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‘No, 150,000 Antarctic penguins did not die because of global warming’

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/02/no_150000_antarctic_penguins_did_not_die_because_of_global_warming.html

As it turns out, the paper did not say that  150,000 penguins had died. In fact, most of the Guardian article based on the paper is false.

Daily Beast:

Major news outlets ran with a widely mischaracterized study from Australian and New Zealand researchers in Commonwealth Bay, Antarctica, saying enough penguins to fill three Yankee Stadiums had been trapped by an iceberg and, unable to fend for themselves, died.

The Guardian issued a death notice, saying “150,000 Penguins Die After Giant Iceberg Renders Colony Landlocked.” Other news sources issuing death certificates included theDaily Mail, The Telegraph, and CNN.

Bit of a problem: The research paper doesn’t—and never did—say that. Some penguins may have died, because penguins aren’t immortal. Others probably just moved.

“Maybe these birds moved. Maybe they died. There’s multiple scenarios that could’ve happened here,” Dr. Michelle LaRue, a research ecologist at the University of Minnesota, told The Daily Beast. “But nowhere in the paper said there was death and destruction.”

LaRue would know. She did the initial census on the Adelie penguins two years prior to the study done by University of New South Wales researchers that came out early this month.

“I doubt [widespread death and destruction], and the reason I doubt that is that the behavior of Adelie penguins has already been observed in similar circumstances,” she said.

Their migratory patterns were recorded in 2001m after the Iceberg B-15 caused them to move, she said.

“It caused them to move a lot more than they normally do. There’s no reason to believe a colony in a similar situation didn’t do the same thing,” she said. “It’s not as fun to report and I get that. At the same time, [the initial reports are] inaccurate. There wasn’t anything in the paper saying these animals died.”

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2016/02/no_150000_antarctic_penguins_did_not_die_because_of_global_warming.html#ixzz40uZQXCvf
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