It’s surprising how much this headline affects me. Who doesn’t like penguins? And seals are nice, but penguins are so likeable. We’ve really ruined everything.
I get a bit of this looming feeling every time there is discussion about the Awk programming language, because it reminds me we already got the closest thing to a penguin in the nothern hemisphere extinct by the XIX century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk
Hope this time around we do a better job of avoiding complete doom for these species.
It's not as though people intentionally made these endangered because they have insufficient love for penguins. We have unintentionally done it because we have insufficient love (care) for them and many, many other things, creatures, people, etc.
It's because the people who get rich off of fossil fuels are in control, and they are willing to continue this damage as long as it adds to their personal fortunes.
We could "manhattan project" ourselves out of this mess if we wanted to. China, in a sense, is doing just that.
I love penguins, and this news has me close to tears
My local zoo has a little event during winter where the king penguins get to go for a little walk around outside their enclosure. I've been a few times this year and they are just such fun animals. It has made me want to get involved with the zoo somehow, maybe not working with the animals directly but something. I don't know.
It makes me so sad how we humans know that we are messing things up on the planet but we keep doing it anyways because the economy must grow
It’s terrible that the side effect of humans creating a world of wealth, safety and comfort (for all?) is that we risk destroying the very comfort we create - but it is also awesome that we have sufficient wealth to allow people to study these birds full time, enough wealth to build communication systems that tell random strangers about the threat they are under and hopefully enough time to correct the problem.
I saw a speech by Carl Sagan that might be relevant - he said (sometime in 1990 judging by haircuts) that the US had spent 10 trillion dollars on defending itself from the threat of Soviet attack since 1945, but that the attack was not “certain” - not 100% sure. So if we were willing to spend trillions to prevent an uncertain catastrophe, why does the same logic not apply to climate chnage?
"According to the IUCN Red List criteria, a species is generally classified as Endangered (EN) if its population of mature individuals falls below 2,500"
Also IUCN, with only 180,000 individuals the Emperor penguin is now classified as Endangered.
That is objectively a wrong summary of how IUCN Red List is calculated. There’s a variety of factors including rate of decline, and any of those factors can lead to a species being in the Endangered category.
the article says 20,000 was 10% of the population
therefore the population is 180,000.
if "something might happen in the next 60 years to wipe out half the population" counts as making a species endangered, every species on the planet counts as endangered.
Please go ahead and read the criteria for how the species are tagged as endangered. Current status and population numbers can contribute to that tag, but if there are active threats that are going to rapidly affect healthy population numbers, they will still be considered endangered.
The die off is accelerating. Krill shortages (mostly due to commercial fishing) and warming temperatures will ensure it’s not going to take 60 years and that’s what the tag means.
The implicit question was whether you think we should endeavour to return to an ice or not.
Personally I'm on the not side.
And also
The only people I have seen deny climate change are the AGW idiots who think the climate has ever been stable, and who demand global action to try to put it into some sort of climatic stasis.
The rest of us have always accepted the SCIENTIFIC FACTS that:
(a) The Earth's climate has always changed and always will.
(b) The Earth's climate is EXTREMELY COMPLEX and cannot currently be accurately modeled in a computer.
(c) While humans, like EVERYTHING ELSE, have SOME effects on climate, there are plenty of other causes of change including many we probably do not know/understand. Some of these other sources, like the sun, have a far greater impact than humans.
(d) The Earth has been both significantly hotter and extremely cold many times in the past before there were enough humans to have had ANY effect on any of those previously very extreme changes.
We ALSO embrace things like the laws of economics, the record of human history, and accept basic human nature - so we:
(a) Believe humans will continue to advance technologically and thus we as a species become better able to deal with climate change with every passing decade, making it retrograde to go nuts trying to offset it now - even if we could, and if we could afford it, and if its happening.
(b) Know that far more people are dying today from other sources than from climate, and that reducing some of the deaths and suffering of people TODAY is achieved using some of those fossil fuels people like you want eliminated or made too expensive because YOU claim it will save some future persons from some imagined future horror.
(c) WE actually believe a pet theory should be PROVEN before we implement policies that have a negative impact on the lives of millions of people in the name of "solving" the supposed problem. In fact, we'd like to not only see the problem PROVEN to exist, but we also want to see that the proposed solution will actually work, will be the most cost-effective option, and will have the least impact upon the lives and liberty of the people who are alive today.
All large land and sea animals are now in danger, except perhaps those that are in some sense semi domesticated, deer, coyotes, raccoons, etc, but the wild ones are dying out due to human competition for resources or there very bodys.
Life on this planet will be OK. Throughout geologic time countless species have gone extinct. The Anthropocene might be tragic for the natural world but not terminal.
But: what are we trading it for? Higher living standards for more people is a noble and good but I don't think there's evidence it requires this rate of ecological destruction. Have we ever seriously tried to decouple growth from extraction?
I'm not convinced a solar punk future exists where technology will eventually close that gap in time. Maybe it will. So far it seems that every efficiency gain gets swallowed by expanded consumption. What seems most probable now is that we don't get a better world but the same dirty one plus a Starbucks on Mars.
Those penguins and seals are certainly being ignored by the world at large. Thanks to trillions of dollars the renewable revolution has proceeded apace since 2010-2015 but reduction in fossil fuel use has not occurred. Quite the reverse and overall total energy demand is now greater than ever before. And from all this one concludes . . . ?
It’s surprising how much this headline affects me. Who doesn’t like penguins? And seals are nice, but penguins are so likeable. We’ve really ruined everything.
I get a bit of this looming feeling every time there is discussion about the Awk programming language, because it reminds me we already got the closest thing to a penguin in the nothern hemisphere extinct by the XIX century: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_auk
Hope this time around we do a better job of avoiding complete doom for these species.
If a bird can't fly and isn't a super fast runner, they end up as food. Tale as old as time.
They're going extinct by habitat loss from climate change.
Have you seen a penguin swim though? They are super fast in water
Also this...
"Trump Administration Seals Extinction Fate for Rice’s Whale in Offshore Drilling Decision"
https://www.sierraclub.org/press-releases/2026/03/trump-admi...
This is the exact same reaction I had
Seals can be a bundle of cuteness. Leopard seals are impressive, in a different way.
This indeed a sad story.
It's not as though people intentionally made these endangered because they have insufficient love for penguins. We have unintentionally done it because we have insufficient love (care) for them and many, many other things, creatures, people, etc.
It's because the people who get rich off of fossil fuels are in control, and they are willing to continue this damage as long as it adds to their personal fortunes.
We could "manhattan project" ourselves out of this mess if we wanted to. China, in a sense, is doing just that.
I love penguins, and this news has me close to tears
My local zoo has a little event during winter where the king penguins get to go for a little walk around outside their enclosure. I've been a few times this year and they are just such fun animals. It has made me want to get involved with the zoo somehow, maybe not working with the animals directly but something. I don't know.
It makes me so sad how we humans know that we are messing things up on the planet but we keep doing it anyways because the economy must grow
Ice breaking up before the chicks can swim isn't even a threat to the penguin population I had considered, and now I am horrified and saddened.
While not related to penguins, [0] is the saddest thing I ever saw.
[0] https://youtu.be/qVJzQc9ELTE?si=R8K7ow2cuSuAOfex
It’s terrible that the side effect of humans creating a world of wealth, safety and comfort (for all?) is that we risk destroying the very comfort we create - but it is also awesome that we have sufficient wealth to allow people to study these birds full time, enough wealth to build communication systems that tell random strangers about the threat they are under and hopefully enough time to correct the problem.
I saw a speech by Carl Sagan that might be relevant - he said (sometime in 1990 judging by haircuts) that the US had spent 10 trillion dollars on defending itself from the threat of Soviet attack since 1945, but that the attack was not “certain” - not 100% sure. So if we were willing to spend trillions to prevent an uncertain catastrophe, why does the same logic not apply to climate chnage?
Right now, for many people, this falls into what Douglas Adams referred to as an SEP field. (SEP = Somebody Else's Problem)
If you want to be thoroughly depressed go ahead and reread Karl Sagan‘s 1996 book the Demon haunted world
Literally everything he described in there is precisely the world we live in today
"According to the IUCN Red List criteria, a species is generally classified as Endangered (EN) if its population of mature individuals falls below 2,500"
Also IUCN, with only 180,000 individuals the Emperor penguin is now classified as Endangered.
I think someone has been out hunting headlines.
That is objectively a wrong summary of how IUCN Red List is calculated. There’s a variety of factors including rate of decline, and any of those factors can lead to a species being in the Endangered category.
https://www.iucnredlist.org/resources/categories-and-criteri...
No one is farming for headlines.
the article says 20,000 was 10% of the population therefore the population is 180,000.
if "something might happen in the next 60 years to wipe out half the population" counts as making a species endangered, every species on the planet counts as endangered.
Please go ahead and read the criteria for how the species are tagged as endangered. Current status and population numbers can contribute to that tag, but if there are active threats that are going to rapidly affect healthy population numbers, they will still be considered endangered.
The die off is accelerating. Krill shortages (mostly due to commercial fishing) and warming temperatures will ensure it’s not going to take 60 years and that’s what the tag means.
Meanwhile, some of us haven't forgotten
https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/record-maximum-sea-ice-in...
https://www.facebook.com/photo/?fbid=3613794165505253&set=gm...
Glad you still remember of random yearly increase in ice from 2014 and a photo of a random newspaper clipping from 1974 shared on Facebook.
Meanwhile long term trends in Antarctic and arctic ice cover: https://climate.copernicus.eu/climate-indicators/ice-sheets#...
The implicit question was whether you think we should endeavour to return to an ice or not.
Personally I'm on the not side.
And also
The only people I have seen deny climate change are the AGW idiots who think the climate has ever been stable, and who demand global action to try to put it into some sort of climatic stasis.
The rest of us have always accepted the SCIENTIFIC FACTS that:
(a) The Earth's climate has always changed and always will.
(b) The Earth's climate is EXTREMELY COMPLEX and cannot currently be accurately modeled in a computer.
(c) While humans, like EVERYTHING ELSE, have SOME effects on climate, there are plenty of other causes of change including many we probably do not know/understand. Some of these other sources, like the sun, have a far greater impact than humans.
(d) The Earth has been both significantly hotter and extremely cold many times in the past before there were enough humans to have had ANY effect on any of those previously very extreme changes.
We ALSO embrace things like the laws of economics, the record of human history, and accept basic human nature - so we:
(a) Believe humans will continue to advance technologically and thus we as a species become better able to deal with climate change with every passing decade, making it retrograde to go nuts trying to offset it now - even if we could, and if we could afford it, and if its happening.
(b) Know that far more people are dying today from other sources than from climate, and that reducing some of the deaths and suffering of people TODAY is achieved using some of those fossil fuels people like you want eliminated or made too expensive because YOU claim it will save some future persons from some imagined future horror.
(c) WE actually believe a pet theory should be PROVEN before we implement policies that have a negative impact on the lives of millions of people in the name of "solving" the supposed problem. In fact, we'd like to not only see the problem PROVEN to exist, but we also want to see that the proposed solution will actually work, will be the most cost-effective option, and will have the least impact upon the lives and liberty of the people who are alive today.
All large land and sea animals are now in danger, except perhaps those that are in some sense semi domesticated, deer, coyotes, raccoons, etc, but the wild ones are dying out due to human competition for resources or there very bodys.
Life on this planet will be OK. Throughout geologic time countless species have gone extinct. The Anthropocene might be tragic for the natural world but not terminal.
But: what are we trading it for? Higher living standards for more people is a noble and good but I don't think there's evidence it requires this rate of ecological destruction. Have we ever seriously tried to decouple growth from extraction?
I'm not convinced a solar punk future exists where technology will eventually close that gap in time. Maybe it will. So far it seems that every efficiency gain gets swallowed by expanded consumption. What seems most probable now is that we don't get a better world but the same dirty one plus a Starbucks on Mars.
> The Anthropocene might be tragic for the natural world but not terminal.
I'm not so sure. I'm reminded of this quote:
“How did you go bankrupt?" “Two ways. Gradually, then suddenly.” ― Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises
Plus, we are in the process of making parts of the earth unlivable for humans.
Most of the planet already is unlivable for humans.
The difference is that the parts we're making unlivable for humans already have millions of people living there already.
Quick, book a cruise to take some picture of them before they're all dead! \s
Don't forget to raise awareness on Instagram (and vote for parties that lead to this).
Climate change is a hoax, those leftist penguins and marxist seals just want to hamper our great economy!
Those penguins and seals are certainly being ignored by the world at large. Thanks to trillions of dollars the renewable revolution has proceeded apace since 2010-2015 but reduction in fossil fuel use has not occurred. Quite the reverse and overall total energy demand is now greater than ever before. And from all this one concludes . . . ?