From Polar Bear Science HT/Cam_S
Dr. Susan Crockford
Yesterday, the US Fish and Wildlife Service announced it will classify the Emperor penguin as ‘threatened’ with extinction under its Endangered Species Act (ESA) based on what are known to be flawed climate models, to take effect next month. This is despite the fact that Emperor penguin numbers increased between 2009 and 2019, an IUCN Red List reassessment in 2019 did not reverse its 2018 decision (still listing it as ‘near-threatened’, not ‘vulnerable’), and member-nations refused earlier this year to enact an Antarctic Treaty to protect the birds. Conservation activists of all stripes are filled with glee at this bettter-than-nothing decision for a species nowhere near extinction because it means more money for them.
Bottom line: An article by the US National Public Radio (25 October 2022) admits the real reason for this listing:
Though emperor penguins are not found naturally in the U.S., the endangered species protections will help increase funding for conservation efforts. U.S. agencies will also now be required to evaluate how fisheries and greenhouse gas-emitting projects will affect the population…
Reuters (26 October 2022) says the FWS’ justification for this action is not that penguins are currently in danger but that they might be [my bold]:
The wildlife agency said a thorough review of evidence, including satellite data from 40 years showed the penguins aren’t currently in danger of extinction, but rising temperatures signal that is likely.
Read my detailed and fully referenced blog post on this issue for background on why the predictions of doom for this species, which are based on implausibly extreme ‘worst case’ scenarios as shown below (i.e. RCP8.5 or ‘unmitigated scenario’), are as fatally flawed as those for polar bears (Crockford 2019; Hausfather and Peters 2020).
Note also that one of the co-authors of the paper used to justify this decision (Jenouvrier et al. 2020) is activist Shaye Wolfe of the Center for Biological Diversity, the organization that first petitioned for this result back in 2011. Just like they did for polar bears.
In 2018, the IUCN Red List said this about their Emperor penguin assessment, which did not change with its 2019 assessment (BirdLife International 2020) [my bold]:
This species is listed as Near Threatened because it is projected to undergo a moderately rapid population decline over the next three generations owing to the projected effects of climate change. However, it should be noted that there is considerable uncertainty over future climatic changes and how these will impact the species.
References
BirdLife International. 2020. Aptenodytes forsteri. The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T22697752A132600320. Downloaded on 26 October 2022. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22697752/157658053
Crockford, S.J. 2019. The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened. Global Warming Policy Foundation, London. Available in paperback and ebook formats.
Hausfather, Z. and Peters, G.P. 2020. Emissions – the ‘business as usual’ story is misleading [“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy”]. Nature 577: 618-620
Jenouvrier, S. et al. 2020. The Paris Agreement objectives will likely halt future declines of emperor penguins. Global Change Biology 26(3): 1170-1184. [paywalled] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14864
If they just go to the antarctic equivalent of Polar bear hiding spots they’ll be safe.
Anyone using RCP8.5 knows they are lying.
That is actually its allure.
They know that we know they are lying. Yet they can still force their authoritarian measures down our throats.
Soviet propaganda wasn’t to make you believe the obvious lies, it was to break your will.
They know they are lying….they know that we know that they are lying.
Of course, you have to be photogenic to make the list in the absence of real evidence. The climate communication consultants made that very clear. And it has to fit on a T-shirt and coffee mugs.
… and live somewhere remote so that only “expert scientists” can monitor their numbers.
Antarctic penuins may be safe for now, but those in the Arctic are really suffering.
No kidding, I haven’t seen one in ages!
I have one of those refrigerator magnets, from Seaworld in Orlando, that has a polar bear and a penguin side-by-side. Maybe it’s my imagination but I think the polar bear is eyeing the penguin.
This was posted some years ago
Haven’t seen a polar bear in the Antarctic in…centuries?
But they would be called pygmy polar bears, today, and the little cuddly chappies were hunted to extinction by the Emperor penguin about the time of the Holocene Climatic Optimum, as they struggled with the heat in Antarctica.
Auto.
Mods – think ….
The original penguin was the great auk, which was a northern hemisphere bird. Alas you will only see stuffed examples, because it was hunted to extinction by humans.
The Great Auk was one of a family of 24 species of Auks, which also includes the Little Auk, Guillemot, Black Guillemot, Puffin and Razorbill, them being very much alive. Great Auks weren’t closely related to Penguins at all apart from both being flightless sea birds, in actual fact, Canadian loons are the closest relative to the Penguin living in the northern hemisphere. I totally reject your flawed idea that Great Auks were ‘the original penguins’ – it’s very silly and not based in reality.
Arm yourself with Wikipedia darling!
Polar bears are eating them as there are so many they’re short of food…
They could be threatened because there are too many of them!
What a project – projected decline of emperor penguins! Based on equity!
This post has a funny background. For years, warmunists tried to to make the Adélie penguins their Antarctic alarm. The ‘logic’ was Adelies depend more on sea ice, which would diminish with warming. But the Antarctic sea ice has increased (new record extent 2021), and new sat observed Adelie colonies increased their numbers by about 1.5 million.
Well, Adelies didn’t work, so let’s switch to Emporers. Dr. Crockford has the ‘new’ story dead to rights. It’s also false, but will now take some undoing. For warmunists, getting any penguin endangered suffices, as Susan points out.
The Adelie alarm failure was chronicled near the beginning of longish essay ‘No Bodies’ in ebook Blowing Smoke. Showed how bogus warmunist ‘science’ is.
The Emperor penguin population in 2019 was found to have grown by up to 10% since 2009. It reached as many as 282,150 breeding pairs, up from about 256,500, out of a total population of over 600,000 birds (Fretwell et al. 2012; Fretwell and Trathan 2020; Trathan et al. 2020).
Clearly, the US Fish and Wildlife Service has to act fast to classify the Emperor penguin as ‘threatened’, before population pressure has them falling off the edge of the ice shelf.
Much like the sad decline in polar bear numbers from 7000 to 35,000…
The Climate Mafia seems to believe that COP26 has given them a licence to make any outrageous claim that they like. That’s what we have here. This rubbish should never have grown legs. Instead it is up and running as more ammunition for the crazies to use.
Because nobody wants to cut funding, the pork remains.
You’ve got to admit they are cute though, aren’t they?
Oodgie koodgie koodgie koo.
I’ll bet Shackleton barbecued a couple on South Georgia and never told. Or some chicks, battered and deep-fried in seal oil. I’m not sure where this is leading, but more research needed. And a proper bar, please, on Boaty McBoatface.
Penguin egg omelette’s?
Apparently, soothsayers and psychics are now in charge of placing animals on lists. Because they predicted it was going to happen in the future. But what I want to know is why they only can foresee extinction for cute animals. The ugly ones get no clairvoyance at all.
The Climate Crusaders are in a victory lap and know that they can get away with most anything. Doesn’t matter if it’s total B.S. they know that the media will parrot what ever they claim.
And the Leftists in the U.S. government will act upon it.
Note the top label in the image:
“Global climate policy has the capacity to halt the future projected declines of emperor penguins”
Interestingly, this is true. The declines are “projected” based on a scenario that would change if “climate policy” restricts use of carbon-based fuel and that is used to reinitialize the models. I have no idea how all this works, but it seems fewer penguins will have died when the results of the computer run are printed or appear on a screen.
I am even more perplexed by what any of this has to do with reality, that is “real penguins on real ice”.
Get your orders in now northern knaves in order to save our Emperors-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNp_M76wIws
We’ll take those surplus to requirement vehicles off your hands to stick the steering wheel on the proper side so they’re appropriately recycled-
https://www.walkinshawperformance.com.au/products/range/
The steering wheels are on the right side!
Which way are you facing?
From the article: “The wildlife agency said a thorough review of evidence, including satellite data from 40 years showed the penguins aren’t currently in danger of extinction, but rising temperatures signal that is likely.”
Rising temperatures? These alarmists are fixated on rising temperatures.
I guess when temperatures cool, like now, they just ignore the cooling and pretend it is warming.
Delusional.
There’s no reason to think temperatures will continue to rise.
This is the equivalent of scientists back in the 1930’s claiming the heat will continue forever. Well, the heat didn’t continue forever from the 1930’s, the temperatures actually cooled so much after the 1930’s, that alarmist climate scientists were predicting a new ice age was coming. We should not be surprised that this pattern repeats.
The 1930’s warmth and today’s warmth are equivalent.
And the temperatures are not continuing to warm, they have cooled over the last few years. Alarmists don’t seem to notice. I guess that’s a psychological defense mechanism.
UAH satellite:
And anyway, Antarctica hasn’t warmed in any way over the last 70 years.
The ongoing La Niña is pumping warmth poleward and jacking up average world temperatures. I wonder what will happen when ENSO turns neutral.
Attenborough fodder.
Someone should establish penguin colonies in the arctic. That would help both penguins and polar bears.
Tee hee.
New computer modeling study determines that computer modeling studies use an exhorbitant amount of electricity increasing CO2 output thus warming the planet causing penguins to perish. Further studies needed.
Did anyone examine usage for gaming and bit-coin mining?
Clearly nothing that industries or governments do in the continental US will have any impact on the emperor penguin census in the continental US which will remain stable at 0 no matter what. Obviously this determination by US Fish and Wildlife was intended as a bit of levity to break the monotony of our mild and pleasant weather. I support a more important determination of endangerment regarding the clear and rapid decline in public sector critical thinkers.
Good work Susan, the US Fish and Wildlife Service are liars and cheats.
I demand a penguin recount
Do you have dangling chads? Or are those your nads?
Human beings are a Threatened Species and should be added to the ESA List, according to the output of a model that I have designed.