There's a very good reason why seabirds in general are long-lived. Breeding failures are common. Arctic Terns in Shetland, Scotland basically did not raise any chicks for 10 years due to food shortages, probably due to overfishing for sandeels, their main prey (sorry don't have a reference).
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.
I spend summers in a seagull rookery on a small island, about 2000 adult birds. Each pair averages about two young. A few years ago when the young were hatched but still tiny, puffy balls with legs there was a strong wind for two days. One by one the chicks lost their balance, tumbled away across the island and blew into the cold water. It was nearly a 100% wipe of the young. But the birds live many years, and 1 young per adult per year is unsustainable, so they have to get eaten or die somehow. It just feels horrible to see all of a year’s young go at once.
> There's a very good reason why seabirds in general are long-lived.
> 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.
While I agree with the main thrust of your point, there have always been boom and bust cycles in nature with no humans involved. Good years lead to overbreeding which leads to food shortages which leads to famine. Animals are capable of overusing their natural resources too, humans are just more efficient at it.
I think the main problem is we compete for these resources with them. And in many ways jam the ecosystem from reaching equilibrium so the bad years become more frequent and are not followed by good years at the same rate.
I watched the matrix when I was too young to understand much. But when I watched it a few years later it just hit me and this quote of Agent Smith has stayed on my mind
"I'd like to share a revelation that I've had during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area"
> 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.
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.
The unfortunate consequence is that there seems to be no sign of further breeding after this point, despite the adult penguins surviving. I think they're insinuating that the catastrophe is on-going.
I don't believe you read the article, because if you had I believe you would have noticed that they nearly all but dismissed this as climate change related. Scientists did that not, HN commentors.
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.
Funny you attribute this to climate change when the article clearly mentioned this incident had nothing to do with climate change. Did you even read it?
> 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.“
> “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.”
Which is not related to this particular incident. Thanks for proving my point again.
You made up the “which is not related to this particular incident” part (which is why you couldn’t quote it). They said they couldn’t point to an “obvious” cause in this case, which you eagerly mischaracterized as meaning “it has nothing to do with global warming.” But that’s not what they said. They said they didn’t deeply study and understand the cause in this case. But we know with great certainty that sea ice is on a rapid decline due to climate change, just half of what it was in the 80s.[1] Thus the article notes studies that project this event will happen with greater frequency due to climate change, ultimately killing off more than half this species by century's end.
It reads like the current fact is that they don't know why the ice didn't regenerate now.
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.
2015-2016 in Antarctica had one of the biggest sea ice extents on record. Way above the average (for the 40 years or so of data that they actually have)
It's possible to question without being a paid shill - overpopulation is relevant yet taboo, we are bound to an economic model that worships inexorable economic growth despite likely consequences for the planet that cannot be solved by innovation alone, the rich and powerful are disproportionate creators of CO2 and in unique position to influence yet apparently most show little true inclination to change matters, we are kept in the dark about the true scale of the changes required (which would leave our lifestyles unrecognisable compared to now - forget cars, forget flying, forget imported goods, forget cheap clothes, forget meat) and there are myriad other environmental issues that to my eyes are conveniently ignored in favour of the 'push global warming at all costs' directive. I care about the planet and want to see global warming tackled, but look past the rhetoric and there are discrepancies galore.
Cheer up, outside of SV & academia, it's not all that much contentious anymore. People moved on, we are dealing with issues that we consider timely and well sourced.
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.
>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).
Only the BBC's deliberately emotive headline to this story suggests that 'penguin chicks have died'. The facts behind it are that BAS scientists have reported that one colony site has been abandoned and that another nearby has increased in size. The probability is that the abandoned site had become vulnerable to storm damage and the colony moved to a less risky location. No panic, no disaster.
From the article’s first paragraph, which was in bold:
“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.”
So I take issue with the GP's assertion that is overly "emotive", the implication being that the BBC is biased about blowing things out of proportion that suits its agenda. The article seems quite factual to me.
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.
> 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).
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.
> 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].
I’m sorry, are you familiar with their computer models? How do you know they are overly simplistic?
Please don't insinuate that someone hasn't read an article. "Did you even read the article? It mentions that" can be shortened to "The article mentions that."
This is a useful rule, but sometimes the best response to a comment is to point out that that an assertion is refuted by the linked content. That's especially true when the comment being responded to is a commentary on the rhetoric and content of the linked article.
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
I'd argue that examples of disasters that are incredibly likely to be a consequence of rising global temperatures would fill the "intellectual curiosity" niche.
While it's a warning of similar things that could happen due to rising temperatures:
> 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.
Examples of disasters isn't enough. There must be some technology involved in the article that shows how future disaster is being prevented, otherwise it's just needless clickbait. We already know about climate change, not really anything more to be curious about there. I have flagged the article.
Why must technology be involved. Is technology the only topic of interest to hackers? Not history, art, the natural world. It seems patently untrue that content that doesn't mention technology is needless clickbait.
> I'd argue that examples of disasters that are incredibly likely to be a consequence of rising global temperatures would fill the "intellectual curiosity" niche.
I'd disagree, because good hackers are already familiar with the subject and possible consequences and such news aren't going to change anything. We're already being spammed with daily climate apocalypse news on all major news sites and come to HN for stuff that isn't from Reuters/AP/BBC/etc. ...
I for one was not familiar with the fact that over half the world’s population of this species may die off by the end of the century due to climate change. Science and computers are essential to understanding these complex and urgent effects and thus it is eminently appropriate for HN.
>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.
We get it, you are too cool to care for some dumb animals. While most people won't shed a tear for the penguins most of us here realize that those penguins were victims of something way bigger and while for now that bigger thing seemingly only impacts birds in antarctica this could become a problem for all of us and we should understand this as a warning.
But of course instead of caring for something like this you are busy posting comments like this on the internet.
It is not clear whether that happened because of human activity. I am saying that this is something natural sometimes and this contributes to enhanced gene pool via natural selection.
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.