Evo
Staff Emeritus
- 24,029
- 3,323
Excellent reasoning, how do we select which animals will live and die? There is actually something in the 2001 article which I found strange about the ice sheets being too extensive and being a major reason the penguin population was decreasing. I'll post it later.denverdoc said:Well as you can see the article i cited was very recent, and may just show a boom/bust pop curve that happens all the time for various factors. Thats the thing, warmer waters favor one species which is a food source for another, they can go up in synchrony for a bit, even if the longer term effects are skewed against the higher member on the food chain. I think whaling had a lot to do with the seal explosion and possibly penguins as well. All points out what an impossily difficult task climatoligists, Earth scientists and biologists have at any concordance--sort of like the seven blind men and an elephant routine.
EDIT: Here it is.
"Although higher levels of sea ice increase the food supply, such conditions have a negative effect on reproduction because emperor penguins hatch fewer eggs when sea ice is more extensive.
After laying eggs, a female travels across the ice and out to sea to feed on krill, fish and squid that she regurgitates to feed her young. The male keeps the eggs warm until she returns. But when the sea ice is extensive, the female may be gone for months. The male eventually gives into his hunger and abandons the egg or chick.
Thus, as the scientists note in their paper in Nature, extensive sea ice poses a trade-off for emperor penguins. In population terms, its nutritional advantage, which favors higher survival and further reproduction, "outmatches its physical disadvantage of reducing fecundity," they write."
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/05/0509_penguindecline.html
Also I meant to say this was a very good post of yours https://www.physicsforums.com/showpost.php?p=1292261&postcount=18
Nice to see someone looking at things from more than one side. It doesn't matter if a person leans one way or another, but to shut down all common sense and entrench yourself in a rut that you can't climb out of makes no sense. That's why I sit on top of the fence, it allows me to see what's happening on all sides.

Last edited by a moderator: