Yes, it still is the Ice Age in parts of the US -- and here's a chance to meet the denizens of that brutal corner of Alaska.

Talk about diversity! Here we have close to 200,000 caribou engaged in the largest land migration anywhere on earth, earning the region the nickname Serengeti of America. Not moving from place to place, but native to the area are head-butting behemoth musk oxen, polar bears and grizzlies, foxes both arctic and red, delicately stepping Dall sheep, eagles, and wolves. Birds from all of the world make a trip there once a year.

We see the effects of global warming in these traditionally Gwich'n lands, a polar bears cope with shrinking ice of the Beaufort Sea mosquitoes thriving in more temperate climes torture the caribou.

And while narrator Campbell Scott intones earnestly throughout the episode, he doesn't cast blame on either man or nature for the fact that winters in the environs are eight degrees warmer than 50 years ago. We're shown a bit of the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay -- largest in North America -- but, to the program's credit, we're not made to feel guilty for our dependence on fuel. Hey, people are animals, too!

One would have to be singularly obsessed to call this episode anti-fossil fuel propaganda. It's a good episode, beautifully filmed as usual. That in it which might smack of propaganda is fairly straightforward, and seems to be a reasonable reading of the situation. Funny how some like to see evil where it is not particularly present, but will not question their own overly simplified understandings of the complex world we live in.

This a straightforward biology piece on caribou in the far north of America. If it scares you, or you feel you must misread it, you have confused yourself with the world you live in. That's never very smart, nor very healthy for what must be a poorly adjusted ego.