{"id":274714,"date":"2023-08-21T11:01:44","date_gmt":"2023-08-21T09:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=274714"},"modified":"2023-08-21T11:01:57","modified_gmt":"2023-08-21T09:01:57","slug":"activists-try-to-reboot-pacific-walrus-as-climate-change-icons-just-as-numbers-reach-a-new-high","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/climatescience.press\/?p=274714","title":{"rendered":"Activists try to reboot Pacific walrus as climate change icons just as numbers reach a new high"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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From polarbearscience<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Activists have again resorted to using\u00a0documentary film<\/a>\u00a0to promote Pacific walrus haulout deaths as contrived \u201cproof\u201d of gruesome climate change impacts even as evidence emerges that walrus numbers are higher than at any other time since the late 1970s. Oops! Busted by facts yet again!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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In 2020, a pair of activist Russian filmmakers made a low-budget re-creation of the the enormous Cape Serdtse-Kamen beach walrus haulout scenes from Sir David Attenborough\u2019s\u00a0Our Planet\u00a0<\/em>(see map below), centred on the infamous shack used by visiting biologists and\u00a0filmmakers<\/a>\u00a0(photo above by Maxim Chakilev, courtesy the\u00a0Smithsonian<\/a>). In describe this Russian haulout beach in detail in\u00a0Fallen Icon: Sir David Attenborough and the Walrus Deception.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Location of Cape Serdtse-Kamen on sea ice map from\u00a018 October 2021<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

No doubt spurred on by propaganda spread by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) \u2014 ensconced in Siberia since 2007 \u2014 and funded by\u00a0The New Yorker magazine<\/a>, they marketed their\u00a0Haulout<\/em>\u00a0handiwork<\/a>\u00a0at film festivals in 2022 as a\u00a0horrifying, stand-alone message<\/a>\u00a0of\u00a0climate change emergency<\/a><\/em>, now known as\u00a0global boiling<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Russian biologist Maxim Chakilev, who assisted off-screen in the\u00a0Our Planet<\/em>\u00a0documentary, is featured on-screen in this short film (see below). A biologist movie star, just like his colleague Anatoly Kochnev who starred in the\u00a0Our Planet<\/em>\u00a0\u201cBehind the Scenes\u201d<\/a>\u00a0walrus feature!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an\u00a0interview with filmmaker Evgenia Arbugaeva<\/a>\u00a0in March 2023, she talks about Chakilev\u2019s concern for the walrus [by bold]:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe biggest concern, of course, is how this animal adapts to the new reality that this has been happening for a long time now. Maxim started his research 10 years ago \u2026 And unfortunately, as we know, this process is irreversible. So,\u00a0there will be a possibility of a shrinking of the population of the animal.<\/strong>\u00a0I think all biologists that are now working are concerned about the same thing really, of the disappearance of species and what can be done to protect them.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Quote from\u00a0The New Yorker<\/a>\u00a0(21 November 2022) \u201cWhere walruses go when sea ice is gone,\u201d Arbugaeva also revealed [my bold]:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Because it was so warm, there were also\u00a0a lot of brown bears<\/strong>\u00a0nearby who hadn\u2019t been hibernating. \u201cThey were super aggressive,\u201d she said, \u201cso we were walking as three, always, and that added to this feeling of being trapped.\u201d\u00a0The bears, and even flocks of birds, would scare the walruses, which would set off a panicked stampede toward the water, leading to tramplings and deaths.<\/strong>\u00a0\u201cTo see walruses dying right in front of me, and I couldn\u2019t help them in any way,\u201d Arbugaeva said, was the most difficult aspect of making the film. \u201cFor a few days, a baby walrus was stranded in our hut. It was all beaten up. There was no way to find his mother in the sea of walruses, and we had to leave it alone to die.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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