Do you remember when we used to listen and learn from experts who spent their life studying the natural world and wanted to share their knowledge with us?
Sadly, those days are gone.
Today, we have outspoken celebrities whose fame has been built, for the most part, from spouting their own - often antagonistic - views and who now attempt to claim they know more than the scientists, and experts. But because their voices are so loud, and lots of media are willing to offer them a platform, people listen to them over the facts.
Jeremy Clarkson has tried to belittle and ridicule the great Sir David Attenborough's latest series Frozen Planet II because it seemingly broadcasts truths that he feels uncomfortable with.
In his strange ramblings published by the Sun, the former Top Gear presenter picks out a select few animals that are thriving from the planet’s rising temperatures and then concludes that all references to the climate emergency are sensationalised by the series’ producers ‘with their pigtails and their Glastonbury hats’.
Apart from mocking their clothing like a child in a playground, Jeremy - like all climate crisis deniers - really has no other bow in his arrow to attack.
The production team is led by Mark Brownlow, who has a degree in Zoology, and has been studying and producing nature documentaries for decades. Jeremy also tries to distance Sir David from what is being said in the documentary, saying 'he no longer writes it'. That is frankly another very weak attack, as Sir David has spent most of his career campaigning against the climate emergency and is as much an advocate of showing the escalating destruction of our climate as his Glastonbury -wearing hat production team.
When we get to the crux of it, the evidence for the climate crisis is so compelling and alarming why are we giving these deniers a platform? Their views are so illogical and anti-science that we can safely put them in the same box as flat-earthers or those that believe lizards are really running our country.
Jeremy mocks the filming of glaciers reaching the oceans, pointing out this has happened throughout time. What he seems to completely ignore here is the hard fact that the oldest and thickest ice in the Arctic has declined by a stunning 95% in the past 30 years - far faster and more alarming than anything in nature before it.
It’s dumbfounding that a presenter - who has spent much of his working life in the motoring industry - believes he knows more about the natural world than the people who have studied it all their lives. If it comes between believing Attenborough or Clarkson on the climate there is no contest for me. And if Clarkson expects fans to believe him over Attenborough, he really has lost the plot.
It’s a similar story with his weak reference to the UK’s long-tailed tit thriving in the UK now that Springs are warmer. The reality is species across the world are facing extinction at a faster rate than ever before, especially the creatures who live in our seas. Nearly 80% of the world's fisheries are already fully exploited, over-exploited, depleted, or in a state of collapse. Worldwide, 90% of the stocks of large predatory fish, such as sharks, tuna, marlin, and swordfish, are already gone. And some of the worst-case scenarios show our oceans could be virtually empty of fish in little over 30 to 40 years.
Jeremy finished by saying the only way to make Sir David’s 'half-arsed twaddle tolerable' was by drinking a beer every time the emergency was mentioned.
I think that sums up all of our approaches perfectly; we can either listen to scientists and take action or drink ourselves into oblivion pretending that everything is going to be fine.
