Adelie penguins wondering whether it’s safe to swim.
On Dec 29, 2007, ZeeNews reported that Adélie penguins faced extinction within five to ten years due to climate change. They quickly changed that to “locally extinct”, which means not extinct, extant.
But never mind — melting ice is making it easier for the darling Adélies to find food. Hurrah! Continue Reading →
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Does Greenpeace expect us to accept their numbers without demur? To accept the cause they suggest? When can we question the researchers? A few inquiries raise serious questions about the study’s credibility. This is how the story begins on the Greenpeace website, with the headline shown in the screen grab:
February 10, 2020 – Scientists surveying chinstrap penguin colonies in the Antarctic have found drastic reductions in many colonies, with some declining by as much as 77 percent since they were last surveyed almost 50 years ago.
The independent researchers, on a Greenpeace expedition to the region, found that every single colony surveyed on Elephant Island, an important habitat northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula, had declined. The number of chinstrap penguins on Elephant Island has dropped almost 60 percent since the last survey in 1971, with a total count of only 52,786 breeding pairs of chinstrap penguins, plummeting from previous survey estimates of around 122,550 pairs. Continue Reading →
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It’s got so cold here that penguins are arriving.
The NZ Herald has some great shots of Mr Emperor on the beach, taking in the sights and getting used to the adulation.
On the Google Earth clip at right you can see the shortest possible track he could have swum in reaching us from the nearest part of the Antarctic coast. It measures a mind-bending 3300 kilometres. Of course, it’s beyond question that he would have travelled far more than that, because of ocean currents.
Nice to see him here, but I hope he goes on his way soon, because there’s not much future for his kind in New Zealand. We’re not cooling that much.
Visits: 67
