Robin Williams

Of course, where else at 100?

Belle, take us into space before we hear about what David Attenborough may, just for a while, have been keeping quiet about.

Oh, let's say 700 kilometres per hour.

This is The Science Show on ABC Radio National with some thoughts about David Attenborough, just turned 100.

And for some time, as concerns built about climate and conservation, a few, such as journalist George Monbiot, complained that David was avoiding the bigger issues while showing us comfy confections about glorious nature.

In fact, of course, David Attenborough was calling himself not a scientist but a journalist and thinking deeply about the conflicts of how ethically to report evidence.

So here, for example, is what a professor of sociology at James Cook University in Cairns thinks about the quandary.

Meet Stuart Lockie.

I come from a generation, may I tell you, Professor, that you mention the word sociologist and the scientists run like fire.

Are there examples of that going on here in Northern Queensland where that success has been achieved?

So no fish zones seemed a very good idea because you are putting them where you have a need to restock variety of species and so on.

And there is always a leakage across the zone that there's no fence there, but the fish don't know where they're not supposed to go.

And so it's an improvement for the fishes on the outside, the no zone.

And so isn't that so obvious?

Well, indeed.

Let me give you a personal example.

I broadcast on the Science Show several times, and that's somebody called Jeremy Leggett, who actually started off as someone lecturing in geology of how to extract fossil fuels.

And when he got to know the industry, he was so disgusted, he became the chief scientist of Greenpeace.

Now he's transformed himself, having educated some people such as Naomi Oreskes,

who's quite well known in Harvard.