Antarctica: Thousands of emperor penguin chicks died in 2016 weather event
bbc.com
bbc.com
Emperor penguins have an expected lifespan of 20 years, with some birds living as long as 50 years. Breeding starts when the birds are 4-5 years old. Losing one breeding attempt is not that big a deal - despite all the apparent "OMG, think of the penguins". If this event becomes more common as a result of climate change then that is another matter.
> probably due to overfishing for sandeels, their main prey
It's interesting that you point to an evolutionary fix (longevity to compensate for frequent breeding failures) for a problem caused by humans (overfishing). To me it seems more likely that if the population was at relative equilibrium for the past 100k years (seems like a reasonable assumption), then any steady increase in the number of breeding failures is a huge problem. Population dynamics are complex though, I'm not claiming to be an expert.
The actual cause is secondary to my point, be it overfishing, anthropomorphic global warming, plastic pollution, etc.
The article literally says this event will become more common due to warming and that 50-70% of the species will die off by the end of the century.
That might not be as obvious as you think. There are studies demonstrating that the parts of the brain that demonstrate consciousness in mammals, evolved before mammal and avian evolution split. With other features co-evolving later on as well.
Some birds are considered sentient now, and as more studies are performed, more and more animals are added to that list. First it was just humans, then all apes, oh and dogs, plus pigs, turns out dolphins too, and parrots, and corvids, etc. etc. etc.
At this point I'd be more surprised if they weren't conscious.
Pretty much what happens in humans when there's no contraception and therefore a new kid every ~year and less food than needed to feed everybody.
Which describes most of humanity's history. Particular care for children and the concepts of childhood and parenting are a rather new phenomenon.
From the article: "A colony some 50km away, close to the Dawson-Lambton Glacier, has seen a big rise in its numbers."
At least some of them seems to have moved on.
Really disappointed in this kind of response to an article about a worrying ecological change which is undisputedly due to climate change.
How is climate change still such a contentious issue?
You are shifting the purpose of the article from informative news to something that suits your agrnda; via shaming I might add, very weak style of argument to make in this group I imagine.
> Quite why the sea-ice platform on the edge of the Brunt shelf has failed to regenerate is unclear. There is no obvious climate signal to point to in this case; atmospheric and ocean observations in the vicinity of the Brunt reveal little in the way of change.
“But the sensitivity of this colony to shifting sea-ice trends does illustrate, says the team, the impact that future warming in Antarctica could have on emperor penguins in particular.”
“Research suggests the species might lose anywhere between 50% and 70% of its global population by the end of this century, if sea-ice is reduced to the extent that computer models envisage.“
Which is not related to this particular incident. Thanks for proving my point again.
And then they follow up with basically saying this proves that rescinding ice does affect the Penguins, so 'future' (not current, as they haven't detected any changes) could affect them.
I.e, it's speculation.
Personally, I find BBC "Have your say" comments generally more depressing than YouTube comments on anything to do with the Apollo program!
In my estimation, the 2017 was the high watermark of climate change worries. Recall how AOC's recent Green New Deal went down with little support beyond lip service, and note how the current Extenction Rebellion protests in London gets only moderate media coverage.
What kind of sourcing are we talking about here? Articles published in renowned journals and based on sound research or...?
You are asking objective trustworthiness here. People's perceptions are more complex. On one hand we can't reliably know the objective trustworthiness (or objective truth for that matter) in a timely manner. OTOH we are evolved to use heuristics to deal with insufficient information and information overload.
Cliche as it may be, "the optics" aren't currently on the side of over-arching, globe-spanning climate action.
Contrast that with examples: ozone layer hole, smog in cities, polluted rivers, whale hunting, and many other similar issues - specific items that got popularized and solved more or less permanently in our lifetimes. There are several other specific issues considered pressing (like drug resistant pathogens, garbage in the oceans, overfishing, honey bee population collapse) that people support major efforts towards solving. There are other issues that recently came to attention as potentially pressing and requiring rapid research and again major efforts towards solving (like microplastics, insect population collapse).
We will solve the specific issues.
“Thousands of emperor penguin chicks drowned when the sea-ice on which they were being raised was destroyed in severe weather.”
And for some context on what ‘thousands’ means relative to the global population of emperor penguins :
“But the Brunt population, which had sustained an average of 14,000 to 25,000 breeding pairs for several decades (5-9% of the global population), essentially disappeared overnight.”
“Research suggests the species might lose anywhere between 50% and 70% of its global population by the end of this century, if sea-ice is reduced to the extent that computer models envisage.”
But I do take issue with the claim that we "might lose between 50% and 70% of the global population" because of reduced sea ice as overly simplistic extrapolation [1].
As much as birds (like many animals) seem to return to the same place (typically where they themselves were born)--and, on a side note, I would love to know how they do this--they also seem capable of adapting. It seems relatively likely that a good number of them have moved to the nearby colony mentioned just based on numbers.
So even if sea ice does reduce dramatically by the end of the century, it doesn't automatically follow that penguin populations will similarly decline. Stability of ice (April-December) is important but declining sea ice just moves that further south (to a point). Proximity to food sources is also key.
I actually kind of wish we'd just stop with "computer modeling". Part of the reason we have so many climate change deniers (IMHO) is just how bad climate model predictions have been.
Sources? You seem to have read the number and automatically assumed it's a straight line extrapolation.
As far as I'm aware the climate models have been fine and - corrected, but not majorly disproven; it's the reporting on them that looks at the most extreme extrapolations to whip up hysteria (and so it gets ignored and so the extreme cases become more likely).
Sources? because they really really haven't.
On page 7, they have a bunch of scenarios based on various GHG emissions. From what I can tell, we're above all of them on the GHG emissions front, and under all of them on the actual temperature changes. Yet this carbon brief site says it matches exactly what has happened, so don't know what they're going off of.
I’m sorry, are you familiar with their computer models? How do you know they are overly simplistic?