Credit to Becky Oskin at Live Science for unpacking the hype, getting two points of view and finding a researcher who knew something:
But there’s no proof yet that the birds
are dead. No one has actually found 150,000 frozen penguins. In fact,
experts think there’s a less horrific explanation for the missing birds:
When the fishing gets tough, penguins simply pick up and move. It
wouldn’t be the first time Adélie penguins marched to new digs. When an
iceberg grounded in the southern Ross Sea in 2001, penguins on Ross Island relocated to nearby colonies until the ice broke up.
“Just because there are a lot fewer birds
observed doesn’t automatically mean the ones that were there before
have perished,” said Michelle LaRue, a penguin population researcher at
the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who was not involved in the
study. “They easily could have moved elsewhere, which would make sense
if nearby colonies are thriving,” LaRue told Live Science in an email
interview.
As for the dead birds, La Rue explained that there are always
carcasses lying around Antarctica because it’s so cold and dry (they
don’t decompose in the freezer so to speak). You might think an expert
like Chris Turney might know that? It appears Eric Worrall,
non-penguin-researcher, and not published at all in the peer review
literature on Antarctica thought the non-migration of Penguins facing
disaster was “ridiculous”. (WUWT)"
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