I was responding to the claim that there is no "right" height. I demurred: there is a right height, and one can compare various measurements or estimates of that height to the actual "right" height. Terry and others seem to think that height is like a coastline, and that there is no right height, so (presumably) one cannot compare measurements or estimates to it.

I side-stepped the cumulation problem a while back by asking, "how much change in height and what gradients would it take so that the energy expended to get you up those hills and across those distances in the amount of time you took is consistent with the observable data?" and ended up showing how to turn an expensive power meter into a cheap altimeter.