More than half of Antarctica’s plants, animals could disappear due to climate change
By Paul Homewood
A study in the journal PLOS Biology found that 65% of Antarctica’s plant and animal species, including penguins, will likely disappear by the end of the century if the world does not do something to decrease fossil fuel emissions.
The study also showed that the current conservation efforts in Antarctica are not working on the rapidly changing continent.
Researchers concluded that implementing an extra layer of cost-effective strategies, which they lay out in the study, could save up to 84% of Antarctica’s vulnerable biodiversity.
"Antarctica is not really contributing to climate change; there’s not a large-scale number of people living there, so the greatest threat to the continent is coming from outside the continent," Jasmine Lee, lead author of the study, told CNN.
"We really need global action on climate change, as well as some more local and regional conservation efforts, to give Antarctic species the best chance of surviving into the future."
Thursday’s study shows that disappearing sea ice will threaten emperor and Adelie penguins that rely on ice from April through December.
"These iconic species, like emperor penguins and Adélie penguins, are at risk and it’s really sad to think that Antarctica is one of the last great wildernesses on the planet and human impacts are being seen and felt there," Lee said.
"It’s just incredibly sad to think that we could drive those kinds of species towards extinction."
Lee said that more action is needed to save one of Earth’s vast, pristine biomes.
"This is just the tip of the iceberg," Lee said.
"We’re at this huge turning point now not just for Antarctica, but globally, when it comes to climate. We’ve got the opportunity to stop it and if we don’t do something now, then the impacts are going to be much, much worse than what they could be."
There’s only one slight problem – the Southern Polar regions have barely got any warmer since 1980:
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Don’t worry about the temperature, just keep the money rolling in.
Reality – Bah Humbug.
By the way, Santa’s on his way.
Yep, half the plants and animals could disappear because of global warming, or more likely they will not, this is the coldest warm time in ten thousand years in Greenland Ice Core Records and temperature is in the same bounds as the last ten thousand years in Antarctica Ice Core Records.
So, most likely all these stories about what might disappear are just more of their lies. CO2 added to the atmosphere is just a little more than one molecule to ten thousand, their actual CO2 control of climate is all about almost nothing.
Water, water vapor, and ice are abundant, especially in Antarctica, look to water in all of its abundance and changing states for max control of climate and its proven stable alternating warmer and colder periods.
I’m not sure that repeating the (alarmist) headline and most of the alarmist article verbatim gets the right message across.
And the link to the graph just shows the graph with no further info or background.
Given that most people go no further than headlines casual visitors will assume it is true.
Anyway, seasons greeting etc.
One of the firm predictions made by the key-tapping climate gurus is that, ‘Nightime temperatures would rise as the level of CO2 increased’. As the weather here has currently demonstrated, once water vapour in the atmosphere has been deposited as frost, the rate of change of temperature has not changed in the last 50 years. I remember, that many decades ago, being shocked by the rapid change of temperature on the edge of the Sahara desert in Libya, once the sun had set. The air in Antarctica is very dry, hence I would be surprised if the small increase in CO2 had any demonstratable effect, as is correctly shown by Paul’s graph.
Much has been made of the CO2 levels at Manua Loa – could we also see data regarding the night-time temperatures at the same site? If they don’t track CO2, Oh dear….?
“Nightime temperatures would rise as the level of CO2 increased”
Seems they have no idea about Nightime (sic) temperatures in the Antarctic.
The monthly mean temperature at the South Pole in winter hovers around -60°C (-76°F). Along the coast, winter temperatures range between −15 and −20 °C (-5 and −4 °F).
Lead author of the paper Jasmine Lee : ” Antarctica is not really contributing to climate change ; theres not a large scale number of people living there ,so the greatest threat to the continent is coming from outside the continent ……..We really need global action on climate change …..to give Antarctic species the best chance of surviving into the future ……..iconic species like emperor penguins and Adelie penguins are at risk …….We’re at this huge turning point now not just for Antarctica but globally ,when it comes to climate . We’ve got the opportunity to stop it and if we don’t do something now ,then the impacts are going to be much much worse than what they could be ”
Notice Jasmine Lees utterly absurd assumption that human beings are the force majeure of climate change. The beleagured emperor and Adelie penguins must have been hanging on by their webbed feet 1000 – 1200 years ago and during the ‘hothouse hell’ of the Roman Climatic Optimum centuries when the worlds population was only a fraction of todays and the Antarctic continent was 0.8 – 1 C warmer than the present . See here
https://joannenova.com.au/2017/11/antarctica-cooling-since-roman-times/
And here https://joannenova.com.au/2019/07/antarctica-was-warmer-one-thousand-years-ago-and-life-was-ok/
Antarctica has intermittently yet gradually cooled for the past 1600 years . Indeed the paleotemperature data derived from the Greenland and South Pole ice cores shows the Roman Climatic Optimum was warmer in both hemispheres .If only the industrious Romans, Persians and Han Chinese closed down their mines and charcoal smelters and the barbarian hordes culled their herds they could have ” stopped it ! ..And the “runaway cooling ‘ that followed the ” turning point ” of the Medieval Warm Period
Mockery coupled with factual data are the best antidotes to this pseudoscientific nonsense . Modest global warming is not “intensifying ” threats to Antarctic biodiversity ” at an unprecedented rate ” at all . There is no evidence of any intensified warming and the warming is not ” unprecedented ” as one can see from the paleotemperature data
Why not put the Stenni et al and the Luning et al Antarctic temperature reconstruction graphs up to debunk this latest junk science publication Paul ?
Blah, blah, blah, blah and more blah. It’s getting boring and never happens. The only thing that does happen is that my wallet gets thinner every day and I have no idea how the sticky fingers got there.
How many authors did any field research in Antarctica? This looks like a Hollywood science by couch potatoes.
Seems they have already disappeared . . . I don’t see any.
This is just the tip of the iceberg,” Lee said.
Yes Lee, and there’s a lot more where that came from.
Yet more plandemic of lies and wild guesses pretending to be “science”.
Little Jasmine, you COULD be doing something useful.
Flipping burgers would be a start.
“Flipping burgers would be a start.”
That would require at least another 3 years of university studies !!
There is more government grant largesse in promoting climate apocalypse propaganda Martin …..Why would Jasmine flip burgers when she can flip the principles of scientific rationalism to millenarian prophecy with little to no prospect of punitive repercussions ? . Besides graduates embarking on a career in scientific research have witnessed the fates of Professor Peter Ridd , Bob Carter. Bill Gray, Judith Curry and others who dared challenge the Climate Inquisition .
She certainly flipped her narrative of 5 years ago as a PhD student when she wrote that Antarctic biota flourished in a warming Antarctica : ” Ice free areas make for small patches of suitable habitat for plants and animals in a sea of ice “
“… but globally, when it comes to climate. We’ve got the opportunity to stop it and if we don’t do something now, then the impacts are going to be much, much worse than what they could be.”
Actually, if they do try to stop it and do “something” now, the negative effects on global economies would be much worse than any climate change. Rapid reductions in CO2 emissions to zero by 2050 means less and less fossil fuels for the conventional transportation required to complete the transition to renewables and electric transportation.
Indeed.
The atmospheric CO2 concentration will not so much as twitch upwards or downwards however much CO2 mankind produces.
The moderator is the oceans, simple as that.
According to the Mauna Loa Observatory (and other stations in the Pacific at different latitudes) CO2 has risen to near 420 parts-per-million since 1960 at a variable rate. About 40 billion tons was added last year from all sources. But, of course, some of that is still equilibrating with the ocean, the land and the biosphere. it will continue to increase as fossil fuels will be needed for the foreseeable future. It can be lowered by industrial carbon capture technologies, but not in any meaningful amounts.
“It can be lowered by industrial carbon capture technologies”
They won’t make the slightest difference to it.
After the Covid thing struck and there was a massive slump in fossil fuel burning, there was optimistic speculation from the “climate scientists” that the big reduction of 17% IIRC in anthropogenic emissions would be noticeable in the Mauna Lua CO2 trace.
It didn’t even twitch.
Mankind’s efforts have zero measurable effect on the atmospheric CO2 concentration.
“Mankind’s efforts have zero measurable effect on the atmospheric CO2 concentration.” Except when we add to it. You’ve already been given the reference earlier to the paper about the high statistical correlation between the sum total of human activities and Mauna Loa CO2 since 1960.
So how do you account for the unfortunate fact that a significant reduction in anthropogenic emission amounting to an estimated 17% over a two year period had absolutely zero effect on the trajectory of the Mauna Loa CO2 graph?
I repeat –
CORRELATION DOES NOT IMPLY CAUSATION
The current progressive increase in atmospheric CO2 concentration has NOTHING to do with anthropogenic emissions.
I suggest you acquaint yourself with Dalton’s law of partial pressures, Henry’s law and Raoult’s law.
You might also familiarise yourself with the concept of the purge stream, one of the first topics that are addressed during a chemical engineering degree course.
https://chbe241.github.io/Module-3-Separation-I/3.6%20-%20Recycle%20and%20purge.html
Again..You were given the reference to the 1987 paper by Newell and Marcus (the latter a statistician). It was entitled Carbon Dioxide and People. You chose not to read it before making that comment about causation you just repeated. Indeed, I quoted verbatim from it about causation. I suggest you read the paper, especially Figure 1.
But, right now the atmosphere contains 420 ppm of CO2. The pre-industrial value is ~280 ppm. Two thirds of the current value is therefore natural. The rest is from our use of fossil fuels to make our lives better. And, as I said the 40 billion tons emitted last year are still in the process of equilibrating with the oceans, the land and the biosphere.
And the fact that CO2 concentration was 280ppm at a randomly selected start date is an irrelevance. All you have is a figure which was “natural” at that point in history. Go back to previous warm periods and cool periods and you will find higher concentrations of CO2 freqently linked to volcanic activity.
There is still no evidence outside computer programs that CO2 influences atmospheric temperatures and sufficient historical and palæontological evidence that temperature changes precede changes to CO2 concentrations.
“(the latter a statistician)”
Ah, that’s your problem!
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics”.
Mark Twain
Now you are getting even sillier with that comical quote. Read the paper, look at Figure 1.
I’ve read it.
It’s BS.
So…you’ve read it and it’s BS? That’s all? No explanation why? Figure one is BS? The explained high correlation is BS? Now you have gone even further to be silly. Time’s up on this absurd dialog.
“The explained high correlation is BS?”
In a word – YES!
Mike Jackson’s post of December 24, 2022 10:06 pm sums it up.
Regardless, BS or not. Atmospheric CO2 has made a new record every year at the Mauna Loa Observatory and its other locations at all latitudes in the Pacific. The ~40 billion tons of CO2 we added last year represent five added parts per million, but they are still equilibrating with the land, the oceans and the biosphere so they all don’t appear at Mauna Loa right away. That process will continue as we need fossil fuels for the transportation required to complete the transition to renewables and electric translation. Expect new records every year until that process is completed, if it ever is.
“But, right now the atmosphere contains 420 ppm of CO2. The pre-industrial value is ~280 ppm.”
So Man has saved the planet !!!
Good gosh. Recent studies have found that:
Ice volume was increasing on the continent (NASA, I believe).
Antarctica has cooled a bit over the past 4 decades.
Sea surface temps around the continent has cooled for a couple of decades.
I suppose species could die out if it got too cold for them?
Nearly every environmental (note NOT Climate) issue is certainly almost always due to socio economic factors.
More pseudo-scientific alarmist male cow ordure.
Paleological record AFAIK invariably shows that that flora and fauna invariably thrive during warmer, CO2-rich periods.
Then there’s this:
Scientists confirm that slight global warming is GREENING the Antarctic Peninsula with new life, dramatically boosting ecology
https://www.naturalnews.com/2017-05-27-scientists-confirm-that-slight-global-warming-is-greening-the-antarctic-peninsula-with-new-life-dramatically-boosting-ecology.html
Nice find
Its all cow excrement regardless of gender …In 2017 as a UOQ PhD student Jasmine Lee herself predicted Antarctic biota may flourish as ” Ice free areas make for small patches of suitable habitat for plants and animals in a sea of ice ” ……..Now 5 years later working for the British Antarctic Survey, Lee and this study’s co researchers warned that 65% of Antarctic species may disappear by 2100 in the same unsuitable “suitable habitat ” https://thestatesman.com/technology/science/ice-free-areas-of-antarctica-to-increase-by-2100-1498733717.html
The claim – So? It’s extremly old news … In numbers, today there are only a tiny fraction of all species left, compared to what once existed when Antartica and Australia was one single continent. Back then before the break, the climate was tropical all over. (According to a BBC program, broadcasted in Sweden last year. A program, interesting enough, that managed to slip through both BBC’s and [Swe] SVT’s fact filters …)
You really must stop letting facts get in the way of zealotry fiction.
Reblogged this on Climate Collections and commented:
From the “Quit reading after the word ‘could'” file…
Just another paid-for puff piece stuffed full of alarmist rhetoric and argument by assertion BS.
Antarctica hasn’t had raised temperatures for decades while sea ice was at all-time record levels just a few years ago.
We see this tripe all the time; obviously paid-for activism where the main thrust of the ‘study’ is emotive language to convince the masses.
Put the lead authors on the stand under Oath, then cross-examine them on pain of perjury and jail if their ‘evidence’ is found to be wanting.
Nobody would ever write a ‘climate study’ ever again.
“Antarctica hasn’t had raised temperatures for decades while sea ice was at all-time record levels just a few years ago.”
How would we know? We have so little data from there. Each weather station represents 100,000 square miles.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg”
Big iceberg 😎. No region of the Earth is a museum, things can change. Get over it.
Even more WHBay Polar Bear garbage.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-64083507.amp
It’s not just the BBC, just about every news outlet is carrying this central climate unit propaganda.
What they omit – it is a flyby survey and a statistical estimate of the total population from those sightings. Normally these surveys quote the 95%CI range. Their 618 bears is within the previous ranges (just) of comparable surveys in 2011 and 2016. Additionally 42 bears are allowed to be harvested/defence/accident killed annually and the Inuit Knowledge still believe the population is actually increasing.
Yet all the headlines visible on a Google search have definitive catastrophic headlines like rapidly declining, dying out etc.
It’s a Google problem then, not a bear problem. Try Bing.com perhaps?
‘Data from conservation groups and the government show that the polar bear population is roughly five times what it was in the 1950s and three or four times what it was in the 1970s when polar bears became protected under international treaty’
https://fee.org/articles/the-myth-that-the-polar-bear-population-is-declining/
The story has been disseminated to just about every news outlet going, it doesn’t matter what search engine you use, if you are looking for info on recent polar bear news, that is all you are going to find.
The issue is specifically about the supposed climate/ice decline link to the supposed demise of the WHBay sub population. Although bizarrely one of the articles actually admits
ice duration/levels have been pretty good most recent years.
It’s just tedious. A forecast biased to show disaster is applied in an entirely simplistic way to populations assuming the programmed changes will be disastrous.
It’s not even close to science.
How are they going to be able to survive on Antarctica without fossil fuels if they wish to be there to measure the weather.
I can’t see solar panels being much use in the winter and windmills will haave a rough time of it. Also, how will EVs perform down there..
As an aside, how are EVs performing in Canada and the USA at present?
Most weather stations on Antarctica are unmanned.
I keep wondering… why do only the certifiably insane get to write about climate change/global warming.
“Antarctica is not really contributing to climate change; there’s not a large-scale number of people living there, so the greatest threat to the continent is coming from outside the continent,” Jasmine Lee, lead author of the study, told CNN.”
Well, what can I say!!!
You havent contributed anything of value …..Anymore than Jasmine Lee
Massive ”scare the kids” propaganda on BBC News today.
I get really concerned when I read statements like the following from “supposed” scientists.
“A study in the journal PLOS Biology found that 65% of Antarctica’s plant and animal species, including penguins, will likely disappear by the end of the century if the world does not do something to decrease fossil fuel emissions”.
They are stating an EXACT number as a consequence of and directly linked to something for which there exists no statistically significant empirical data of any kind to support the claimed link. This is just yet more garbage from the model sewer outfall.
It sounds so serious and scientific but their pseudo empiricism is based on nothing except for a shrieking activits claim.
What is worse is they get away with this garbage because they are never challenge or held to account so without challenge their activist oxygen becomes fact.
Not the penguin got special mention because of course small and cuddly provides the emotion otherwise mentioning it specifically is very strange.
I hope these people can sleep soundly after writing yet one more work of fiction.
A week ago the weather forecasters predicted my daughter would be driving through snow to get here today. As it turned out, mild a drizzly, but we know for certain what’ll happen in 100 years. Curious.
“They are stating an EXACT number as a consequence of and directly linked to something for which there exists no statistically significant empirical data of any kind to support the claimed link.”
In logic, it’s called a false precision fallacy.
It is a favorite tool of climate ‘science.’
Specifically mentioning Fossil Fuels shows this “scientist” up for what he/she /it is….a corrupted political operative. There are lots of other sources, the MAJORITY of which is NATURE. To specify fossil fuels makes this this asinine grant seeker deserving of utter contempt.
Further I am sad to say that very CO2 provides the oxygen which this waste of space breaths.
What I find most unacceptable and galling about these fear mongering charlatans is to a man/woman/thing/things they NEVER EVER acknowledge the elephant in the room which they are obliged to do as scientists. That is to put their abject asininity in context of the Minoan warm, the Roman warm and the Medieval warm. The very fact they ignore those means whatever they are performing it is NOT a scientific study and consequently for any conclusions they produce, utter garbage is guaranteed….as they seek the next funding millions for more worthless climate fear propaganda.
“The very fact they ignore those…”
They don’t just ignore them, they have deliberately and methodically removed them from the historic record, most noticeably by the egregious Michael Mann with his fictitious “Hockey Stick” which despite having been comprehensively debunked is still regularly touted by the mainstream press to this day.
I expect the Antarctic wheat harvest will be hard hit too……….
– what conservation efforts might those be?
“Climate change is identified as the most pervasive threat to Antarctic biodiversity and influencing global policy to effectively limit climate change is the most beneficial conservation strategy”
= give us more money – what’s new?
98% of Antarctica is under miles-deep ice. So, I am not sure there is much to conserve. ‘Antarctic biodiversity’ is an oxymoron.
It is strange how the mere existence of many different species is regarded as some sort of miracle. It is simply the relentless exploitation of the planet by unquestioning, aggressive, ‘life.’ Every niche in Nature is filled – and there are a lot of niches. MILLIONS of them. Bacteria live under our feet. The oceans teem with quadrillions of quadrillions of viruses.
And the niches and their occupants come and go all the time. BILLIONS of species have gone extinct. If you found a trilobite on the beach would you scoop it up and cuddle it and say “Thank God you boys are alive!”?
One starts to suspect that value judgements about Nature may be a little bit pointless.
Yes, Dave. There is some anthropomorphism involved, as well.
Man abhors death. Nature doesn’t. Nature couldn’t care less. Extinction is a human concern; it doesn’t concern Nature.
The following was written about Antarctica by Alistair Fothergill in his book ‘Life in the Freezer’, published in 1993 before the current climate change hysteria really got a grip:
Beneath your feet at the South pole lie over 3000 metres (about 9800 feet) of ice, 4000 metres (13,123 feet) in parts, which rests not on the sea but on land. Antarctica is a frozen continent larger than Europe, larger even than the United States and Mexico combined. A massive icecap covers 98 percent of that land, swallowing a continent higher than any on Earth. The length of the polar winter night increases with latitude until at the pole itself, the sun sets just once a year. For a while after it disappears, the setting sun provides aglow above the horizon, and then leaves the polar world in complete darkness for half the year.
The warmth the polar regions absorb in the summer is far less than the heat they lose in the winter. Only in November and December, the very height of the Antarctic summer, does the South pole actually gain heat. The Antarctic is much colder than the Arctic. The average winter temperature in the Antarctic is minus 60 degrees Celsius. Even on a good summer’s day it’s minus 30 degrees Celsius, colder than the coldest winter’s night at the North Pole. Antarctica is the highest continent on Earth, three times higher than any other.
There are larger waves, stronger winds, and more powerful currents in the Southern Ocean than anywhere else on the globe. Icebergs are a real threat to shipping. At times they show up on the radar screen as hundreds on tiny white dots, which in reality could be an iceberg which could easily sink the largest vessel. It is absolutely essential to keep a lookout posted around the clock, and many captains prefer to avoid travelling at night whenever there are lots of icebergs about. On land, cold air from the high continental plateau rushes down the gradient to the sea causing katabatic winds. These can reach over 300 kilometres an hour and add terrifying windchill to the already freezing conditions.
If you sail around Antarctica, you will see mainly white ice. Sometimes it towers over you as mighty ice shelves. Elsewhere great glaciers tumble into the ocean, calving off icebergs which make navigation very dangerous.
Fast forward to the present. Greenpeace on its website states that ‘… parts of the Antarctic are warming three times as fast as other parts of our planet. Scientists recently recorded its warmest day ever – a distinctly not-freezing 17.5°C’ and also that ‘Changing ocean temperatures are also important, because they warm the massive Antarctic glaciers from below, making them less stable.’
Quite how changing ocean temperatures are warming the Antarctic glaciers from below given that the Antarctic is a land mass below ten thousand feet or so of ice is not explained – but then, who needs explanations, the scary story is what counts. And where exactly was the claimed temperature of 17.5 degrees measured, and under what circumstances? The British Antarctic survey states; ‘Around the coasts of Antarctica, temperatures are generally close to freezing in the summer (December-February) months, or even slightly positive in the northern part of the Antarctic Peninsula. During winter, monthly mean temperatures at coastal stations are between -10°C and -30°C but temperatures may briefly rise towards freezing when winter storms bring warm air towards the Antarctic coast. Conditions on the high interior plateau are much colder as a result of its higher elevation, higher latitude and greater distance from the ocean. Here, summer temperatures struggle to get above -20°C and monthly means fall below -60°C in winter. Vostok station holds the record for the lowest ever temperature recorded on the surface of the Earth (-89.2°C).
Greenpeace also states that ‘ Glaciers form on the Antarctic landmass as snowfall compresses into ice over time, and they flow under their own weight towards the ocean – like a very slow river. But as these glaciers feel the heat of a warmer ocean underneath them, they speed up their slow march to the coast, causing big chunks of ice to break off into the sea as icebergs at a faster speed. The melting and break down of glaciers into the ocean raises sea levels all around the world. Antarctic glaciers are now losing ice faster than snow is falling to add new ice. The rate at which Antarctic ice sheets melt under increasing temperatures will affect coastal communities globally, whether living in small island states or mega-cities.’
Yet there have clearly always been plenty of icebergs in the Southern Ocean. Greenpeace is yet again telling us fairy stories (to put it politely).
Greenpeace have been busted for not only telling lies , desecrating heritage sites and bullying employees [ See the No Frakking Consensus article : ” Greenpeace Employer From Hell ” ] or in Patrick Moores experience ” unpersoning ” a founder who fell foul of Greenpeace puritanism , eco terrorist violence and threatening climate skeptics but also bribing people to commit criminal acts …..Greenpeaces mantra was straight out of Josef Goebells playbook : that it doesnt matter what is true – only what people believe to be true
“We know where you live. We know where you work. And we be many, but you be few.”
Gene Hashmi, communications director at Greenpeace India.
Nice…
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2010/apr/06/greenpeace-gene-hashmi-climate-sceptics