Emperor Penguins Join Polar Bears on ESA’s List of Threatened Species based on occult climate models – Are you interested in that?

By Polar Bear Science HT / Orange_WORLD

Dr. Susan Crockford

YesterdayUnited States Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would classify emperor penguins as ‘threatened’ as extinct under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) based on what is seen as flawed climate models, to effective next month. This is despite the fact that The number of emperor penguins increases between 2009 and 2019, a reassessment of the IUCN Red List in 2019 did not reverse their 2018 decision (still listing it as ‘near threatened’, not ‘vulnerable’) and member states refused earlier this year to enact Antarctic Treaty to protect birds. Conservation activists of all stripes are filled with joy At the end of the day this decision is better than nothing for a species that is not likely to go extinct because it means more money for them.

The Bottom Line: An article by United States National Public Radio (October 25, 2022) admits the real reason for this list:

Although emperor penguins are not found naturally in the US, protecting endangered species will help increase funding for conservation efforts. U.S. agencies will now also be required to assess how fisheries and greenhouse gas emissions projects affect people…

Reuters (October 26, 2022) said the FWS justification for this action was not the penguins are currently in danger but they maybe [my bold]:

The wildlife agency says a thorough review of the evidence, including 40 years of satellite data, shows penguins are not currently endangered, but rising temperatures signal that could happen.

Read my Detailed and complete referenced blog post on the matter for the rationale for why the extinction predictions for this species are based on extreme ‘worst case’ situations as shown below (i.e. RCP8.5 or ‘unadjusted scenario’), has the same serious flaws as for polar bears (Crockford 2019; Hausfather and Peters 2020).

Also note that one of the co-author of the article used to justify this decision (Jenouvrier et al. 2020) is activist Shaye Wolfe’s Center for Biodiversity, The organization first petitioned for this outcome in 2011. Like they did with polar bears.

In 2018The IUCN Red Book says this about their Emperor penguin rating, unchanged with its 2019 review (BirdLife International 2020) [my bold]:

This species is listed as Near Threatened because it is predicted to experience a rapid moderate population decline over the next three generations due to the effects of climate change. It should be noted, however, that there is considerable uncertainty about future climate changes and how these changes will impact species..

Presenter

BirdLife International. 2020. Aptenodytes forsteri. IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2019: e.T22697752A132600320. Download on October 26, 2022. https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/22697752/157658053

Crockford, SJ 2019. The polar bear disaster has never happened. Global Warming Policy Fund, London. Available in paperback and eBooks formats.

Hausfather, Z. and Peters, GP 2020. Emissions – misleading ‘business as usual’ story [“Stop using the worst-case scenario for climate warming as the most likely outcome — more-realistic baselines make for better policy”]. Nature 577: 618-620

Jenouvrier, S. et al. 2020. The goals of the Paris Agreement will likely prevent future declines of emperor penguins. Global change biology 26 (3): 1170-1184. [paywalled] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/gcb.14864