China has thwarted an attempt by members of the Antarctic Treaty organization to enact special protection status for the Emperor penguin, which would have generated a ‘Species Action Plan’.
Apparently, such a proposal required a consensus of all parties and China wouldn’t go along. [bold, links added]
But as we know from past actions by the IUCN Polar Bear Specialists Group against former member Mitch Taylor, such impediments are easily sidestepped when a decision requiring consensus doesn’t go your way.
Hyping the Demise of Emperor Penguins
Over the last few years, a few scientists (see here and here) have used totally implausible climate models (those that use ‘worst case’ or ‘unmitigated’ scenarios, see graphic below) to predict the future near-extinction of Emperor penguins due to sea-ice loss.
I commented on this issue two years ago in detail (with references).
“I’d suggest that using far-fetched ‘worse case’ scenario predictions to propose an unlikely but scary-sounding future catastrophe isn’t likely to work any better for emperor penguins than it has done for polar bears, especially when the animals keep thriving.” Crockford, 2020.
These ‘worst case’ scenario models used to project future climate have been deemed totally inappropriate by respected scientists (e.g. Burgess et al. 2021; Hausfather and Peters 2020; O’Neil et al. 2020; Spencer 2021) but activist conservation specialists studying polar bears and penguins continue to use them to press for special protection status for their beloved species.
In recent years, both polar bears (Crockford 2022) and Emperor penguins (Fretwell et al. 2012; Fretwell and Trathan 2020; Trathan et al. 2020) have documented slight increases in overall population size.
Pointing this out has gotten me ‘climate mauled’ by the scientific community–see my length response to the 2018 BioScience attack on my reputation and integrity–and canceled by the academic community (Laframboise and Crockford 2020). But I digress…
Antarctic Treaty Thwarted
With China obstinately standing in their way, the other members of the Antarctic Treaty organization intend to do what they want regardless, according to a report by PBS (3 June 2022):
“An overwhelming majority of parties held the opinion that there is sufficient scientific evidence for the species to be put under the special protection,” the German government, which hosted the May 22-June 2 meeting, said in a statement Friday.
While a formal decision was “blocked by one party,” it said that most countries attending the meeting planned nevertheless to put in place national measures to protect emperor penguins. –PBS, 3 June 2022
However, the lack of consensus means they didn’t get the ‘Species Action Plan’ they were really after: having failed to achieve their objective, they are trying to spin it into a positive result.
Read rest at Polar Bear Science
Applying extreme climate models that are not going to happen isn’t the only problem. The other is assuming excessive sensitivity to a warmer climate. At least that is true of polar bears. The earth has been much warmer in the past. The last interglacial period it was ten degrees warmer, yet the polar bears survived.
China the Earths #1 Polluter wont sign anything that stops them from robbing the world blind