Descent of a Man: famous David Attenborough has helped mislead, and frighten, children about climate

The GWPF has just released an indictment of David Attenborough, the much-admired populariser of wildlife studies.  His emotive voice-overs in misleading documentaries have surely been one of the drivers of the current high levels of climate anxiety in young people:

'London, 27 January: A new video documenting Sir David Attenborough’s inaccurate claims about climate change and Arctic wildlife blames his apocalyptic language and misleading narrative for the dramatic rise in eco anxiety among young people.

The video published today by the Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF) and written by Dr. Susan Crockford, a Canadian wildlife expert, shows that increasing climate angst felt by many young people around the world started with Attenborough’s films that blamed starving polar bears on human-caused global warming.

The parents and teachers of these youngsters trusted Attenborough’s BBC productions to be accurate portrayals of the effects of climate change but that trust has been betrayed.

David Attenborough’s claims that ‘the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon’ have captured international media attention but it is now apparent he has failed to ensure that the scripts he reads for his Arctic documentaries and the messages they contain are true reflections of the natural world.

"Misleading narratives about starving polar bears and fabricated stories of dying walrus, used to support an escalating message of doom about the Arctic, are not supported by facts," Dr Crockford said.

"Attenborough did not verify any facts contained in the scripts he was paid to narrate and passed along misinformation to naïve viewers, including many young children," she added.

One of these children was Swedish climate change activist Greta Thunberg, who said she was shown images of starving polar bears in school when she was 8 or 9 years old. The timing and nature of the material suggests the film she saw was Attenborough’s ‘On Thin Ice’ documentary from the ‘Frozen Planet’ series released in 2011.

"David Attenborough bears the brunt of responsibility for the recent epidemic of ‘eco-anxiety’ among children and young adults. Much of their misguidedly negative sense of how Arctic animals are fairing and their bleak outlook on the world come from the heart-wrenching but unverified stories found in Attenborough’s documentaries,| Dr Crockford said.

It is the responsibility of teachers and parents to reassure these worried youngsters that polar bears and walrus are not suffering because of sea ice loss blamed on climate change. Children need to be told the truth: that whatever scary stories some biologists come up with about what might happen in the future, Arctic species have demonstrated that they are much more resilient to changes in sea ice than Attenborough’s films suggest.

The GWPF is sending copies of this video to all head teachers of UK schools together with a letter, telling them that they are responsible for the mental health of their pupils and that they have a responsibility to provide their pupils with accurate information about the state of wildlife in the Arctic.

Watch: Attenborough's Arctic Betrayal (13 min)'

Key points from the letter can be read here, along with links in support of the case made: GWPF letter support

Well done Susan Crockford for this work, and well done the GWPF for promoting it.  

Terrifying Children to gain Recruits for the Climate Cult Continues

A bout of illness has delayed my next post aimed at helping those who want to protect children from the excesses of the CO2 fanatics, but in the meantime here is some motivation for doing just that - a good piece in the Mail on Sunday:

DOUGLAS MURRAY: Terrifying our children with doom mongering propaganda on climate change is nothing less than abuse

Well worth reading in full here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7902895/DOUGLAS-MURRAY-Terrifying-children-propaganda-climate-change-abuse.html  (hat-tip: Climate Science)

The article ends with these words:

'Natural phenomena, including disasters such as the recent fires in Australia, are presented as though they have never happened before and they are presented as though they are solely the result of this ‘climate emergency’.

It is a cynical and dangerous trend. And so the hyping-up of a generation continues, all encouraged by adults.

Caroline Hickman, a teaching fellow at the University of Bath, recently claimed that eco-anxiety had increased massively in the past year.

‘We’ve been talking to teachers and head teachers about how to help children and young people,’ she said. Some children have reported waking up with eco-nightmares. Her response? ‘Parents can’t just say, “Everything will be all right” as it won’t be.’

And there we get a glimpse into the real project here: a new generation is being terrified into agreeing with a specific and fringe eco-lobby. 

This lobby does not care if it damages the mental health of a generation because it seeks to recruit that generation as foot-soldiers.

It is time we called this what it is: an abuse of children on a massive and unforgivable scale. Something that the generations that will succeed us will look upon with shame.'

Well, parents, it is perfectly reasonable to assure your children that 'Everything will be all right' because there is no good reason to doubt that it will be as far as CO2 and climate variation are concerned.  But what an effort is going to be needed to overcome the decades of scaremongering propaganda!