I posted the following on Romm’s Climate Progress:

“how can anyone take a post seriously that has the insulting title “Freeman Dyson, Climate Crackpot” – an ad hominem attack like that simply does not deserve any response or discussion; neither does Thomas Friedman’s slander of NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF’s well-balanced NYT article”.

Wonder how long it will stay up…

You don’t know much about the subject of this site, do you?

I’m a big believer in visual aids. And I’m here to help newbies:

click1

click2

click3

click4

click5

click6

click7

click8

click9

click10

You can quit worrying about “climate change.” The climate always changes. And there’s nothing you or anyone else can do about it.

‘I will send out something (“Worshiping the Temple of Doom”) on cap-and-trade soon. It is incredible how governments resist the obvious (maybe not so incredible when lobbying budgets are examined, along with Washington’s revolving doors). This is not rocket science. If we want to move toward energy independence and solve the climate problem, we need to stop subsidizing fossil fuels with the public’s money and instead place a price on carbon emissions. ‘

http://community.nytimes.com/blogs/comments/dotearth/2009/03/25/some-inconvenient-thinkers.html?s=1&pg=8

He is perfectly entitled to voice an opinion,as do the contrariness as he also states.

However the “colorful” language and timing is obvious so we can identify his “raison d’etre to influence the “press” by an instantaneous “soundbite”(and which will be in the British press within minutes of the release) and the “rent a crowd” protesters who will no doubt respray their placards for the G20 meetings this week.

Hansen also shows how his critical research is undertaken

“* The reporter left the impression that my conclusions are based mainly on climate models. I always try to make clear that our conclusions are based on #1 Earth’s history, how it responded to forcings in the past, #2 observations of what is happening now, #3 models. Here is the actual note that I sent to the reporter after hanging up on him:

I looked up Freeman Dyson on Wikipedia, which describes his views on “global warming” as below. If that is an accurate description of what he is saying now, it is actually quite reasonable (I had heard that he is just another contrarian). However, this also indicates that he is under the mistaken impression that concern about global warming is based on climate models, which in reality play little role in our understanding — our understanding is based mainly on how the Earth responded to changes of boundary conditions in the past and on how it is responding to on-going changes.”

But paleoclimatic studies tell us that we are not sure of the initial conditions,and as historical behavior in ALL dynamic systems is sensitive to initial conditions we can only use the studies to tell us of the stationary states of the historical past(and where often higher temperature states are present when CO2 Is lower eg Pliocence) so the paradox is the rule) When we imitate equations of motion the error rises exponentially introducing a temporal horizon .

“Now of course gas isn’t so cheap and is getting scarce, which is the main reason that the UK is switching back to nuclear, it’s nothing to do with global warming – that’s just rhetoric to please the chattering classes.”

Actually, natural gas is cheap, and getting cheaper.

http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/natural-gas-glut.html

Nuclear power is far more expensive than natural gas power when nuclear is not subsidized by government.

http://energyguysmusings.blogspot.com/2009/02/nuclear-power-costs-2008.html

Hmm, I can think of a few on the AGW side that describes. But the truth, Mattj, is that genius doesn’t ever follow the herd or give a toss for consensus.

Not enough to even be noticed.

No, I don’t buy it, for a number of reasons, which I’ll get into later. But thanks for the link.

Here’s a link to Amazon’s listing of Dyson’s numerous books on scientific topics:
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_?url=search-alias%3Dstripbooks&field-keywords=freeman+dyson&x=0&y=0

Here’s the link to the NYT article, copied from the top of this thread, which should disabuse you of some of your concerns about Dyson’s with-it-ness:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=all

Here’s a link to his article “Heretical Thoughts and Climate Change”
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html

He’s not just spouting off his head on the climate issue. He collaborated with scientists at Oak Ridge in studying it decades ago. He’s doubtless, I trust, read the main “pro” literature, and discussed and debated the matter with knowledgeable scientists.

“Some Inconvenient Thinkers. On climate, Mr. Dyson may be right or wrong, and pretty much admits that.”

Which stirred the hornets at Climate Progress to this stinging invective:

“It is one thing for the puff-piece profilers at the NYT magazine to give the eccentric Dr. Dyson a forum and a free pass to say whatever anti-scientific nonsense comes into his head at the moment — but if the top climate science reporter for the entire New York Times thinks “Dyson may be right,” then may be the newspaper should simply dump their entire climate-reporting staff and start from scratch.
Note to Andy: You have simply gone too on this one. I call on you to retract that statement.”

As we have noted to Mr. Revkin, the Times Climate reporting is mostly concerned with population – a legitimate concern. It is our suggestion that the Times and Mr. Revkin redirect their Climate section to address the population issue head on. Thinking people on Earth can handle it. And, without the burden of fictional climate disaster hanging over our heads – we can better address the issues directly responsible for population imbalance.

Somewhat OT, I’ve had the pleasure of a brief discussion with Professor Dyson during a celebration of John Wheeler’s birthday. He is immediately fascinating and, per this story, even a bit “puckish” – to his infinite credit.

READ THE LAST STATEMENT. JACKPOT!

Chris
Norfolk, VA

I could work out how to get the answer but no way do the arithmetic to produce it in a few seconds without a pen & paper.

I think the smallest such integer is 105263157894736842

Doubling it has an interesting property!