 Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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PG, I can't believe it! David Bellamy should be a respected scientist, and if this article is true he has clearly ignored his training and should have his PHd devalued!
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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easiski, It's probably another example of Ostrich thinking, if you don't like what the evidence tells you, go out and find evidence that says otherwise, but don't check the accuracy or you might not like the answers
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easiski, orthodoxy is something religions encourage. Scientists MUST be prepared to challenge orthodoxy. Scientific progress is not possible without challenging, and occasionally overthrowing, orthodox thinking.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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laundryman, would citing data from websites of former architects and convicted fraudsters be an acceptable way of challenging orthodox scientific methods and thinking?
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PG, I guess that depends on the proposition and the data!
Seriously, I've no idea what Dr Bellamy has been up to, but propositions on far firmer ground than any theory of the climate have been overturned - at which point, the previous consensus counts for nothing. Even Einstein believed, wrongly, that "God does not play dice". My point is that in science it is important that nothing is unsayable, and that every proposition is exhaustively tested.
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And to prove Laundryman both right and wrong, I believe very much that Einstein was right and not wrong, and there isnt a darned thing anyone can do to prove otherwise!
However, anyone who claim that glabal warming doesnt exist is using incorrect terminology. Global warming is 100% natural.... it has happened before, as has global cooling and, if im not mistaken, there wasnt much in the way of industrial type pollution at the end of the last iceage 
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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laundryman, glaciers are either getting bigger or they're not, and assuming the Guardian report on Bellamy is accurate, he apparently preferred to quote the aforementioned alleged fraudster with a book to promote and the website of a former architect, than refer directly to the reputable organisation with a UN mandate to specifically study that area.
The architect's website is here www.iceagenow.com - Bellamy must have realised it wasn't written by someone with a formal scientific background. Just a cursory glance shows it's written by someone with an agenda. And a book to sell.
My initial post and the research mentioned isn't about whether human actions are accelerating climate change or not, indeed the WGMS study barely mentions that possibility.
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The original source for Bellamy's - and the above website's - information that "since 1980, there has been an advance of more than 55% of the 625 mountain glaciers under observation by the World Glacier Monitoring group in Zurich" is, according to Bellamy ""the latest issue of 21st Century Science and Technology".
The Guardian states that 21st Century Science and Technology:
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"is published by Lyndon LaRouche. Lyndon LaRouche is the American demagogue who in 1989 received a 15-year sentence for conspiracy, mail fraud and tax-code violations. He has claimed that the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate, that Henry Kissinger is a communist agent, that the British government is controlled by Jewish bankers, and that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential." |
21st Century Science and Technology's source? Probably
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| "Professor Fred Singer, one of the very few climate change deniers who has a vaguely relevant qualification (he is, or was, an environmental scientist). He posted them on his website, www.sepp.org, and they were then reproduced by the appropriately named junkscience.com, by the Cooler Heads Coalition, the US National Centre for Public Policy Research and countless others. They have even found their way into the Washington Post." |
Combined with Bellamy's admitted mistyping of 55% - which turned into 555 "of 625 glaciers are advancing", a quote that was reproduced by sympathetic interest groups around the world, and a whole fabricated "scientifically-based" scenario develops, ostensibly from an original "trustworthy" source.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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laundryman, I'm not saying that scientists shouldn't challenge everything - indeed they should. However when publishing what is likely to be a widely read paper they should always cite their sources and verify that the source material stands up to scrutiny. To do otherwise is irresponsible in the extreme, especially when the scientist in question is as famous in the non-scientific world as David Bellamy.
I cannot comment on the facts, or why he chose to represent the opinions of a non-scientist as scientific fact, if indeed he did. I have worked with many scientists at the University of Bath while not teaching ski-ing and none of them would even consider writing such a paper.
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Well gwaple me gwapenuts!
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You know it makes sense.
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easiski, I hadn't read the details - what he's supposed to have done does sound unsound!
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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laundryman, you're right to say "what he's supposed to have done". Monbiot's version really is hard to credit.
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Poster: A snowHead
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What a strange coincidence - I've just seen a TV advert with David Bellamy voice-over saying that 95% of all blackcurrants end up in Ribena - perhaps we'll get a rebuttal from George Monbiot!
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Wasn't all this hammered out in the letters pages of New Scientist a few months ago? Bellamy wrote in with his preposterous claim and was discredited over the next couple of issues. I can't believe this is still doing the rounds.
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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Alan Craggs, Surely the problem is not what goes on in New Scientist, but that as a well-known TV personality, many non-scientific people will believe what he says since he's supposed to be the scientist, and he seems friendly and cuddly!!! He (or any other scientist) could be discredited in the scientific press but still widely believed by the general public. 
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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easiski, that's the problem with today's cult of personality and it's by no means an isolated case.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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An interesting perspective on climate change from the point of view of the native peoples of Alaska can be heard on BBC 4 tonight at 2100 hours BST or online for 7 days after that at Radio 4's "Listen again" page.
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"Nowadays ice conditions are thinner than in the 1970s and 80s. The ice used to be 20 to 30 feet thick but now it is more like 10 feet thick. But what can we do? Sometimes I feel sad but we just have to go with what we have got.
"Up here in the Arctic we are definitely warming up, the polar pack ice has all but gone."
Percy says Western nations need to have scientific proof that the climate is warming rather than believing the word of the native people but he adds: "The white man, the climatologists are just learning what we knew was going on." |
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easiski, well that's my point - back in April he was discredited in New Scientist (a quite widely read popular magazine, not the "scientific press") and now he is discredited in the Grauniad (also not the scientific press), but still this type of myth (i.e. that there is a serious scientific debate about this subject going on) gets perpetuated because the mainstream media in general appear to be hamstrung on this sort of issue. Why were there no 6 o'clock news or Sun headlines proclaiming "TV boffin in internet scam gaff - my world has fallen apart claims bearded plant man". Only then might people begin to wake up to this kind of thing 
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Yes, read it all , and very interested. I was brought up as a little kid who belived that Europe had massive glaciers that moved slowly but were massive. Have they really shrunk ? Are they really less thick? Is summer skiing a major issue in their demise?
Very interested and a little perturbed if we are party to and/ot the cause of it
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You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
You'll get to see more forums and be part of the best ski club on the net.
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snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
snowHeads are a friendly bunch.
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eEvans, I personally believe that the world is warming up more quickly than natural evolution, and that it's our (human) fault. There is no doubt in my mind that the glaciers of the world are receding in general and that the polar ice caps are diminishing. However, on the scale of things, I should think the damage done by summer ski-ing is minimal compared with all the other stuff.
ps: No real facts, but just personal observation.
Alan Craggs, You say New Scientist is not a scientific magazine, and I believe you, but I would not buy it because of it's name. I would asume that I wouldn't understand most of it anyway. It's like when I read biomechanics papers - I just skip all the algebra!! 
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And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
And love to help out and answer questions and of course, read each other's snow reports.
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Since when has David Bellamy been a "respected scientist"? A respected populariser of science maybe, but not a respected scientist.
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He taught my cousin botany at Durham in the early seventies. She must have been impressed because she joined the RAF as soon as she graduated
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You know it makes sense.
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PG,
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Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:
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Glaciers don't form in decades, nor under normal circumstances do they vanish in decades. The process takes thousands of years. So that, combined with the inaccuracies pointed out by some other people here, makes me think that he's talking rubbish.
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Poster: A snowHead
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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That seems to be a rather poor and innaccurate synopsis of the Science papers.
A better synopsis can be found here
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php?p=170
The problem was that temperature measurements of different levels of the atmosphere from satelites and radiosondes didn't match the climate models. A warming trend was not beeing seen unlike the warming trend seen with ground level temperature measurements. The scientists have now found errors in corrections applied to the satelite datasets. The data now fits the climate models. So I'm afraid the papers actually further back up the global warming hypothesis
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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Any "massaging" of figures took place with the original measurements of atmospheric temperatures. Our esteemed scientists failed to notice that heat from the sun was absorbed by the original carrier weather ballooons, affecting the measurements being registered. The temperatures registered should have been lower, taking this heating effect into account. The argument that there was little or no warming because the evidence provided by atmospheric tests demonstrated that temperatures have remained stable in comparison with today's figures was based on incorrect data. In fact temperatures have risen over that period in line with measurements taken at ground level.
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You'll need to Register first of course.
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I've been involved (many years ago) in interpretation of earth-observation satellite data (though not inferences about temperature). My job was understanding the modelling that went on to get approximations to conditions on the ground (actually, the sea) from the physical measurements taken from low-earth orbit. The reason for doing this was to find out how any degradation of the analogue measurements through on-board digital signal processing would affect inferences about conditions on the surface. If inaccuracies didn't have much effect, we could make savings in the mass, volume and power consumption of the instrumentation, all of which are at a premium on a satellite.
I learnt a number of things from this exercise. Firstly, that these modelling techniques are never going to be especially accurate. Of the radiation reaching a sensor, only a small fraction will come from the area of interest: the rest will be the result of various scattering processes and reflections from various sources. Similarly the converse is also true: of the radiation leaving the area of interest in the direction of the sensor, only a small fraction will actually get there, due to absorption, scattering and reflection.
The second thing I learnt, was that peer-reviewed scientific papers can be full of complete b****cks. In this field there were several institutions that had published work appearing to validate a particular model. However, anyone with an inkling of statistics ought to have come to the Spock-like conclusion "there is insufficient data" (in this case "ground-truth", simultaneous measurements taken on the spot). Furthermore, although the published work purported to be independent, it relied in many places on modelling from just one group (which was not made clear in the papers). I examined this in detail. I found errors in the modelling of individual physical processes; errors in algebraic manipulation in combining these effects to produce an overall mathematical model; programming errors in the representation of this model in software - all of which were shame-facedly admitted to.
The net result was that all published work in this field at the time (admittedly it was a loooong time ago) was worthless. Even it had been scientifically sound, the clear concusion was that if want to know anything about conditions on the surface of the earth or its atmosphere, measure it on the spot rather than from several hundred miles. You can buy an awful lot of mercury thermometers for the cost of a satellite.
Fortunately, the image/signal processing techniques we researched went on to find their place in JPEG / MPEG compression of imagery and in the kind of error-correction codes used in satellite TV, so those years of my life weren't entirely wasted.
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GrahamN,
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I of course haven't read any of the links
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I thought someone might ask if I had, so I did. Bit hard to follow as I'm a cell/molecular biologist not a climateologist. They are not readily available either. I needed to 'borrow' a colleagues personnel subscription to Science to get hold of the articles. They won't actually appear in the paper magazine for a few months and our institutional subscription to Science wouldn't let me read them online. From skimming the papers one of the problems is/was that the sattelite and radiosonde data were designed and collected for weather forecasting not for climatology. The problem has come in manipulating the different data sets from varying machines as satelites were replaced software upgraded etc. so that they were consistant. Part of the problem being that the interdecadal trend in increasing tempereature scince the seventies has only been about 0.7C which is small compared to what the instruments were designed to measure for forecasting.
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All this modifying sounds a bit like my maths stats coursework, which coincidentally I lost a mark on for cocking a section up 
(The damn teacher robbed me! 47/48 combined over 2 pieces)
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FAQ
Reminds me of a multi-faith conference on the environment in Canterbury in the early 80s, a service led by the Archbishop, singing hymns surrounded by Hari Krishnas, Buddhists, Anglicans, and ... David Bellamy - I was sitting right next to him. D-B sang very loudly, slightly out of tune, and, as you say above 
... I had a (silent) fit of the giggles just as we got to "All Cweatures Gweat ...." 
)
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