Guest “drive by” by David Middleton
Alternate Title: “Tarantino does ‘Happy Feet'”
Is Antarctica gaining ice? 01:47
(CNN) A penguin colony in Antarctica has suffered a massive breeding failure, with only two chicks surviving the disaster.
Terre Adélie (Adélie Land) is home to more than 18,000 pairs of Adélie penguins, but this year almost all the seabirds’ babies starved to death, a situation one expert described as “Tarantino does Happy Feet.”
The World Wildlife Fund said unseasonably extensive amounts of sea ice around the colony in East Antarctica had forced the adult penguins to travel further than normal to forage for food.
“This devastating event contrasts with the image that many people might have of penguins,” said Rod Downie, Head of Polar Programmes at WWF. “It’s more like ‘Tarantino does Happy Feet’, with dead penguin chicks strewn across a beach in Adélie Land.”
[…]
I had to double-check both the website and my calendar to make sure this wasn’t from The Onion and that it wasn’t April Fool’s Day.
Too much sea ice —> “Tarantino does ‘Happy Feet'”
If RCP 8.5 doesn’t exterminate Adélie penguins by 2100, too much sea ice will. Apparently Adélie penguins lived in a Goldilocks world for the past 37,000 to 122,000 years. From the end of the Eemian interglacial stage, through the last glacial maximum, on through the Holocene Climatic Optimum, down to the coldest part of the Little Ice Age… Antarctica clearly must have had a perfect Goldilocks sea ice extent… Because penguin evolution is clearly restricted to pristine climatic conditions:
Clearly penguin evolution depended on stable atmospheric CO2 levels…
And a stable, unchanging climate…
As usual: Any and all sarcasm was purely intentional.
Global cooling kills. Save the Penguins, Burn more Coal.
“Adélie penguin population almost doubles in East Antarctica” – 2015
Less ice is good: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/news/2015/adelie-penguin-population-almost-doubles-in-east-antarctica
“A proposed reduction in sea-ice extent in the mid-20 century may also have benefited Adélie penguins by enabling better access to the ocean for foraging.”
Less ice is bad: http://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/2006-2010/issue-17-2009/science/adlie-penguin-population-dynamics-18-years-in-a-colony
“For example, their notable decrease on the Antarctic Peninsula is thought to be a direct response to a reduction in sea ice as a consequence of climate change”
despite the fact the article contains this correlation:
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0006/159882/varieties/antarctic.jpg
but no, its definitely bad:
Oh, and look. A couple of other monitored sites suggest 0% success some years isn’t uncommon.
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0018/21645/varieties/antarctic.jpg
http://ars.els-cdn.com/content/image/1-s2.0-S0967064507003190-gr8.jpg
I think they’re doing ok.
http://icestories.exploratorium.edu/dispatches/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/chart.jpg
http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure/image?size=medium&id=info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0091188.g002
.. but we’ve only just worked out we we’ve been counting them wrong:
https://phys.org/news/2017-03-antarctic-penguin-previous-scientists.html
Maybe reporters and scientists should be reading Darwin —
They surely won’t read this satanic author.
Because they are, like Griff, creationists with some sort of Noah’s complex: save all species, no matter what, and [screw] Darwin and his awful Darwinism that make species disappear without any mercy to weak individuals. Because, you know, it is all Darwin fault, when he invented natural selection (the very same way Newton invented gravity, and you wonder how things stood on Earth before), turning the Eden into an horrible struggle-for-life arena dominated by this most horrible creature (Man).
They would rather get rid of struggle-for-life, so that Eden gets back. This can be done, just don’t teach Darwin’s idea and all will be well again, as in the good old days.
Extinction is taken as an example of the perfidy of patriarchal Western Capitalism, and due to Daddy’s sins that the True Believers are atoning for, by trying to overthrow technological society. Humans are unnatural, so any change in Nature is an indication of our inherent evil. (I wish I was being sarcastic, but some of the green blob take that attitude)
They are effectively creationists (the ideas that species can and will eventually disappear, and that “struggle for life” applies, send them into trance), so, no, they won’t read Darwin.
No one is going to reference the great episode of “Futurama” about penguins??
Once in a while, wide area of nature do not bear fruits. Because of hail, drought, flood, or whatever. Well, they will next year… or just do not belong here anymore, and some other living being will benefit.
What’s the fuss?
Actually penguins are almost bound to decrease in the fairly near future. The near extermination of large whales in the Southern Ocean meant a massive increase of food resources for penguins and they have grown greatly in number in recent decades. Take for example the Royal Penguin colony on Salisbury Plains in South Georgia:
http://www.my-photo-blog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/King-Penguins-Salisbury-Plain.jpg
And that is just part of one single colony of one species (the brown birds are young ones in juvenile plumage).
As whale stock recovers there will be less food available, and the number of penguins will decrease.