Essay by Eric Worrall
Aussie scientists struggling to present good news as a grim warning about the future.
Phillip Island’s little penguin colony passes 40,000 as climate change leads to more mating
ABC Gippsland / By William Howard and Millicent Spencer
Polyamorous little penguins living on Phillip Island, off Australia’s southern coast, are having so much sex there are now more than 40,000 of them — and it is all thanks to climate change.
Key points:
- Phillip Island’s little penguin colony is growing as rising sea temperatures lead to more fish
- With more energy, the animals are mating twice each season, often with different partners
- Climate scientists warn it is important to look at the full picture of events in the ecosystem
As sea surface temperatures have increased, so too has the number of fish swimming in the surrounding coastal waters.
Phillip Island Nature Parks marine scientist and Monash University associate professor Andre Chiaradia said the influx of food meant the “opportunistic” little penguins had more time, and energy, to mate.
…
A false sense of hope?
…
Professor Brendan Wintle, the director of the Melbourne Biodiversity Institute and lead councillor at the Biodiversity Council, said shifts in one part of an ecosystem had impacts elsewhere.
“Ecosystems are big connections, big webs of interactions between animals and plants,” he said.
“If you’re seeing changes in one animal or plant species, you can be absolutely sure that’s going to be having an impact on hundreds of other species that we may not be studying so closely.”
…
Read more: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-01/little-penguin-colony-growing-as-climate-changes-victoria/103414498
I think I understand this climate thing now. When a species mass die off occurs, climate change is blamed, but when benign conditions cause populations to boom, scientists warn about the imminent climate change mass die off.
So what are the long term prospects for the penguins?
I don’t expect record populations to continue uninterrupted, really big concentrations of a single species are a disease magnet. No doubt any disease driven die back will be blamed on global warming.
Longer term, even if global warming continues, there is no evidence global warming would harm fish populations, quite the opposite. During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, the oceans were full of fish.
Bad or good, is it linked to CC it can only be bad.
Al Gore’s and John Podesta’s ears perked up when someone mentioned “sex mad penguins.”
Biden gives orders to catch a young one.. so he can sniff its hair.
Guess what Slick Willie wants to do with him/her/it.
My imagination is stimulated!
You spelled “pizza” wrong.
Populations are never stable. They are always either increasing or decreasing..
You have to love those penguins though.
I like to go fishing in a kayak in Tauranga harbour. At this time of year there are usually a couple of little blue penguins also fishing near me.
I have had one swim so close I could have reached out and touched it as it chased a small fish.
They manage to find places to nest even though there is urban development surrounding the harbour. They often nest under houses.
Be very aware and careful, John
NZ is about to be invaded by horny penguins.
Person the barricades….
Keep your dogs and your cats…. and your children… safe !!
“Populations are never stable. They are always either increasing or decreasing..”
An obvious truth evidenced by observation. Global or local temperatures follow the same truth. If not increasing they would be decreasing. Pick your poison.
It is also logical that they will continue to increase until they decrease. The major danger lies in significant decrease.
There is the presumption that any change is A Bad Thing. Warming from the Little Ice Age is dreadful, despite that era being characterized by famine, war, and plague.
One thing I’ve never heard from a clientist is just what time in the past had a perfect or even just an unchanging climate?
Just what was the best age to be alive?
If they had a Mr. Fusion and a DeLorean, just “when” would they settle down?
The WEF and the NutZero crowd considers”famine, war, and plague,” The good Old Days.
Just imagine how the climate priest must have been in panic mode when the ice sheets melted away over places like Canada.
These people are insane. More penguins mating producing more penguin offspring means more food for the assorted predators who have penguin for a diet.
So let me guess? These people think that LESS life is a good thing. And they pretend to be marine biologists and “cough, hack” biodiversity experts? We know how this stupid game is played. We were all taught it as children. It’s very simple: “heads I win, tails you lose.”
The insanity starts from their initial presumption that:
Temperature causes Fish
just where do you start to explain…
If warmer waters and more CO2 results in more things that fish eat, then there will be more fish.
Orca’s and Leopard Seals are probably heading there now for the penguin buffet.
These idjits are firmly opposed to change – change, whether for better or worse, is always a Bad Thing and must be stopped whatever the cost. Change isn’t natural – the natural state is for everything to be stable and in perfect balance so any change must be due to unnatural sources (guess who?).
You get the idea from this that most climate enthusiasts don’t have much of a clue about how the world works but far too many ideas for how they think it should work.
They are paid to think like this. Any other way of thinking would made them lose that well paid job.
Phillip Island’s little penguin colony is growing as rising sea temperatures lead to more fish
As sea surface temperatures have increased, so too has the number of fish swimming in the surrounding coastal waters.
Gee, Warmer lead to more Life. Who Knew, and didn’t tell us?
These people think that LESS human life is a good thing.
Well, so do I.
Provided that you accept that WEF types and climatists are actually human.
My sense is that this story ought to be classed as BS. What’s the rest of the story?
The history of Phillip Island penguins
Before Europeans settled in Australia, there were 10 little penguin colonies around Phillip Island. With the construction of roads, infrastructure, housing and land clearing of their natural habitat, as well as introduced predators like foxes, nine of these colonies disappeared over time.
The last remaining colony was on the Summerland Peninsula, where numbers of little penguins were also on the decline until 1985, when the Victorian Government initiated a 30-year scheme called the Penguin Protection Plan.
https://www.penguins.org.au/conservation/education/nature-notes/little-penguins/
OMG, they’re doing well—‘it’s worse than we thought’.
Higher temperatures means more food–who could have seen this coming? Helloooo–have you seen the Jurassic? You know, when ammonites were 8 feet in diameter, and the largest land animals were 20 tons?
And they all produced fertilizer–talk about positive feedback.
“”Higher temperatures means more food
Sorry. No it doesn’t.
Even before ‘temperature’ is just a number, temperature has no physical reality
Food does.
Actually it does. There’s a reason why there are a lot more plants at the equator than either pole.
Have you ever asked yourself why people in cold climates build greenhouses? And, in an ocean environment higher temperature produces lower solubility of CaCO2; it takes less energy for plants like coral and animals like bivalves to precipitate calcite for their homes. That’s food for small fish, which is food for bigger fish, which is food for penguins, which is food for seals, which is food for killer whales and polar bears–both of which have been food for humans depending on who gets to eat who first.
Add MarkW’s comment into evidence, and please reconsider.
Usually I can find a grain of truth in comments by Peta.
Not this time, except that food is physical.
I do like my pizza hot and my beer cold. But I guess that is not reality.
“Usually I can find a grain of truth in comments by Peta.”
I generally can’t make head or tail of them.
Sort of like a mad woman’s breakfast. (as the saying goes)
I’m waiting for the BBC to report this!
Their last Penguin report was this
Climate change: Four new emperor penguin groups found by satellite“It’s good that even as emperors are being affected by changing ice conditions, we’re still finding colonies,” said Dr Peter Fretwell from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS).
“But it’s also clear these birds are going to have to be adaptable, to move around to new sites as those ice conditions continue to change, and we’re seeing evidence of this,” he told BBC News.
BBC Report
Over the last few years the BBC has done four reports on new Emperor Penguin colonies being found in Antarctica, and in each one Dr Peter Fretwell has been a harbinger of doom.
“Fretwell”?
Fretting and worrying… he does it well !!
There’s a tie-in between this story and the invasive alien species crisis. For instance, the Mississippi River system is being taken over by acrobatic Asian carp, who are pushing the native fish like walleyes and bass out of the environment somehow. Their presence has led to the closure of commercial river traffic on the Mississippi above pool 2. But calling them “Asian” carp made some people upset so they were called ‘invasive” carp instead. However, the word “carp” itself has an unpleasant connotation that doesn’t sparkle on seafood restaurant menus. From now on it will be called Copi to encourage its consumption by diners.
The real point of this complicated story is that no fish or other animal is native to the upper Mississippi, an area that was covered by continental glaciation just a short time ago, in geological terms. Every fish species found there today is an invader, even the first one. Giving that particular animal environmental rights over others seems to create a philosophical issue that can apply to other problems, some involving humans on a more involved level.
Actually “Carp” (whatever brand) are an invasive species in North America.
They are a game fish in Europe that was introduced to NA a long time ago.
(NA had it’s own bottom feeders. We’ve got a few in DC still.)
Open to corrections about “Carp” being an invasive species. That’s the best I know.
PS If I’m not mistaken, Asian Carp are also know as White Amurs. Great for controlling algae in a pond BUT only Triploid White Amurs are legal to buy and stock. The Triploids are sterile. Expensive to buy since one has to be grown to a size where they can be checked.
(Disclaimer: My Amur info is from about 40 years ago when managing some ponds were part of my job.)
Ictiobus – Buffalo, is a native American, commonly called carp.
Wikipedia has a page with a photo.
I looked a bit deeper and found this.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_carp
The “carp” I was thinking about is a different subfamily than Ictiobus, which is native to NA.
We need to set everything back to where it was in ~1900.
Everything was perfect then, right?
Well, it was pre-Jekyll Island (Federal Reserve) and League of Nations (->UN/Global Government).
AND direct election of senators with no way to recall them, a REAL problem.
Before the state legislatures could just remove them for failure to do the best for the state.
Definitely not 1900. The problems started with Magna Charta, 1215.
How much has the local sea actually warmed? And if any, how fast? One mating season? Or several? If many don’t say we haven’t been watching penguin pops carefully enough? Oh dear
“During the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, 5-8C hotter than today, the oceans were full of fish.”
Some of them very big fish… Penguin for lunch , anyone ?
“If you’re seeing changes in one animal or plant species, you can be absolutely sure that’s going to be having an impact on hundreds of other species that we may not be studying so closely.” – Wintle
The typical “expert” of today. I’m absolutely sure that Wintle wants to get funding so he can study more closely the impact on his wallet.
Science reports that the web of life is all interconnected – almost all changes having an impact that doesn’t matter – a trivial amount.
Randy little buggars
If you think these penguins are sex mad, you should read about the Adelie penguins. George Murray Levick is the only scientist to have observed a full breeding cycle of the penguins and their sexual behaviour shocked him. He was with the Scott expedition, survived, and recorded his observations in a private study, written in Greek so only other educated gentlemen would read it. Do a search for it online, it makes for a strange read.
Someone should alert the Pope. He is deeply concerned about climate change and its effects. Therefore he would no doubt be eager to send some of his best hellfire and brimstone preachers in to civilize these natives on important aspects of eternity like monogamy and restraint. After all, this has been an important function of the church for millennia.
“I don’t expect record populations to continue uninterrupted, really big concentrations of a single species are a disease magnet. No doubt any disease driven die back will be blamed on global warming.”
They must have some predators- and those species will now increase- a new balance will occur. I don’t think there necessarily will be more disease unless they’re starving. If the population increases- it may split into different colonies. I dunno- just guessing. We didn’t discuss penguins in forestry school.
“We didn’t discuss penguins in forestry school.”
Well, that was an oversight, wasn’t it.
Horny Penguins expanding so rapidly, that will soon be taking over the forests world-wide.
The usual penguin predators are Orcas and Leopard Seals.
As to disease – that’s sheer guesswork; data and information on penguin health is very limited and subject to many biases, we simply don’t know enough about penguin diseases and parasites to judge what may or may not happen.
I could care less what these professors say.
I couldn’t.
Just how much more of this good news can we take, all of it is coming from the increase in temperature and CO2. The penguins are doing so well that it is all worse than they thought.
I wonder if they consulted the extensive records and studies performed by the indigenous residents in years past as we are often told that these locals have a scientific background.
CSIRO is working with Indigenous communities and organisations to create Indigenous-driven science solutions that support sustainable futures for Indigenous peoples, cultures and Country.
Their records and learned papers would help to understand the ebbs and flows of penguin populations to determine if the current situation is normal or caused by another factor, climate change being the main suspect
/sarc
By ‘working with’ they mean ‘talking at’ – presumably the indigenes are being regaled with how they should think and behave rather than it be a full dialogue.
Did the “indigenous residents” hunt and roast penguins?
The blue feathers might make nice decorations and a couple of
the little sex fiends roasted over an open fire (think Salmon
and natives of Oregon, Washington, and B. C.). I think Alder
is a preferred wood in N. A. What fits the need along Australia’s southern coast?
found this quote.
“A particularly unflattering description of penguin meat composed by a Belgian seaman in 1898 suggests that it won’t be replacing chicken anytime soon: “If it’s possible to imagine a piece of beef, odiferous cod fish, and a canvas-backed duck roasted together in a pot, with blood and cod-liver oil for sauce, the illustration would be complete.”
“
Will the Victorian Government consider dismantling the Philip Island Grand Prix circuit as this would be a major contributor to CO2 release in the area and that would be a bad outcome?
No doubt, considering the financial and recreational impact this would cause, there would be copious reasons for keeping the circuit, all the while demonising every other CO2 source.
As with all politicians, they get to eat their cake and keep it too.
Shhh, the lunes who run Victoria have forgotten it exists, one of the few opportunities to people in Victoria to have some fun.
A question.
Up north (off the coast of Alaska, for example) cold water rising from greater depths to the surface due to underwater currents, brings more nutrients (from things that died and decomposed at higher levels) supports more life even in still cold surface water. (Food for the bottom of the food chain.)
Are the “mad sex” penguins on Epstein’s … er … Phillip Island have a similar thing going on?
What are they like to eat ya reckon? Would have been on the menu at some time somewhere for sure!
See bnice2000 above.
Supposedly the polar bears in the Boreal regions are dying off because of a lack of food because of a lack of sea ice because of AGW. None of which is true, of course, but if they’re concerned about an overpopulation of Austral penguins and starving northern polar bears, I think I have a solution, lol.
My wife and I went on a National Geographic/Lindblad Tours expedition in the Galapagos Islands last November, and one of the surprises was that this equatorial archipelago was home to a species of penguins. They’re little guys, like the ones pictured above. The water in the islands was unusually warm last year, due to the strong El Nino we’re experiencing. According to one of naturalists, that is bad for these penguins. It seems that they feed on smaller fish, like bait fish, which thrive only in colder water. Apparently it really puts pressure on the penguin population. I would have thought the effect of warmer water would be the opposite, as it is in the above article. At any rate, no one was blaming “climate change” since El Nino is just normal variability.
They will blame the increase in population on “climate change”, as well as the inevitable later decline in population, which will be an even worse effect of “climate change”, ad nauseum.