Radio Times: Review by:; David Butcher

After a series full of marvels, it’s time for the sombre pay-off. Because it’s all very well revelling in the sweetness of polar bear cubs or the comedy of penguin courtship, but we know deep down the poles are threatened. Put simply, they’re melting fast.

There is not a peep in the programme about what has caused the loss of Arctic sea-ice, the retreat of glaciers, the break-up and dispersal of colossal Antarctic ice shelves. Instead there is a steady accumulation of example after shocking example.

The images say it all. A satellite photograph from
September 1980 shows Arctic ice cover at the end of summer. By September 2010 a similar image shows
the area covered by ice has shrunk by 30 per cent. Attenborough tells us almost wearily that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the Earth: within the next few decades there could be open ocean
at the North Pole.

About this programme

7/7. David Attenborough investigates what rising temperatures will mean for people and wildlife in the polar regions, and how changes there could affect the rest of the planet. He discovers polar bears in the Arctic are going hungry as the sea ice they hunt on disappears, and accompanies scientists studying waterfalls of meltwater in Greenland that are leading to a rise in global sea levels. From the Antarctic there are images of the break-up of the Wilkins Ice Shelf, which covered an area the size of Jamaica. Last in the series.