Tag Archives: propaganda

Frozen Planet II repeats Attenborough’s climate change scaremongering that began in 2015

Posted on September 12, 2022 | Comments Off on Frozen Planet II repeats Attenborough’s climate change scaremongering that began in 2015

A new Sir David Attenborough-narrated BBC six-part documentary, Frozen Planet II, has just hit TV audiences in the UK with a fresh litany of sob stories about Arctic and Antarctic animals designed to amplify the ‘save the planet’ rhetoric that Attenborough has been pushing for years, which I described in detail my book published earlier this year, Fallen Icon: Sir David Attenborough and the Falling Walrus Deception. h/t Toby Young.

Filming of Frozen Planet II series began in 2018, which suggests it was part of Attenborough’s relentless ‘climate change’ and ‘tipping point’ messaging agenda that started in 2015 with the inception of the WWF/Netflix ‘Our Planet‘ blockbuster series and the infamous Russian ‘falling walrus’. I’m sure it’s no coincidence that the second episode of this new series (‘Frozen Ocean‘) is set to air next week, around the time that Arctic sea ice will reach its lowest extent for the year.

Frozen Planet II: Sunday [11 September], 8pm, BBC One

Penguins! Gerbils! Seals! The fluffiest (and grumpiest) cats in the world! David Attenborough returns with another epic exploration of the world’s frozen regions. One minute you’re screaming at a grizzly bear chasing a muskox calf that’s lost its parents, the next you’re weirdly sad that a polar bear can’t hunt seals because of the melting ice – and this image nails the urgent message in this incredible six-episode series. The frozen wilderness is disappearing at a faster rate than ever before, with the Arctic predicted to see ice-free summers by 2035. Each closeup shot of these amazing animals is a reminder of what the world will lose without taking immediate action. [my bold] Hollie Richardson, The Guardian, 11 September 2022

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Posted in Advocacy, Book promotion, Sea ice habitat

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Polar bears became global warming icons because biologists promoted a narrative of doom since 1999: it didn’t happen ‘by accident’

Posted on September 1, 2022 | Comments Off on Polar bears became global warming icons because biologists promoted a narrative of doom since 1999: it didn’t happen ‘by accident’

“The polar bear became an ‘accidental icon’ of climate change“, claims a recent CBC Radio interview with ardent global warming promoter and polar bear catastrophist Andrew Derocher. Derocher’s insistence that the polar bear became a climate change icon “by accident” is historical revisionism. While such a statement may be attractive now that polar bears are not dying in droves as he and his colleagues predicted in 2007, that doesn’t make it true.

In the summer of 1999, polar bear biologist Ian Stirling helped produce a short doomsday film spectacular for the biggest news outlet in Canada at the time, in which he hyped his ‘climate warming’ fears about Hudson Bay polar bears, yet we are expected to believe Derocher that on September 4, 2000, Time Magazine put polar bears on its “Arctic Meltdown” cover because they ‘just happened’ to hear about an academic paper Stirling had written the year before.

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

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Polar bear cubs play on the thin ice that supposedly threatens them with extinction

Posted on December 21, 2019 | Comments Off on Polar bear cubs play on the thin ice that supposedly threatens them with extinction

This video tweet deserves a post of its own: two relatively inexperienced cubs-of-the-year in Russia deliberately break through thin ice, fall into the icy water and crawl back out – over and over again, for fun, as their mother watches in the background. Play is one way animals learn important survival lessons and for polar bears, this is one of them:

Thin ice was a natural component of the Arctic long before polar bears evolved to live there: it is nothing new but dealing with it requires a strategy that cubs must learn.

UPDATE 1 August 2020: here is the same video, better quality, on Youtube:

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People go to Churchill to see polar bears in the wild and PBI controls the info they get

Posted on September 18, 2019 | Comments Off on People go to Churchill to see polar bears in the wild and PBI controls the info they get

Polar Bears International is the non-profit organization that virtually rules the town of Churchill when it comes to informing naïve tourists about polar bears.  A million-dollar donation last year guaranteed the creation of a new building to permanently display PBI-generated information in downtown Churchill – previously limited to those visitors wealthy or influential enough to ride Tundra Buggies run by Frontiers North.

tundra buggy and bear_Frontiers North_wikipedia

PBI is an organization dedicated to the promotion of climate change rhetoric that currently purports to present unbiased scientific information about polar bears and climate change. It was founded by a retired marketing director and “polar bear enthusiast” in 2002 but its current leader is ‘chief scientist’ Steven Amstrup. Amstrup was almost single-handedly responsible for the failed survival model that got polar bears classified as ‘threatened’ under the Endangered Species Act (ESA) in the US (Crockford 2017, Crockford 2019; Crockford and Geist 2018).

Amstrup’s model predicted that 2/3 of the world’s polar bears would be gone if sea ice got as low as it has been since 2007 but it was spectacularly wrong: polar bears are healthier and more numerous than 50 years ago.

Population size estimate graph chapter 10

Global polar bear population size estimates to 2018. From Chapter 10 of The Polar Bear Catastrophe That Never Happened (Crockford 2019).

Amstrup presented his firmly-held opinions as if they were scientific facts but observations have shown his guesses were incorrect. But he refuses to acknowledge this and PBI continues to spead a message of impending doom [my bold]:

“This year’s polar bear season is going to be big for our team, perhaps our biggest yet. Not only do we have an amazing schedule of Tundra Connections webcasts and live chats, but we’re also working with an array of media to tell stories and spread awareness about polar bears and the threats they face in a warming Arctic. This is especially important following another summer of massive sea ice loss in the Arctic and amidst overwhelming global momentum pressuring world leaders to address the climate crisis.”

Below is an excerpt from an interesting story from 2010 on how PBI controls the ‘polar-bears-are-doomed/save-our-sea-ice‘ narrative presented to the media and innocent tourists who just come to see polar bears in the wild.

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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.

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More starving polar bear nonsense from National Geographic & a better video to watch

Posted on May 6, 2019 | Comments Off on More starving polar bear nonsense from National Geographic & a better video to watch

This time National Geographic’s ‘Hostile Planet’ series laughably claims a fat polar bear that’s caught a beluga calf off the coast of Western Hudson Bay has been saved from starvation! The message: here is a prime example of climate change pushing a species to its limit. This is nonsense, of course: polar bears hunting beluga whales from rocks has nothing to do with climate change or desperately hungry bears. More importantly, there is a much better video of the action that is both more informative and truthful.
Polar bear hunting beluga_Nat Geo 11 April Hostile Planet clip starving

See both below and decide which you’d prefer your kids or grandkids to watch.

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Stop lying to children about dying polar bears as a way to achieve action on climate change

Posted on May 4, 2019 | Comments Off on Stop lying to children about dying polar bears as a way to achieve action on climate change

The heartbreaking story of dying polar bears, told for more than a decade now, was meant to get kids on board the global warming action train. It worked a treat – except that it was never true. The lie gave sensitive children nightmares and turned others into political activists full of groundless outrage who now pointlessly rant in the streets.

BBC video screencap with Thunberg video quoting starving pb images_23 April 2019

As the established icon of climate change and Arctic habitats, polar bears have been given centre stage in the climate change narrative presented to young children and their teachers. But the distressing tale of polar bears on the brink of extinction – dying for our fossil fuel sins – was never true, as I show in point form below. Polar bear lies form the foundation of the baseless political activism of Greta Thunberg that other youngsters have since emulated.

Here are some of the false ‘facts’ children have been taught:

  1. Polar bears are an endangered species and only a few hundred still exist
  2. Polar bears numbers are declining
  3. Polar bears now spend months on land because of climate change
  4. There is not enough sea ice for polar bears: no sea ice, no polar bears
  5. A bear falling through thin ice will drown & become a victim of climate change
  6. Any skinny polar bear is a victim of climate change

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

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Winnipeg zoo unashamedly frightens children about polar bear extinction, for a price

Posted on November 26, 2014 | Comments Off on Winnipeg zoo unashamedly frightens children about polar bear extinction, for a price

The Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg is selling Polar Bears International-style1 “save our sea ice” global warming propaganda to children, which it calls “messaging.”

“The centre is deliberately targeting children, fully aware that there is a magical connection between the cuddly, entertaining orphan cubs and young visitors.”

Orphaned cubs from Churchill now on display in Winnipeg

Orphaned cubs from Churchill now on display in Winnipeg

That’s the money quote, in more ways than one, from an article at The Globe and Mail earlier this week (23 November 2014), “Innovative Winnipeg zoo experiment shares the plight of polar bears” in which the author promotes the new “Journey to Churchill” exhibit at the Assiniboine Park Zoo in Winnipeg as “an ambitious experiment.”
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Polar bear biologists doing mark-recapture work in Hudson Bay may have misled the world

Posted on November 2, 2014 | Comments Off on Polar bear biologists doing mark-recapture work in Hudson Bay may have misled the world

What exactly are Western Hudson Bay (WHB) polar bear researchers hiding? Since 2004, research on the body condition and cub production of Western Hudson Bay (WHB) polar bears has been carried out but none of the results of these mark-recapture studies have been made public.

U Alberta student Mislan bio photos_PolarBearScience

The researchers all claim that WHB polar bears are struggling to survive because of recent sea ice changes but won’t release the 10 years worth of updated information they possess on the bears or the sea ice.

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Swimming bear video used for propaganda was not shot with bear-mounted cameras

Posted on June 27, 2014 | Comments Off on Swimming bear video used for propaganda was not shot with bear-mounted cameras

I just went back to Andy Revkin’s blog post on the swimming polar bear video story that I wrote about on Wednesday to see what kind of feedback it was getting. I found that it pays to check up.

pbear_swimming_USGS

A reader from Oregon questioned the filming techniques used for this video.

Revkin followed up.

And it turned out, the reader from Oregon was correct — the film used in this video was shot with “an assortment of traditional methods,” not with the strapped on cameras that the USGS were using on the bears.

Revkin assumed from the background provided to him that this was leading-edge technology, bear-generated video. And even though he’d interviewed the filmmaker, the truth hadn’t come out.

Update June 29, 2014 – another damning comment made, added below.

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