Unabated global warming will wipe penguins off this planet

livemint.com:

Antarctica last year, whole colonies of emperor penguins lost the all chicks they stoically incubated through weeks of darkness, -50° Celsius temperatures, and 160 km-per-hour winds. This sad discovery came through a combination of commercial and government satellites that scientists adapted to spy on these penguins.

These iconic birds depend on sea ice as a platform for breeding and raising chicks, but as the globe is warming sharply, the ice is melting too early. The chicks, too young to swim, are drowning.

Last year, the US Fish and Wildlife Service listed the emperor penguin as endangered. The fact that they and other penguin species are in trouble poses a thorny philosophical question: Why should people care about disappearing species? Often when confronting the public with critically endangered frogs or disappearing rain forest plants, scientists will warn people that some useful compound, maybe a cure for cancer, could be lurking within them.

But what if an animal doesn’t have any obvious use? What if penguins aren’t helpful to humans? The loss of any species is almost certainly irreversible. It leaves the world a lesser place for future generations.

And don’t other animals have some right to exist simply for their own sake? The penguins’ failed breeding, published recently in Nature Communications, Earth and Environment isn’t pointing to imminent extinction, but does show that if global warming continues unabated, there will be little hope for any species that depends on sea ice to hold through polar winters. The lead author on the paper, geographer Peter Fretwell of the British Antarctic Survey, said that penguins come together to breed around April—autumn in the southern hemisphere—laying eggs that the male