The latest round of BBC green agitprop narrated by Sir David Attenborough hit British licensed TV screens (£159 per year, or a criminal record) last Sunday with the first episode of Wild Isles.
Co-produced by the WWF (also known as the World Wildlife Fund) and the RSPB (Royal Society for the Protection of Birds), it concentrates on nature around Britain. Even before the first programme was broadcast, all the parties involved were preparing the alarmist ground with news that 38 million birds had vanished from British skies in the last 50 years. This number comes from a 2020 RSPB report, but curiously missing was the information that the latest figure was similar to the total in 2012. In fact the RSPB noted that in terms of total breeding bird numbers, “the period of relative stability that began in the 1990s is continuing”.
The stand-out eco-scare in the first episode was the claim that in just the last 20 years, 60% of flying insects have vanished. Attenborough’s guesstimate-rich narrations are lightly sourced at the best of times, but it appears this claim arises from work by “citizen scientists” counting bugs on car number plates in England. The ‘Bugs Matter’ survey has been used to ramp up alarm with the Natural History Museum stoking additional concern with the opinion that 40% of insects in the world could become extinct within the next few decades.
Of course, nature relies on insects of every sort to pollinate plants and recycle natural detritus. In fact, a rising level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has led to an estimated 14% ‘greening’ of the planet over the last 30 years. Alarmist stories of decline and extinction might be more convincing if pollination was in obvious retreat, and we suddenly found ourselves knee deep in the smelly stuff.
The car license plate story is largely anecdotal. Over the last 50 years, car registrations have tripled in the U.K. There are only so many insects that can be trapped in narrow road corridors, and existing carriageways bear much more traffic than before. It could be argued that roads regularly swept by millions of vehicles provide the least reliable information on countrywide insect abundance. In addition, car shapes have changed from largely angular boxes to aerodynamic wedges, the latter much more likely to deflect insects out of the way than previous models. In congested England, the trap rate is said to be down 65%, while on the less crowded roads in Scotland it falls to 27.9%. Attempts were made to take account of journey times, distances and locations, but the compilers admit the results should be interpreted “with caution”.
Caution of course is not the Attenborough way these days, since the 60% guess was broadcast to its global audience without identifying the source or putting it into context.
This is not the first time Attenborough and the WWF have joined forces to push a narrative intended to promote the command-and-control Net Zero political project. A recent book by one of the world’s foremost authorities on polar bears Dr Susan Crockford, called Fallen Idol: Sir David Attenborough and the Walrus Deception, recalled the 2019 WWF/Netflix One Planet collaboration. One episode filmed hundreds of walruses falling off a cliff, a horrific scene that Attenborough attributed to “climate change”. A more obvious explanation was the unmentioned presence of a nearby pack of polar bears.
Introducing his film to the World Economic Forum elites at Davos, Attenborough commented: “If people truly understand what is at stake, I believe they will give permission to businesses and governments to get on with practical solutions”.
For its part, the BBC also makes no secret that it uses Attenborough’s nature programmes to spin a tale of climate Armageddon and destruction of the natural world. Last year, the executive producer of Frozen Planet II Mark Brownlow said, “Environmental storytelling is much more engrained in this series. We get the audience invested in our characters, which we then use to communicate a message.” In the course of the first episode, Attenborough used a computer model to claim the Arctic summer sea ice could all be gone within 12 years, despite recent evidence, displayed below, showing the ice extent stopped declining from around 2010.
According to Crockford, the BBC/Attenborough agenda demands a certain message be told about climate change and the people involved are “not about to let scientific facts get in their way”.
With the WWF on board for his latest programme, Attenborough is all set to continue predictions of huge declines in animal and insect life. This of course is the same WWF that claims vertebrates have declined by 69% since 1970. As we noted recently, this is a bedrock climate and ecological scare repeated endlessly across the mainstream media, and broadcast everywhere from UN platforms to school classrooms. As we also noted, a group of Canadian scientists have pointed out the figure is a statistical freak due to the inclusion of 2.4% of falling wildlife populations. “If these extremely declining populations were excluded, the global trend switches to an increase”, they helpfully explained.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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If he believes so fervently in depopulation of the earth, perhaps he could go to the front of the queue.
He’s already there!
I wish he’d get a bloody move on and give us some peace.
Not long now.
No mention of wind & solar destroying the countryside
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No mention of bird and bat death numbers caused by the damned windmills.
Thanks Chris as always for the scientific context to Attenbore’s Malthusian gaslighting. Your diligence and determination to present the real science is essential. The bug splat data is a genuine ecological fallacy used ironically by ecologists. The catastrophic focus on declining numbers without controlling for it and explaining it as an outlier from stable populations is the wirk of out and out liars.
$cience – can you imagine the idiocy of anyone claiming that 69% of insects will disappear in a gen or two based on bug deaths recorded on car plates? Jesus Christ. $cience is a joke. An evil one.
“Science” is NOT a joke. ——-But “Official Science” most certainly is.
The fall of a legend. Honestly, I used to idolise this guy and watched all of his programmes for as long as I can remember. He’s not long for this world now but what a bloody shame that this propaganda, disinformation codswallop is how he will be remembered.
I am glad you are better now and have recovered from Attencrapophilia.
It’s a pandemic. Where’s the WHO when you need them?
Attenborough going out on a very low note reminds me of Delia Smith who similarly undermined a brilliant career by trotting out a book which favoured made-up packet sauces and additives instead of real food.
Pissed up ranting at a kickyball match, on the other hand, did her no harm.
In my day he WAS the Oracle of every schoolchild studying biology. Now he’s just a complete joke. Sad really a bit like watching your relatives slowly sinking into the clutches of Alzheimer’s. And I know.
Probably has Lineker as his gofa
I was on Dartmoor yesterday and a Goshawk fly overhead, spectacular sight, especially as not long ago Goshawks were nearly extinct in the UK. It was the activities of mankind that nearly killed them off and it was the intervention of mankind that brought them back from the brink. When a top predator like a Goshawk is thriving it is a good sign that there is a whole food chain below that is working to ensure there is enough food for a thriving Goshawk population.
Should we have been concerned when we saw Gowhawk numbers declining? in my view yes of course we should and we were right to take action to address the problem. But that is not a reason to try and pin all the blame on climate change which in my view is an artificially contrived political narrative desperately searching for scraps of evidence to justify it’s alarmist propaganda.
Germany has about 40,000 wind turbines and the Red Kite has been virtually wiped out. Birds of prey are always looking down for food and they do not see the blades coming. I am glad you saw a hawk the other day but wind turbines are not a hawks friend. This idea that insects and assorted wildlife is dying because of climate change is totally absurd. These creatures have evolved through many different climate states and it has posed them no problem. The alleged temperature increase since about 1860 has only been about 0.8C which actually suggests a stable climate, but somehow we are told the opposite.
Attenborough
Ramps Up Climate and EcologicalBreakdown FearsWill they be showing ‘our’ Greta’s doom laden tweet from 5 years ago which she deleted 5 years later.
Anything with the WWF participating in and you just know its going to be activist driven drivel.
We are always told “Listen to the Scientists”. ——So why are we listening to Attenborough Di Caprio, King Charles and a little school girl from Sweeden? It seems that you can do anything at all for a living and can spout of about “Climate Change” but if you disagree with any of it you get told “You are not a Scientist”. When everything that happens is due to your theory you are not indulging in science. Constant claims that cannot be backed up with evidence and then refusing to debate any of those claims only reveals you are trying to hoodwink people. It implies what we have here is a manufactured crisis in support of politics. The politics of the UN and their Sustainable Development. There is zero evidence that CO2 is causing or will cause dangerous changes to climate and if that is the case then the whole argument for Sustainable Development collapses. Mainstream media are complicit in this eco scam but the BBC as the State Broadcaster is particularly guilty, since they take their license fee and use it for this endless brainwashing.
Yes, and…
We are always told “Listen to the Scientists”.
But which ones? Unlike the church, or Mosque where any priest, vicar, or Imam anywhere can tell you identically what the scriptures say, there are edges to scientific knowledge that are very fuzzy with scientists often in disagreement. and that is normal. Science is not a belief system, therefore when someone says they believe in man made global warming, they are not talking about anything to do with science, especially if they become hostile to scrutiny.
“There are but two ways of forming an opinion in science. One is the scientific method; the other, the scholastic. One can judge from experiment, or one can blindly accept authority. To the scientific mind, experimental proof is all important, and theory merely a convenience in description, to be junked when it no longer fits. To the academic mind, authority is everything and facts are junked when they do not fit theory laid down by authority” – Robert A. Heinlein
Or as Mark Twain put it ———“Ah yes science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture from such a trifling investment of fact”————You and I both know that when it comes to politicised issues like climate change that science has been corrupted and is no longer “science”. It is “Official Science”, which is the science that gets used in support of public policy.
I hate to fall back on anecdotal data, but anyone who has been looking can see there has been a general decline in nature in this country over the last 50 years. Species that were abundant when we were growing up like water voles and crayfish are now on the red list. In both of these cases, the main driver has been the introduction of species (what we used to call ‘alien’ species before the etymologically woke came along). But the greatest cause of the general decline has been habitat loss, and we have paid for it – mainly through an inefficient mechanism that diverted the money via Brussels for farm subsidies. When the government subsidizes rewilding projects like that at Knepp, the irony is that we are paying a second time.
However, there is a lot of hope for the future – large birds of prey (with the exception of hen harriers) are no longer persecuted to the extent they once were, and reintroductions of these species, combined with natural recovery and spread, have caused some big increases in population and range.
I have seen more wildlife in the last 10 years than most of my life, which stretches back to the 1950s. I live in an urban area and I regularly see Hedgehogs, Slow Worms, Frogs, Newts, Damsel Fly, Dragonfly, along with wide varieties of bees, wasps and flies. Lots of birds also, including a Greater Spotted Woodpecker. I work in a hi-tech company surrounded by modern farming and often I hear more than one type of owl.
However, unrestricted housing is a bigger destruction of habitat than farming. As far as destruction of habitat, humans cannot compete with nature. Prior to 10,000 years ago, the UK, and in fact just about all of the northern hemisphere, was devoid of life, as the land was either under kilometre thick ice or too cold. The last time the UK would have supported anything like the wildlife we have now was over 110,000 years ago, during the last inter-glacial. There is nothing in the pattern of ice core data to indicate the glacial cycles have ended.
63% of England is agricultural land – apparently only 8.7% of England is ‘developed’, so agricultural practises definitely have a big impact on wildlife.
He should come and visit our farm in Central West NSW where, not only have no bird species disappeared, but half a dozen new species have appeared over the last 5 years including black cockatoos, king parrots and budgerigars.
Though that wouldn’t fit the Armageddon narrative.
That would be fantastic to see – but it might be a stretch fitting it into a programme about British wildlife!
Immigrants are the new British. Do not diss ’em!
As far as loss of Summer sea ice in the Arctic, the point of minimum ice extent is mid September. September is not summer, and by the end of the month the sun is on it’s way down below the horizon. The ‘threat’ from open ice free waters absorbing heat from the sun is a little difficult to explain as it’s impossible for the sun to heat anything if it’s not visible in the sky, and/or higher than the horizon.
I do wish Chris was right about the decline in insect populations, but I fear not. If only the recent bug survey were the only evidence. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0185809
I misread WWF as WEF.
“I misread WWF as WEF.”
It’s the same gang.
usually with the same response by most ; WTF
And they both begin with a ‘W’…
On the bright side this doomster is old and does not have much longer to be bothered by the humans that he so clearly hates.,
“A more obvious explanation was the unmentioned presence of a nearby pack of polar bears.”
Climate change deniers haul out a daft conspiracy theory about Attenborough’s new programme
Sophie Lanfear of Silverback Films told the Telegraph: “We filmed Pacific walrus falling from high cliffs. They were not being driven off the cliffs by the polar bears and we know this because we had two team members watching the cliffs from afar who could see the polar bears and were in radio communications with us to warn us about any bears approaching the crew closer to the walrus and the cliffs.
“Once the walrus had rested at the top for a few days they wanted to return to sea when all the others below started to leave. We would watch them for hours teetering back and forth on the edge before finally, falling off.
“Fundamentally, the reason walrus used this haulout location is because of a lack of sea ice in the region, meaning they are coming ashore more frequently than they did in the past. Especially mothers with their pups. And at this particular site, once the beach below the cliffs was full, they spread out and up the cliffs and were unable to find their way safely down, with tragic consequences.”
Patrick Moore (one of the co-founders of Greenpeace) explains in detail why he believes Attenborough is a liar and a fraud. Well worth a watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ5oHByFPU4
After minute 56 of the film he explains that walruses feed on clams, do not dive to great depths and therefore do not live on ice flows, but the shoreline. As you have already identified there were so many walruses on the beach that this group went to the top of the hill – hardly evidence of their decline if the population was so healthy that there was no room for them on their normal beach.
In addition to the walrus explanation, it is worth looking around minute 52 to hear the explanation about the bird’s use of plastic in the gizzard to grind food. He highlights Attenborough’s falsehoods and the staged photos used to support the catastrophe agenda.
Moore’s ignorance is stunning. I only watched a clip around the 50 minute mark so as to get the bit about birds eating plastics.
Plastics do leach toxins under natural conditions.
Some sea birds may ingest some plastics to keep in their gizzard but there is no doubt some also eat it. There are plenty of videos of seabirds being dissected and the stomach contents being exposed.
These things are available with just a few minutes research.
And Walruses are air breathing and like seals are excellent swimmers, so much like the Eskimos/Inuit, they require open water. In addition if there was unbroken ice the Walrus would starve as access to clams would be blocked off. Added to that Polar Bears are excellent swimmers also, so how come they are adapted to swimming 50 or 60 miles in near freezing water? That takes more than practice.
Use of expressions like “climate change denier” and “conspiracy theory” indicate an unreliable source.
“If people truly understand what is at stake, I believe they will give permission to businesses and governments to get on with practical solutions”. Sir David
No! If people truly understand what is at stake they must not give permission to any self appointed people or organisations. Truly understanding something must be arrived at by the individual. It is dangerous in the extreme if people are told what to understand by the very same people that provide ‘practical solutions’. We should have enough experience from history to pay close attention to anyone providing ‘solutions’.
I truly understand what is at stake, it is the self-importance of people like the Attenbore together with all the other blowhards who think that because they’ve seen changes during their life that these are all driven by man, when they’re nearly all naturally cyclical.
A pox on the lot of ’em, they haven’t got my permission for anything at all.
They claim to be all about sustainability, but their “practical solutions” include massive subsidies for wind and solar. Yet when you look beyond CO2 emissions at EROI, land use and material consumption, wind and solar are not sustainable. Burning trees at Drax is even worse.
https://davidturver.substack.com/p/wind-solar-renewables-not-sustainable-not-green
Did Attenborough and the RSPB tell us how many rare sea-birds and eagles are killed by windmills every year?
Let me guess …… that didn’t fit the narrative!
“Caution of course is not the Attenborough way these days, since the 60% guess was broadcast to its global audience without identifying the source or putting it into context.”
He should join the Government minister who replied to Andrew Bridgen’s recent speech by claiming tens of thousands of lives had been saved by “the vaccines”. Of course no evidence of this was forthcoming.
Trouble is Joe Public seems to believe this nonsense.
Desperate stuff.
Is it still alive?. He sounds vaccinated to me
. Strange how all the rich people have waterfront properties. 3 tears without a licence and ” loving it”
“Attenborough lies” is hardly the stuff of news interest. “Attenborugh admits to lying” would be worthy of a headline. But as that will never happen, just ignore the old git,
Attenborough has become the BBC’s poster boy for its biased lies. Now, there are so many real scientists telling the truth about climate that it’s unclear to understand why anybody listens to Attenborough or the BBC on their mostly rubbish about Climate. It is so bad that many times the BBC’s nature programmes deliberately falsify pictures or their context to try to prove something which is untrue. The BBC is trying to put fear about the climate into the population in the same way they did about Covid, I just hope this time the damage that was done to many people’s mental health is not repeated.
Having Supper with an ex work colleague in the Autumn of 2022, his wife, who is a meteorology scientist, asked my opinion on Net Zero. I replied that it was a disaster waiting to happen and should be stopped immediately. She became very angry and called me a climate denier.
I, very calmly, reeled off a whole load of facts which debunk the Net Zero fantasy and she turned to my wife and said “Why is it that people like your husband spout facts at me; I don’t do numbers”.
I rest my case. While Chris Morrison is excellent at reporting honestly about the facts about the Net Zero and people like me who can retain facts and figures and bring them out at will, we are are not winning the argument very successfully as cognitive dissonance has set in and it is going to be mighty difficult to move public opinion which has no understanding of facts and figures.
She’s a meteorology scientist but she doesn’t do numbers.
That’s all you need to know.