Guest essay by Jim Steele, Director emeritus Sierra Nevada Field Campus, San Francisco State University.
David Attenborough was my favorite wildlife cinematographer and each year I fed my students numerous clips to make biology and ecology come alive. Researching the plight of the polar bears, I began to worry that “my hero” had decided to use his spectacular wildlife videos to promote catastrophic climate change.
The first example that raised my suspicions was his portrayal of polar bears feeding on walruses, with a narration suggesting it was a new behavior desperately driven by climate change. But for us ecologists who know better: shame on you David Attenborough. He ignored documented wildlife history, and cherry-picked a dramatic scene to promote climate fear.
First view this older BBC video pitting polar bears against walrus. Notice how many bears are converging on the walrus herd and that they are coming from the land. Then view Attenborough’s “new and improved video” that puts a very misleading slant on polar bears and walruses.
If you want to read historical facts about walruses and polar bears, I suggest reading Francis H. Fay’s 1982 “Ecology And Biology Of The Pacific Walrus, Odobenus rosmarus, Divergens Illiger.” In the 1950s Fay was concerned that the walrus was headed for extinction due to overhunting for ivory and blubber, so Fay set out to document everything there was to know about walruses.
In his tome, Fay published early 1900 observations by Russian researchers who admired the polar bears’ varied and clever tactics for hunting walrus.
“The walruses on Peschan Island are frequently bothered by bears, which creep up to them under cover of uneven terrain and of driftwood, of which there usually is an abundance along the shore. Sometimes the bears dig pits in the sand or make a pile in front of themselves, in order to hide from the walruses. We saw a bear in a pit dug in the driftwood within 50 m of the herd, where it watched for a long time. Suddenly, it leaped from its concealment and plunged along the flat terrain toward the walruses. The animals, upon seeing the running bear, rushed into the water, and when the bear reached those on shore, only a few large males remained, and these gradually pivoted into the water, threatening with roars and swinging tusks. The bear in his misfortune was unable to decide whether or not to enter the water and only brandished his paws helplessly and growled in discontent. Not infrequently, in the confusion, the adult walruses crush some young; possibly, at the time of the attack, the bears hope to profit from such accidentally crushed or abandoned young.”
Anyone familiar with the scientific literature knows polar bears have been hunting walruses since recorded history, and most certainly before that time. More recently researchers reporting to the Polar Bear Specialist Group meeting, speculated that hunting walruses on land was likely to be a behavior that has allowed bears to survive the lack of sea ice that was far more common through out the Holocene Optimum.
For example Wrangel Island is both home of one of the largest known polar bear denning areas in the Arctic, as well as the location of several traditional walrus land haul-outs each summer. Because walruses often get trampled at these haul-outs, bears eagerly supplement their diet by feeding on the trodden carcasses. In addition polar bears will wait at these haul outs anticipating the summer wave of walrus herds that typically come ashore, and then dine on weak or young walruses. Seasoned bears know to avoid a healthy bull.
In 2007 the 2nd greatest decrease in Arctic sea ice was observed in the waters surrounding Wrangel Island. That summer researchers observed the greatest number of polar bears on the island. However contrary to the less ice-means-starving-bear theory, there were no signs of increased nutritional stress. Quite the opposite.
Anticipating the seasonal haul-out of walruses, the bears concentrated along the beaches where they were easily observed by researchers who determined that less than 5% of the Wrangel Island bears were designated skinny or very skinny. That compared very favorably to the 7 to 15% of skinny bears observed in previous years with heavier ice. Furthermore researcher determined that not only did 29% of all bears look “normal”, the remaining 66% were fat or very fat. Those polar bear experts wrote, “Under certain circumstances, such as were observed on Wrangel Island in 2007 (Ovsyanikov and Menyushina 2008, Ovsyanikov et al., 2008), resources available in coastal ecosystems may be so abundant that polar bears are able to feed on them more successfully than while hunting on the sea ice.”
With that scientific background, view Attenborough’s rendition and ask yourself if he is objectively narrating the video. He ignores the bears and walruses’ natural history to suggest polar bears have only recently attacked walruses out of desperation. Attenborough suggests the lone bear had been desperately swimming for days, trying to reach the island. However without a radio-collar on the bear, one must wonder if Attenborough is using creative license. And why is Attenborough “serendipitously “ set up in this location to film this event??? Is it a traditional walrus hunting spot, and not the rare event his video suggests?
Researchers have documented instances of younger bears who have not mastered hunting walrus that resulted in injury, but it a matter of a younger bears evolving experience. Attenborough marries an uncommon hunting failure to climate change. Playing sad music, he suggests that bears only attack walruses as an unnatural last resort, suggesting that in essence it is a climate change driven act that is suicidal and doomed to increase.
To my increasing dismay, my former wildlife hero seems to be plunging more deeply into climate propaganda. Attenborough has a new series on Discovery called Africa but it might as well be called “Let’s Push Climate Fear“.
Take for instance his video segment shown below on Green Turtles. He accurately tells us that unlike humans who determine gender via the X and Y chromosomes, Green Turtles (as well as several other reptiles) determine the next generation’s gender based on the temperature of the developing eggs. Researchers realized this when trying to save endangered sea turtles from depredation and dug up their eggs to “safely” incubate them. Fearing that buried eggs at the bottom of the pile had not benefitted equally from the sun’s warmth, the eggs were laid out evenly on trays so all could incubate at the same temperature. The result was uni-sex baby turtles.
However turtles have been around since the dinosaurs and their temperature-gender system has been completely successful throughout monumental periods of climate change, massive extinctions, and epochs with far warmer temperatures than today. Attenborough should tell his audience that microclimates a far more critical to their success as well as informing the public that temperatures drop off dramatically with depth in the sand. Nonetheless he warns that due to global warming, female turtles will soon have great difficulty finding a male. Shameful propaganda Sir David!
Video: http://www.discovery.com/tv-shows/africa/videos/sea-turtles-face-climate-change.htm
Literature cited
Fay, F. (1982) Ecology and Biology of Odobenus rosmarus the Pacific Walrus, divergens. US. Department of the Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, North American Fauna, No. 74.
Ovsyanikov N.G., and Menyushina I.E. (2008) Specifics of Polar Bears Surviving an Ice Free Season on Wrangel Island in 2007. Marine Mammals of the Holarctic. Odessa, pp. 407-412.
Segments of this essay are adapted from Jim Steele’s Landscapes & Cycles: An Environmentalist’s Journey to Climate Skepticism
I don’t know if anyone else has mentioned it, but Attenborough is seen as a ‘scientist’ over here in England – which he is NOT. He’s a Naturalist. His degrees are all honorary. He’s simply a silly old man, nothing more, nothing less. Of course, he’s right up the BBC’s street.
David Attenborough has long been considered one of British television’s great eccentrics, with his frequent use of sweeping, and sometimes illogical, generalizations which he deems to be “scientific” (even while many such assertions are usually viewed strictly ‘tongue in cheek’ by trained and seasoned scientists), but – despite this – he has risen to the top of the BBC. On May 24th 2006 Attenborough actually made the following somewhat nonsensical comment, “Climate change is the major challenge facing the world. I recognize that the world has always changed. I know that. But the point is, it’s changing more extremely and swiftly than at any time in the past several million years…”
Since no data exists which covers “the past several million years” is Attenborough suggesting that he himself has been around for millions of years and can therefore provide evidence of his assertion? Of course not and, of course, no such data to back up such an exaggerated assertion could possibly be available. Reliable data only goes back a very few hundred years and this data confirms that the world has gone through both warmer and colder phases in the past – nothing odd about that.
Sir David is a skilled communicator but the error is always to mistake his charmingly boyish enthusiasm for the environment and “the scientific world” with genuine expertise and knowledge in the areas which he, perhaps naively, sometimes wanders into. As Attenborough himself once famously quipped, “You know, it is a terrible thing to appear on television, because people think that you actually know what you’re talking about.”
Lord Leach of Fairford, the Tory peer, has dismissed Sir David Attenborough’s views on climate change as “not worth listening to.”
“I don’t think what Attenborough has to say about climate change is worth listening to,” the 77-year-old former director of the British Library tells me at the launch of his wife’s Jessica Douglas-Home’s book, A Glimpse of Empire at Daunt Books, Holland Park. “He’s very endearing but I don’t think there’s any truth to what he says — he has no idea about it. The fact is you can be jolly nice to monkeys but it isn’t the same as knowing what you’re talking about on climate change.”
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8904953/Sir-David-Attenboroughs-global-warming-views-leave-Tory-peer-cold.html
Lord Leach adds that he is in support of the decision by the BBC to drop an episode focusing on climate change from the broadcaster’s Frozen Planet series to sell the program better abroad. The global warming episode has been relegated by the BBC to an “optional extra” which foreign networks can ignore. Climate campaigners have said the decision not to incorporate the episode as part of the main package was “unhelpful.”
“Attenborough, as a respected scientific commentator and naturalist in his own right, should know better than to take computer models as gospel while ignoring paleo-geographic evidence from the real world that today’s climate variations are well within normal limits.”
– Roy W. Spencer, “The Sloppy Science of Global Warming,” March 20, 2008.
I gave up watching Attenborough about 30 years ago when I realized he was salting his wildlife programs with anti-West, anti-industrial and anti-human propaganda. My good friends were at first astonished that I would abjure such a “national treasure” but after I explained why I could do without his persistent misanthropic spiel they also gave him up. Don’t be fooled by his courtly style and mannered exterior; “global warming” is just one part of his human-hating view of the world because he sees people as the most disgusting pollution on Earth, and regards humanity’s extinction as both inevitable and just.
Would David Attenborough be where he is if it was not for his brother Richard Attenborough?
Sad to say, after some initial reluctance to board the CAGW bandwagon, David Attenborough eventually underwent the BBC’s CAGW Awareness Reprogramming & Indoctrination Course and emerged, of course, a happy convert to the religion of The Holy Consensus. It was an undignified fall from grace and one which has irretrievably damaged the once magnificent reputation of the BBC naturalist. At his age, staring forced retirement for non-compliance in the face, what choice did he have but to bend over and take it from the Politburo’s Climate Enforcement Unit?
As a result, I’ve never watched anything of his since.
Not only is he a fear monger he’s also a fraud. Showing a birth of a polar bear as being in the wild when in fact it was filmed in a zoo? The only reason he got a job in the first place at the BBC was because of his luvvie brother.
Attenborough is a pillar of the BBC establishment.
The BBC is rotten to the core and has somewhat lost the confidence of the British People.
The late great Spike Milligan nailed him years ago in his TV series There’s A Lot Of It About, Episode 6. His take on Attenborough’s Life On Earth starts at 8m 22s. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DgXUkktd4Bk
I wonder what makes him and his cohorts still believe in the AGW myth when there has been no warming for 17 years: The sea is not rising: The Arctic ice is back, Polar Bears are healthy and growing in numbers: Antarctic ice is at record levels: Tornado numbers are down: etc. etc. etc.,and everything in the World is fine and the same as ever. They lie to suit their cause. I wonder how he and his GW friends can sleep easily at night. Perhaps Sir Richard might care tell us through a blog on this site!
Has David Attenborough Become A Propaganda Mouthpiece Promoting Climate Fear? If he weren’t, he would’ve been disappeared from the BBC many years ago. The BBC – Britain speaking with one voice (that voice being an anonymous, overpaid, trendy liberal arts graduate).
s:
2) How much the new EPA regs will impact climate change.
————————-
In 2010 the EPA said: Temp – about .01C, Sea Level about .01cm
:
Top middle column
projected atmospheric CO2
concentrations are estimated to be
reduced by an average of 2.9 ppm
(previously 3.0 ppm), global mean
temperature is estimated to be reduced
by 0.006 to 0.015 °C by 2100 (previously
0.007 to 0.016 °C) and sea-level rise is
projected to be reduced by
approximately 0.06–0.14cm by 2100
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Files.View&FileStore_id=57cadd3c-afb0-4890-bae5-3d6a101db11f
the good thing about modern lifestyle being unsustainable is that when the collapse comes it will be people with guns who say what is truth rather than tax funded hockey stickers
Regardless of whether or not Attenborough is a scientist, he’s an intelligent man and should be able to make up his own mind on cAGW. Membership of the Club of Rome seems to have overridden his natural intelligence
I like this article but i have to say with no hint of sarcasm. Hello? Did you need to ask this question? He’s been unashamedly driving the BBC alarmist bandwagon for a decade at least. However he believes what he believes.
For those who say that Attenborough is in it only for the money or that he is just an old duffer who believes what climate scientists tell him, google ‘david attenborough population control’ and check out a few of the links including “David Attenborough – Humans are plague on Earth”
These views are not new either; he’s long been a misanthropic eugenicist follower of Malthus and Ehrlich.
rgbatduke says:
May 29, 2014 at 3:07 pm
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The Apology of Sir David Attenborough. Ignorance is not an excuse, it is a valid reason to be critical of someone.
At first, both David Bellamy and David Attenborough were sceptical but, while Bellamy maintained the truth and suffered, Attenborough quickly realized his status of National Treasure would turn to National Periah unless he changed his tune. His desperately wanted to do a series in the Arctic but only the BBC ccould fund that.
He knows rightly that it’s all a con but he has grown to hate humans, especially in the third world. I gave up on him a long time ago! My respect for Bellamy is sky-high.
The guys a talking head. Nothing to see here, move on.
deebodk says:
May 29, 2014 at 6:00 pm
“‘Tis a sad state of affairs”…
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It certainly is deebodk, I feel that way too, along with many other commenters on this thread.
I can’t watch Attenborough anymore either, because of the lacing with propaganda.
But a number of commenters have another take on this, i.e. this is just an example of a more general problem in society. David Attenborough is an example of just one climate alarmist, and climate change is an example of just one issue, but the same deliberate control of public perception through the media and scientific/academic establishments goes on in many other areas of public life as well. When you well understand how it works with the climate change issue then you have to ask yourself “is this just one example of how the world is run”?
People need to read at websites like this (for this issue). WUWT has educated me (through the postings, comments and links) on this issue enormously over the last several years. After this education I can clearly see that that there is some serious malfeseance going on somewhere, between the aforementioned parties. Lying, graft, deliberately twisting the truth, you name it. I have similarly educated myself in a number of other areas and it seems to me the world is run like some huge, global criminal syndicate. Just my take.
I don’t watch TV and read 98% alternative news websites (such as this). When I speak to people who consume 98% television news it’s like we are on two different planets: our world views are just so far apart – what I can clearly see, they are oblivious to. If you push it with them, you risk alienating yourself from them. They don’t care anyway – they’re not interested – and, for them, Attenborough is still a darling and the ice caps are still melting.
rgbatduke says:
May 29, 2014 at 3:07 pm
Interesting, as always. Do you have a link to that Chapter 9 Disclaimer? I looked but could not find it. No wonder Attenborough and others haven’t seen it. Can we expose this to the light of day?
Here’s a quote for you, David:
“The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”
-Friedrich Nietzsche
Re AR5 Chapter 9, the closest they come to a disclaimer is this from page 824, Ch. 9:
“Climate models of today are, in principle, better than their predecessors. However, every bit of added complexity, while intended to improve some aspect of simulated climate, also introduces new sources of possible error (e.g., via uncertain parameters) and new interactions between model components that may, if only temporarily, degrade a model’s simulation of other aspects of the climate system. Furthermore, despite the progress that has been made, scientific uncertainty regarding the details of many processes remains.”
David Attenborough talk on population
http://www.populationmatters.org/attenborough-talk/
Introduced by Prince Philip
Cites Julian Huxley(the Eugenicist) as farsighted in co-founding the WWF
Approves of Malthus as farsighted
Climate Change propounded
The New Divinity
By Julian Huxley
http://judithcurry.com/2013/08/31/open-thread-weekend-30/#comment-373005
Hardtalk – James Lovelock – Population reduction (max 1 billion)
Hasbeen @10:06 29th May 2014:
We have felt exactly the same and pretty well stopped watching Attenborough a long time ago. We did see some of the ‘flitting around the planet’ sequences and felt very irritated by them; especially when pious lectures about global warming catastrophe were also on offer. “Do as I say and not as I do” seems to be the mantra.
My other half and I switch off any nature ‘documentary’ now to avoid all the hushed, reverent tones of the presenter, the endless sequences of presenter walking around, the ghastly overloud muzak that drowns out commentary anyway, the endless lecturing about how it’s all our fault the planet is going to boil/fry/whatever. I remember an absolutely classic occasion on ‘Springwatch’ (I think it was, not ‘Autumnwatch’ presented by the same numpties a few years ago by the BBC in the UK) when our dear Kate Humble told us merrily about some rare bird and its wonderful song. Were we allowed to hear the bird in question? Were we, heck as light! Loud muzak was what we heard; certainly no beautiful birdsong.
It is a pity, when there are such talented cameramen/women producing marvellous high quality footage that it has to be tainted.
Two presenters on BBC of note, David Attenborough & Dr. David Bellamy, both at the outset did not believe in CAGW, Dr David bellamy got let go and David Attenborough changed sides. It was shameful to watch, I live in UK and have had to watch the steady decline of the BBC from integrity into BIAS.
Maybe this is what rgbatduke was reading:
“On the other hand many studies have failed to find strong relationships between observables and projections. Whetton et al. (2007) and Knutti et al. (2010a) found that correlations between local to regional climatological values and projected changes are small except for a few regions. Scherrer (2011) finds no robust relationship between the ability of the CMIP3 models to represent interannual variability of near-surface air temperature and the amplitude of future warming. . . The main difficulties are sparse coverage in many observed variables, short time series for observed trends, lack of correlation between observed quantities and projected past or future trends, and systematic errors in the models.”
AR5 WG1 Chapter 9, Pages 826-7