Good grief

[pootlus]

Leaving aside the annual headbanging over the number of A grades awarded at A-level, this is the standard of journalism in the UK.

Note this paragraph:

In 1953 two people got to the top of Everest, an extraordinary achievement at the time. Yet on a single day in 1996, 39 people stood on the summit. That might suggest that Everest had become 20

Comments

[anonymous]

Unfortunately you didn't see the rest of what Professor Gordon Stobart said. This is the nature of stuff taken out of context and with the following sentence or sentences omitted. It then flies around the internet. People get all worked up without looking at the original source, which can make them look like Daily Mail readers.

[pootlus]

Despite your protestations the Everest analogy becomes even less appropriate if I add the text that followed (incidentally, the article does not place the Professor's text in quotes - which implies that the journalist paraphrased rather than took a direct quote).

That might suggest that Everest had become 20 times easier to climb. Yet the mountain remains the same height.

Of course, today people have better equipment, better training, better nutrition and so on. In that sense, it is less surprising that more people can climb Everest.

Good grief.

Firstly, I don't know why 'might' is used here. Is the author saying that the technological advances, ropes, and the teams of Sherpas are having a negligible effect? Or that people (many Everest ascendees have virtually no mountaineering experience) are, over time, becoming better mountaineers? He could have added "But take away all the assistance, and Everest is just as difficult to climb as it ever was." (which is almost certainly true). The problem is that this still doesn't help