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Penguin 134 saw the headline and just had to read the story. She’s a big fan of the British newspapers. Especially for some reason I can’t remember a fan of the Independent:

What can dying penguins tell us about the future of the planet?

It turns out there are a bunch of excerpts from a book by Meredith Hooper “The Ferocious Summer: Palmer’s penguins and the warnings of Antartica.”

You’d probably want to read an article called “What can dying people tell us about the future of the planet?”

Anyway here are some of Meredith Hooper diary entries:

2 January 2002
The night before arriving at Palmer, Bill gives me a briefing. Dr Bill Fraser is a seabird ecologist, one of an inner group of US scientists who have dedicated themselves to Antarctic research …

The news is shocking. The season, Bill says flatly, has gone to hell. Palmer’s Adélie penguins are in crisis, barely holding on. The weather has been relentless, dire. The seabird work is under real pressure. “We are arriving to a catastrophe, walking into a bitter scenario produced by climate change,” he says. “The Adélie penguins don’t have the capacity to survive the drastic changes that are occurring. There’s no doubt. ”

The real penguin losses in Antarctica are happening on the Antarctic Peninsula, where the greatest warming is occurring …

And some penguin-inspired poetry:

“There’s a revelling in the intense activity of a penguin summer. Its rhythm catches you up. It’s there in all the accounts – the early explorers, scientists, delighted visitors, dedicated penguin observers, everyone engrossed in the privilege of watching, the luck of being there. Becoming in a small way part of it, because they are tolerated. Stop watching, and you miss something. Keep watching and you begin to recognise the stages.

But this time there is so little noise. So little smell. Such small groups. So few chicks. An almost complete absence of guano, that starburst of pink radiating out from each nest, that signal of occupancy, of chicks at home, of regular feeding, of the need to feed, of rotation of parents with their full bellies coming back from the ocean. Some of the smaller colonies have only one successful nest with one chick, very occasionally two, under the one bird. Seeing the Adélies for myself is shocking. In my head are memories of busy, functioning penguin colonies. The din of living, the pervasive smell of food being crammed in and processed out. Of beaks snapping and clashing, of the haze of dust and feathers rising over massed nests …

Last time, each colony, each subset, seemed to me like a suburb, most households roughly similar. Now the rookery feels like an urban city in a war zone. Some colonies are reasonably active, some almost non-functioning. But in general the city is severely depleted. There appear to be very few “families,” lots of singles and childless partners.

One leopard seal has been working the area periodically, another full-time. Pickings are easy at Torgersen, where birds have to stack in bottlenecks to come ashore. Beach access has been confined by snow to two narrow locations, and the water churns as a leopard thrashes a penguin out of its skin. Birds grab morsels. If the dead penguin is one of a functioning pair – this season that’s not just a loss, it’s a disaster.

There’s a small amount of pebble-carrying and nest-tidying, but very little. I see one pair attempting a fumbling copulation: beaks clacking, flippers waving, male attempting to balance on the female’s back. Many birds are sitting in the brooding position. But nothing is happening. What do birds do when the eggs have failed? Does the pair bonding remain? Does alternate feeding continue when there’s no need to relieve each other on the nest? I find just one empty egg on a rock; but no eggshells. I see dead penguins on the ground, bones and sinew, but the carcasses could belong to last year, or the year before. The skuas seem particularly confident. Where have all the penguins gone?”

Numero Uno - Penguin The First here. Not that many of you can tell the difference - don’t they all pretty much look the same?

Well this post is going out to all our friends up North. Where the ice is shrinking faster than the humans expected. And that can’t be good news.

Thanks to Guiseppi for sending us this article from the New York, New York Times. “Analysts See ‘Simply Incredible’ Shrinking of Floating Ice in the Arctic.” Just in case you think this is just another instance of penguin propaganda, you can check out Andrew C. Revkin’s article for yourself.

The area of floating ice in the Arctic has shrunk more this summer than in any other summer since satellite tracking began in 1979, and it has reached that record point a month before the annual ice pullback typically peaks, experts said yesterday …


William L. Chapman, who monitors the region at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and posted a Web report on the ice retreat yesterday, said that only an abrupt change in conditions could prevent far more melting before the 24-hour sun of the boreal summer set in September. “The melting rate during June and July this year was simply incredible,” Mr. Chapman said. “And then you’ve got this exposed black ocean soaking up sunlight and you wonder what, if anything, could cause it to reverse course.”

A few moments after Guiseppi weighed in, Melinda from Minneapolis emailed Penguin5 to check out the climate scientists at realclimate.org. By the way, considering we all look alike, why is it that Penguin5 gets so much more email than the rest of us?

Anyway even though the realclimatologists speak science - an odd dialect of English - we thought you’d be interested in some of what they have to say on the subject:

A few people have already remarked on some pretty surprising numbers in Arctic sea ice extent this year (the New York Times has also noticed). The minimum extent is usually in early to mid September, but this year, conditions by Aug 9 had already beaten all previous record minima. Given that there is at least a few more weeks of melting to go, it looks like the record set in 2005 will be unequivocally surpassed.

Penguin 6 was convinced a minima was an Italian racecar until Guiseppi set him straight!
Back to the science:

Just to give a sense of how dramatic the changes have been over the last 28 years, the figures below show the minimum ice extent in September 1979, and the situation today (Aug 9, 2007).

The reduction is around 1.2 million square km of ice, a little bit larger than the size of California and Texas combined.

The comments were very interesting. Andy Revkin wrote:

One thing that’s important is to track what someone is measuring. Chapman/Walsh at UIUC focus on ice AREA while NSIDC estimates ice EXTENT. That’s one reason they have different findings at the moment.


But everyone I talked to yesterday (Claire Parkinson, Mark Serreze, Walsh/Chapman, etc) agreed we’re in for a remarkable year. Polar bears and Arctic shippers beware.

Some more science. Lawrence Coleman wrote:

The re-freeze each winter will result in the ice depth getting thinner
and thinner and also the edges of the polar region to shrink as well.
From the 1960-1980 the rate of ice loss each decade was on average 1.4%, now in 2007 it is 7.8%. It is safe to assume that in the coming decade the loss of ice will escalate to 30-40%. So that probably well within 20 years we will have no permanent ice at all in the polar region.

Calling all polar bears. We’re talking major problem. These scientists are saying no permanent ice in 20 years.

So how about some sirens. Alarms. Some red flares. SOS.

A presidential press conference. The Incredible Shrinking Ice!!! Polar Bear Alert!!!!

But wait. This just in. A new poll from the United Kingdom - we’re talking England. Here’s the headline from the Guardian newspaper: “Millions say it is too much effort to adopt greener lifestyle.”

David Adam writes:

Millions of people across Britain think their behaviour does not contribute to climate change and find it too much effort to make green changes to their lifestyle, a government survey suggests.

About a quarter of people polled agreed with statements such as: “It takes too much effort to do things that are environmentally friendly” and “I don’t believe my behaviour and everyday lifestyle contribute to climate change”. About half the people disagreed with the statements.

Calling all polar bears. We’re talking real big major major problem!

Here’s more:

The results of the survey of public attitudes and behaviour were released yesterday by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. About 3,600 people were asked about issues such as transport, waste recycling and buying habits. It follows five similar surveys over the past 20 years, the last in 2001.

Of the issues people think the government should address, the environment was the fourth most commonly mentioned, behind crime, health and education. But fewer people placed the environment as a priority, down to 19% from 25% in 2001. Crime came top as an issue, mentioned by 49%, up from 30% in 2001. Some 18% of people cited immigration, the first time it has featured significantly.

Who writes these poll questions?

How about making it a bit simpler? What about something like this: “If you could keep a polar bear from drowning would you take a bus one day a week?”

Good day. This is Penguin 5 back from my extensive travels. I have seen a great many things and have spent some time relaxing. Gentle Yoga. Deep breathing. Meditation. It’s amazing how it helps to stare into the water and imagine a better world. I wish I could say it’s the solution but …

One day while waddling my way down to the water, it all came clear to me. Men are from Mars, Women from Venus, and for better or worse, we penguins are from Earth.

Not only does this help explain the human difficulty in maintaining relationships, but the very different perspective humans and penguins seem to have.

We only have this one, single planet - our home - to worry about. You seem to imagine leaving this one behind when it no longer suits your purpose.

Although I confess I never have really understood how many of you can actually expect to make it on the spaceships - or who will decide the passenger list.

We are here, really here, stuck on Earth. We struggle to stay alive. To survive the winter wind. To protect our young from predators. To survive our ever-increasing popularity. For it seems we have become cute. A tourist attraction.

Here we are. Take a look:

Perhaps a few examples will help:



Rebecca Fox reports from New Zealand that:

“The future of yellow-eyed penguins at Sandfly Bay on the Otago Peninsula could be under threat from unregulated tourism.

The accessibility of prime penguin-spotting sites had become common knowledge and Sandfly Bay had even found its way into travel guides, University of Otago zoology lecturer Dr Philip Seddon said.

Tourists in their thousands were finding their way to the bay.

Studies by his department showed penguins at Sandfly Bay exposed to unregulated tourism showed significantly lower breeding success and fledgling weights than sites visited infrequently.

Is this a surprise to you? Remember “There but for the grace of God go I.” Take a moment. Think penguin. Feel penguin. Be penguin. How happy are your feet?

Speaking about spaceships, here’s a species that never made it on board. Where’s Noah
when you need him?

Bye-bye Yangtze River dolphin:

The long-threatened Yangtze River dolphin in China is probably extinct, according to an international team of researchers who said this would mark the first whale or dolphin to be wiped out due to human activity.

The Yangtze River dolphin, with its distinctive long nose, is likely to have been lost to the planet for ever

The freshwater dolphin, or baiji, was last spotted several years ago and an intensive six-week search in late 2006 failed to find any evidence that one of the rarest species on earth survives, said Samuel Turvey, a conservation biologist, at the Zoological Society of London, who took part in the search.

He said the dolphin’s demise — which resulted from overfishing, pollution and lack of intervention — might serve as a cautionary tale and should spur governments and scientists to act to save other species verging on extinction.

I think I definitely need to take a moment. And some deep breathing. In with the good thoughts. In, one two three four five. Out with the negative. Out, one two three four five.

We’re not talking about some johnny-come-lately species here. This is the Baiji Yangtze River dolphin. A Chinese report puts it in greater perspective:

Regarded in China as the “goddess of the Yangtze”, the 20 million year old river dolphin was one of the world’s oldest species. The Baiji is the first large mammal brought to extinction as a result of human destruction to their natural habitat and resources.

In the beginning of the 1980s the Yangtze still had around 400 Baiji cavorting in its waters. However, the river dolphin became a victim of China’s rapidly growing economy. A 1997 survey still showed 13 confirmed sightings. The last confirmed sighting of a Baiji was in September 2004. QiQi, a dolphin male, who was rescued in 1980, died in July 2002 at the Institute of Hydrobiology in Wuhan.

The baiji was for more than 20 years among the most disputed conservation issues between chinese and western scientists. There has been especially in the nineties endless arguments and disputes about strategies how to save the species – whether to leave them in their natural habitat or capture and move them to a safe place like the Tian-e-Zhou Oxbow “Semi Natural” Reserve. “Now we do not have to discuss any longer. We have lost the race. The Baiji has gone”, said August Pfluger.

20 million years! Take a deep breath. That’s 20 million years! So then the question is how long have people lived on Earth:

Fixing a time when the human race actually came into existence is not a straightforward matter. Various ancestors of Homo sapiens seem to have appeared at least as early as 700,000 B.C. Hominids walked the Earth as early as several million years ago. According to the United Nations’ Determinants and Consequences of Population Trends, modern Homo sapiens may have appeared about 50,000 B.C.

Now there are still an awful lot of humans who want nothing to do with the early hominids. So let’s leave the answer somewhere between several million and 52,000 years. That still gives the Baiji Yangtze River dolphin at least a 10:1 time advantage.

Imagine how hard it must have been to survive for 20 million years! They did pretty darn good until they ran into the Men from Mars and the Women from Venus!

And just in case you feel like blaming the dolphin, add this story into the mix. According to an article by Martyn McLaughlin in The Scotsman, the Scottish puffin population
is starving as a result of climate change.

In the darkness of their burrows, the puffin chicks starve to death while food lies decomposing in front of them.

They are not able to swallow the snake pipefish brought back from the North Sea by their parents because it is covered in a hard exo-skeleton.

With no fat on their bodies, the pufflings soon perish. Shunned even by predators, they are left to decay atop the cliffs of St Kilda - the latest victims of climate change.

Come on kids. These puffins are cute. Almost as cute as penguins. Well that’s asking for too much, but pretty cute nonetheless. How about making some “SAVE THE PUFFIN” posters and getting out on those Scottish streets!

The article continues:

With about half of Britain’s population, few of the World Heritage Site’s puffins are coming of age, which some conservationists say is leaving the entirety of the birds’ population “verging on catastrophe” …

Yet barely over half of the eggs hatched fledged chicks last year. While that figure of 57 per cent represents an increase on 2005’s all-time low of 26 per cent, it remains perilously below the average, which stands at about 71 per cent.

Across other sites in Scotland, the threat to the puffin population is equally severe …

Conservation experts have told The Scotsman, the issue is inextricably bound to the mismanagement of Scotland’s waters.

Over the past two decades, the surface temperature in the southern North Sea has risen by 2C.

It appears at first to be a negligible increase, but it is playing out a complex choreography on the food needed during the seabirds’ breeding seasons.

Whereas once the puffins, also known as sea parrots, thrived on the likes of oil-rich sand eels, young herring, or sprats, they are now forced to eke out what little nutritional value is available from snake pipefish, which until recently, was rarely seen.

Whoops! A 2C rise in temperature and all of a sudden the puffins are “verging on catastrophe.”

Oh well I promised Penguins 2 and 4 I’d offer you something entertaining.

Forget starving puffins for a moment. Have you heard these:

“According to a new U.N. report, the global warming outlook is much worse than originally predicted. Which is pretty bad when they originally predicted it would destroy the planet.” –Jay Leno

“According to a survey in this week’s Time magazine, 85% of Americans think global warming is happening. The other 15% work for the White House.” –Jay Leno

“Has anybody seen the Al Gore movie about global warming and the environment? Well, the Bush administration has seen it and they are very annoyed about the whole thing. As a matter of fact, earlier today, Dick Cheney shot a projectionist. … One very dramatic scene in the Al Gore global warming movie is when a glacier melts and they find more Al Gore ballots from the election.” –David Letterman

There’s always Mars for Men and Venus for Women!

And for those of us left behind some deep breathing. In with the good thoughts. In, one two three four five. Out with the negative. Out, one two three four five.