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LiveEarth

Penguin4 — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 13:39:56 +0000

Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. Who knows where time goes? It seems to be melting all around us.

I think we at Penguins United have been a bit depressed lately. Perhaps that explains the silence.

Penguin5 has returned. He is resting and will likely be writing you soon.

He has travelled far and wide and met with many penguins and many humans.

Young Mary, an apprentice at the PC – that’s what we sometimes call the Penguin Center – arranged for a delegation of us to watch Live Earth on what she called their big screen TV.

A lot of people. Not enough penguins. And what’s with this Metallica?

She showed us the website. Not enough penguins.

Al Gore got all these people together to answer the call.

What are we missing here:
I will change four light bulbs to CFLs at my home.
I will shop for the most energy efficient electronics and appliances.
I will shut off my equipment and lights whenever I’m not using them.
I will ride public transit or carpool one or more times per week.
I will forward a Live Earth email message to 5 friends.
Add my name to the Live Earth pledge.

And from Somini Sengupta in this morning’s New York Times:
“This is how a glacier retreats.
At nearly 13,000 feet above sea level, in the shadow of a sharp Himalayan peak, a wall of black ice oozes in the sunshine. A tumbling stone breaks the silence of the mountains, or water gurgles under the ground, a sign that the glacier is melting from inside. Where it empties out — scientists call it the snout — a noisy, frothy stream rushes down to meet the river Ganges …

Three years ago, the snout was roughly 90 feet farther away. On a map drawn in 1962, it was plotted 860 feet from here.

The thousands of glaciers studded across 1,500 miles of the Himalayas make up the savings account of South Asia’s water supply, feeding more than a dozen major rivers and sustaining a billion people downstream. Their apparent retreat threatens to bear heavily on everything from the region’s drinking water supply to agricultural production to disease and floods.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/17/science/earth/17glacier.html

A lot of people planned LiveEarth. Not enough penguins.

SAVE THE ICE

Penguin4 — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 09:57:38 +0000

Goodmorning all – it’s Tuesday June 06 2007 here. First, thanks to all those of you who have written. It’s impossible to answer all of you personally – but I do want to say to Dorothy in Aukland that all of the photographs we use have been taken by people photographers not penguins and we always try to give them credit. Flippers, you know what I mean! An opportunity most of the time but a slight problem when it comes to point and shoot.

There is great concern in the Penguin Nation over recent new reports. Where is Penguin5 when you need him?

On May 30 some NASA scientists, led by James Hansen, issued a warning:

“NASA and Columbia University Earth Institute research finds that human-made greenhouse gases have brought the Earth’s climate close to critical tipping points, with potentially dangerous consequences for the planet.”

Here’s where they get a bit technical but … ” From a combination of climate models, satellite data, and paleoclimate records the scientists conclude that the West Antarctic ice sheet, Arctic ice cover, and regions providing fresh water sources and species habitat are under threat from continued global warming … Tipping points can occur during climate change when the climate reaches a state such that strong amplifying feedbacks are activated by only moderate additional warming.”

If I understand it, at this point even a little bit of warming can have a bigger effect than you might imagine.

And they added a photograph from space showing that here in Antarctica more ice melted into the ice than we added by snowfall. You know, of course, that no penguin has ever seen our home from space:

Photo: NASA/SVS

But here are the most important points of all:

“we probably need a full court press on both CO2 emission rates and non-CO2 forcings, to avoid tipping points and save Arctic sea ice and the West Antarctic ice sheet.” and “With another decade of ‘business-as-usual’ it becomes impractical to achieve the ‘alternative scenario’ because of the energy infrastructure that would be in place says Hansen.”

Wouldn’t it be great if scientists spoke penguin? Now remember we don’t play basketball but you’d have to be dead not to know about LeBron and Kobe. And here where teamwork is everything, we especially appreciate Steve Nash and Tim Duncan. Anyway enough of the full court press.

So here goes: take away the scientese and we’ve got 10 years to save the ice. To save our home.

But this is the part that we penguins find so puzzling.

A day later comes this news report:

“NASA administrator Michael Griffin continues to draw the ire of preeminent climate scientists inside and outside of NASA, as well as members of Congress, after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming.

In an interview broadcast yesterday … Griffin was asked by NPR’s Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming.

“I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists,” Griffin told Inskeep. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

Our ice is melting. Our home is in danger. And the head of your space agency thinks that “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”

Do I sound like Penguin5?

Just a few days, even more evidence appeared. The Independent, a British newspaper – do Americans read British newspapers – published the following report:

“Global warming is accelerating three times more quickly than feared, a series of startling, authoritative studies has revealed.

The study, published by the US National Academy of Sciences, shows that carbon dioxide emissions have been increasing by about 3 per cent a year during this decade, compared with 1.1 per cent a year in the 1990s.

The significance is that this is much faster than even the highest scenario outlined in this year’s massive reports by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) – and suggests that their dire forecasts of devastating harvests, dwindling water supplies, melting ice and loss of species are likely to be understating the threat facing the world.”

Understating the threat facing the world. That is very hard to believe.

Yesterday, the Associated Press published an article revealing that:

“The Bush administration is drastically scaling back efforts to measure global warming from space, just as the president tries to convince the world the U.S. is ready to take the lead in reducing greenhouse gases.

A confidential report to the White House, obtained by The Associated Press, warns that U.S. scientists will soon lose much of their ability to monitor warming from space using a costly and problem-plagued satellite initiative begun more than a decade ago.”

What you can’t see, can’t hurt you.

Well, time is running out!

Photo: NOAA

WHAT’S A DAY OR TWO OR THREE … SO LET’S START COUNTING DOWN A DECADE FROM YESTERDAY. THAT GIVE US 10 YEARS TO SAVE THE ICE. TO SAVE THE SNOW.

FOND FAREWELL

Penguin4 — Tue, 08 May 2007 19:48:10 +0000

Well I must admit we all miss Penguin5 a bit more than we expected. Here’s a photo one of the researchers took – that’s me in the background as Penguin5 takes one last look back as he heads off on his adventure.

Penguin4 watches as Penguin5 slowly heads off
Photo: Kris Kuenning, National Science Foundation

Meanwhile I’m very pleased about our new focus on humor. Penguin 3, our webmistress – and we penguins know about using the web – just found the following cartoon:

The Cause of Global Warming, HoleyHands

She’s convinced it’s very funny. From the penguin school of thought that you have to be willing to laugh at yourself before you can laugh at others.

So what do you think? Funny, no? Or not funny?

REST & REHABILITATION

Penguin4 — Sat, 05 May 2007 22:42:30 +0000

For those of you who had hoped to be reading Penguin 5’s latest post about global warming and the climate crisis, I have some sad news. Well not so sad because he’s getting some well needed rest. But it’s just that the rest of us – Penguins 1 – 10 minus #5 – felt that he was turning a bit too sarcastic. I think what got to him was the penguins on the treadmill. Anyway, we chipped in and sent Penguin5 on a fishing trip.

We’ll let you know how he’s doing.

Just for the record, we are, after all, for much of the time a happy-go-lucky bunch.

And, in the interest of reaching out to our human brethren and sistren, we the Penguin Speakers felt that humor might ultimately work better than anger.

And since I’m known as the life of the penguin party, I thought I’d give it a shot:

Have you heard about the human who was driving down the highway with a car full of penguins. There were penguins everywhere: penguins leaning out the windows, penguins popping up out the sunroof, a penguin riding shotgun, and penguins loaded in the back seats. Well a few miles down the road, the car gets pulled over by a policeman. Who walks up and leans in and tells the driver that if he doesn’t want a ticket, he better take all the penguins right back to the zoo. Well without any hesitation, the driver promises that, first thing he’ll drive straight to the zoo. And he drives off.

Well the next day, the human was driving down the exact same highway with the same car full of penguins. There were penguins everywhere: penguins leaning out the windows, penguins popping up out the sunroof, a penguin riding shotgun, and penguins loaded in the back seats. The only thing different is that the penguins were all wearing sunglasses! All of a sudden, the car is stopped by the same policeman. The policeman is pretty annoyed this time and he leans in and says, “I thought I told you to take these penguins to the zoo!”

“I did” says the human. “But, today I’m taking them to the beach!”