“Thirty years of climate hysterics being proved wrong time and time again.” Oh, balls. Seriously, now — balls.

July 17, 2018

The headline was one of the most stupid declaratives I have seen in quite some time, but it’s worth mentioning because it shows, better than anything I can think of, the scale of the problem facing climatologists, environmentalists and anyone concerned about the future health of Planet Earth. Thirty years of climate hysterics being proven wrong over and over again.

That heading appeared in a national newspaper I shall not dignify by naming. It was accompanied by a column written by a bellicose newspaper magnate and unapologetic climate denier, who I shall also not dignify by naming.

Every sane person is opposed to the pollution of the environment, it continued — an exercise in distraction if ever there was one, considering the words to follow — but there is no justification for the self-punitive nonsense of the Paris climate accord.

Said national newspaper is a tireless advocate of fossil fuels, Big Oil and, specifically, the Alberta tar sands, the filthiest, dirtiest, most ruinous-to-the-environment form of extracting fossil fuel there is. Jobs — or, more importantly, the quarterly profit statements of mining companies and Big Oil matter more than the future health of the planet, to cut to the chase.

Never mind that, though. Take another look at that comment: Thirty years of climate hysterics being proven wrong over and over again.

Never mind the past 30 years. Let’s look at the last 30 days.

The past month has seen power shortages across California as record temperatures — 47.2°C one recent weekend in Los Angeles — drove a surge in the use of air conditioners. A prolonged heatwave across the UK melted the roof of a science centre in Glasgow, Scotland, a nation state more renowned for its damp and drizzle damp than blistering heat. Ouargla, a remote desert town in Algeria’s Sahara, experienced the hottest temperature ever recorded on the entire continent of Africa: 51.3°C on July 5th.

Night-time provides little relief — in itself an anomaly — in some hot spots around the globe: Quriyat, on the gulf coast of Oman, recorded minimum overnight temperatures of 42.6°, set a new mark for the highest “low” temperatures ever recorded on Planet Earth.

A “heat dome” over much of Eurasia culminated in dramatic higher-than-average heat-wave temperatures throughout Russia during the World Cup; the post-match ceremony at Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow was interrupted by a sudden deluge of near Biblical proportions. French president Emmanuel Macron was forced to wring the rainwater out of his suit jacket after the World Cup trophy was presented to Les Bleus; Russian president Vladimir Putin, meanwhile, was allowed to retain his dignity after a minder present a black umbrella to shield him from the torrential downpour of a Moscow monsoon. (Note to climate deniers: Moscow is not particularly renowned for its monsoon rains, not even in July.)

But wait, there’s more. Torrential flooding across Japan, four times the monthly average, led to more than 150 deaths in one of the most technologically advanced, climate-aware nations on the planet. A lethal heat wave across southern Quebec, prompting dozens more deaths (54 to be exact , as of July 14th). Montreal set a new record high temperature of 36.6°C on July 2nd.

Western Siberia, which noted climate denier Sarah Palin can see from her living room, recorded five straight days of temperatures rising to more than 30°C this past month.

That’s a big deal because climate scientists, environmentalists and field biologists worry this will accelerate the melting of permafrost, which — science again — will release vast amounts of methane, a more problematic and potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, into the atmosphere.

The issue is not just wild fluctuations in hot and cold but rather that weather fronts — both hot and cold — are stalling or being blocked by shifts in the jet-stream. That causes droughts and storms to linger longer in one place, which exacerbates the damage. Recent high temperatures, intense rains and slow-moving fronts are becoming the rule, not the exception. And scientists — those wieners — warn these weather changes are in line with their predictions of how increased, and constantly rising, gas emissions are likely to affect the climate.

Weather is not the same as climate, of course, but the two are related. One is short-term, the other is long-term. The expression “global warming,” now out of favour with most climate scientists, is misleading because it implies that heat is the primary indicator of Planet Earth’s deteriorating health, when it’s climate extremes — wild, unpredictable swings between extreme heat and extreme cold — that is the more serious and hard-to-isolate problem.

Every issue, especially one as complex and (unnecessarily) controversial as climate change, needs a snappy picture or viral video to bring the message to the public. Just such a video emerged this past week from western Greenland, where a huge iceberg that drifted close to the coastal town of Innaarsuit, prompted a mass evacuation, in case the iceberg calved in such a way that the resulting wave, likened to a tsunami, would swamp people’s homes.

This is not a joke: Last summer, four people died after waves swamped houses in northwestern Greenland, following a seaquake.

Climate scientists have coined a new term, “extreme iceberg risks,” which they say are becoming more frequent, because of climate change.

Back to that screed in a right-wing national newspaper in Canada.

Alongside that declaration about how Thirty years of climate hysterics (are) being proven wrong over and over again came this what newspaper people call “nut graph:” “No ice has been lost by Greenland, other than what melts every summer and then forms again, and water levels have not moved appreciably.”

Yes, indeed! And here’s the video to prove it.

Not all right-leaning media outlets believe climate change is simply the fevered dream of hand-wringing hysterics and unrepentant lefties.

The UK’s Daily Mail, not exactly a bastion of Guardian or Independent-style progressive thinking, warned in no uncertain terms on July 4th that global warming — climate change by any other name — is to blame for all-time heat record being set worldwide, even as the experts — those wieners — warn that these already stifling temperatures will continue to soar.

I don’t know about you, but I’m with the climate hysterics.

The year in pictures — not all opinions are equal.

January 02, 2018

The end of one year and the beginning of the next is a time when we’re inundated with best-of lists and conversation starters about things to come. There’s almost too much to choose from, which is why we need curators — for everything from social media to the day’s news. Judgment, and taste, is everything. Not all opinions are equal, no matter how loudly and how often we’re told they are.

I disagreed strongly with the judges’ final choices in some high-profile photography awards this past year, but who am I to judge? I just know what I know. The Natural History Museum’s Wildlife Photographer of the Year Awards got it right, in my opinion; other competitions, which I won’t name here, got it quite wrong.

That’s why I was more interested in some of the year-end collections of curated material by individual publications — not, “This is the best,” but rather, “These are our favourite pictures of everything we published this year.”

That’s why National Geographic editors’ 57 favourite images of the year — all published in the magazine at some point during 2017, and hardly an award winner among them — struck a nerve with me, chosen as they were from 88 photographers who worked on some 112 stories, accumulating a total of more than 2 million photographs.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/best-of-2017/best-pictures/

I learned more, too, that I didn’t know before from Nature’s “2017 in Pictures: The best science images of the year,” than I did from many other, more prominent periodicals.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-017-08492-y)

On one level, that’s to be expected, of course, because Nature, “the International Journal of Science,” is a peer-reviewed periodical. So a hitchhiking octopus, nanoscale fireworks and the “worm from hell” (the pork tapeworm, but you know it better as Taenia solium) become every bit as fascinating as anything on Animal Planet or NatGeo Wild.

Anyone who reads this space regularly knows I’m more of a Guardian man than a Daily Mail man, and I don’t care who knows it.

That’s why I was gratified to see The Guardian, in its Boxing Day edition, do a summary of the year’s wildlife-photography competitions from around the planet, rather than one of those subjective, often parochial lists of, “These are our favourite images of those we happened to see.”

It’s worth noting that veteran photojournalist Brent Stirton’s controversial image of a rhino butchered for its horn — “Memorial to a Species” — won both the Wildlife Photographer of the Year award and the World Press Photos award in the nature category. It’s not often that nature photography and photojournalism coincide.

I wouldn’t be doing my due diligence if I didn’t note that, judging from comments on the WPOTY’s Facebook page, many animal lovers were annoyed — livid, in fact — that Stirton’s image won best-in-show.

“How am I supposed to keep my child interested in nature,” went one refrain from an outraged mom, “if you promote such a disgusting image as yourbest-of? I couldn’t show my young daughter that picture. How is that helping anything?”

Another mom took a differening view, however, commenting on the Daily Mail’s message board, “The beauty and heartbreak in these pictures makes me proud that my daughter wants to pursue ecology and conservation as a career.”

Others pointed out — and I happen to agree — that nature photography isn’t just about big eyes and happy faces. There were better images in the final mix, both from a technical and a creative point-of-view, but few were as important.

Enough about me and my own personal opinions, though. Here’s an edited — curated, if you will — look at The Guardian’s year-end summary of award-winning images from around the world.

The complete version can be found at

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/gallery/2017/dec/26/the-best-of-the-wildlife-photography-awards-2017-in-pictures

Interestingly — for me, anyway — if there’s one subject that unites many of these images, it’s our growing interest in the sea and the future of our oceans.

That isn’t just because of Blue Planet II. The legacy of the sea is a cause that runs deep.

‘You don’t have to work hard for the beauty:’ Sir David Attenborough on filming ‘Blue Planet II.’

November 14, 2017

A metre-long worm with dagger-like teeth rising from the coral reef. A cuttlefish hypnotizing its prey by turning itself into an underwater lava lamp. Dead-eyed sharks gorging on spawning grouper fish, like an undersea adaptation of The Walking Dead. Just another night for Blue Planet II — in the U.K., that is.

Blue Planet II won’t bow in Canada and the U.S. until spring, 2018. BBC America won’t be more specific than that, at least for the time being. BBC Earth, the tepid Canadian version at any rate, will follow suit.

Even though it hasn’t aired yet in North America, the David Attenborough-narrated follow-up to 2001’s The Blue Planet is already making waves, so to speak.

And not just in the UK, where the first episode went into the record books as the most watched program of 2017 so far, when it debuted on Oct. 29.

BBC’s marquee wildlife series was seen by more than 14.1 million viewers the week it aired, according to UK media reports. That’s including repeats, streaming and PVR viewing in the week following the initial broadcast, but still, that’s a telling number.

The UK Daily Mail reported this past weekend that Blue Planet is such a hit in China that it slowed that country’s Internet.

Yes, consider the source — the Daily Mail is the UK intellectual equivalent of the New York Post, but still: Even the idea that Sir David Attenborough, who the Daily Mail described tongue-in-cheek as “the most viewed creature on Earth,” could slow China’s internet service — owing to all those downloads, see — is a conversation starter in itself. Blue Planet II has already had a profound effect, in other words, even if it has yet to air in the land of The Walking Dead and NBC Sunday Night Football.

The world’s oceans — one of planet Earth’s last enduring natural resources — are in serious trouble, environmentally and climate-wise, and yet they remain home to many of Earth’s most enduring, eye-opening mysteries.

Judging from comments on Weibo, a Chinese social media site modelled after Twitter, Blue Planet is having a profound effect in China, where comments range from, “I watched with my mouth hanging open,” and, “it’s a profound humanistic appeal to protect our environment,” to, “I’ve been crying all the time … it’s just so beautiful.”

Writing in the Guardian this past weekend, media critic Stuart Heritage wrote that BBC’s wildlife sequel has it all — profundity, wonder and trippy visuals. Crucially, he added, it transports viewers to a tranquil place, “untouched by the awfulness above the ocean.”

There’s something more at play, too.

“I can remember with uncharacteristic clarity watching the first episode of The Blue Planet,” Heritage added, “thanks to its context. BBC One broadcast the first episode at 9pm on September 12th, 2001, and it felt . . . necessary. Graphic images of the Twin Towers in flames were on the front of every newspaper. Television schedules were shoved to the wall in favour of rolling news coverage. It was the topic of every conversation, no matter where you went. The anxiety of the moment was suffocating.

“And then the clouds broke. At roughly the same time that most broadcasters were overcooking 9/11 coverage, setting clips of the attack to a Gounod oratorio, BBC One treated us to the most soothing thing imaginable. The Blue Planet, with its whispered narration, gently pulsating light and quiet wub-wub noises, was a screensaver. It was a lava lamp. It was the closest that television had ever got to letting you crawl back into the womb, right at a moment when everyone wanted nothing more than to ball themselves up in a duvet and shut the world out.”

We are living in disquieting times once again, even if these times lack the immediacy and emotional hot button of the 9/11 terror attacks.

Blue Planet II, from what I’ve seen of it so far, is unlike anything else on TV. The second episode — called, appropriately enough, “The Deep” — ventures to the bottom of the ocean, an area we know less about than we do the surface of Mars, and explores where life may have started.

Hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor — including a vent in the Atlantic Ocean dubbed “The Lost City” — contain as much life as a tropical rainforest. “Something truly extraordinary is taking place,” Attenborough narrates. “Under extremes of pressure and temperatures, hydrocarbons — the molecules that are the basic component of all living things — are being created spontaneously.”

Indeed, Attenborough adds, “many scientists now believe life on Earth may have begun around a vent like this four billion years ago.”

Filming was dangerous — life-threatening, even — on several occasions. In one instance, a submersible deep dive in Antarctic waters nearly ended in disaster when a leak sprang a less than hour after submerging. Cameraman and producer managed to avert catastrophe by first finding and then plugging the leak with whatever they had at hand.

Then there was the producer who, while swimming in deep waters off South Africa, found himself within arm’s length of a rarely seen species of octopus, only to be attacked — cameraman and octopus together — by a marauding shark.

Then there gnarly critters like the colourfully named fang tooth fish, which roams the depths, “snapping at anything that moves or glows,” and the sea toad fish, an ocean predator which can transform its fins into feet, like some kind of marine, sub-aquarian superhero villain.

Blue Planet II was four years in the making. It was filmed virtually wherever there are oceans, from Mexico to Japan and New Zealand, with stops at Hornoya Island, Norway; Sipadan, Borneo; Monterey, Calif.; the Sea of Cortez off Mexico; and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef along the way.

“The wonder, the knockout quality that you get from the natural world is infinite and never ending,” Attenborough told a gathering of reporters at the semi-annual meeting of the Television Critics Association, in Beverly Hills, Calif., back when his Planet Earth was about to change the way many people look at the world. “When you see something for the first time, you are knocked out. It’s extraordinary. It’s beautiful. It’s wonderful. But when you see it for the second time, you are beginning to understand more about the way (it) works.”

If programs like Blue Planet II have anything more to offer than the original, it has to do both with the increase of scientific knowledge over time and rapid advances in camera technology, Attenborough explained.

“The technology today is amazing. I started in 1954. My first animal, I was then using a clockwork camera, which ran for 90 seconds, and a hundred-foot roll of film, in black-and-white, which we tried to run for two minutes 40 afterwards. You had to change it. We were using lenses that couldn’t give you a closeup of anything beyond about 10 yards away. And, of course, the results were terrible. Thank goodness no one looks at them anymore. But, in 1954, people hadn’t seen giraffes or even heard of giraffes. Even if they were just a herd on the skyline, or a far distance away, people said, ‘Wow, a herd of giraffes, and they are fantastic. Which, of course, they were. But now, with the increasing complexity and sophistication of the gear we have, we can do anything. We can put a tiny camera down the burrow of an armadillo or in the nest of a bird. We can slow down a hummingbird’s wings so you can see how they move. You can speed up how plants develop. You can film at night. You can film at the bottom of the sea. The range of images you can bring back is simply breathtaking. Year after year, my breath is taken away more and more.”

There is more beauty in truth, even if it is a dreadful beauty, John Steinbeck wrote, in East of Eden. Attenborough would agree.

“The beauty is there,” Attenborough said. “You don’t have to work hard for the beauty, really. Ugly is . . . what is ugly? It’s very odd. You can’t say necessarily an amoeba or a trilobite is beautiful or ugly. I happen to think it’s beautiful, but, in fact, that’s what it is, and that’s what you are dealing with. You are dealing with that funny animal with those eyes, multiple eyes, and a tower on either side. Is it beautiful? I think it’s absolutely knockout, but it’s up to the viewer to make up their own mind whether it’s beautiful or whether it’s ugly.”

Blue Planet ©James Honeyborne:BBC Natural HIstory UNit.png