Walrus Makes A Wally Of Olivia Rudgard
By Paul Homewood
h/t Ian Magness
The babies are out in force in the Telegraph today!
Quite why the ice loving walruses should come south as the “Arctic warms up” is a mystery. Surely they would head further north where it is colder.
In any event, the Arctic Ocean is chock full of ice at the moment, and throughout the last three months temperatures have been hovering around normal, which rather makes a nonsense of claims about Wally.
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icethickness/thk.uk.php
In other words there is no justification whatsoever to play the climate card.
Contrary to popular myth, the Atlantic Walrus is perfectly happy hauled on land, instead of sea ice. What is critical to them is the availability of nearby shallow water as they are bottom feeders, eating molluscs. As NAMMCO, the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission report:
Walrus occupy a large range but have a narrow ecological niche, requiring large areas of shallow water with bottom substrates that support a productive bivalve community and the reliable presence of open water over feeding areas, as well as suitable ice or land nearby for haulout.
Habitat use by walrus varies according to the season. For most of the year, walrus are widely dispersed over vast areas where they usually occur in clumped groups (Heide-Jørgensen et al. 2013). In spring and summer, walrus are generally found in coastal areas throughout their distribution, where water depths are relatively shallow and they can access their favoured benthic foods. Summer habitat use is also driven by available haulout areas (Freitas 2009). Proximity to human settlements is also a factor in habitat choice, as walrus that are disturbed or displaced from an area tend not to return.
https://nammco.no/topics/atlantic-walrus/#1475843212917-9abc9066-9674
Too much sea ice can actually be a bad thing if it restricts feeding to deeper waters. Even WWF accept this point:
https://www.wwf.org.uk/learn/fascinating-facts/walrus
Atlantic Walrus are certainly an endangered species, but not because of the popular myth of global warming. The real problem has been hunting to virtual extinction in the last couple of centuries. Indeed Vikings managed to do the same in Iceland a thousand years ago!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walrus
If walrus are left alone by humans, they will no doubt thrive just as they have done during previous millennia of climate change.
Meantime Wally, who appears to have fallen asleep on an iceberg, will probably enjoy the change of scenery!
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Of course the iconic polar bear was recreationally hunted almost to extinction. But, the climate alarmists blamed it on climate change and AGW CO2. Once this hunting was outlawed the polar bears recovered and are now present in large numbers. CO2 continues to rise but the global temperatures are unimpressed? So, presumably, are the polar bears?
but noticed today the WWF are still using polar bears on money raising tv adverts – assuming that joe public still thinks they are endangered
Wasn’t this an unusually cold winter?
It is interesting that the walrus can innately “follow the science” and the so-called scientist advocates of climate change can’t. IQ tests needed?
I could not help but smile when I read :
” Laura Eyles of the marine conservation society said one of the theories for its arrival in the UK was that it had floated south on a broken off ice sheet”.
Firstly an ice sheet is a very big thing. this challenged individual means an ice berg I think. If what she said was true this would be headline news as this would be interrupting major shipping lanes.
Secondly how long did Wally (not his real name for reasons of anonymity) languish on said ice sheet/berg whiling away the hours/days/weeks/months? They hardly move at speed. What did Wally the wally live on as the water would be too deep for him to find his usually wally type feast?
It is said when digging a hole you should stop digging but Ms Eyles was clearly enjoying her moment, so she is then quoted as saying with clear feeling of authority:
” That definitely looks like we could be having more of these sightings because it’s likely that climate change could be melting the ice and these ice sheets falling away and drifting a little more easily than normal, she said”.
Just drink that all in.
Firstly, if that is a verbatim account of Ms Eyles spoken words then clearly the first challenge to her life is the English Language.
Secondly like so many thousands of her kind with a degree in something she sees the pound signs attached to climate change so broadcasts her clear “expertise” . Bet she has a cat and is a socialist.
Thirdly I think she once watched a video of a tidewater glacier which meets the sea as for example in Greenland and then ice breaks off naturally (her ref to ice falling away) but there again that term “ice sheets”. Has she also possibly mixed up Arctic and Antarctic ice behaviour possibly?
She is completely out of her depth speaking on a subject she knows nothing about, clutching at words like life rafts or is it life sheets?
However, her piece de resistance comes next. “Because of climate change melting the ice (then there should be no ice to drift) and these ice sheets falling away and drifting a little more easy than normal.
What on earth does that lot mean? Is she suggesting that they drift a lot easier on melted ice water because it is some special kind of lubricant?
One swallow a summer does not make and one wally of a walrus does not climate change make. No one with an ounce of common sense knows not to extrapolate a single data point (She supposedly has a science degree) except those of course who brandish the term climate change like the Colgate Ring of Confidence as if it were some religious or magical saying to impress and demonstrate her desire to join the “winning team” and of course get access to all that cash.
Lauren Eyles has a degree in Marine biology and coastal ecology from Plymouth University and her specialist subject according to her page is plastic – no, not walruses or anything arctic related. The course offers the chance to go to two locations for study – no, not the arctic but France and South Africa. She is the south Wales coordinator for Sea Watch Foundation which is dedicated to monitoring whales, dolphins and porpoises – but not walruses. So I think we can safely assume that she has no idea about the subject in hand and was talking bollocks as she couldn’t resist getting her name in print.
Well, I have a BA, MA and PhD in botany (taxonomy, ecology and ecosystems). However, it does not mean I am unable to assess other scientific disciplines. It does mean that I am careful to do a bit of research before making pronouncements on fields outside my purview.
I would note that it does not take degrees to obtain common sense. It just takes exercising common sense in order to employ it diligently.
Read this earlier – yet another eye roller from the MSM.
Wally was quite happy at Tenby for a while, occupying the lifeboat ramp at times, in the sunshine. There was no hint of climate change in any of the local news reports. Then for some reason he moved on down to Cornwall and seems he is now in France and swimming further south. Maybe he has designs on being the first Antarctic walrus.
No need to assign a reason; Wally is just a tourist, but he is welcome because he hasn’t flown.
Compton Mackenzie in his book The Rival Monster has a walrus in temporary abode on a (mythical) island – Little Todday. Was that based on local memories of one in the Outer Hebrides?
Does anyone pay attention to the DMI Arctic sea ice thickness models? They shouldn’t since the Kronprinz Hakkon fiasco. They are not wrong, they are not right, they’re just worthless, like any other model that has been proven to be seriously wrong.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-56347139
The UN failed to prevent the ethnic cleansing and murder, now some of the refugees are almost in a prison camp. Meanwhile the UN squanders vast resources on non-existent dangerous AGW.
These refugees are being housed on an Island that has recently grown, and that the BBC says is cyclone prone.
The BBC now regularly uses this area of the world to promote the climate refugee lie, and no doubt with the next cyclone they will invoke climate change.
The BBC reported similar to the finding below in July 2008, but their articles on the area these days have little connection to reality.
Getting too cold in the Arctic, so walrus comes south to escape the cold. Soon see polar bears in scotland fleeing the cold.
Cant see its possible it got this far south without being eaten by Orca, its natural predator.
If its siting around near people , indicates it used to human contact its far more likely got away from a zoo or such.
Even Iceland only sees them very occasionally now and they dont stick around or establish new colonies
A Zoo or theme park in Belgium has rooms with a view
MO May weather summary (why they don’t just wait until the month’s stats are actually complete is a mystery to me – especially with the sudden change to warmth).
Anyway, UK May was cool and wet but no cigar records wise, apart from Wales which was supposedly wettest evah. (More environment agency gauges up the rain slopes?)
https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/about-us/press-office/news/weather-and-climate/2021/cool-wet-may-concludes-spring-of-marked-contrasts
The take away quote.
“As often happens in the UK, the variability in monthly rainfall statistics have largely balanced out for the season overall, to bring the UK close to the average…….”
So why don’t they remember that when blaming every warm/cold/dry/wet spell on climate change?
Its because the rain knows when months end and begin presumably….
Like the point I always make, change the calendar by a few days and the record books get completely re-written!
A reminder of UK bygone late May deaths and disaster:
Louth 29th May 1920
Derby Day 31st May 1911
Than goodness the climate is so benign this year.
They only ‘remember’ that when it’s colder than usual.
Apparently the Walrus neglected to read orders and went off script.
isnt that Dick Strawbridge – his chateau in France is close by