This is a well written essay by the New York times on Freeman Dyson. Dyson is one of the world’s most eminent physicists. As many WUWT readers know he is a skeptic of AGW aka “global warming”, even going so far as to signing the Oregon Petition, seen below.
This part really spoke to me:
What may trouble Dyson most about climate change are the experts. Experts are, he thinks, too often crippled by the conventional wisdom they create, leading to the belief that “they know it all.” The men he most admires tend to be what he calls “amateurs,” inventive spirits of uncredentialed brilliance like Bernhard Schmidt, an eccentric one-armed alcoholic telescope-lens designer; Milton Humason, a janitor at Mount Wilson Observatory in California whose native scientific aptitude was such that he was promoted to staff astronomer; and especially Darwin, who, Dyson says, “was really an amateur and beat the professionals at their own game.”
You can read an essay about his views on climate change, posted here on WUWT on 11/05/2007.
Excerpt: from the NYT article:
IT WAS FOUR YEARS AGO that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that “all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.” Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that “the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all” and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an “obsession” — the primary article of faith for “a worldwide secular religion” known as environmentalism. Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, whom Dyson calls climate change’s “chief propagandist,” and James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s “lousy science” for “distracting public attention” from “more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet.”
“The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models,” Dyson was saying. “They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models.”
If only we could get James Hansen to spend an afternoon with Freeman Dyson. (h/t to Alexandre Aguiar )
New York Times Magazine Preview
By NICHOLAS DAWIDOFF
FOR MORE THAN HALF A CENTURY the eminent physicist Freeman Dyson has quietly resided in Princeton, N.J., on the wooded former farmland that is home to his employer, the Institute for Advanced Study, this country’s most rarefied community of scholars. Lately, however, since coming “out of the closet as far as global warming is concerned,” as Dyson sometimes puts it, there has been noise all around him. Chat rooms, Web threads, editors’ letter boxes and Dyson’s own e-mail queue resonate with a thermal current of invective in which Dyson has discovered himself variously described as “a pompous twit,” “a blowhard,” “a cesspool of misinformation,” “an old coot riding into the sunset” and, perhaps inevitably, “a mad scientist.” Dyson had proposed that whatever inflammations the climate was experiencing might be a good thing because carbon dioxide helps plants of all kinds grow. Then he added the caveat that if CO2 levels soared too high, they could be soothed by the mass cultivation of specially bred “carbon-eating trees,” whereupon the University of Chicago law professor Eric Posner looked through the thick grove of honorary degrees Dyson has been awarded — there are 21 from universities like Georgetown, Princeton and Oxford — and suggested that “perhaps trees can also be designed so that they can give directions to lost hikers.” Dyson’s son, George, a technology historian, says his father’s views have cooled friendships, while many others have concluded that time has cost Dyson something else. There is the suspicion that, at age 85, a great scientist of the 20th century is no longer just far out, he is far gone — out of his beautiful mind.
But in the considered opinion of the neurologist Oliver Sacks, Dyson’s friend and fellow English expatriate, this is far from the case. “His mind is still so open and flexible,” Sacks says. Which makes Dyson something far more formidable than just the latest peevish right-wing climate-change denier. Dyson is a scientist whose intelligence is revered by other scientists — William Press, former deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, calls him “infinitely smart.” Dyson — a mathematics prodigy who came to this country at 23 and right away contributed seminal work to physics by unifying quantum and electrodynamic theory — not only did path-breaking science of his own; he also witnessed the development of modern physics, thinking alongside most of the luminous figures of the age, including Einstein, Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Witten, the “high priest of string theory” whose office at the institute is just across the hall from Dyson’s. Yet instead of hewing to that fundamental field, Dyson chose to pursue broader and more unusual pursuits than most physicists — and has lived a more original life.
I, too, am a signer of the Petition. I jumped at the chance when the Kyoto folks had their faces in the bowl so long as to affect world policy. I was one of those “rocket scientists” who worked on many early programs, including the Apollo (the latter only for a little while). I specialized in extra-terrestrial thermo-magneto hydro-dynamics (one of my favorite beer-getting buzz words), and took courses given by Rosen and Larmore, including lectures by Sydney Chapman.
So, when Freeman Dyson came along and cobbled together that incredible “book review,” I rejoiced. It allowed me to refer to the voice of an elder statesman on the order of Teller, Einstein, and others…Teller also being a signer, by the bye.
And yes, even with 100+ hours of Post Graduate studies from 3 different Universities (including one where I lectured Math as an adjunct), Masters Equivalency granted from 2 different institutions, I “Only” have a BS in Applied Mathematics….so when I lecture at my institution, I wear, about once a month, a bandanna made from a Pedigree (Dog Food) neckerchief …the word Pedigree standing on my forehead)…to point out to those who like to pee on their academic fire hydrants: “I too have a Pedigree.”
REPLY: Welcome! On this blog, everything is a matter of degrees. 😉
-Anthony
It’s been awhile since the Guardian ran an article like this one. But it is far outweighed by the daily forcefeeding of hysteria and anti-capitalist tripe from Monbiot, Pearce, Goldenberg and Vidal.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2009/mar/25/wind-climate-change
Quote “But there’s big money to be made – particularly if you’re Nigel Doughty, the venture capitalist, who donated £250,000 to Labour in the run-up to the 2005 general election. His investment company owns LM Glasfiber, the world’s biggest wind turbine manufacturer, and has won many major contracts in Britain.”
More on the Maldives too.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2009/mar/26/maldives-carbon-neutral-greenwash
Still unquestioning though…
“The people of the Maldives, only too aware that their low-lying coral atolls are likely to disappear before the end of the century, are particularly interested in climate change and Lynas’s book has been widely read in government circles in the capital Malé.”
images give good over-the-limb views. Are there possibly four Sunspecks on the Sun at present?
OOooops. Lost the link
The Stereo http://stereo.nascom.nasa.gov/browse/2009/03/26/ images give good over-the-limb views. Are there possibly four Sunspecks on the Sun at present?
The Beeb’s contribution to this debate would be laughable if it wasn’t so pathetic. I wonder if they’ve managed to work out that crane flies and daddy long-legs are the same thing.
A letter in the Daily Telegraph today http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/letters/5050737/The-Government-is-naive-to-support-environmentally-flawed-wind-farms.html takes the RSPB to task for its sudden support of more futile wind farms arguing that it’s not just a question of birds flying into the blades but the whole effect on the local habitat especially where over-wintering migrants need the space.
You would assume that the RSPB know what they’re …… nah! maybe not!
The lead letter is worth a look as well. Milliband minimus trying to pretend he’s all grown up an’ all.
Didn’t Richard Feynman say somewhere that he gave up university life because, outside it, he could think better?
Aron re the BBC on craneflies: “Since global temperatures have fallen since, how could they run an article three years later saying climate change was killing the species off without questioning local urban heat island effects?”
I’m not surprised at all, given the BBC’s complete lack of critical thinking when it comes to AGW. Next we’ll probably see an article entitled “Cranefly population alarmingly static – could climate change be to blame?” They will then have covered all eventualities.
There’s a lot of funny accounting going on in the energy advocacy business. That Der Spiegel report emphasized that it was the trading system, not the wind power itself that failed to live up to expectations. Hence the wind power still works fine within its known limitations. It seems though to be a common tactic to compare the construction cost of wind farms with the running costs of a nuclear facility which is just downright dishonesty. When you include all the costs including construction, safety and decommissioning, nuclear isn’t that hot an option. The main advantage seems to be in smaller land use, bu then most wind farms are stuck in places where its too darn windy to live anyway. Also if you were to say that the Iraq war and the previous Gulf war were both effective fossil-fuel subsidies (surely even the stalwarts must by now admit that it was all about the oil), then oil is therefore hugely subsidized too. Coal is a cheap option but clean coal most certainly wouldn’t be. It really all depends how you add things up. It doesn’t help that the nuclear zealots have usually (bizarrely) been given full control over all alternatives to nuclear. One day I hope to find some trustworthy numbers.
Aron (06:01:27) :
That’s standard operating procedure for ice dams. Quick and usually effective. It’s not so much to blow apart individual pieces, but blow apart multiple pieces that have stuck together to form the dam.
In the links posted by Richard Heg (00:40:50) : Dyson mentions several times that atmospheric CO2 can be controled more easily by managing plant stock than energy production.
Dyson suggests changes in forest management or irrigation, but a simple way to make a big dent in the carbon cycle is to stop recycling paper and other wood products. Trees and plants capture CO2 through photosynthesis and landfills, especially modern landfills, capture through entombment. Yes, a small amount of carbon mass escapes mostly as methane, but that can be captured as well and put to use.
The next step would be to end the practice of incinerating trash which returns the captured CO2 directly to the atmosphere.
The landfill technology and infrastructure is already in place and increasing capacity would be a simple matter.
Before commenting on “running out of space” for landfills, please do some calculations so that you have a true understanding of the area involved – It’s not like I’m suggesting power generation through photovoltaics!
Also, please research commercial timber production before anyone mourns the loss of trees! Timber companies need lots of trees so they can cut them down and sell them. (and if you really love trees stop organic and “locally grown” farming)
Robert Wood, if they are not visible on the visible image of the sun, they are not sunspots. In any case, it seems that the polarities are all screwed up, not too sure if they could be SC23 or SC24. You can also see a burnt diode.
@ur momisugly Rebar (09:48:10) :
You must understand that we must control emissions no matter what. Removing those emissions from the atmosphere later, or mitigating the effects of those emissions just isn’t allowed.
It does not matter if it’s cheaper or more efficient to adapt, capture or mitigate effects. Oh sure, we can clean up afterward so it’s like the emissions didn’t happen. Except that we will know they did happen and so that just can’t be allowed.
Yet Another Pundit (23:16:14) “To be a great scientist is a matter of doing (thinking), not just knowing.” I could not agree more. People outside the science fields look for credentialing and papers published and who knows what to discern whose opinions to follow. These are red herrings. There are thousands of scientists who actually make things work in industry and manufacturing via the physical sciences and math everyday. They know the limitations of sitting at a desk fiddling with models that have little to no relation to reality, and which never lead to doing. They don’t care about getting published, or soliciting help from someone with credentials, they want to get a job done, solve some problem that has not been solved before, or discover some heretofore unknown limitation that hadn’t been previously quantified. These are the real scientists with or without credentials. The thing that can’t be taught in class is what I think of as a ‘BS’ detector, without one, you’ll get nowhere in the real world, and the better a one you develop the more you will be rewarded. It maximizes efficiency in doing. Without the doing part, it is all hypothesis, and never becomes more.
“an old coot riding into the sunset”
Oh, please. The rest of us could only wish to be as lucid in our prime as Freeman Dyson is at his age.
I’ve always regarded thinkers such as Dyson to be the real scientists. Everyone else is just a technician.
evanmjones (22:39:04) :
“Why, whatever do you mean? We all know about the wild success of US schools in recent years. And how well educated the young are. (They all get A+ in Everyday Math, Commercial Arithmetic, Freeform Reading, and Self-Esteem Workshop, don’t they?)”
I think you meant indoctrinate instead of education!
There has been a long time confusion among Gwrs: One thing it is particulate matter in the air, carbon dust, incomplete combustion of oil, etc. and another the beneficial and colorless CO2
Rebar:
I couldn’t agree more. I once calculated that you could put everyone in the world in Rhode Island and give them a square meter to stretch out in. Compacting and burying trash is a no brainer. Stopping recycling is a bit heretical, but probably true with a little hard nosed thinking — a bit like removing the turrets from a Lancaster bomber so that it could actually increase its speed by 20% (A Freeman Dyson idea that was seen as too heretical. It could well have saved lives if casualties were more a function of time in enemy airspace than ability to destroy the attackers. A pretty easy problem to solve with some empirical data.)
OT, apologies if this has been posted, but not to be missed is this video of Gordon Brown getting “addressed”:
Definitely worth the watch. Wish we could have it played in both the Senate and the House.
JimB
Slightly off Dyson topic but still relevant if a little old. Check this out.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2200792/posts
Nice to see that students coming up through the school of New Labour indoctrination have stubbornly refused to close their minds to “off message” idea.
Well done those bonny chaps and chapettes.
In response to Dr. Gerhard Loebert (03:48:44)
Perhaps you can address some of the points raised in the following?
http://www.etheric.com/GalacticCenter/GCgravity.html
OT, but interesting:
The IEEE just published a story questioning why the public is so skeptical about AGW:
http://blogs.spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/2009/03/23/us_citizenry_is_less_concerned.html
You may wish to leave a comment.
JamesG,
The problems with those very windy places is that they are often far away from population centers, too. Also, we for some reason can’t put a regulator on the wind so it blows exactly when we need it. And when you think about building how many million 40 story tall wind turbines with their four story deep concrete bunkers, constructing them to replace our current nuclear plants, which rather than being decommissioned just keep plugging along, does seem a bit daunting. Makes you appreciate coal, though, especially if your a poor country like India and China, as Dyson pointed out.
Aron (06:59:22) :
So it is no surprise to see that the area they sampled is between Sheffield to the east and Greater Manchester to the west. Both of these urban areas have grown at a faster rate than the rest of England as wealth and development has spread northwards.
It’s not climate change or global warming. Again, it is warm winds carried over from urban heat islands.
So, urban heat islands do not contribute to AGW? OK, I see…it’s only contributing to AGW if it isn’t measurable! From your other post, I’d have to conclude that this *IS* AGW, and it must be funded (its correction).
The paper to read is ‘ Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide’ by Arthur and Noah Robinson & Willie Soon
This may be a bit convoluted but I hope you stay with me.
The overriding issue in all this is the concept of “catastrophic anthropologic global warming” or CAGW — this acronym has the advantage of sounding like you are choking when you try to say it. Dyson seems to harbor more of an influence for CO2 induced changes than I do but he doesn’t favor the catastrophic aspect. He recognizes serious problems that something can be done about. I think we are beginning to see more people realize the futility of trying to change the climate by reducing CO2 production.
The article about wind turbines in Europe is an example:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,606763,00.html
The theme is “Despite Europe’s boom in solar and wind energy, CO2 emissions haven’t been reduced by even a single gram.” What has happened in German is that within-country production of energy has been diversified while CO2 production has been moved to other countries for a net benefit to climate of zero.
I’m not surprised by this and here is a non-climate related personal reason why. I’ll keep this short. In 1980 we bought a Chevy pickup with so called saddle bag gas tanks. Soon after the courts were involved in declaring this model deadly because a side impact might cause an explosion. About 20 years of litigation later, owners were offered a coupon for a small discount if they traded such a truck on a new GM vehicle. The point is that nothing was done to remove or fix the problem tanks. The incentive was to shift the problem to those less financially well off. Sound familiar?
Today I read an article in the March ’09 Scientific American. A conservation biologist, Camille Parmesan, with a passion for butterflies has stirred a controversy by promoting human assisted migration for species that seem threatened in their native habitat. In the article the main threat is presented as global warming (the author is David Appell) but there is also an example of an attempt to “rewild” an endangered Florida conifer that began to decline in the 1950s — before the current fuss. In essence, this is a story of acknowledging problems and doing something. It reminds me of the story about the man saving starfish:
http://www.naturalhealthweb.com/articles/Shearstone1.html
I like to refer friends to the following article by Christopher Monckton . . .
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/images/stories/papers/originals/warming_not_happening.pdf
. . .especially the last page where he uses a series of “Even if … ” statements to establish a common sense approach to problems rather than accepting the costly but useless schemes promoted by CAGW believers.