We read in Phys.org that “Penguin poop is melting Antarctic snow by keeping algae green”. And of course we ask: Haven’t penguins lived there for millions of years? Answer: yes. Penguins evolved some 60 million years ago but Antarctica has only had significant ice coverage for 34 million. Yet they never kept it green, or turned it green, despite their predilection for dramatic defecation, until we invented climate. A story that caught our eye not just for the notion that a long-standing natural process could suddenly transform a continent but because we’d just also been told by National Geographic that climate change is driving penguins to extinction. But climate science is not like other kinds.

Despite waddling around looking comically unfit to survive in nature red in tooth and claw, penguins, with the very cool scientific name Sphenisciformes, actually flourish from the equator to the South Pole, with larger and thus better-insulated ones obviously being more common where it’s colder. It’s all part of the marvel of nature, including that having first developed the power of flight, which seems to us terrestrials like the A1 supreme deluxe way of avoiding being eaten, getting to food fast etc., some birds then chucked it to go back to running around but with fewer legs, like ostriches and emus but also kiwis and, in the good old terrifying days, the “terror birds” who ran up to 30 mph, stood up to 9 feet tall and “ripped the flesh from the body of other animals” and whose very name “Phorusrhacidae“ is already frightening.

Others even decided running was also not for the birds, and walking was barely tolerable, so they jumped back into the water from which their ancestors had emerged during the Devonian. And it worked. Indeed, speaking of penguins’ evolution, Wikipedia adds that:

“There was a great diversity of species in subantarctic regions, and at least one giant species in a region around 2,000 km south of the equator 35 mya, during the Late Eocene, a climate decidedly warmer than today.”

Warmer than today? Say it ain’t so! But it is. And a giant penguin, due to the fact that life likes warmth and struggles in cold. (There’s a reason Emperor Penguins are as lonely as they are hardy.) Now however we are doing them in. The NG article starts:

“In the storm-driven wilderness between South America’s southern cape and the frozen boundary of mainland Antarctica, the South Sandwich Islands form an isolated, crescent-shaped archipelago of rock and ice. Its rugged, northernmost isle, Zavodovski Island – where chinstraps and macaroni penguins blanket the hillsides that surround an active volcano – has held the title of the largest penguin colony on Earth.”

And we know what you’re thinking. If the place is bristling with penguins, they must have pooped away the snow long ago. Unless they all died, which apparently they did:

“as chinstrap penguins began facing steep decline across the Antarctic Peninsula starting in the 1980, scientists wondered whether this remote island was faring any better. Through an analysis combining aerial drone surveys and manual population counts, researchers from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) have discovered that in fewer than fifteen years, the island’s chinstrap population has plummeted by 63 percent – a loss of over half a million penguins.”

And not for climate biologists the boom-and-bust cycle we learned about back in ye day in high school biology. Heck no:

“Their findings, published today in the journal Current Biology, identifies the island as home to the fastest-declining chinstrap population in the world, with climate-driven losses documented continuously since 2011. The decline wipes out more than a quarter of the total penguin population on Zavodovski, ceding the island’s title of world’s largest penguin colony to Cape Adare in Antarctica’s Ross Sea.”

Note the phrase “climate-driven losses”. Since we don’t know what climate is driving or how it’s untestable. But it’s taking us with the penguins:

“The Southern Ocean is no stranger to loss. This news comes just six months after Emperor penguins and Antarctic fur seals were officially declared endangered with declining sea ice levels cited as a leading culprit. Acting as the planet’s primary climate buffer, the Southern Ocean absorbs nearly three-quarters of global ocean warming and a fifth of man-made carbon.”

Again, how you’d test any of those assertions is anyone’s guess, though whether they’re going to ask for and get grants to test them is a certain no. As it’s a certain yes that warming faster than yadda yadda:

“Below the surface, warm intermediate waters are melting the continental shelf, while deeper ocean layers in Antarctica’s Weddell Sea are warming up to five times faster than the global ocean average at equivalent depths – dismantling the frozen platforms that sustain Antarctic marine life.”

So we’re all going to die:

“‘The Southern Ocean is changing rapidly, more rapidly at the moment than anywhere else on the planet,’ says Peter Fretwell, a remote sensing expert for the BAS and co-author of the study. ‘What we’re seeing in Antarctica now is an early warning of what’s to come over the rest of the world.’”

What, dead penguins? Plus we thought the Canadian Arctic was warming faster than anywhere else except wherever any particular journalists lives or works. Though apparently the penguins haven’t stopped pooping just because they stopped living:

“On shore, they were met with pungent volcanic fumes and penguin guano. The island’s surrounding coastal features have names like Acrid Point, Stench Point, Reek Point, Pungent Point, and Noxious Bluff. While they found far fewer than expected chinstrap penguins on the island, the nearby population of macaroni penguins was growing; their numbers increased by around 28 percent between 2011 and 2016.”

Wait a minute. If climate is killing chinstraps, who stuck a feather in their beak and called it macaroni? Why aren’t they all dead? Ah, see:

“‘The area is transitioning into a sub-Antarctic state, so we’re losing the more maritime Antarctic chinstraps, and we’re gaining macaroni penguins because the ecosystem is getting more suitable for the warmer water species,’ says Norman Radcliffe, a seabird ecologist at BAS and the study’s lead author.”

And the science rigorously blames climate no matter what:

“The research team pinpointed the reason for chinstraps’ steep decline by systematically eliminating other potential culprits: The island has ample space for nesting, which means interspecies competition was unlikely. Local krill fishing is banned within the island’s Marine Protected Area, suggesting overfishing wasn’t eliminating penguin prey. And a 2016 volcanic eruption may have killed some of the chinstrap population, but did not alter the data showing a steady, decade-long decline. Instead, the study authors say the chronic drop points squarely to regional ocean warming and sea-ice loss – though questions remain about how off-site krill fishing along connected ocean currents might worsen the strain.”

See how it works? A volcano blew up their homes, and people are trawling their food massively. So all climate all the time:

“Long term, scientists expect climate change to reduce the region’s overall biodiversity.”

Even though climate change is an effect not a cause and the tropics have a lot more biodiversity than the poles above and below the water. Also forget all that silly evolutionary adaptation:

“Experts say Zavodovski’s chinstrap penguins are unlikely to seek out more habitable waters on mainland Antarctica. ‘A lot of people think that animals move south, but generally penguins are quite site-faithful, and they stay where they are,’ Fretwell explains.”

Just maybe because it’s a good site, despite booms and busts. But in any case and despite it all, here comes the dung of heat death from Phys.org which, remarkably, never manages to tell us what kind or kinds of penguins are doing the deed (and neither does the by-now-obligatory press release though the study itself, while vague, does allude to Gentoo and um what’s this Chinstraps and our online searches suggest some Adélies as well and maybe a few Emperors):

“Penguin poop is fertilizing snow algae blooms along the Antarctic Peninsula, feeding dense green algae patches along the coastline, a new study shows. These expanding stretches of green snow melt faster than clean, white snow, potentially speeding up the spread of snow- and ice-free areas of Antarctica. As temperatures rise across Antarctica, snow algae habitats are expanding along the coasts, darkening the surface and leading to even more warming and snowmelt. By tracking their poop across the snow, penguins are inadvertently supplying the algae with vital nutrients that keep the blooms green and make the melting effect even stronger.”

And as always it’s worse than it is. Including the job of collecting the stuff and telling it from red snow algae:

“requiring the team to get close to smelly bird droppings to gather algae-tinted snow in bags with ceramic spoons.”

But science marches on, and so do penguins and the climate change troll:

“As penguins waddle their way closer to the South Pole in response to changing conditions, there’s potential for guano-fertilized snow algae habitats to expand and spread their melt-enhancing effects over a larger area. But scientists’ projections of Antarctic melting don’t yet account for this phenomenon.”

Quite. Because nobody actually knows it’s happening so send more money as:

“more data is needed before guano-fueled greening can be added to snowmelt projections for the Antarctic Peninsula.”

Or not if it turns out penguins have always lived in Antarctica and they have always pooped, temperatures are not rising across Antarctica and so on. So just in case MSN rebellows a Daily Mail story recycling glacier doom:

“Antarctica’s ‘Doomsday Glacier’ is even more dangerous than we thought: Study says sea levels could rise TWICE as much as previous estimates”.

And if a penguin poops on it, well… Just kidding. There are no penguin colonies on the Thwaites Glacier. We blame climate change.

P.S. In case you actually love science and don’t mistake it for politics, “Sphenisciformes” comes from the Greek for wedge-shaped (σφήν or phonetically sphḗn via σφηνίσκος or sphēnískos meaning small wedge) and the Latin for “shape”. And yes, it’s related to the early synapsid “Sphenacodon” which means “wedge point tooth”. So now you know.