In light of the previous post by DB I thought this was appropriate along with a look at what turned David Attenborough into an advocate for climate change:
Sir David Attenborough on global warming
Sir David Attenborough has been criticised for not speaking out sooner and more forcefully on climate change. In an exclusive podcast interview for the Guardian he explains why TV fame means you have to be extremely careful what you say.
I have mentioned before that Attenborough was The Man the climate change Lobby wanted in their ‘tool box’ giving them and their Cause authority and credibility.
You should of course remember that the BBC’s environmental journalists have long been saying that no one should be allowed to comment on climate unless they are suitably qualified to do so….dismissing any sceptics as mere ‘bloggers’. (You have to ask what are the BBC journo’s qualifications? None it turns out…they read the scientific papers just like any layman can)
However it seems that someone with fame, authority and respect from his years on Television is not only able to comment but is used as the front man giving credibility to the climate change lobbyists pronouncements….despite his own admission that he is completely unqualified to make his own judgement….as he says….“You are trying to impose on me an authority I don’t have.”
Here is The Independent’s view:
President Lyndon Johnson is said to have exclaimed: “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America!”
What does it take for a whole nation, with its full complement of cynics and pessimists, to trust someone? Is that not a remarkable event, if and when it happens?
Sir David Attenborough’s views on Britain’s own recent military involvement in Afghanistan, if any, are not known. Our leading TV naturalist, who this week signed off from his most recent grand wildlife series, Africa, doesn’t do politics. Governments of all persuasions probably think: a good thing too, as there is no doubt that any Attenborough pronouncement about any policy whatsoever, delivered in those ultra-measured, ultra-reasonable tones, would have an effect on the population at large; at the very least, it would be listened to in sympathetic silence.
For Sir David has now reached that scarcely believable peak of national public confidence which Walter Cronkite attained across the pond a generation ago. He is more than revered; he is, polls show, the most trusted man in Britain.
Here is David Adams of the Guardian: ‘A short-term disaster is needed to guarantee coverage as people aren’t good at processing information about there being no ice at the poles in 30 years. Or get David Attenborough as the front man because everyone trusts him.‘
And here James Randerson also of the Guardian:
‘Climate change presents us with some very hard choices, and if he chooses to use it Sir David has the respect and authority to help the public face them.’
The BBC also recognise that Attenborough can be a hugely influential figure having been a fixture in most people’s lives for years from childhood onwards….a trusted, ‘fatherly’ figure. To have him hint that global warming is a disaster for the world will be calculated by the BBC to change our attitudes and support the climate change movement.
When Attenborough slips in comments such as ‘this maybe the last time we see this Arctic wilderness’ or similar statements throughout the programme it is essentially ‘product placement’ by the BBC using a programme about the Arctic to champion its own political agenda in a subtle and devious manner.
What is so clever is that there is often no mention of man made causes for that climate change, it is left hanging in the air unmentioned but ever present….so you are not alerted to any agenda nor do you then start asking difficult questions such as ‘where’s the proof?‘ that distract you from the message.
Once the BBC has it fixed in your subconscious that climate change is real and importantly, harmful, it can move on to nudge you into believing the sole cause is man made emissions of CO2.…and then onto the solutions.
Here David Attenborough talks to the Guardian about his conversion to the Cause:
Sir David Attenborough has been criticised for not speaking out sooner and more forcefully on climate change. In an exclusive podcast interview for the Guardian he explains why TV fame means you have to be extremely careful what you say.
He is not an atmospheric chemist, he protested, and his TV fame means he has to be very careful about straying into areas in which he is not an expert. “I’ve got to recognise that because I appear on that thing over there people think I know about things,” he said pointing at the TV. “You are trying to impose on me an authority I don’t have.”
The turning point from him came in November 2004, he told me, when he heard a lecture by the respected US climate scientist Ralph Cicerone in Liege, Belgium. That convinced him that the case for man-made global warming was solid.
(Here is Cicerone before the US Senate in 2005)
Here is David Attenborough talking to Australian radio on the same subject in Aug 2012:
David Attenborough: Well, we just have to keep on declaring the truth, and that’s not just restricted to science. It’s a basic thing of life, it is a moral thing in life. That applies to science as it does for everything.
Robyn Williams: Yes, but what if the critics say the proof is not absolute, that science is always conditional?
David Attenborough: Well, you have to take the credentials, look at the credentials of the person who says that. I would dearly like to say that I understood climate science and was able to look at the huge complexity of science that comes out on that and say, yes, I’ve looked at it from the basic facts and I have come to the conclusion that I was right. To do that I would need a university degree in climatology, in all kinds of advanced chemistry and one thing or another, which I don’t have. But I have a sufficient respect for the discipline, the science, to know that if climatologists all around the world of all kinds of nationality and all kinds of schools say the overwhelming evidence is that this is what is happening, then I say I will take your word for it because that’s what science is about, you accept the specialist. Of course if there was a really major section of the scientific world that said no, there’s an element in that argument which is debatable, then, okay, you’d do something and wait for them to sort it out. But there isn’t that. I mean, I don’t know what the proportion is…
Robyn Williams: 97.5% I think they say.
David Attenborough: Is it? Of climatologists who say that is the case?
Robyn Williams: What was the final thing that convinced you in terms of climate?
David Attenborough: I went to a conference in Liège about 10 years ago, and there was an American climate scientist who produced a whole series of graphs of the various elements that he had discovered over the years, and going back to the 18th century. What is so extraordinary is that people think how can you possibly know what it was in the 18th century, what the climate was, well, the answer is you can because you can take ice cores which have bubbles in them which you can date the ice cores, you can know when that ice formed from snow and water and it encloses a sample of the atmosphere as it was at the time. So it’s possible to use ice cores to plot the chemical constituents of the atmosphere going back 200 years or more. And that was part of the statistics which I was being shown. And so it’s inescapable, and particularly when you plot it against population size and industrialisation history. So there’s no doubt about it at all.
“So it’s possible to use ice cores to plot the chemical constituents of the atmosphere going back 200 years or more. And that was part of the statistics which I was being shown. And so it’s inescapable, and particularly when you plot it against population size and industrialisation history. So there’s no doubt about it at all.”
And it is also possible to determine from similar sources that CO2 has been in much greater concentration in the past than it is today, and essentially this follows (not ‘leads to’) Global Warming, and not of the ‘Catastrophic’ level, and certainly not Anthropogenic (man-made)…. rearrange the capitals to find a well-known phrase or saying….so what is it that there is no doubt about, again, Mr Attenborough ? Maybe your pay-packet source ?
It proves that carbon dioxide levels have risen after the medieval warm period, but there is no immediate correlation between the temperature causing the increase in carbon dioxide or the increase in carbon dioxide causing the warming.
But there is a correlation were the increase in temperature causes an increase in carbon dioxide about 800 years after a warming. The medieval warm period peaked about 800 years ago. I think that is convincing but inconvenient to the inferior morons at the BBC.
I am sure David Attenborough must wonder why the BBC prefers his and other unqualified presenters opinions to that of Climate Scientists on Climate science. You would think that he would have friends warning him about the damage to his future reputation., by selling his sole to these fools.
My understanding is the BBC does usually have relevantly qualified people presenting science documentaries, with the almost exclusive exception of Climate science, which rather reflects on the possible true knowledge of the so called 97.5 percent consensus of ignorance.
The censorship at the BBC is weakest with Politicians, slightly stronger with unqualified sceptics, almost total with scientists, and with a total censorship when it comes to the science.
There is one thing I do agree with the BBC, and that is that I would prefer Climate sceptics with the relevant scientific qualifications to have a say, rather than the opinion of a none qualified sceptic such as David Bellamy, but I do not see that the BBC is aware of the irony of this in wanting David Attenborough to have a say on this issue.
Selling ones reputation down the plug hole for these cowardly fools, would be counter productive if the audience became more informed in the future.
Worshiping authority is so uncool and outdated.
May I add to this by highlighting another crime perpetuated by the BBC and most of the British media.
Earlier this decade we had a certain charlatan expounding to the World that MMR vaccination could cause autism is children. At every opportunity this charlatan was encouraged to parade his wares on the BBC like some Wild West style medicine man. How many eminent immunologists came on to plead with the public that there was NO plausible scientific evidence to support these claims?
The charlatan eventually came out and admitted he had done it for the money and the fame. How many have now died of measles or suffer blindness and other permanent disabilities as a result of this?
The BBC and the rest of our media played with this for “ratings” and we see the same process that Labour put in our hospitals, police; tick boxes showing the meeting of targets. These are not targets of achievement these are real people and their lives.
The BBC would rather cause mayhem and death in our society for the sake of ratings than take the advice of the most highly educated and informed scientists. The same applies to the charlatans pushing the climate change agenda. A media and society driven by celebrity not science. Sadly Sir David has been dragged into this. And perhaps, maybe, this ties to another thread today; a culture of bullying and intimidation inculcated into the structure; Sorry Sir David it has been decided that Climate Change shall form part of EVERY BBC product and you WILL drive the agenda or we will find someone else that will.
‘The BBC and the rest of our media played with this for “ratings”’
Same with Dobbin Dunkers in our burgers.
I am not thrilled at a culture where what’s on the tin isn’t in the pack, and any food source bypassing a checking chain raises flags, but I’ve seen ‘could’ elevated to an art form, and some claiming that if our kids get a whiff of taint they’ll be winning the 3.15 at Ascot. Then die.
It may now be what passes for news, but it isn’t responsible reporting.
I heard that the MMR vaccination is safe now that they don’t use a mercury based preservative.
MMR to my knowledge has always been provided in a single dose containing dry component which was reconstituted before administration. In 30 years of practice I have never seen MMR provided in a multidose vial. Several sources confirm that thiomersal was never used in MMR since there was no need as the vaccine was manufactured and packaged under aseptic conditions and secondly a preservative would damage a live vaccine
.
Click to access mmr_ii_pi.pdf
http://www.netplaces.com/vaccines/the-mmr-vaccine/components-of-the-mmr-vaccine.htm
Thiomersal, containing organically bound mercury as a preservative was commonly used in multidose vials for many types of intramuscular and transdermal injections. Over a period of many decades no evidence was found that thiomersal caused any adverse effects but in the 1990’s it was considered wise to remove it due to its mercury content.
Mr Attenborough is a disgrace to old age. You are supposed to acquire wisdom with age; he appears to have reverted to educationally subnormal. And, I wouldn’t care too much if he wasn’t afforded a platform, via the repulsive bbc, to propagate the hysterical propaganda surrounding the normal occurrences of our wonderful planet. I can only infer that Mr A is yet another follower of the anti-Christ.
Attenborough’s story serves as a cautionary tale to anyone else at The Corporation who might dare to imagine themselves Too Big To Sack. Attenborough held out for years against stating his position publicly on so-called ‘man-made climate change’ – everyone knew it; the media (especially the leftist media), well aware of how useful recruiting him to The Cause would be, eventually started baiting him, slyly – and repeatedly – questioning his position on the issue of the Holy Consensus of The Church of CAGW until the pressure became too much.
Perhaps Attenborough could still remember, with a shudder, the melancholy fate of his less fortunate (but far more honest) colleague – a certain Dr David Belllamy. An amiable and by all accounts very informed botanist, long since taken off our screens by bureaucratic appratchiks toiling away deep within the BBC Ministry of Truth – for daring to speak his mind about what he considers the myth of CAGW.
Already an old man well past retirement age, Attenborough could therefore see the writing on the wall, as far back as 2004 (if not earlier) if he continued to hold his tongue on the matter of CAGW. His was a stark choice, indeed; to become a ‘useful idiot’ for the comrades and The Cause by declaring his ‘belief’ in the new climate religion, or to keep his dignity and his silence, but risk a summary dismissal from the Programme Commissioning Commissariat.
David Attenborough will have to live with his choice. He has served his purpose as far as his political paymasters are concerned. They have him bought and sold – they can now wheel him out to deliver the Party Line on CAGW at will (and, boy, they do), content in the knowledge that the majority of the proles will believe whatever ‘that nice man on the telly’ tells them about CAGW and the imminent climate armageddon about to engulf us all.
Mind you, dig a little and you’ll soon discover Attenborough holds more than a few highly questionable Malthusian views on the subject of global population, himself… so perhaps not quite so far from The Party Line, after all…
You could always look up David Bellamy
Enough said – and this is from the Indie!
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/david-bellamy-i-was-shunned-they-didnt-want-to-hear-8449307.html
Phil, quite so. If Mr A was a true believer of euthanasia he’d lead by example. After all a man has 3 score years and 10 so he’s already living on someone else’s time.
He also has at least 2 children and several grandchildren so he’s a hypocrite when it comes to population control: “Do as I say, not as I do”.
Anyone else hear Attenborough chating with Richard Bacon on Radio 5 earlier in the week ? At one point they were talking about population control to “save the planet” like it was the most natural thing in the world. I think Bacon was trying to get Attenborough to agree that population control in Europe or the UK should seriously be considered, but Attenborough seemed to be skirting around the issue by not giving a direct answer.
A classic example of (non) population control was the outcome of Band Aid. Bono and Bob Geldof are happy to tell you how, after the Band Aid concert, aid flooded into Ethiopia.
But what they won’t tell you is that, in a time of plenty with all this aid, then the local habit of giving birth to as many kids as possible (because some were always destined to die) continued unabated. Of course, with all the aid around, very few died compared to previous times – and not only that, they went forth and multiplied from an early age as well. Within a few years, Ethiopia had turned into a country completely unable to ever again sustain its own exploding population without external aid, and because the population just kept on growing, the aid had to keep on growing, as it will have to forever.
If I recall correctly, it doubled in just a few years after Band Aid, and will likely triple again from today’s level by 2050… a population growth from 42 million at the time of Band Aid to 278 million in 2050.
Population growth, the unspeakable element of Global Warming.
Seems more like the law of unintended consequences or, in the luvvie/BBC case, the law of ‘who cares if I get on the telly’?
True, Guest Who – but they’ve had since 1984 to figure out what’s going on – yet Ethiopia had another famine in 2009…. and the next one can’t be that far away with population growth like that. But the BBC will never stop to think between famines (as you say – good telly) to consider… ‘why might this be happening ?’ and to actually inform the UK public.
And in global terms, not too far away, Nigeria, in the same period as Ethiopia above – population expected to rise by a factor of almost 5, to make it the world’s fourth largest country by 2050 (almost 400 million).
And although the UK’s population will grow very quickly (mainly due to immigration, and births to immigrants) the population of Europe is projected to fall between now and 2050.
It’s hard to talk seriously about global warming when you are up to your arse in snow.
Hey beeboids, look at this and then speak of global warming!
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/10/nyregion/winter-storm-northeast.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&hp
I think you’ll find that this is ‘weird weather’ and is a caused by global warming. At least that’s what the BBC/Greenpeace Friends of the Earth/WWF/Oxfam conglomerate told me.
The weather is going mad and this was predicted for the UK by climate scientists was the message in a Beeb radio 3 broadcast just last night. Richard Mabey, in a 14 minute essay that is undiluted warmist propaganda, unashamedly uses the phrase ‘global warming’ on more than one occasion. He even has Ruskin, back in the 1870’s sensing its onset!
“Only those with vested interests or ideological blinkers deny that global warming is happening and that human activity has a major role in it.” At least he ad the rigour to use the word ‘probably’ in attributing the latest vagaries of the weather to global warming, rather than ‘definitely’.
(downloadable podcast: ‘Changing climates 5: the stormclouds of the 21st century)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/essay
Yup – don’t think it takes a genius to predict that British weather, as it has been in the past, will always be unsettled, variable, subject to swings, but rarely, and not exclusively in this century, extreme. We’ve had bad floods before, we’ve had droughts before, we’ve had bad snowfalls before, we’ve had ‘thundersnow’ before….these things are not that unusual.
Only those with vested interests or ideological blinkers would believe that, despite all the evidence to the contrary, the planet is statistically NOT warming, and hasn’t been for many years.
But hey, if you’re considered a voice of authority on the climate by saying that weather will change in this country….. where do I line up for my research grants !
You know how here the topic can often get sidetracked by the odd obsessions of some?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9858473/Attenborough-documentaries-ignore-gay-animals.html
Ladies, Gentlemen, Flokkers… start up your engines.
I merely observe the fact that the current highest comment has been removed… another issue, if BBC topical, entirely.
Quite enjoyed a couple of the comments – along the lines of “Gay…..natural selection/Darwin….one of these isn’t going to work out too well in the long run.”
You touch on another theological contradiction that the liberal Inquisition find difficult to explain to the flock and therefore try to ignore.
Both classical and neo-darwinism (especially dullard dawkins crude reductionist version) find male homosexuality something a fly in their ointment (notice I avoided the obvious).
In fairness the BBC hasn’t elevated zoologist dawkins to the level of sainthood in the way C4 has, but they have their own high priest in the shape of the most reverent David Attenborough.(They also choose to ignore the inherent racism of both forms of darwinism.)
For the record I am an atheist and believe evolution must have taken place in some form.But I resent the way the BBC especially (for ideological reasons) present a good, but incomplete theory, as settled science on a par with Newton’s Three Laws of Motion.
I recommend reading the late australian philosopher David Stove’s Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution to see how and why this is important.
There is also a video on you-tube somewhere of dullard dawkin doing a Steve Coogan on question time impersonation,trying to square shambling robots and male homosexuality.