London 9 April: A prominent zoologist says that Sir David Attenborough’s latest wildlife show is misleading the public about walrus deaths in the Arctic.
Over the weekend, viewers were shocked by footage of walruses plunging to their deaths from sea cliffs. In his narration, Sir David said that this was the result of declining sea-ice levels caused by global warming. This was said to have forced the animals on shore, where their poor eyesight meant that they couldn’t perceive the danger of falling.
According to Canadian zoologist Dr Susan Crockford, this explanation is laughably wrong:
“We have records of walrus haulouts that are nearly a century old, including some from this part of the Arctic. The idea that walruses are being driven on shore by sea-ice decline is entirely incorrect. They have always done so. In fact there are reports of walruses falling over cliffs from long before the age of global warming too. Sir David’s story about climate change appears to be just that – a fable.”
Moreover, it appears that Sir David’s story has other problems too. According to Crockford, the Netflix footage seems to have come from a well-documented incident in October 2017, when polar bears in the Russia village of Ryrkaipyi drove dozens of walruses over a cliff and then feasted on the corpses.
While the documentary makers have admitted that the film was shot in Russia in the autumn of 2017 and that polar bears were close by at the time, they have so far refused to confirm that the event they used in the documentary is the same as the reported polar bear attack in Ryrkaipyi. Instead, they are blaming climate change for the incident.
“Our Planet is a thinly veiled fundraiser for WWF, and it seriously misleads the public” says Crockford. “We need to ask who knew the truth, and when”.
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Not disclosed in this article is that Crockford is a well known friend and fund recipient if the fossil fuel industry’s multi-billion dollar climate science denial campaign.
As detailed in the paper by Harvey et al 2018 in BioScience https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/68/4/281/4644513
‘Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on the effects of sea ice on the population dynamics of polar bears. However, she has published notes and “briefings” through a conservative think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), and is described by them as “an expert on polar bear evolution.” Similarly, the Heartland Institute, another conservative think tank that downplays AGW, describes her as “one of the world’s foremost experts on polar bears.” ‘
Not disclosed in this article is that Crockford is a well known friend and fund recipient if the fossil fuel industry’s multi-billion dollar climate science denial campaign.
As detailed in the paper by Harvey et al 2018 in BioScience https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/68/4/281/4644513
‘Crockford has neither conducted any original research nor published any articles in the peer-reviewed literature on the effects of sea ice on the population dynamics of polar bears. However, she has published notes and “briefings” through a conservative think tank, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), and is described by them as “an expert on polar bear evolution.” Similarly, the Heartland Institute, another conservative think tank that downplays AGW, describes her as “one of the world’s foremost experts on polar bears.” ‘