Robert Onfray Writer

May 21 at 2:28 PM

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Another round of "penguins are facing extinction from climate change!” stories has just appeared in the press, all based on a new paper by Peter Fretwell. If you only read the headlines, such as those from the ABC, you’d think Emperor Penguins are on the brink of disappearing because the Antarctic sea ice is suddenly melting due to global warming.

But the real story is far more complicated and far less catastrophic.

Peter Fretwell is not a zoologist. He’s a cartographer with the British Antarctic Survey who became involved with Emperor Penguins when satellite imagery allowed him to detect colonies from space, not by counting birds directly, but by spotting large stains of guano on the ice. His mapping work was genuinely valuable because before 2009, we didn’t know how many colonies existed, or even where some of them were. Thanks to satellites, colonies were discovered in places where no scientist had ever set foot.

However, the jump being made now is that a recent decline in several colonies must be the result of climate-driven melting. The media swallowed this eagerly, presenting the loss of sea ice in 2022 as proof that the long-predicted climate crisis is finally hitting penguins.

Except the evidence simply doesn’t support that conclusion.

As scientist Jim Steele points out, Antarctica is so cold that surface melt ponds are rarely observed, and Emperor Penguin breeding failures are usually caused by fast-ice breakouts, not melting. When the sea ice breaks apart before the chicks have moulted into waterproof plumage, they can’t survive.

More importantly, the colonies Fretwell cites as proof of climate disaster don’t behave like a simple melt narrative. For example, some colonies (like Pfrogner Point and Verdi Inlet) were only discovered a few years ago, so long-term comparisons are impossible.

Other colonies, such as Rothschild Island, had no breeding failure in the same year.

Populations at Smyley Island have always fluctuated wildly, long before the current climate storyline existed.

What actually explains the sea-ice variation in 2022 is well known in Antarctic science, namely natural pressure and wind systems, especially the Amundsen Low, which shift sea ice dramatically depending on seasonal strength and position. These variations are also linked to El Niño and La Niña cycles, not CO₂.

So instead of a continent-wide climate collapse, what we have is natural year-to-year variability, regional ice breakouts driven by wind patterns and selective interpretation turned into global doomsday headlines.

Once again, normal wildlife struggles, which are part of the natural ecology of Antarctica, have been weaponised to push a climate narrative that the data does not justify.

It’s a pattern we’ve seen many times. Predictions from the early 2000s claimed Emperor Penguins would be disappearing by 2010. Instead, satellite surveys discovered more colonies than we ever knew existed.

The real crisis here isn’t with the penguins. It’s with how science is reported.

Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at 07:03 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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