @ProfChrisTurney does not exist.
https://mobile.twitter.com/profchristurney
Must have gone searching for his penguins.
An iceberg caused by global warming killed his twitter account.
Chris Turney is starting to like Dorian Grey. He thinks that Antarctica is falling apart but everytime he says so a piece is falling off himself. Until in the end nothing is left of him.
sorry: “look like”
Turney achieved success in the measure that means most to him ‘headlines’, that the claim lacked scientific validity is unimportant . In that he is a classic example of a climate ‘scientist ‘
heres the link to the WORST drivel on this by Adelaide Advertiser..
implies they all just died recently.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/technology/science/150000-penguins-die-in-antarctica-after-giant-iceberg-traps-colony/news-story/35a301c4a9aa2144df0e49dfa504559d
I thought a mackerel sky was the one that looked like, er, mackerel scales
lower down the picture its looking a bit fishy..
R2Gentoo ?
Willis, this is one of the easier debunks you have taken on, but very timely and educational. I never knew about the mummified remains of penguins and seals – seems a treasure trove for scientific work: centuries, maybe millennia with some digging, of DNA, evolution, etc. etc. and maybe even climate. I recall they found the cache in recent decades that Scott was heading for when they perished – the steaks were edible and there was a case or two of old scotch as well.
I love the Ozzies but, they have to do something about the cerebral infestation that has gripped their scientific institutions. There seems to be some tens of times the number of climate scientists per capita filling up atrophying universities. They are laying off ….350 (three hundred and fifty!) of this spawn from the CSIRO alone. They have an “ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science” combining a half dozen universities’ programs that seems responsible for almost half of the sludge on climate science that comes out of the bilge pumps of world institutions of hire lerning. Half the work of Steve McIntyre is spent debunking Ozzie papers that are subsequently retracted.
Our favorite bozo, Chris Turney, was given a distinguised award for commanding the Ship of Fools into the Antarctic ice, a fiasco that the rest of the world was using as material for their comedy hours.
http://www.jammiewf.com/2014/of-course-climate-clown-who-got-stuck-in-antartic-ice-wins-award-for-understanding-past-and-present-climate-change/
The guy, doesn’t seem to go in for graphs and statistics and data collection, but rather is like an idiot reporter, ‘observing’ the ravages of climate change whether there is anything there or not.
Yes indeed, pre CSIRO redundancy event Ozzie academia was seen to be on a trajectory approaching some sort of CAGW event horizon as it was about to implode and the only information thereafter allowed to escape the resulting singularity would be an ever increasing torrent of quacking mad climate pseudoscience. Something seemingly inspired by Douglas Adams’ shoe event horizon on Frogstar World B.
Another Antarctic expedition anyone?
Been there, done that?
Turney needed some 2016 PR, and he got some that was intellectually one of the following: odious, revolting, repulsive, repellent, repugnant, disgusting, offensive, objectionable, vile, foul, abhorrent, loathsome, nauseating, sickening, hateful, detestable, execrable, abominable, monstrous, appalling, reprehensible, deplorable, insufferable, intolerable, despicable, contemptible, unspeakable, atrocious, awful, terrible, dreadful, frightful, obnoxious, unsavory, unpalatable, unpleasant, disagreeable, nasty, noisome, distasteful . . . .
It was PR though.
John
Is the climate and environment focused media the profession with the lowest IQ? Did Turney rely on assuming it to get them to do PR on penguins for him?
It seems like the answer is plausibly in the affirmative for both Qs.
John
Willis the old saying is actually “Mackerel Scales and Mares Tails”, not Mackerel Skies
Thanks, Ancient Pistol. Google finds 64 with “mackerel scales”, vs. 84 with “mackerel skies”, so both ways seem to be in use.
w.
The main point in either case is to wake up the crew and be ready to furl the sails, no ?
Sounds like it might be an energetic yet fun time.
Get ahead of Her.
Still, no rain in the East Bay Willis, but you can feel it coming right now, as I type. My obligatory weekly post on the Folsom Reservoir levels:
http://cdec.water.ca.gov/cdecapp/resapp/resDetailOrig.action?resid=FOL
Pretty awesome switch from man-made drought to man-made rapidly filling reservoirs here.
There are 3.79 million breeding pairs of Adelie penguins in 251 breeding colonies.
Even if some got cut-off by the ice-berg, this likely happened 1,000s of times to these (and other) penguins before. It is what happens where they evolved and still live today so I imagine they have ways around these problems..
Only a drama queen would make such a big deal out of this.
“mommy , mommy are you sure I am a penguin ?”
“of course you are silly ”
” But mommy, mommy are you certain I am a penguin ? ”
” Look your daddy is a penguin, your mommy is a penguin, you are a penguin .
Why do you keep asking if you are a penguin ?”
” because I am bloody freezing !!”
I don’t suppose on this website there’s a hope of any of you actually reading the scientific article, but it in fact makes no mention of global warming or climate change whatsoever, and stresses that this is a ‘natural’ event that provides an experiment to see what may happen to other colonies if Antarctic sea ice increases in other sites. Similarly, Chris Turney has been quoted in media sources as saying, “I must stress B09B is not thought to be directly the result of climate change…”. The lead author of the paper is a highly respected scientist of Southern Hemisphere and Antarctic ornithology, has spent many, many months of her life in penguin colonies, and is the chairperson of the New Zealand West Coast Penguin Trust.
The original press release can be read at http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science-tech/giant-iceberg-decimates-antarctic-penguin-colonies. At no point did the paper, the press release or any of the authors say that this event is related to global warming, or indeed that ‘150,00 penguins were killed’ – it simply highlights the decline of the colony and failure to breed since the sea ice increase.
As is often pointed out on this website, media reporting of science is frequently hyperbolic, but I see you choose to believe it and look no further at original sources when it supports your somewhat militant agenda!
If anyone cares to read the article it is open access and can be found at http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=10171606&fulltextType=RA&fileId=S0954102015000644
Enjoy!
I don’t think most commenters thought it was about global warming. The fact that it turns out to be normal to find even centuries’ old dead, mummified penguins, chicks and eggs on Antarctica is the main thing that should tell you that neither NZ ‘expert or C. Turney know much about the subject they have pronounced on. In your zeal to marginalize skeptics you missed this point. Shame on the senior author and the seemingly witless Turney for putting this bilge out, knowing MSM and the legion of useful fools like yourself would give them relevance on the subject.
Concerned! February 17, 2016 at 11:26 pm
Since you appear to be one of the very few people who seem to think this is about global warming, I fail to see what you are talking about. I know I didn’t mention it at all.
Same objection. If you could quote what someone said about global warming, you’d sound more coherent.
In fact, the total lack of any comment about global warming in the paper was significant. Not one word about how despite the endless drivel about global warming, Antarctica is getting colder … funny, that.
Kerry-Jayne Wilson is a retired seabird scientist, and apparently a good one. However, she has written exactly two papers on Antarctic penguins, which you seem to think makes her a penguin expert of some kind. She was also one of the fools that got stuck in the Ship of Fools episode, q.v. I find no evidence that she spent “many, many months of her life in penguin colonies”, a citation for that would be useful.
In any case, not sure what your point is. I fear the reputation of the author of a science paper is meaningless as a guide to the truth content of the paper …
Nonsense. It says:
An order of magnitude decline means that about 150,000 penguins were killed.
Not only that, but the headline says “Giant iceberg decimates penguin colonies”. So the claim of dead penguins is in the headline. And the paper says that the penguins of that colony may be “extirpated” within 20 years … but as real penguin experts have pointed out, the penguins likely just moved.
Finally, perhaps you were insightful enough to determine that there were no claims of penguin deaths … other penguin researchers were not as brilliant as you, nor was the public. They also objected to the claims of penguin deaths. And the media assuredly reported the deaths:
“Thousands of penguins die after iceberg traps colony”
“150000 Antarctica penguins die after iceberg grounding”
“150,000 penguins die after giant iceberg renders colony landlocked”
and dozens more. We also find:
“Critics Challenge Climate Scientist’s Claim That Antarctic Iceberg Killed 150000 Penguins”
Meanwhile, the study author has gone into hiding from critics …
So yes, they did claim that 150,000 birds perished, and other penguin researchers said no way …
Sorry, amigo, but the one being “hyperbolic” here is you. You keep claiming that you are objecting to something you think someone said … but what? You haven’t quoted one word anyone has said, so it is totally unclear what you object to.
Best regards,
w.
Dan, you’re back.
What science?
I read a public relations exercise.
Naked,unsubstantiated speculation.
Science would require a little more rigorous effort.
Maybe even some measurement?
Projection.
Never follow an academic into the wilderness, especially the antarctic/arctic wilderness.
These penguins look OK to me, they are healthy, inquisitive and learning to speak Russian
Wow, if penguins are learning to live in the north, things are going to be interesting!
I suggest Willis Eschenbach goes over to Twitter search and types : Denison penguin, or Adelies Pengiun
…The whole Tweitterverse only follows’s Turney’s doom narrative and links to the doom video.
It’s only when you search for the mysteriously now deleted account @ProfChrisTurney
That you find any contrary opinions then only 10 ..pointing to Livescience copy of the discovery.com story
– All Chris Turney’s work is stamped “Narrative PR , not science”