First, let’s quote the facts .There are some 4500 species of mammals , there have been around 110 extinctions, which is 2.444% of the total, or 0.00611% per annum. That’s not a very big figure to worry about, right? But the BBC headline today is “Mammals facing extinction threat” with the further sensational line that 25% of all mammals are on the way out. Oh, and just in case you still don’t embrace the eco-wackery, there’s a fetching picture of a baby seal to pull those heart strings. I appreciate that there is a lobby such as that represented by the Red List of Threatened Species which has a right to have its opinion heard, but by the same token there are many others who profoundly dispute this unscientific sensational. The BBC prefers to only offer a platform to the former group.
WHAT EXTINCTION?
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The BBC is mainly in the manufacture of audience chasing down market TV entertainment programmes and the cheap, tacky and sensationalist style of news that appeals to the kind of people who like such entertainment.
I don’t buy trashy tabloid newspapers so why do I have to buy the BBC? I just want to watch football on Sky TV without getting a fine and a criminal record so why do I need to be involved with the BBC at all? Can’t the people who need/want it pay for it all themselves?
Its all in there David, they are cramming in everything in this uber trash science report even linking it to the stock market! can you believe it? Global warming/climate change got mentions too, scare mongering’R’us and Shukman played the nodding dog like a good little brainless eco lackey and lickspittle!
Lying and cheating,twisting and perverting,selective facts and figures wrapped up with lots of agenda, as always heavy on inuendo and dishonest manipulation and low on actual facts.
All these figures are twisted with plenty of coulds,mays and ifs thrown in the whole ‘report’ is like some throwback to the old USSR propaganda and the BBC are good at it, very good with shots of heart string pullers added to convince the dumb thicko proles, you can almost hear them go Aaaaaah!
Who is running the BBC eco propaganda output?
I was laughing so hard I fell over and the deadpan delivery of such obvious horse shit only makes it funnier, what are these dummies playing at?
Ohmygodohmygodohmygod…I’m a mammal…ohmygodohmygodohmygod.
Perhaps we need to replace the annual seal cull with a BBC journalist cull.
No. 4 iron anyone?
“Al Gore, in his 1993 book Earth in the Balance, says “40,000 species go extinct per year”. Problem is, he is exaggerating by at least a factor of four. Even if he weren’t exaggerating, he performs a trick well known to those who lie with statistics: he fails to mention the denominator of that fraction. 40,000 of 100,000 is a lot. 40,000 of a million is not a lot. 40,000 of 10 million is negligible. So if our estimate of 1.6 million total known species is correct, even Al Gore’s exaggeration is somewhere between not a lot and negligible.
But if that number is wrong, where did he get it? The answer is that he got it from a British ecologist, Norman Myers. And where did Norman Myers get it? He made it up.
No, really, he made it up! Pulled it out of thin air.”
http://ivo.co.za/2008/07/15/making-up-extinction-numbers/
And so does the BBC – just like all their “science” clap-trap. Thats why they don’t explain that if Britain closed down tommorow and everyone went back to living in caves the effect on CO2 emmisions would be negligable.
AndrewSouthLondon: Oh the temptation 🙂
Martin,
Place an Islamist terrorist and a beeboid against a wall and give me a glock with one round up the spout, it would the beeboid that gets the lead headache, I hate them that much!
It’ll be 40,001 if my new cat doesn’t get down off those bloody curtains.
HSLD | 06.10.08 – 8:54 pm |
LOL – but I think its species they are taking about not a single cat.
Cassandra: “Go ahead beeboid, make my day!”
This was one of the two articles from the Black/Harrabin duo today.
The other one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7655290.stm
The usual one-sided nonsense from Harrabin, complete with that f*cking “Animated guide” thing that they attach to EVERY Climate Change (formerly known as Global Warming)
article, and about 20 or so links to back it up.
Why don’t they talk about new species that are created? What beeboids don’t understand is that nature kills off species that can’t adapt or change to the environment.
Why don’t they talk about NEW species that are discovered every year?
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070301085647.htm
http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=28104307916
Martin: The BBC live for doom-and-gloom for the every day man, the only time they are happy is when the stock market collapses another 5%, or a seal pup falls off an iceberg.
The last time i can ever recall a positive story was when the Beeboids were singing the praises of a “free” bus service put on for the athletes/journos at Beijing 2012.
nelson | 06.10.08 – 9:07 pm |
Oh dear its those ex-communist Poles again.
But it is the sneaky way that Harribin equates CO2 to polution that really is shamefull.
And he also drags out that well known climate scientist Sir Nicholas Stern but not apparently Lord Lawson who takes a different view. One sided debate definately biased.
There’s a handy list of a few things caused by Global Warming here:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
Dear Friends
In the light of the BBC’s gloom I commend to you an organisation that may help us all: The Voluntary Human Extermination Movement. Enjoy!
http://www.vhemt.org/
John Bosworth: Can we start with leftie media types?
Groups like this wildlife lot release this kind of info every year regular as clockwork and the BBC uncritically print it with no real analysis or views of people who either don’t agree or couldn’t care less. So much for balance.
The BBC is a sort of guaranteed noticeboard for the ‘correct’ opinions on everything while other opinions are usually ignored or subject to the inexpert negative analysis of the BBC’s clueless ranks of homes counties jobsworths – not that I want the BBC in Salford you understand. I don’t want them lowering the tone of the area with their crass activities.
Newsnight soon extinct?
Newsnight Mess Up the Market Report Yet Again
Kirsty correctly informed us that the pound had “tumbled almost one and three quarter cents” yet the graphic had it up +1.74 cents. Viewers have to guess the truth, one wonders does anyone at Newsnight actually care?
Guido watched Randall Live on Sky earlier this evening interviewing Martin Sorrell. An adult conversation about business and the markets with some interesting insights. Sorrell explained what he was up to re-domiciling WPP in Ireland. It wasn’t at all the hectoring quasi-Marxist business bashing that so often characterises the BBC’s reporting – which might be fine for Guardian readers but is pretty tiresome for people interested in business news. Randall is recommended.
http://www.order-order.com/2008/10/newsnight-mess-up-market-report-yet.html
Paxman soon to be extinct?
BBC ‘fawns’ over the royals, claims Jeremy Paxman in outspoken attack
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1070539/BBC-fawns-royals-claims-Jeremy-Paxman-outspoken-attack.html
BBC soon extinct?
Can any readers help us to save the BBC?
What do you think? Leave your comments here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/organgrinder/2008/oct/06/bbc.ofcom
Nice bit of numeracy on the BBC’s part:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/7654372.stm (slide 10)
“Rachel Hylton, 26, is in Dannii Minogue’s under-25s category.”
Yeah – It’s on the front page of the Socialist Daily Telegraph web site as well – bloody nulab tree huggers
Now I have just about got used to endless celebs and their camp following ‘journalistic’ mates raising ‘awareness’ of climate change in their sweetly ironic way by helicoptering up to a snow-covered place at the first crack of a calving glacier or to see if saying ‘boo’ to a polar bear will stress it out… a bit more.
Or getting in a boat which, one presumes, uses some form of internal combustion power (‘No dear, you can’t put your settee on the funnel as that’s where the poisonous gasses belch from when Capt’n Fishstocks yells ‘Hypocrisy Ho!’). They have gathered that kayaks don’t work too well, especially when trying to make a point.
But I am still trying to get my jaw off the floor as I watch my BBC Breakfast News about a couple who used their Tesco ClubCard Miles to buy Business Class flights.
Hey, whatever keeps the ratings up in Sevenoaks, I guess.
However, what got me, immediately, (and, to be fair a few readers, who whose comments were jokily referred to mid-way) was that what made this advertisement for the ‘buy more stuff’ scheme by a major private retailer a ‘good thing’ to share was, apparently, the fact that the couple accrued these points by collecting recycling waste.
Now, I really endorse the notion of reward-based eco-schemes (so long as they make sense.. and work) as opposed to the usual fine or hairshirt stuff, but for the love of Gaia could they not have found someone… anyone… who did not negate the whole effect, and hence point in such a crass manner?
Apparently it was offset. Now, I am no expert, but I am pretty sure the carbon gain of recycling some plastic bottles for 12 weeks is probably going to struggle to cope with what pops out the exhaust of a 747.
I wonder if it was the same one that ferried the bouffant and crew to New York for a quick slot on how the news in America is made. Don’t they have guys over there to do that?
And now, as I type, It seems that shrimps in some bay up North are vanishing on account of… the salt water being diluted by all the rain.
There was a time when I would have swallowed that hook, line and mayonnaise, but now, without a serious scientist or two elsewhere agreeing, as far as I am concerned this is more likely due to over-fishing due to ever-increasing demands for prawn-cocktails as such the BBC canteen expands with more staff to address the news ‘needs’ of a growing population.
lack of concern about endangered animals smacks of tokenistic “look at me, i’m so hard join-the-dots right wingery.
but if it’s going to (rightly) flag the issue perhaps the beeb should highlight the massive impact of the EU Common Agricultural Policy and to a lesser extent US farm subsidies in impoverishing third world farmers and forcing them to knock off tigers and gorillas to survive?
Some of the best conservationists for wildlife and habitation are in the hunting, shooting ,fishing community. They`ll not get a mention from Beeboids though.
Incidentally, that WATO report yesterday, was Martha Kearny talking to an eco activist oe a BBC reporter ?
Original Robin | 07.10.08 – 12:20 pm | #
Except wasn’t there a documentary screened last year about trophy hunting?
Richard Lancaster,
No idea. Was it for or against ?
Martin | 06.10.08 – 9:08 pm |
Why don’t they talk about new species that are created? What beeboids don’t understand is that nature kills off species that can’t adapt or change to the environment.
Why don’t they talk about NEW species …..?
…sorry for the misfire…
Martin | 06.10.08 – 9:08 pm |
Why don’t they talk about new species that are created? What beeboids don’t understand is that nature kills off species that can’t adapt or change to the environment.
Why don’t they talk about NEW species …..?
Because there are no new species, Martin.
The ‘new’ species of fish in the article you cite were, as the article makes clear, first spotted between 1824 and 1850. It was just that no-one believed Bleeker then.
They have been ‘discovered’ now, but just as the north american landmass was there long before Columbus, these fish could well have been around for millions of years before recently being ‘discovered’.
If you come across a species that’s been ‘created’ in living memory (that isn’t a variant of the fruit-fly Drosophilia) then I’d be interested to hear about it.
This extinction threat is just cobblers , where ever man has taken space away from animals the animals have adapted , thats why we see urban foxes , peregrine falcons etc in our cities. Man made GW is a myth and we know it is , if Co2 were so deadly surely they would have banned carbonated drinks by now ? perhaps that will be the beebs next suggestion ! . certain species have struggled to survive for hundreds of years , well before i drove a land rover !
The BBC nature lot are just a bunch of old left wing hippies with no idea of how the UKs countryside works let alone the wider world ! they should all be dumped far out at sea along with the other poisonous waste thats dumped there.
Surely the news comes from Table 7 from the statistics section: species changing category.
http://www.iucnredlist.org/static/stats
Following the BBC report and looking at mammals there are almost 150 species under “genuine deterioration”. However, looking for the most depressing news: species becoming EX – extinct or EW – extinct in the wild, there aren’t any for mammals in the past year.
This should be viewed against almost 40 “genuine improvements” of which two are changes from EW – extinct in the wild, presumably as a result of re-introduction programmes.
If I had more time I would check the 4-1 deterioration / improvement ratio over time to see if this has improved, and also (as David Vance suggests) check out historic extinction rates to get the news in some perspective.
“This extinction threat is just cobblers , where ever man has taken space away from animals the animals have adapted , thats why we see urban foxes , peregrine falcons etc in our cities.”
And of course the urban dodo – it never went extinct – it is a BBC myth.
Please no more stories like this it makes the good anti BBC stuff seem rubbish. There are mammal species at risk of extinction the Iberian Lynx for example (thanks to the E.U)
to the person called “Darwins Granny.”
I am surprised that you haven’t pointed out that the extinction of a species is merely the logical end product of evolution.
That would be the theory first introduced by your grandson.
Also — did you know that 99% of all the species which have ever existed went extict in the 4 billion year old Earth, before the appearance of jolly old us (homo sapien sapien) on the planet.
Once upon a time the BBC Natural History Unit used to make factual programmes about real animals filmed in the wild.
Now they use CGI to invent animal scenarios in order to make the film more “dramatic”. They come up with tosh about dinosaurs, complete with the sound of their roars and in glorious technicolour.
Rubbish rubbish rubbish
David | 07.10.08 – 5:39 pm | #
“There are mammal species at risk of extinction the Iberian Lynx for example (thanks to the E.U)”
Ok, you’ve got to explain that one to me.
“David | 07.10.08 – 5:39 pm | #
“There are mammal species at risk of extinction the Iberian Lynx for example (thanks to the E.U)”
Ok, you’ve got to explain that one to me.”
Here you are from WWF :-
http://www.wwf.org.uk/search_results.cfm?uNewsID=1361
“The EU and the Government of Spain have actively contributed to the catastrophic decline of the species by building an illegal road through one of the last remaining Iberian lynx habitats.”
Our money helps makes the Iberian Lynx extinct !!!
Species don’t exist in any real, unambiguous sense, they are defined.
By this I mean to say, that conservationists seem to be making new species,(for example out of say African Elephants) based on minor differences, ill defined, and often well within what is normal variation. So when you look at the total population of elephants, all as one species, you might think they are safe. But if you define as a separate species a locally threatened population, say shall we call it “The Limpopo Slightly Longer Haired, on average Marginally Heavier Elephant which in certain lights looks a little bit browner” then:-
a/ you can call for more money to save it from extinction(and keep yourself funded in a job you love)
or
b/ if you fail to save it, you can add to the number of extinctions, which is your fall back position, to call for more funding so the same manufactured event doesn’t happen.(and keep yourself funded in a job you love)
Of course they will give the animal a Latin name, to impress the ignorant, because no one would be worried about the “Limpopo slightly longer haired…”
“Of course they will give the animal a Latin name, to impress the ignorant, ”
Sadly the ignorant seem to be very unimpressed by species becomming extinct. A great shame.
The shame is that David doesn’t even get the point. What do you mean by species? In plants some modern taxonomists don’t even accept the concept of species, because they are impossible to define, even especially when chromosomal studies are made.
Almost 150 years since Darwin published The Origin of Species, and most people, David apparently very much to the fore, still don’t have a clue about what it means.
Once again, Species do not exist other than by definition, and I am not going to get impressed by, as already stated made up figures about extinction of largely illusory species. Especially when those species are defined for ulterior motives.
Somebody told me moles were extinct once. And I nearly believed him, until I saw a mole the next day. But then the only reason he said that was because he was a double glazing salesman.
Also the mole I saw was dead. But I don’t think it was the last mole in the world so I’m pretty sure they are still going.
“Once again, Species do not exist other than by definition, and I am not going to get impressed by, as already stated made up figures about extinction of largely illusory species. Especially when those species are defined for ulterior motives.
terry Aherne | 09.10.08 – 8:57 pm | # ”
So if tomorrow all whales were to disappear for some reason you do not think that it would be a shame?
That is so sad.
How do your facts contradict the article?
You say very few have gone extinct, and the article says many will go extinct soon.
I think this site would work better if people debated the facts on a case by case basis rather than just nodding and saying “yes, you are right this is proof of some bias or other”
Very true. There is BBC bias but articles like this help the BBC says “these people are loons”.