Vast numbers of emperor penguin chicks drown as sea-ice melts and collapses underneath them.
Humans deserve everything we’re about to get as a result of climate change but watching things like this happen is heartbreaking.
Hard agree. The animals didn’t do anything wrong. :(
The vast majority of the humans are just along for the ride as well.
Unless you’re talking about the Amish, you’re giving us too much credit. We could choose simpler lives, but the reality is we will continue to do business with the worst of the worst if it makes our lives even a modicum more easy, because that’s human nature. We don’t realize long term risks well, we’re programmed to dodge snake attacks; not greedy snake-like other humans.
You think the average human can just “choose” whatever life they want? Just get up one day and be like, “you know what? I’m going to save up for a horse and buggy.” That’s not a possibility for the vast majority of people. Go to the YouTube channels featuring people who HAVE made that switch in life and it’s usually people who had a lot of money, time, and independence before they made the decision.
I know you probably have very decent intentions when you say this, but the lack of depth in consideration around how much actual freedom of movement people have is just really frustrating that it borders on victim blaming. Most people simply cannot do what you’re making sound like it’s a choice like flipping a light switch. It’s not.
Even making simple changes in lifestyle can be challenging. What is up and down? A well educated person might still be confused as we had decades of a recycling industry that was basically non-existent, corporate interests intentionally confusing, and a whole corner of the public discourse outright lying to people about reality. It’s extremely challenging and often very expensive to choose the more environmentally conscious items when buying food and basic needs. Most people don’t have public transit options, can’t afford an EV, or don’t even have access to better options for what they buy either way.
This problem is way more complicated than you’re making it and the fact yours is a common position on social media is extremely tiring. It’s also just a lazy take that is akin to yelling at traffic while you yourself are part of it. So I hope you at least counted yourself when you made that comment.
You’re giving the Amish too much credit, even. You can fuck up the Earth plenty with 1850’s tech.
Not that other critters would be better in our shoes. The fact is we never evolved to manage the whole Earth, but we inevitably have to.
Animals can do wrong too, though they are not as aware of it. https://asm.org/Articles/2022/February/The-Great-Oxidation-Event-How-Cyanobacteria-Change
Cyanobacteria are not animals, or even eukaryotes. It’s right there in the name.
I’d personally agree that being eaten is bad whether it’s by Jeffrey Dahmer or a lion, but that’s a weird way of arguing for it.
Change animal with non-human.
Oh, I see. Yeah, all sorts of organisms can have impacts we don’t like (and it is worth pointing out that biodiversity is itself a human goal).
Yes, that’s what I wanted to point out, because the comment sounded like the appeal to nature fallacy (aka nature is good humans are bad). Mindlessly changing its environment for its own benefit seems to be something that every form of life tend to do, except we are smart enough to understand it’s going to make us suffer, so we should improve it.
Summary: A catastrophic die-off of emperor penguin chicks has been observed in the Antarctic, with up to 10,000 young birds estimated to have been killed.
The sea-ice underneath the chicks melted and broke apart before they could develop the waterproof feathers needed to swim in the ocean.
The birds most likely drowned or froze to death.
The event, in late 2022, occurred in the west of the continent in an area fronting on to the Bellingshausen Sea.
It was recorded by satellites.
Dr. Peter Fretwell, from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS), said the wipeout was a harbinger of things to come.
More than 90% of emperor penguin colonies are predicted to be all but extinct by the end of the century, as the continent’s seasonal sea-ice withers in an ever-warming world.
“Emperors depend on sea-ice for their breeding cycle; it’s the stable platform they use to bring up their young. But if that ice is not as extensive as it should be or breaks up faster, these birds are in trouble,” he told BBC News.
“There is hope: we can cut our carbon emissions that are causing the warming. But if we don’t we will drive these iconic, beautiful birds to the verge of extinction.”
There is hope: we can cut our carbon emissions that are causing the warming.
Maybe 25 years ago. It’s too late now. There is no hope. We could stop 100% of emissions tomorrow and it would change nothing. We’ve entered the runaway train scenario.
This is what the oil companies want you to think. The less hope you have the longer they’ll keep making profit. They still receive trillions in public subsidies, it’s criminal.
We may never go back, but if we did cut 100% of emissions tomorrow, it would have a huge impact. These penguins would have a much better chance for the future, for one, and so would plenty of other species.
That’s not entirely true. If we cut off carbon emissions right now, you’ll still get the runaway train that is global warming, yes, but it will end sooner or will have a lesser peak temperature increase.
Imagine a pile of 10,000 dead baby penguins. This is tragic
Those penguins should have turned on the AC in the summer like the rest of us.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
More than 90% of emperor penguin colonies are predicted to be all but extinct by the end of the century, as the continent’s seasonal sea-ice withers in an ever-warming world.
But the research team watched as sea-ice under emperor rookeries fragmented in November, before thousands of chicks had had time to fledge the slick feathers needed for swimming.
Antarctic summer sea-ice has been on a sharp downturn since 2016, with the total area of frozen water around the continent diminishing to new record lows.
Between 2018 and 2022, roughly a third of the more than 60 known emperor penguin colonies were affected in some way by diminished sea-ice extent - whether that’s ice forming later in the season or breaking up earlier.
She links the causes for the current decline to anomalously warm ocean water around the continent and a particular pattern of winds, which in the case of the Bellingshausen, has pushed ice back towards the coast, making it difficult to spread.
Currently, emperors are classified as “Near Threatened” by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the organisation that keeps the lists of Earth’s most endangered animals.
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God fucking dammit. Those poor little creatures… They, and their families and fellow penguins, deserved so much better. All animals do.
Fuck. I can’t cope with this terrible, horrible shit. Humans are awful garbage. Those poor babies!
