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Interesting fellow, Dr. Bellamy. Unfortunately he seemed to have fallen victim to the desire of most scientists to hold a differing, earth-shattering voice that is decisively separate from the consensus. This is every scientists dream - it is the equivalent to a new discovery, something that ultimately leads to immortality in the scientific realm.
The problem, really, is how you get there - do you get there with honest, sound, valid evidence to support your assertions? Or do you fall the way of the dodo (like every Creationist "scientist" I've ever known) and essentially utilize unsupported assertions, and if all else fails - make shit up?
A quick google scan on this guy tends to support the latter:
| quote: | In 2004, he wrote an article in the Daily Mail in which he described the theory of man-made global warming as "poppycock".1 A typographical error in a recent letter he published in the New Scientist (April 16th, 2005) suggested a large percentage (555 of 625!) of the world's glaciers were advancing, not retreating. This was a gift for global warming deniers, but turned out to be untrue and misleading.2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Bellamy |
Why was it misleading?:
| quote: | “Despite his scientific reputation, he makes all the mistakes that are possible”. He had cited data which was simply false, failed to provide references, completely misunderstood the scientific context and neglected current scientific literature.(4) The latest studies show unequivocally that most of the world’s glaciers are retreating.(5)
But I still couldn’t put the question out of my mind. The figures Bellamy cited must have come from somewhere. I emailed him to ask for his source. After several requests, he replied to me at the end of last week. The data, he said, came from a website called www.iceagenow.com.
Iceagenow.com was constructed by a man called Robert W. Felix to promote his self-published book about “the coming ice age”. It claims that sea levels are falling, not rising; that the Asian tsunami was caused by the “ice age cycle”; and that “underwater volcanic activity – not human activity – is heating the seas”.
Is Felix a climatologist, a vulcanologist, or an oceanographer? Er, none of the above. His biography describes him as a “former architect”.(6) His website is so bonkers that I thought at first it was a spoof. Sadly, he appears to believe what he says. But there indeed was all the material Bellamy cited in his letter, including the figures – or something resembling the figures – he quoted. “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.”(7) The source, which Bellamy also cited in his email to me, was given as “the latest issue of 21st Century Science and Technology”.
21st Century Science and Technology? It sounds impressive, until you discover that it 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.(8) He has claimed that the British royal family is running an international drugs syndicate,(9) that Henry Kissinger is a communist agent,(10) that the British government is controlled by Jewish bankers,(11) and that modern science is a conspiracy against human potential.(12)
It wasn’t hard to find out that this is one of his vehicles: Larouche is named on the front page of the magazine’s website, and the edition Bellamy cites contains an article beginning with the words “We in LaRouche’s Youth Movement find ourselves in combat with an old enemy that destroys human beings … it is empiricism.”(13)
Oh well, at least there is a source for Bellamy’s figures. But where did 21st Century Science and Technology get them from? It doesn’t say. But I think we can make an informed guess, for the same data can be found all over the internet. They were first published online by 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 National Center for Public Policy Research and countless others.(14) They have even found their way into the Washington Post.(15) They are constantly quoted as evidence that manmade climate change is not happening. But where did they come from? Singer cites half a source: “a paper published in Science in 1989”.(16) Well, the paper might be 16 years old, but at least, and at last, there is one. Surely?
I went through every edition of Science published in 1989, both manually and electronically. Not only did it contain nothing resembling those figures; throughout that year there was no paper published in this journal about glacial advance or retreat.
So it wasn’t looking too good for Bellamy, or Singer, or any of the deniers who have cited these figures. But there was still one mystery to clear up. While Bellamy’s source claimed that 55% of 625 glaciers are advancing, Bellamy claimed that 555 of them – or 89% – are advancing. This figure appears to exist nowhere else. But on the standard English keyboard, 5 and % occupy the same key. If you try to hit %, but fail to press shift, you get 555, instead of 55%. This is the only explanation I can produce for his figure. When I challenged him, he admitted that there had been “a glitch of the electronics”.(17)
So, in Bellamy’s poor typing, we have the basis for a whole new front in the war against climate science. The 555 figure is now being cited as definitive evidence that global warming is a “fraud”, a “scam”, a “lie”. I phoned New Scientist to ask if he had requested a correction. He had not been in touch.(18)
It is hard to convey just how selective you have to be to dismiss the evidence for climate change. You must climb over a mountain of evidence to pick up a crumb: a crumb which then disintegrates in your palm. You must ignore an entire canon of science, the statements of the world’s most eminent scientific institutions, and thousands of papers published in the foremost scientific journals. You must, if you are David Bellamy, embrace instead the claims of an eccentric former architect, which are based on what appears to be a non-existent data set. And you must do all this while calling yourself a scientist.
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2005/05/10/junk-science |
But that's digressing a bit offtopic of your post. So what exactly did Bellamy use as reference to the article you posted? Here, have a look yourself:
| quote: | A week or so ago the big-bearded TV personality and former environmentalist David Bellamy penned a frankly bizarre article in the Daily Mail, entitled 'Global warming: what a load of poppycock!'. In it, he asserted that global warming is a "myth", that increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are a good thing because CO2 fertilises plants, and that "climate change is an entirely natural phenomenon, nothing to do with the burning of fossil fuels". Amusingly, the only supporting evidence Bellamy could find to cite was the notorious Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine petition of 1998, which claimed to have the signatures of 18,000 scientists, all disagreeing with global warming. The OISM, which is run from a remote shed in an Oregon wood by a right-wing Christian fundamentalist, was so lax about the names on its petition that they included Ginger Spice and Michael J. Fox, according to PR Watch. The upshot is that many of us, including myself, who once held great respect for Bellamy's contribution to public understanding of environmental issues, are fearing for his sanity. It is especially sad to see the waters of the climate change debate muddied yet again in the week that Dr David King, the UK government's chief scientist, issued another dramatic warning of how urgent the problem has now become.
http://www.marklynas.org/wind/bloggin/68.html |
Interesting nut. BTW, here's a correspondence between Bellamy and Monbiot on his wind power dissenting view:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/200...-david-bellamy/
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Whence September dusk grows crisper still,
with leaves all crimson conquered,
I yearn to shout,
and dance about,
and stick pickles in my honker...
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Nathan Fake - Outhouse (Valentino Kanzyani Remix) 
