penguinsunited.com

If you are reading this, it’s probably because you have been thinking about penguins, or about global warming and climate change, maybe wondering how we are doing, or maybe about your future.

These are scary and complicated times for all of us.

Adélie 422 walking - Photo: Geroge F. Mobley


The news down South is not very good. And for that matter, it’s even worse up North. I’ll talk about that in just a minute. But there’s one thing that really confuses me. Now that I’m surfing the web - interesting choice of words for a penguin - I read a lot of newspaper reports about the climate crisis. And, of course, the comments that readers post. Have you ever taken the time to read those comments?

So many of you humans are so very angry. You’re angry at the newspaper for printing the reports. You’re angry at your scientists for telling you about rising levels of carbon dioxide and greenhouse gases, rising sea levels and melting ice. About disappearing glaciers. Check it out: angry comment after angry comment.

What’s going on? Is it so very hard to acknowledge what is happening before your very eyes? Here’s a picture of the Boulder Glacier in Glacier National Park in Montana, US in 1932.

And a photo taken in 2005:

It’s gone. Do you want to blame the scientists?

Is it so very hard to understand that the Earth is paying a price for all the coal you burn to keep your cities lit so bright? When did you become so afraid of the dark? Is it so very hard to understand that there is a price to be paid for the SUVs you drive to the malls you shop in? Where is it written in your holy books that each man and woman needs to have a car, two cars, three? That it is too much of an inconvenience to ride together in buses and train and trolleys? That you need second homes and motor boats and private airplanes?


Anyway here’s a quick update of the latest news. Antarctica, our home, our ice is melting. TV3 in New Zealand reports:

The ice shelves of Antarctica are collapsing faster than scientists could ever have predicted, loosened by warming climate conditions - warm air and warm water is compromising the existence of the entirety of the Antarctic ice sheet as global temperatures rise.

Dozens of ice shelves are steadily breaking apart - three major ice shelves have disintegrated in recent times, one of which taking mere days to collapse …

During the last 15 years, almost 90% of the glaciers observed by scientists in Antarctica have shown significant levels of retreat.

Adelie penguins - Photo: Frans Lemmens


Our dear friends, the Adélies, founding members of Penguins United, are in deep trouble. The melting ice is a matter of life and death for the Adélies. A National Geographic headline asks “Antartica’s Adelie Extinct in a Decade?”

Adélie penguins in Antarctica are in the midst of a major upheaval as climate change causes their icy habitat to warm up, experts say.

Some populations of the birds are thriving, but most are declining rapidly.

The penguins rely on winter sea ice as a platform for feeding on ocean krill.

But they also need the ice to shrink in the summer so they can access their breeding colonies on land.

The mid-latitudes of the Antarctic Peninsula once provided the perfect habitat for the penguins—but not anymore.

“That region has experienced the most rapid warming during winter on the planet,” said Bill Fraser, an ecologist with the Polar Oceans Research Group in Sheridan, Montana.

“The mid-winter temperatures are now around 10.8 degrees Fahrenheit [6 degrees Celsius] higher than they were 50 years ago.”

Help the Adélies. Save the Ice. Save our Home.

Another day without a penguin dollar. One of the benefits of living without money. As world leaders gather at the United Nations for talk, more talk, there is more news about the ice.

The BBC says “Ice withdrawal ’shatters record.’” Which means we have lost more ice than ever before:

“The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) said the minimum extent of 4.13 million sq km (1.59 million sq miles) was reached on 16 September.

The figure shatters all previous satellite surveys, including the previous record low of 5.32 million sq km measured in 2005.

Earlier this month, it was reported that the Northwest Passage was open.”

The fabled Arctic shipping route from the Atlantic to the Pacific is normally ice-bound at some location throughout the year; but this year, ships have been able to complete an unimpeded navigation.

East Greenland 2 - Photo, Christian Morel


Words don’t do ice justice. You have to see it the ice to understand. There are human scientists who have dedicated themselves to better understand the ice. Their project is called the International Polar Year. They have some extraordinary photographs on their website, including many by a truly gifted photographer, Christian Morel. Look. Feel. Experience. Mourn the loss of the ice.



Antarctic Peninsula - Photo, Christian Morel

Speaking to BBC News on Monday this week, Mark Serreze, a senior research scientist at the NSIDC, said: “2005 was the previous record and what happened then had really astounded us; we had never seen anything like that, having so little sea ice at the end of summer. Then along comes 2007 and it has completely shattered that old record.”

He added: “We’re on a strong spiral of decline; some would say a death spiral. I wouldn’t go that far but we’re certainly on a fast track. We know there is natural variability but the magnitude of change is too great to be caused by natural variability alone.”

Svalbard - Photo, Christian Morel


And so what does it mean to you, this melting ice. The islanders of Tuvalu already know what is happening. Do you?

The Associated Press can help:

How would some of the United States’ best known cities look if seas rise by slightly more than 3 feet? It’s a disturbing picture.

The projections are based on coastal maps created by scientists at the University of Arizona, who relied on data from the US Geological Survey. Many scientists say sea rise of 1 meter is likely to happen within 100 years. Here is a look at what that might do:

Boston

Fourth of July celebrations wouldn’t be the same. The Esplanade, where fireworks watchers gather, would be submerged by a rising Charles River, along with the Hatch Shell where the Boston Pops stages its annual concert. Some runways at Logan International Airport will be partially covered, and the neighborhoods tourists know best would be smaller.

Hatch Shell Boston Pops - Photo, Winslow Townsend, AP

New York

At the southern tip of Manhattan, sea water would inundate Battery Park City, now home to 9,000 people. Waves would lap near the base of the new Freedom Tower. Beachfront homes from the blue collar Rockaways to the mansions of the Hamptons, could be swamped by advancing surf.

New Yorkers seeking a change of scene would find it tougher to get out of town, since both runways at LaGuardia Airport would be partly underwater. But all that would pale compared to what would happen during a bad storm. If giant storm walls were built across key waterways, that might protect parts of the city, “but that doesn’t help anyone outside the gates,” said Malcolm Bowman, who leads a storm surge research group at Stony Brook University.

Miami

You can kiss goodbye the things that make south Florida read like an Elmore Leonard novel: the glitz of South Beach, the gator-infested Everglades, and some of the bustling terminals of Miami International Airport.

Many of the beachside places where tourists flock and the rich and famous luxuriate would be under water. Spits of land would be left in fashionable South Beach and celebrity-studded Fisher Island.

While the booming downtown would be mostly spared, inland areas near the airport and out to the low-lying Everglades would be submerged. Miami would resemble a cookie nibbled on from the south and east.

New Orleans

If the levees break again and the nation gives up the fight to save the lowest parts of New Orleans, the Big Easy would be reduced to a sliver of land along the Mississippi River, leaving the French Quarter and the oldest neighborhoods as the only places on dry ground.

Another article by Seth Borenstein of AP puts it this way:

Experts say that protecting America’s coastlines would run well into the billions and not all spots could be saved.

And it’s not just a rising ocean that is the problem. With it comes an even greater danger of storm surge, from hurricanes, winter storms and regular coastal storms, Boesch said. Sea level rise means higher and more frequent flooding from these extreme events, he said.

All told, one meter of sea level rise in just the lower 48 states would put about 25,000 square miles under water, according to Jonathan Overpeck, director of the Institute for the Study of Planet Earth at the University of Arizona. That’s an area the size of West Virginia.

The amount of lost land is even greater when Hawaii and Alaska are included, Overpeck said.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s calculation projects a land loss of about 22,000 square miles. The EPA, which studied only the Eastern and Gulf coasts, found that Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, Texas and South Carolina would lose the most land. But even inland areas like Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia also have slivers of at-risk land, according to the EPA.

And for you college students:

Storm surges worsened by sea level rise will flood the waterfront getaways of rich politicians - the Bushes’ Kennebunkport and John Edwards’ place on the Outer Banks. And gone will be many of the beaches in Texas and Florida favored by budget-conscious students on Spring Break.

Spring Break! Gone! Kaput! Like Tuvalua!

If that’s not enough to get you moving, nothing is.

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.

Arctic polar bear jumps ice floes at Herald Island in the Chukchi Sea
REUTERS/Greenpeace/ Beltra

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?”

What’s a penguin worth? A baby seal? A polar bear?

A billion people?

How much will you give me for a billion people? Mothers and brothers, sisters and cousins. Grandfathers and grandsons?

American scientists have figured out how to measure how much land would be lost and how many people might be affected by rising sea levels.

They figured out how many people might die if melting Arctic and Antarctic ice - or storms - raise the level of the sea 100 feet. That’s the level of the big Tsunami in the Indian Ocean that killed 230,000 people.

Meltwater stream on the Greenland ice sheet.
Photo by Roger J. Braithwaite, The University of Manchester UK


I’m only a penguin, but the answer scares me.


“More than 1 billion people live in low-lying areas where a sudden surge in sea level could prove as disastrous as the 2004 Asian tsunami, according to new research by U.S. government scientists.”

I’ve never seen a billion of anything. A billion is bigger than my penguin mind can imagine.

“The team also found that a 100-foot (30-meter) rise in sea level would cover 3.7 million square miles of land worldwide.”

But let’s suppose the water doesn’t get that high. What if it’s just one-sixth that high:

“A rise of just 16 feet (5 meters) would affect 669 million people and 2 million square miles of land would be lost.”

Maybe these scientists are just trying to scare us. A lot of people think scientists exaggerate. This is what one of them, E. Lynn Usery, said:

“Sea levels are currently rising about 0.04 to 0.08 inches (1 to 2 millimeters) each year, making it unlikely such a scenario would suddenly occur across the globe, Usery said.

“But he said 10,000 years ago sea levels rose 20 meters in 500 years - a relatively short span - after the collapse of the continental ice sheets due to warming temperatures.

“‘It can happen in a short period of time if we look at the historical data,’ Usery said.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18230533/


So I guess the penguin question of the day is: what are you willing to do to save a billion people?

Tear up your maps! Throw away your globes! Faster than a speeding train! We have global warming’s first new island. Using the language of the native people, the Inuit, “American explorer and Greenland expert, Dennis Schmitt … has named it Warming Island (Or Uunartoq Qeqertoq in Inuit, the Eskimo language.”

Thanks to the British newspaper, The Independent, we have a picture:

And this is what they say: “The map of Greenland will have to be redrawn. A new island has appeared off its coast, suddenly separated from the mainland by the melting of Greenland’s enormous ice sheet, a development that is being seen as the most alarming sign of global warming.”
http://news.independent.co.uk/environment/climate_change/article2480994.ece

How interesting that we see this picture on the same day we read that although China admits global warming will have a dramatic effect on its environment the government is unwilling to impose strict caps on its carbon dioxide emissions. What’s a penguin to do?

And it’s obviously not just China. Check out this graph of the countries that have increased their emissions in the last few years, and the countries that have made important changes.

It seems that 34 countries have increased their emissions since 2004. The worse offenders are Turkey, Spain. Portugal, Canada, Greece, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, Liechtenstein and the United States of America. What’s a penguin to say?

How many scientists telling you that you have changed the world for the worse will it take? How many studies of melting ice? How many new coal-fired plants spewing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere do you need? Hummers and SUVs?

It’s not enough that you have ignored the obvious. Now you want to mess with my friends and family to prove what every living thing except humans know.

Give me a break.

How about this brilliant headline:

“Want to monitor climate change? P-p-p-pick up a penguin!”

It turns out “scientists at the University of Birmingham are trying out an alternative bio-indicator - the king penguin - to investigate whether they can be used to monitor the effects of climate change.”

The great idea: put penguins on treadmills. Implant “heart rate loggers” in penguins going to sea.

© mlenny

And why? To see whether we have to work harder and use more more energy and swim further looking for food when fish and food are scarce.

Do you really need to misuse us to learn about the man-made climate crisis? Why not open your eyes and see the melting glaciers? Listen to your children coughing from asthma! Try to see the night sky from your pollution-filled cities! List the rivers you can no longer swim!

Forgive us, but sometimes it takes a while for us to get word of what’s going on. We just heard that Canadian Fisheries spokespeople were disappointed that only 860 seals were killed during the first three days of Canada’s seal hunt. They indicated “that melting ice has depleted much of the herd in the southern Gulf of St. Lawrence.”

Only 860! Oh my God - or maybe Oh your God!

Why so low? Well it seems the seals have been drowning before the hunters could get to them.

How can a seal drown? Well it takes a bit of time for baby seals to learn how to swim. Kind of like humans and bicycles. And so much ice is melting that the baby seals have been drowning. They try the best they can to cling to the pockets of ice, but many of them don’t make it.

Courtesy: Rei Ohara


“The quota for all three phases of this year’s seal hunt is 270,000 seals. That is 65,000 fewer than last year, a change imposed mainly because of the toll from the ice conditions.”

What’s so important about seals? “Fishermen sell seal pelts mostly for the fashion industry in Norway, Russia and China, as well as blubber for oil, earning about $78 per seal.”
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17953506/

We, in Antarctica, send our greetings to our friends up north in the Arctic. We were saddened to learn that things are getting worse for you.

It seems that Human scientists who have measuring the thickness of Arctic ice for 40 years have changed their minds. A few months ago they were warning that the summer ice in the Arctic could disappear altogether in 2040. Well new information gathered from a British submarine - they could have asked a polar bear - indicates “the effects of global warming are much worse than previously suspected and could lead to a complete melting of Arctic summer ice in as little as 13 years … the thinning was already approaching 50 percent and that the ice could disappear by 2020.”
Just in case you think we’re making this up, check this:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18039460/

Mother polar bear & cub: Mike Dunn, NOAA Climate Program Office

The melting Arctic ice will not only change life for the worse for our animal friends but for the native Inuit peoples. Houses, roads, railroads, pipelines sit above fragile permafrost.

Not only that, Humans in their infinite wisdom have used the Arctic lands as dumping grounds. “In some part of the Arctic, toxic and radioactive materials are stored and contained in frozen ground. Thawing may release these substances in the local and wider environment with risks to humans and wildlife alongside significant clean up costs.”
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070410140922.htm

Full moon Arctic ice: Mike Dunn, NOAA Climate Program Office