The B.S. doesn’t get any more odorous than this. Bloomberg News is waving around fecal matter as a method to prevent Antarctica melting from the ever-present climate boogeyman of global warming.
Reporter Aaron Clark filled the toilet on Bloomberg News’s website May 22 with a story headlined, “Penguin Poop Could Limit Global Warming’s Impact on Antarctica.” Yes, this is an actual story.
Clark, who based his argument on a seemingly wacky new study published on the leftist site Nature.com, heralded how “[a]ccumulated penguin excrement — or guano — emits ammonia, a gas that can contribute to the formation of clouds and which is likely generating a cooling effect by creating a buffer between the sun’s heat and Antarctica’s ice and water.”
So are laxatives for penguins going to become a thing?
This sounds just as ridiculous as when climate change extremists were advocating for “melting the arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot” to stave off global cooling in the 1970s.
JunkScience.com founder Steve Milloy dunked on Bloomberg News for treating this nonsense as a legitimate news story in comments to MRC Business. “Recent research has (again) inconveniently shown that Antarctica is cooling and gaining ice,” Milloy noted. “The ‘penguin poop’ study seems to be a rather pathetic effort to explain the cooling without having to admit that emissions-driven warming is a hoax.”
Clark tried to drum up fears about melting ice on the continent: “Scientists point to the impact warming oceans are having on the continent, and have warned of significant risks to sea levels if huge ice sheets begin to melt.” Here’s the problem: Nowhere did Clark point out that “[t]he Antarctic Ice Sheet (AIS) has shown signs of record-breaking growth after decades of contributing to global sea-level rise,” as the New York Post just reported May 5. In fact, the Post noted based on another study that “between 2021 and 2023, the AIS gained mass at a rate of 108 gigatons per year — a remarkable reversal from the rapid loss seen in previous years.”
Guess this factoid was just too clean for Clark’s feces story. Oh, nevermind.
It was even more humorous when Clark tried to get specific about his newfound study’s findings. “Scientists studying the presence of ammonia downwind of a colony of 60,000 Adelie penguins found concentrations were 1,000 times higher than baseline values.” He stated that the “role of penguins” in “cloud formation” was “particularly important.”
PS: The Washington Post also hailed the positive effects of "buttloads of guano" forming "poo-fueled aerosol particles."
