![]() Today’s southern elephant seals are thus threatened by modern cooling. The “genetically distinct” VLC elephant seal populations that endured throughout the Holocene and even through Medieval times have tragically died off in the last few centuries due to the modern-era cooling gradient and subsequent ice cover expansion ( Hall et al., 2023).Īnd with the modern sea surface temperatures cooling and southern hemisphere sea ice expansion in recent decades, even the subantarctic islands in the South Pacific that SES are limited to occupying today may not be sufficiently warm and ice-free to accommodate remaining populations. The substantially reduced number of remaining SES today can only survive on subantarctic islands (South Georgia, Macquarie) at southern South American latitudes (~54.5°S) situated 2400 kilometers north of VLC ( Koch et al., 2019). It is now too cold and the sea ice is too extensive. ![]() Today, however, elephant seal populations can no longer subsist anywhere even remotely close to the coasts of the Antarctic continent. The Ross Sea was also sufficiently ice-free to allow for elephant seal populations (as large as ~200,000 individuals) to thrive at 73-78°S. Throughout the Holocene (Medieval Warm Period, Roman Warm Period, and earlier) and until a few hundred years ago (from ~7100 to 500 years before present), coastal Antarctica’s Victoria Land (VLC) was substantially warmer than today. Southern elephant seals (SES) require extended sea ice-free sea waters to breed, forage, and provide nourishment for their pups. Since 1982 there has been a “ significant and robust cooling trend” throughout the Southern Ocean surrounding Antarctica ( Xu et al., 2022).Ĭonsequent to this robust cooling trend, the sea ice in the Southern Hemisphere has been expanding since the late 1970s ( Comiso et al., 2017). The Southern Ocean (the seawater south of 60°S) occupies approximately 14% of the Earth’s surface ( Turney et al., 2017). Image Source: Wikimedia Commons (public domain) A new study even suggests the last glacial (CO2 ~190 ppm) may have been warmer with less ice than today in this region. The observed incapacity for southern elephant seals (SES) to withstand late 20th and early 21st century extreme cold and expanding sea ice conditions suggest coastal Antarctica (Victoria Land Coast, VLC) climate is colder and icier today than any time since the last glacial. So don’t expect them to solve the huge mess they themselves have created. ![]() The “world’s dumbest energy policy” is being run by the world’s dumbest energy politicians. The WSJ keeps the hope alive that “Berlin will catch up to what the market already knows: Fossil fuels remain indispensable for powering modern economies.” My message to the WSJ editors: Don’t keep your hopes up. “So in an hilarious green irony, coal is keeping the lights on.” “Another explanation for coal’s resurgence is the political hostility of Germany’s green left to nuclear power” and to its shale-gas reserves,” comments the WSJ. This past winter, without coal stepping up to the plate, the natural gas shortages would have left a number of German households out in the cold.Ĭoal is doing the job, according to the WSJ, because “wind and solar don’t work when the winds are still or the skies are cloudy” and “when the weather doesn’t cooperate” – which is often the case in Germany in the wintertime. Now the famous, renowned financial journal is back again with a follow-up article: “ Coal keeps Germany’s lights on“.įirst the WSJ reports how Europe managed (ironically) “to avert an energy-shortage recession this winter”, by using “evil coal”, citing recently released data. ![]() So it’s little wonder that not long ago, the Wall Street Journal called Germany’s it: “The world’s dumbest energy policy.”
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