Climate deniers are about to be smited by Saint Attenborough @ the BBC. It will be the coup de grace after being pummeled almost into submission by heart-breaking footage of walruses tumbling to their deaths shown recently by Attenborough @ Netflix. He gets around does our nonagenarian much loved wildlife presenter turned climate change prophet of doom. But even that’s not enough for the energetic 92 year old. He’s vowed to take on the Beast Himself, The Donald, the biblical Arch Climate Change Denier whose coming was foretold by such enlightened souls as Oreskes, Conway, Klein, Cook, Mann etc. in their various Books of Climate Revelations.

Attenborough @ Netflix was not an unmitigated success it must be said. Our Planet upset many viewers with its horrifying scenes of walruses tumbling to their deaths from rocky cliff faces, which the program narrated by Attenborough claimed was due to ice melted by global warming. Then animal biologist Dr Susan Crockford accused Netflix of indulging in ‘eco-tragedy porn’. Then Paul Homewood even suggested that the Netflix film crew themselves might be responsible for the sickening tragedy which they documented.

So when Saint Attenborough leaps onto our screens again at 9pm on Thursday April 18th to tutor us on the facts of climate change science, the impacts of climate change and what we must do to avert a looming global catastrophe, he will have Walrusgate hanging over him – but I don’t imagine this will be too much of a problem for a living nonagenarian Saint and Beast Slayer.

Here’s the blurb for the program:

The documentary will provide an urgent look at the science of climate change and the potential solutions to this global threat, combining footage that reveals the already devastating impact of climate change on our planet, with interviews from some of the world’s leading climate scientists.

After one of the hottest years on record, climatologists and meteorologists explain the effects of climate change on both the human population and the natural world. Scientists, including Dr James Hansen, Dr Michael Mann and Professor Catherine Mitchell, will forensically unpack the science behind the extreme weather conditions of recent years – which have seen unprecedented storms and catastrophic wildfires – as well as detailing how the accelerating rate at which the world’s ice is melting is causing sea level rises, and how deforestation is exacerbating the problem of global warming by adding to CO2 in the atmosphere.

The film will deliver an unflinching exploration of what dangerous levels of climate change could mean for human populations, what is likely to happen if global warming exceeds 1.5 degrees and if major reductions in CO2 emissions are not made in the next decade.

The documentary looks too at potential solutions, exploring the innovations, technology and actions the world’s governments and industries are taking to prevent further warming – and showcasing individuals who are creating change at grassroots levels.

Climate Change: The Facts is part of the BBC’s ongoing commitment to programmes which explore the environment and the challenges facing the natural world, under the Our Planet Matters banner.

I like this particularly:

Scientists, including Dr James Hansen, Dr Michael Mann and Professor Catherine Mitchell, will forensically unpack the science behind the extreme weather conditions of recent years – which have seen unprecedented storms and catastrophic wildfires . . .

Cliscep looks forward to the opportunity to forensically unpick the unscientific bullshit which the BBC will no doubt air on April 18th, having most definitely resumed normal service.

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33 Comments

  1. If Attenborough and his crew were indeed responsible then it was death due to climate change because of there were no climate change hysteria he wouldn’t have been there filming.

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  3. I suppose, strictly speaking David cannot have been canonized. Thus, at most, he is a venerable. Certainly he dispenses holy climatic writ from on high.

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  5. It is highly likely BBC will not say that it is “global” emissions that need to be reduced to stop 1.5°C of dangerous warming. British policy covering less than 1% of global emissions will make little marginal difference.
    It is highly likely that the BBC will not quote the UNEP Emissions Gap Report that states to restrain warming to 1.5°C requires global emissions to be 55% lower in 2030 than in 2017.
    https://manicbeancounter.com/?s=UNEP+2018

    It is highly likely that the BBC will highlight actions that individuals can take to reduce their carbon footprint, without an rejoinder that for sacrifices made by the current generation to yield greater benefits for future generations in terms of climate catastrophes averted is at least contingent on nearly everyone else on the planet making similar sacrifices. This is not true as
    1. There is no prospect of most countries adopting aggressive emissions reduction policies. See above
    2. Emissions reduction policies are far from being economically efficient.
    https://manicbeancounter.com/2019/03/15/nobel-laureate-william-nordhaus-demonstrates-that-climate-mitigation-will-make-a-nation-worse-off/

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  6. The BBC is also highly unlikely to clarify the basic assumptions behind the 1.5°C.

    1. That the rise in average global temperatures is from the late nineteenth century, when temperatures have risen by almost 1°C.
    2. That there is not, in the peer-reviewed literature, a statistical test that confirms >50% of that warming average is human caused. .
    3. In SR1.5 ECS was 2.7°C, lowered from 3.0°C. If ECS = 2.7 a rise in CO2 from 280 to 412 ppm will eventually produce 1.5°C of warming. Last year Mauna Loa CO2 levels averaged 408.52ppm.
    4. If up to 100% of warming since the late nineteenth century was caused by CO2; CO2 has a long residency time in the climate system; & achieving full ECS takes decades & ECS = 2.7 or higher; then greater 1.5°C is already built into the system.
    5. If other GHGs are not offset by negative forcings such as aerosols, then they will contribute to warming. Thus greater than 1.5°C is already built into the climate system if SR1.5 assumptions are true and I have not missed some offsetting assumption.

    Basically, SR1.5 pushed the most extreme AGW assumptions that they could get away with as at 2018.
    https://manicbeancounter.com/2018/10/09/ipcc-sr1-5-initial-notes-on-calculations/

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  7. “what is likely to happen if global warming exceeds 1.5 degrees [presumably since “pre-industrial”] and if major reductions in CO2 emissions are not made in the next decade.”

    Well, what did happen?

    https://judithcurry.com/2018/10/08/1-5-degrees/

    “Over land, we have already blown through the 1.5C threshold if measured since 1890. Temperatures around 1820 were more than 2C cooler.

    And then there is the goldilocks issue. Who would prefer the climate of the 18th or 19th century relative to the climate of the early 21st century?”

    Gavin has the answers on temperature:
    http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2017/08/observations-reanalyses-and-the-elusive-absolute-global-mean-temperature/

    “In 1997, the NOAA state of the climate summary stated that the global average temperature was 62.45ºF (16.92ºC). The page now has a caveat added about the issue of the baseline, but a casual comparison to the statement in 2016 stating that the record-breaking year had a mean temperature of 58.69ºF (14.83ºC) could be mightily confusing.”

    Indeed…

    “In reality, 2016 was warmer than 1997 by about 0.5ºC!”

    Gavin gives a link to a 1999 paper by Phil Jones: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/1999RG900002

    Jones says:

    “We present global fields of surface temperature change over the two 20-year periods of greatest warming this century, 1925-1944 and 1978-1997. Over these periods, global temperatures rose by 0.37 and 0.32C, respectively.”

    He is saying that the greatest increase in the 20th century was 1925-44, before the large increase in CO2 emissions from the war and afterwards. CO2 rose by 5.4ppm during that period, 1.8%. In the 34 years from 1944 to 1978, temperatures were static, for a rise in CO2 of 25.7 ppm. Also the warming was due to less cold night-time temperatures rather than hotter daytime temperatures. Urbanisation rules, OK?

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  8. Will the BBC’s alarmist doc tell us that the noble Professor Mikey Mann is a Nobel prizewinner?

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  11. Ben has a good article at spiked, Attenbollocks:

    “Slow, stupid, myopic, easily frightened, anxious away from their group, prone to poor judgement, incapable of independent thought… we can see why natural-history TV producers might have an affinity with the walrus.”

    Liked by 1 person

  13. Paul,

    LOL. I wonder what GMB viewers, infuriated by Madeley denying Attenborough’s Sainthood and declaring him to be “just a broadcaster” will think of Ben’s “Attenbollocks”. The problem with reverence is that the people just go on revering even after the reverential status is long past its sell by date.

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  14. Methinks the news of an impending solar minimum and consequential cooling has the climate worriers frightened hence the upsurge in dire predictions. They may be seeing the end of the gravy train and the terrible retribution that awaits the lying, conniving creeps when they are finally exposed as the frauds thet are.

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  15. We now know that Stott of the Met Office, pioneer of the art of linking extreme weather to climate change, will make a guest appearance on Saint Attenbollocks‘s BBC documentary; indeed he helped them research the ‘facts’:

    Sir David Attenborough looks at the science of and potential solutions to climate change in a new BBC Documentary (broadcast 9pm Thurs 18 April 2019). Met Office climate scientist Professor Peter Stott appears in the programme and also supported the BBC as they researched the facts. Here he looks back at his career and how the science of climate change has developed.

    https://blog.metoffice.gov.uk/2019/04/17/my-career-in-climate/

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  17. Stott uses that interview to respond to the question of whether climate change is increasing extreme weather generally and ‘great storms’ particularly to make the trivial point that more hot temperature records are being broken than cold temperature records, thereafter pointing to some fairly confident assessments that heatwaves only have increased since 1950. Neither proves the case for the attribution of extreme weather to man-made climate change.

    Stott is in thrall to his own theory of extreme weather attribution which he developed after celebrating his wedding anniversary in Italy in 2003 and thinking to himself ‘Blimey it’s hot here, this must be due to global warming’. As soon as he got back to Reading, he number-crunched the figures through the Met Office mainframe, via the all-singing, all-dancing, CO2 driven global circulation models and it confirmed his worst fears – which was quite exciting.

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  19. Oh dear, I can’t see many deniers repenting, I must say. The most likely outcome of being exposed to these ‘facts’ for an hour is ‘zzzzzzzz’ – probably before the final, ultra-urgent and saintly appeal to viewers to ‘save the planet’ by getting a smart meter fitted.

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  20. ‘Climate Change – The Facts’.

    Watched.

    I estimate 3% facts, 97% bullshit, propaganda, misinformation, disinformation, lies, emotional blackmail.

    I consider it a duty to expose the 97% for what it is. I’m sure many other sceptics do too.

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  23. Haven’t watched. Now it’s contaminating my recording device and I’ll perhaps watch the programme when it’s been somewhat detoxified by my reading the comments of others beforehand. My wife (she who should be listened to) feared for the integrity of our television if I had watched it “straight-up”.

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  25. Four years since the last comment on this thread. That’s kind of bizarre too.

    So the BBC appears to be self-censoring the Legend That Is Attenborough because he’s saying some controversial things about how farmers are responsible for the destruction of wildlife and no doubt telling us all that we’ve got to stop eating meat and dairy in order to prevent the twin Climate and Extinction Crises – things which might risk a ‘right wing backlash’. There was me thinking that Shellenberger’s ‘Industrial Censorship Complex’ was aimed squarely at conservatives by left wingers, only to find out that the ‘Trusted News Initiative’ BBC is now censoring a left winger, and not just any left winger, the Great David Attenborough himself! How strange. Maybe the BBC just want to preserve the cosy image of Attenborough as the nation’s most loved and admired naturalist, especially after they killed off Bellamy. Maybe they don’t want their ‘asset’ tainted by that anti-farming loon Moonbat. I do think that the BBC is feeling a little nostalgic, perhaps acknowledging that this series will be Attenborough’s swansong.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. I won’t be watching this series so I can’t comment on the level of catastrophism re. species decline and where the finger of blame is pointed. The WWF and RSPB certainly can no longer be trusted to provide unbiased analysis of animal and bird populations. Given Attenborough’s previous form, it would be surprising if he managed to get through even one episode without making mention of some man-made environmental/ecological disaster. How much he mentions it as compared to straightforward narrating on wildlife is obviously going to affect the series as a whole. From what was reported above, it would seem that the hardcore catastrophism was reserved mainly for the final episode, which the BBC will not be showing.

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  28. I’m not watching it either. I ditched my TV licence 16 months ago. No regrets. So many books to read, so much else to do.

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  29. Jaime I recommend you change your mind and watch Attenborough’s new series. I highly recommend it. In places it is superb and its main message (so far) has been that habitat change and destruction is the main cause for biodiversity loss, not climate change.

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  31. Alan,

    Like Mark, I don’t have a licence, so don’t watch any live TV programs. I suspected what you say might be the case, but then this raises politically sensitive issues re. the ‘solutions’ to such habitat loss and declining wildlife populations. Monbiot’s solution is to ban livestock farming altogether and rewild the areas currently grazed by sheep and cows. I’m all for creating/maintaining refuges for wildlife, but this strikes me as extreme and ideological. I suspect that the final episode left out by the BBC advocates this extreme solution and probably throws in the additional ‘benefits’ in the ‘fight against climate change’ by reducing methane emissions/creating carbon sinks etc. It would be nice if Attenborough’s swansong was to be a far more balanced appraisal of the threats facing the environment and wildlife in these beautiful British isles. Do let us know when you’ve watched the entire series.

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  32. Jaime. It is possible to watch the Attenborough series as a pure documentary. He presents you with facts about the decline of habitats. Yesterday’s programme for example was about woodlands. Each type was identified and shown with Attenborough informing us as to how much survives and how much has been lost, before showing us the lives of some typical and sometimes atypical inhabitants. Monospecific forests = plantations were shown occupied by huge flocks of starlings murmorating then settling on the trees. But the programme did more. It then shot the trees in infra-red showing the enormous number of hot birds as white dots covering the fir tree branches almost to the ground like snow.
    Next week is about grasslands; I wonder if the fourth programme will be about our cities.

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