Only two chicks survive as colony of 40,000 penguins suffer breeding tragedy

The followers of the inventor of the Internet will not be happy.

As counter-intuitive as it seems, events at Antarctica - such as increased sea ice, which lead to this massive die-off of penguin chicks - CAN be attributed to global warming. The interplay of factors is much more complex than, "Oh, more sea ice? Must be getting colder, not warmer."

In this instance, for example: Normally, the parent penguins are able to safely leave the chicks for long enough to go to the edge of the ice field, dive into the ocean, feed themselves, and gather enough to carry back to the rookery and feed the chicks.

However, increased snowfall for several of the previous winters has increased the size of the glacier. The parents must travel farther, taking longer for them to feed themselves, gather for the chicks, and get that food back to the chicks. Add to that the chicks getting wet from unexpected rainfall and resultant hypothermia, and you get the massive die-off discussed in this article.

And what caused this increased snowfall and unexpected rain, you might ask? (Well, maybe you don't, but scientists do.) Snow and rain, two different forms of precipitation, come from water vapor in the air condensing into water. Ambient air temperature determines which form it's in when it hits the ground. Increased amounts of water vapor in the air produces increased amounts of precipitation.

More water vapor in the air produces more snow (in Winter) and more rain (in Summer).

And where does this increased water vapor come from? It evaporates from the ocean. If you have an increase in the amount of water evaporating from the ocean, you'll have an increase in the amount of water vapor in the air.

Water evaporates from the ocean, passes over land, condenses into precipitation, falling as snow or rain, runs into the ocean, and the cycle continues. Sorta' like on your shampoo bottle: Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Only the bottle of shampoo (the ocean, in this case) never gets empty. And there you have a small part of a much bigger, more complex system we generally call 'weather'.

It doesn't take much of a temperature increase to cause this. A change of one tenth of one degree in the average temp. (Centigrade or Fahrenhite, take your pick) is enough to produce noticable results.

Is that an accurate description of what has happened? I don't know. I'm not a research scientist. But I do, personally, know some research scientists. And I read some of the studies of others who are research scientists. And they are pretty consistent in saying that the exceptional events we're seeing world-wide can most easily be explained by increases in AVERAGE temperature in almost every region of the world. Including all the oceans.

When you look at these conditions in Antarctica, the number and size of the storms on the East coast, the long standing drought conditions on the West Coast which have led to numerous and massive wildfires, you have to conclude that SOMETHING is going on. Personally, I find global warming to be a much more believable cause than secret xyz rays from China.

But maybe, that's just me.