Fraser is amused and, also one suspects, quite moved as he is
handed a framed illustrated certificate and digital photo of Fraser
Island. “Now climate change will reverse and in 25 years it’ll be covered
up again,” he jokes to appreciative laughter.
But everyone in the room knows better.
The science on anthropogenic (human-enhanced) climate change
has become well established by now, despite efforts by the fossil-fuel
industry (the largest industrial combine in human history) first to deny
the science and later to delay the transition from coal and oil to non-
carbon-based renewable energy systems, arguing this would be “too
costly.”
In early 2003, the science journal Naturepublished two studies
that found global warming is forcing species around the world to move
into new ranges or alter habits in ways that could disrupt their ecosys-
tems and endanger their survival.
In some cases, species’ ranges were found to have shifted 60 miles
or more in recent decades, mainly toward the poles. In other species
the timing of egg laying, migrations, and the like has shifted weeks ear-
lier in the year (with earlier springs), creating the risk that species
could be separated in both time and space from their needed sources
of food.
Fraser has found that by being hardwired not to shift their egg-lay-
ing patterns or locations, adelie penguins may face a similar risk of cli-
mate-driven extinction.
We are on Humble Island, a 20-minute boat ride from Palmer,
walking toward a wide flat field of pebbles that is actually a graveyard.
We walk past a dozen burbling 800- to 1,000-pound elephant seals lay-
ing in their own green waste. One of them rises up just enough to
show us a wide pink mouth and issue a belching challenge: Stay back
or I may have to rouse myself from complete stupor in order to attack
you. The elephant seal population, once restricted to more northerly
climes, is now booming along the peninsula, while adelie populations
are crashing.
“These penguins are the ultimate canaries in the mine shaft.
They’re extremely sensitive indicators of climate change,” Fraser tells
me, explaining how the open pebbled area we are standing on repre-
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