Category: Penguins

“Although the move cannot directly be attributed to climate change … “

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Tickbox on all “science” stories. Blame climate change.

“Antarctica’s charismatic emperor penguins are thought to be particularly vulnerable to climate change, because warming waters are melting the sea ice where they live and breed. Now, the penguins have abandoned one of their biggest colonies after breeding pairs there failed to raise almost any new chicks in 3 years. Although the move cannot directly be attributed to climate change, researchers say it is an ominous sign of things to come for the largest of penguin species.”

“abandoned one of their biggest colonies”

They moved. They adapted.

“It seems that many of the adult emperor penguins have travelled elsewhere to find more reliable breeding ground. Satellite data shows that a colony of emperor penguins at the nearby Dawson-Lambton Glacier suddenly experienced a “massive increase” in numbers starting in 2016, the study authors write.

In some respects, this is good news.”

In some respects?

Shifting sea ice blocks their breeding ground and they are smart enough to move somewhere. How is that not good news?

Oh … right… harder to blame on climate change.

“While the researchers don’t know if the breakup of ice at Halley Bay was caused by warming …”

They have to tick the “Climate Change Causes Everything” box on their grant applications.

Scientists Discover Hidden ‘Supercolony’ of 1.5 Million Penguins After Tracking Poop From Space

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Scientist: We are running out of penguins due to climate change.

Other Scientist: Nope.

Imagine if your community pooped so much it was visible from space. A supercolony of 1.5 million Antarctic Adélie penguins has bragging rights to this achievement, after scientists discovered the birds thanks to satellite images of their pink guano.

Despite its large population, the colony has managed to remain off the maps since it first took roost on the Danger Islands some 3,000 years ago. The archipelago, which is named for the dangerous ice cover that surrounds it even in the summer, sits near the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula, and has barely been explored.

But when scientists developed an algorithm for detecting penguin guano in NASA Landsat imagery, the Danger Islands showed up as an untapped hotspot.

“We thought that we knew where all the penguin colonies were,” said Heather Lynch, a Stony Brook University ecologist, at a news conference during the American Geophysical Union (AGU) meeting last week. “But in fact, this small archipelago, that measures only 15 kilometers from one end to the other, [has] more Adélie penguins than the entire rest of the Antarctic peninsula combined.”

Millions of Penguins Found – “seemingly unaffected by climate change”

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Sometimes you gotta laugh.

Penguins are in trouble because of AGW … then they find 1.5 million they knew nothing about doing just fine.

‘Supercolony’ of 1.5 million Adelie penguins found in Antarctica

“Researchers are stunned to find such a large number in the remote Danger Islands, seemingly unaffected by climate change.”

“Just 100 miles away, on the peninsula’s west, Adelie numbers have dropped by around 70% in recent decades due to melting sea ice, something blamed on global warming.”

Maybe they just moved?

 

https://news.sky.com/story/massive-colony-of-15-million-adelie-penguins-found-in-antarctica-11273522