Fatalistic Friday: Penguins at risk, acidic oceans, and California drought

Late in the day but just as depressing, here's some of the week's worst news about global warming:

Less sea ice=Fewer penguins: A study released on Monday has firmed up the links between disappearing Antarctic sea ice -- being caused by climate change -- and the fate of emperor penguins. "If sea ice shrinks in Antarctica as the models predict, authors say an emperor penguin colony in Terre Adélie, Antarctica, would decline from its peak of 6,000 breeding pairs in the 1960s to about 400 by 2100." (USA Today)

As both Ed Humes and I blogged here last month, although the Bush administration listed six penguin species as threatened or endangered last month, it declined to list the Emperor penguin, because the US Fish and Wildlife Service concluded there isn't sufficient evidence that global warming is threatening, or will threaten, the ice-dependent bird's Antarctic habitat in the near future.

“Severe damages are imminent" to the world's oceans, and may be unavoidable: The more CO2 the oceans absorb, the more acidic they become. And now that's happening so rapidly that the survival of shellfish -- and the marine food web overall -- are threatened. This has been discussed for a few years now, but today a panel of 155 scientists from 26 countries convened by the United Nations has issued a blunt statement designed to get some political attention on this dire ecological situation. (The New York Times)

California's drought has become so severe that Central Valley farmers are cutting back their plantings, for fear that federal water supplies will falter. Although the government has yet to announce a water allocation plan, the farmers have to decide now how much to take out in crop loans for seeds -- so they're planting less. Last year farmers left thousands of acres fallow, causing $260 in crop losses and cutting hundreds of jobs. (MSNBC.com)

NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer says "chill": NATO's chief believes growing worries about future military confrontations in the Arctic are overstated. Although he agrees that Arctic thawing presents NATO with new security challenges -- conflicts are likely over energy resources buried beneath the sea bed, as well as sea routes -- he has called on nations with Arctic borders to pursue “a military presence which is not overdone.” (Bloomberg News)

Image: Emperor penguins. Source: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration