Delingpole: More Green BS from Attenborough - Polar Bears v Beluga Edition
Sir David Attenborough has been caught out telling more porkie pies to promote his green agenda – this time with a whale of tale in which he misleadingly suggests that ‘climate change’ has altered polar bears’ feeding habits.
The whispery-voiced, gorilla-hugging, walrus-slaying Malthusian made his claim on his Seven Worlds One Planet series for the BBC.
It showed footage of a polar bear in Hudson Bay, Canada leaping into the water to kill a beluga whale. Attenborough’s script heavy-hinted that this was virtually unprecedented behaviour which had been forced on the hapless, starving bear as a survival strategy to deal with climate change.
After claiming that Canada is ‘warming faster than any country on earth’, Attenborough praises the polar bear’s ‘remarkable strategy for survival’.
According to a breathless resume in the Mail, formerly a newspaper sceptical of the global warming scare, this was an example of ‘climate change’ forcing ‘predators to hunt new prey’.
As the footage of the attack is played, Sir David says: ‘One small group of bears has found an ingenious way of surviving the lean summer months.
‘This extraordinary behaviour has only been recorded here, in this remote corner of North America, and only in the last few years.’
He goes on to say: ‘We continue to transform our planet and the seasons are becoming less predictable. Will the wildlife of North America be able to adapt?’
How many of the thousands who shared that story or watched the episode and took Attenborough’s claims at face value will ever know that this was the purest greenie propaganda.
First, as polar bear expert Susan Crockford has repeatedly demonstrated, climate change has done no harm whatsoever to polar bears – unless you want to worry about the fact that their populations to have grown massively, meaning more competition for food. (Saying this unsayable fact cost Crockford her job, for that is how tolerant and benign greenies are)
Second, as Paul Homewood notes, ‘just because David Attenborough’s cameraman has not seen this happen before, it does not mean it has not ever happened.’
Homewood goes on to demonstrate that Attenborough has misrepresented as unusual, almost unprecedented, behaviour which is in fact well-documented.
These two scientists, for instance, saw exactly the same thing going on in the 1980s, off Somerset Island in the high Arctic.
Abstract
Somerset Island. All of the narwhals and two of the belugas had been attacked and partially eaten by polar bears. At Cunningham Inlet, where belugas concentrate in large numbers, we have noted ten strandings over the period 1980-88, without bear predation on these occasions. One bear, hunting from an ice floe in deep water at Cunningham Inlet, killed two sub-adult belugas in July 1985. Belugas seem to exhibit curiosity towards swimming polar bears that might serve to drive bears out of the area and reduce the risk of predation. The potential large summer food resource for bears represented by odontocete whales in the High Arctic Archipelago seems to be underutilized. The timing and location of beluga concentrations are known and dates of probable strandings are somewhat predictable, which might allow us to assess the extent of bear predation on whales in the future
Note that this kill took place in the summer, just as Attenborough’s latest incident was. And there certainly should not have been a “shortage of sea ice”, given the much higher latitude at Somerset Island and the fact the sea ice was more extensive in the 1980s.
Attenborough has previously been caught out in this series talking utter nonsense about walruses.
Still, the public appear to be wising up to this. Here’s a sample of the comments below the Mail article:
This person (SDA) used to be regarded as a “National Treasure”. Now many of us regard him as a National Disgrace. There are too many well documented rebuttals of his claims that “all of this is caused by Climate Change” I used to sit and listen (whenever he was on the telly in the room next door), and count the number of times he said “Climate Change’ in each episode. Each time I heard it I used to shout out ‘That’s the (insert number 1 – …….) times he has said Climate Change. My better half got fed up so turned telly down, so I can’t hear him, and shut the door when he is on. Nowadays I cannot stand to hear his voice…
and
I am get really tired of Attenborough and his incorrect and sensationalist nonsense. Here we have yet another example. Polar bears have been feeding on beluga whales for decades, it’s what they do. It has nothing to do with any perceived warming and the bear in the picture certainly doesn’t look as though it was starving.
and
Attenborough must have his pension tied up in carbon credit bonds
There are lots more comments in this vein. So why do we never read or hear these people’s concerns reflected anywhere any more in the mainstream media?