Tag Archives: Attenborough

New video shows Attenborough & Netflix falling walrus deception as revealed by BBC

Posted on December 19, 2019 | Comments Off on New video shows Attenborough & Netflix falling walrus deception as revealed by BBC

A new video with clips of critical footage not available outside the UK shows that Sir David Attenborough and Netflix producers (who insisted earlier this year that climate change – not polar bears – were to blame for Russian walrus falling to their deaths) had deceived audiences around the world.

Falling walrus deception video 19 Dec 2019

Falling Walrus: Attenborough Tacitly Admits Netflix Deception (Susan Crockford/GWPF).

As I explained last month, footage from the Attenborough/BBC TV series Seven Worlds, One Planet (Asia) showed conclusively that events precipitating the walrus tradegy porn sequence in the Netflix film was a deception. It means that Attenborough, director Sophie Lanfear, cameraman Jamie McPherson, WWF in Chukotaka, and scientific advisor Anatoli Kochnev all knew this to be so.

In case you missed it, another episode of the same BBC One Planet TV series falsely claimed that polar bears hunting whales from shore are unprecedented effects of climate change.

Comments Off on New video shows Attenborough & Netflix falling walrus deception as revealed by BBC

Posted in Life History, Sea ice habitat, walrus

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

BBC’s One Planet falsely claims that polar bears hunting whales from shore is an unprecedented effect of climate change

Posted on November 30, 2019 | Comments Off on BBC’s One Planet falsely claims that polar bears hunting whales from shore is an unprecedented effect of climate change

Polar bears leaping on the backs of belugas off Seal River, in western Hudson Bay, is being falsely promoted by the BBC’s new “Seven Worlds: One Planet” TV special as an unprecedented effect of climate change.

Bear hunting beluga Seal River Sept 2017 Quent Plett photo

More specifically, the Daily Mail (30 November 2019) this morning quoted the documentary, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, as saying:

‘This extraordinary behaviour has only been recorded here, in this remote corner of North America, and only in the last few years.’

Poppycock. More climate change hyperbole from Attenborough’s seemingly never-ending litany of nonsense that’s easily refuted. There is scientific literature documenting such behaviour in Canada’s far north in the 1980s, which I included in the blog post I wrote about this phenomenon a few months ago (after National Geographic published a similar scare-story), which I have reposted below.

And from the sounds of it, there was no mention in the BBC special that freeze-up along western Hudson Bay was early again this year: for the third year in a row. So if the footage was filmed any time since 2017, the claim of accelerating sea ice loss in this region and bears on land for longer than ever is pure fantasy. PS. Fat bears are not ‘starving’.

Continue reading

Comments Off on BBC’s One Planet falsely claims that polar bears hunting whales from shore is an unprecedented effect of climate change

Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Life History, Sea ice habitat

Tagged , , , , , , , , , ,

Polar bears precipitated Netflix walrus deaths, new Attenborough TV special shows

Posted on November 4, 2019 | Comments Off on Polar bears precipitated Netflix walrus deaths, new Attenborough TV special shows

Concerns I raised earlier this year – see here and here – regarding the Sir David Attenborough’s Netflix walrus tragedy porn episode have been vindicated by a new Attenborough BBC TV special called Seven Worlds, One Planet (Asia). It shows film footage of polar bears – taken by drones – driving walrus off the same Siberian cliff that was shown in the Netflix documentary film released in April.

BBC One Planet Asia vs Neflix screencaps

Few of the reporters who covered this story bothered to investigate further despite the evidence provided by myself and others that polar bears and drones were the likely triggers for these deaths: they simply took Attenborough and the film crew at their word.

Netflix director Sophie Lanfear and cameraman Jamie McPherson insisted there were no polar bears in the vicinity at the time they shot their film footage but this was clearly not the case. They knew that bears were involved because they filmed them menacing the walrus!

It is now evident that McPherson filmed the 20 or so polar bears stalking walrus at the top of the Ryrkaypiy cliff and driving them over the edge for the BBC episode only a few days prior to filming a few walrus falling with no bears present on the cliff top for the Netflix film in September 2017. The bears were close enough when the Netflix sequence was filmed to converge immediately on the rookery to feed on carcasses once the walrus herd left the beach.

Fat, healthy polar bears (not desperately hungry ones) were indeed involved in these walrus deaths and so were drones. Lack of sea ice was not a significant factor.

 
UPDATE 6 November 2019: See Paul Homewood’s take on this here. Additional video added at the end.

Continue reading

Comments Off on Polar bears precipitated Netflix walrus deaths, new Attenborough TV special shows

Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat, walrus

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Polar bear at a walrus haulout with cliffs in Russia: Netflix scenario all over again?

Posted on September 13, 2019 | Comments Off on Polar bear at a walrus haulout with cliffs in Russia: Netflix scenario all over again?

In the news this morning is a report out of Russia that a team from WWF and a Russian documentary film crew were approached from the top of the cliff by a polar bear – at what looks suspiciously like the steepest part of the same Chukotka cliff that the infamous Netflix ‘Our Planet’ walrus video was filmed in 2017. The Netflix crew insisted that no polar bears were around when the walrus deaths occurred, despite strong evidence to the contrary (including a polar bear shown in the final seconds of the film!)

WWF and RT journalist fend off polar bear as they film walrus in Russia_13 Sept 2019 headline

Is the cliff above the same one we saw last year as walrus fell to a gruesome death on the rocks below, falsely blamed on lack of sea ice? It is mid-September, the same time of year as the 2017 walrus footage was filmed by the joint Netflix/WWF crew – and surprise, surprise, it looks like WWF are taking other filmmakers back for more of the same.

Or have they found another location with the same features?

Here is the original WWF Behind the Scenes video from the Netflix incident:

Continue reading

Comments Off on Polar bear at a walrus haulout with cliffs in Russia: Netflix scenario all over again?

Posted in Advocacy, Polar bear attacks, walrus

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , ,

Fear promoted by young activists is based on false walrus & polar bear narratives

Posted on August 21, 2019 | Comments Off on Fear promoted by young activists is based on false walrus & polar bear narratives

Despite a demand by radical protest group Extinction Rebellion that governments “tell the truth” about climate change, it’s apparent that when it comes to walrus extinction risk they prefer the contrived walrus tragedy porn compiled by David Attenborough and his Netflix cronies over scientific evidence.

Netflix falling walrus clipped from trailer 01

For this group of radical protesters, ‘the truth‘ is a narrative that serves their traffic-disrupting purposes. Since many gullible people – young and old – were horrified by the Netflix claim that hundreds of walruses in the western Arctic had hurled themselves off a cliff because of human-caused climate change, Extinction Rebellion plan to exploit this emotional connection during upcoming protests, apparently believing that what Attenborough told them was a fact. But in accepting docu-drama content without question, they are rejecting the best available science produced in 2017 by biologists who determined that Pacific walrus are not being harmed by the effects of climate change and are not threatened with extinction.

Continue reading

Comments Off on Fear promoted by young activists is based on false walrus & polar bear narratives

Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat, walrus

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Zoos abrogate their position of trust by misleading the public about polar bears

Posted on May 23, 2019 | Comments Off on Zoos abrogate their position of trust by misleading the public about polar bears

Since at least 2007, zoos around the world have proudly partnered with climate change activist organization Polar Bears International to ‘educate’ the public about the plight of polar bears. Although contrary to all expectations, polar bear numbers have increased slightly since the abrupt decline of sea ice in 2007 yet zoos are still promoting the false message that polar bears have already been gravely harmed by lack of sea ice.

CTV News on pb sightings Labrador as climate change warning

A news clip that aired on Canadian television in April 2019 was ostensibly about recent sightings of polar bears in Labrador (which I discussed here). But it digressed rapidly into a baseless diatribe about polar bears as victims of climate change, delivered by an animal keeper from the Toronto Zoo presented as an ‘expert’ on this topic.

See it here (about 4 minutes long).

And while I have no doubt that Toronto Zoo curator Maria Frankie is indeed an expert in keeping mammals in captivity, she appears to have zero qualifications to speak with any critical scientific authority on climate change, sea ice variability, or polar bear survival in the wild.

Frankie is complicit in spreading misinformation about polar bears to an unwary public (including children) as a method of spurring political action on climate change as surely as David Attenborough is to blame for spreading misinformation about Pacific walrus. She is being used by PBI but is too naive to realize it.

Continue reading

Comments Off on Zoos abrogate their position of trust by misleading the public about polar bears

Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

In case you missed it, the text of my Financial Post essay on Netflix false walrus message

Posted on April 27, 2019 | Comments Off on In case you missed it, the text of my Financial Post essay on Netflix false walrus message

For those who missed it on Wednesday, here is the text of my essay on the walrus fiasco published in the Financial Post section of Canada’s National Post. A map of the region under discussion is here.

Netflix is lying_FP headline 24 April 2019

Special to Financial Post

Susan J. Crockford    April 24, 2019   9:46 AM EDT

Now that polar bears have failed to die off in response to a sea-ice decline as promised, climate alarmists are looking hard for a new icon. They think they’ve found it in the walrus. And for their purpose, walruses are more useful dead than alive, and best of all splattered against sharp rocks from a great height. Continue reading

Comments Off on In case you missed it, the text of my Financial Post essay on Netflix false walrus message

Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat, Summary, walrus

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

My opinion piece in the Financial Post on Netflix splattering walrus film footage

Posted on April 24, 2019 | Comments Off on My opinion piece in the Financial Post on Netflix splattering walrus film footage

Netflix is lying about those falling walruses. It’s another ‘tragedy porn’ climate hoax

Opinion: Netflix and the WWF are misleading the public in the name of climate change — just as National Geographic did with the emaciated polar bear  [24 April 2019]

read it here.

Netflix is lying_FP headline 24 April 2019

I’ll post the full text in a few days for those who hit a paywall: see it here.

Just a reminder of the geographic locations of the action in the Russian portion of the Chukchi Sea: The cliff where the falling walruses were filmed was at Cape Kozhevnikov and the beach haulout of >100,000 animals was almost certainly Cape Serdtse-Kamen. There is often another haulout at Vankarem, described in the USGS Pacific walrus coastal haulout database.

Chukotka walrus haulouts map with inset

Comments Off on My opinion piece in the Financial Post on Netflix splattering walrus film footage

Posted in Advocacy, Conservation Status, Sea ice habitat, walrus

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

‘Our Planet’ film crew is still lying about walrus cliff deaths: UPDATE

Posted on April 21, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘Our Planet’ film crew is still lying about walrus cliff deaths: UPDATE

I had an opportunity last night to watch the original Netflix ‘Frozen Worlds’ walrus episode and have some addition thoughts.

Polar bears on the cliff at Cape Kozhevnikov Maxim Deminov WWF from Siberian Times 2017

One big eye-opener was the final shot of the walrus sequence: a polar bear approaching from the water to feed on the carcasses below the cliff at Cape Kozhevnikov. This is additional proof that polar bears were in the area while the crew were filming. Yet the narrative in the film was silent on the risk to walruses on the cliff from polar bears and not a word was spoken of the hundreds of walruses that had fallen off that very cliff just days before after being spooked by approaching bears.

Oddly, I have also discovered that the Russian scientific advisor to the film, Anatoli Kochnev, wrote a scientific report in 2002 (translated into English) on walrus deaths at two regularly used beach haulouts on Wrangel Island from 1989-1996, when walrus population numbers were much lower than today and summer sea ice extent was higher (Kochnev 2002). He concluded that stampedes initiated by polar bears were responsible for most of the walruses found trampled to death.

This means Kochnev knew that polar bears nearby were a huge risk factor for walrus stampedes over the cliff but went along with the official ‘Our Planet’ narrative that no polar bears were involved and only lack of sea ice and poor eyesight were to blame for the carnage presented in the Netflix film.

Continue reading

Comments Off on ‘Our Planet’ film crew is still lying about walrus cliff deaths: UPDATE

Posted in Advocacy, Sea ice habitat, walrus

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,

‘Our Planet’ film crew is still lying about walrus cliff deaths: here’s how we know

Posted on April 14, 2019 | Comments Off on ‘Our Planet’ film crew is still lying about walrus cliff deaths: here’s how we know

Last week, I called “contrived nonsense” on the claim by David Attenborough and the production crew of Netflix’s ‘Our Planet’ that the walruses they showed falling to their deaths were victims of global warming. After unbelievable media attention since then, newly-revealed details only solidify my assertion. Something stinks, and it’s not just the bad acting of director Sophie Lanfear in the ‘Behind the Scenes‘ trailer as she delivers her WWF-approved message: “This is the sad reality of climate change”.

walruses2-1024x683_USGS

Despite many statements to the press, the film crew have steadfastly refused to reveal precisely where and when they filmed the walrus deaths shown in this film in relation to the walrus deaths initiated by polar bears reported by The Siberian Times in the fall of 2017.

I can only conclude, therefore, that the two incidents are indeed essentially one and the same: that the filmmakers, probably alerted by resident WWF employees at Ryrkaipiy, moved in after polar bears caused hundreds of walrus to fall to their deaths. The crew then captured on film the last few falls over the cliff as the walrus herd moved away from the haulout.

The lie being told by Attenborough and the film crew is that 200-300 walruses fell during the time they were filming, while in fact they filmed only a few: polar bears were responsible for the majority of the carcasses shown on the beach below the cliff. This is, of course, in addition to the bigger lie that lack of sea ice is to blame for walrus herds being onshore in the first place.

See my point-by-point analysis below and make up your own mind.

UPDATE 21 April 2019: I had an opportunity last night to watch the original Netflix walrus episode and have some addition thoughts that I’ve added below. [see separate post here]

Continue reading

Comments Off on ‘Our Planet’ film crew is still lying about walrus cliff deaths: here’s how we know

Posted in Polar bear attacks, walrus

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,