And Still More Pooh

Isn’t technology wonderful? British researchers have discovered a way to use satellites to discover the whereabouts of Antarctica’s emperor penguins. By tracking their poop stains.

Satellite images have picked up giant red-brown stains on the pristine white sea ice, indicating the presence of thousands of penguins.

It meant that researchers for the British Antarctic Survey were able to locate every colony on the continent for the first time ever.

The in-depth satellite survey identified 38 breeding colonies – believed to amount to between 200,000 and 400,000 breeding pairs of emperor penguins.

Until now it has been difficult to accurately estimate the population of emperor penguins because scientists have not been able to track them during the winter breeding season.

Researchers now hope by tracking the penguin colonies they can monitor the impact of climate change, which threatens to wipe out 95 per cent of the population by 2100.

One applauds the application of technology, but one is also at a bit of a loss to figure out exactly how “global warming” will “wipe out 95 per cent” of the penguin poopulation. Perhaps by freezing them to death? Because the Antarctic ice sheet is GROWING, not shrinking.  In fact, it is about one million square kilometers bigger than the historical average right now. The increase is  larger than the total area of Texas by about 1/3. The Antarctic ice growth dwarfs the much-talked about Arctic sea ice loss, by the way.