Why do I say this? Because he does not ape along with the others but is prepared to speak out against the accepted line and view, even to the extent of being asked to leave the boards of a number of organizations.
David Bellamy first came to public prominence as an environmental consultant at the time of the 1967 Torrey Canyon disaster. He has written and presented some 400 television programmes on botany, ecology, and environmental issues. Few of us, I should think, old enough to have seen some of his programs of years back, will ever forget the “peat bog incident”. This caused David Bellamy to be firmly stuck in my mind.
David Bellamy is the originator, together with David Shreeve and the Conservation Foundation (which he also founded), of the Ford European Conservation Awards and has published over 80 scientific papers and many books.
He is Britain's most prominent campaigner against the construction of wind farms in undeveloped areas. This is despite appearing very enthusiastic about wind power in the educational video Power from the Wind produced by Britain's Central Electricity Generating Board.
His views on global warming are more likely seen as rather controversial.
In 2004, he wrote an article in the Daily Mail in which he described the theory of man-made global warming as "poppycock".
A letter he published in New Scientist (16 April 2005) asserted that a large percentage (555 of 625) of the glaciers being observed by the World Glacier Monitoring Service were advancing, not retreating. Mr. Bellamy has since admitted that the figures on glaciers were wrong and came from unsubstantiated sources, and announced in a letter to The Sunday Times on 29 May 2005 that he had "decided to draw back from the debate on global warming" . However he has not withdrawn his assertions about the causes of global warming, to which this writer can only say “thanks”.
His opinions have changed the way in which some organisations view Bellamy. In 2005 a spokesperson for Plantlife, where Bellamy has been president for 15 years, said it "would be wrong to ask him to continue [as president]".
The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts stated in 2005 "We are not happy with his line on climate change", and Bellamy was succeeded as president of the Wildlife Trusts by Aubrey Manning in November 2005.
It is rather amazing that, as soon as one has slightly controversial views that one then no longer can be accepted to be serving in this or that capacity. I am actually surprised that no one is, as yet, trying to suppress David Bellamy from actually making his comments and have stopped his books being published and sold.
While I may now digress a little we do see this again and again in matters relating to the Romani People, the history of our People, and other such aspects, for as soon as we, such as the Romani Institute, put forward ideas as to origin, time of Gypsies in Europe, and the fact, and it is a fact, that while we are all Romani we, the Romani People are not all part of the Roma. The Roma are but one part of the Romani and not the other way round. However, we must not publish that. It meets with violent reactions by the established Gypsyologists.
And as the readers of this journal will know, David Bellamy and I share views similar as far as “global warming”, now called, more correctly “climate change”, especially as to it being the result of man's activities. I arrived at my conclusion before I even knew that David had arrived at the same. While we humans and our actions and our abuse of nature may have sped it all up a slight bit climate change has always been a part of the Earth's cycles and no one can change that. We must learn to live with it and work with it and we must do that now while, at the same time, continuing to balance our life with the environment. While I am no scientist I know a little about physics and chemistry and anyone who paid attention in the relevant lessons at school may also remember that CO2 is, so it was taught (this may have changed by now), heavier than air and therefore, when, say, a silo is opened the CO2 present therein actually is pressed down. How then, can CO2 from motor vehicles, etc, reach the atmosphere and the upper atmosphere at that. Also, forgive me, but as said, I am no scientist, is it not carbon monoxide (CO) that is, amongst other things, in car exhaust fumes, and not carbon dioxide (CO2)?
While we can all see that something is happening to the climate in the same way as David Bellamy I too do not believe that it is man-made.
© Michael Smith (Veshengro), March 2008
David Bellamy - An environmentalist with his head screwed on
