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.
So, urban heat islands do not contribute to AGW?
When Alarmists talk about global warming they mean a worldwide change in the planet’s climate caused by human activity that spans almost every square mile of the planet. They don’t mean a regional unavoidable effect. They mean a global change that can be avoided by regulating human activity and forcing new technologies onto the market before they are mature enough for popular use.
That kind of worldwide change spanning so much terrain and airspace cannot be caused by urban heat islands or human activity. It will be from mostly natural factors.
When I talk about climate change I mean almost exclusively urban heat islands and measurable/visible pollution. Urban heat islands will always exist, no matter what technology we use so UHI should be eliminated from the question of global warming/climate change.
The BBC article failed to make mention of any UHI contamination of the Peak District even though it is obvious and as usual treated wildlife as being dumb and incapable of adaptation. Insect and bird species are more adaptable than humans!
Anthony,
Speaking of Mr Dyson, Dr. Connelly and Wikipedia I noticed that almost all of Dr. Connelly’s once extensive input in the discussion of Mr. Dyson’s wiki stub has been deleted. Same thing with your. In fact a lot of the discussion Dr. Connelly had over skeptics bio’s has been deleted.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Dr. Connelly finally realized that he is subject to the strict libel laws of her majesties’ empire and has recently wiped his slate clean.
Mr Dyson is a national treasure.
John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern were probably acquaintances of his.
Oskar Morgenstern wrote a book in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s on the accuracy of economic measurements. In that book he mentioned something by Norbert Wiener about computers. If my weak memory serves me correctly Wiener was mentioned as being worried that computers would be abused because calculations would be so easy and thought and theory would be neglected.Isn’t Mr Dyson saying about the same thing with regard to “climate change”?
And isn’t it amazing Hansen a big time user of computers and shall we say questionable user of observations accurate or not would say “there are bigger fish to fry than Dyson”. In my opinion, Hansen can’t hold a candle to the toe of Dyson as the saying goes.
They don’t make them like Dyson, Wiener, Neumann, Morgenstern ,Teller,Mises, Hayek,Salk, Fermi and others of that generation.
JimB (10:59:18) :
“…not to be missed is this video of Gordon Brown getting “addressed”…”
perhaps Jim you would like to summarize the 6000 coments?
My favorite line from the clip was “you can not borrow your way out of debt”
Back to this post’s topic: Dyson
I read the entire article, long but worth the time.
I would argue that getting environmentalism a religion is something we should all push for so we can sue to have global warming policy removed from political debate as a violation of the separation of church and state.
Aron
A little while ago in another thread you posted some information on smog stopping sunlight and affecting temperatures and mentioned that people wore gloves and other clothes because of its effect. Can you give me a reference
for this so I can read more. It sounds interesting.
Tonyb
UK Sceptic – thanks for the link.
Aron (06:59:22) :
Here’s yet another big failure of investigative journalism and scientific research.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/7963088.stm
“Ditches are being blocked at Forsinard, Caithness, in a bid to help the larvae. ”
The article refers Forsinard, Caithness which is part of The Flow Country.
I still remember the enthusiasm when trees were being planted in the bog;
and being told about all the new species of birds which will be attracted by the trees.
Reality the RSPB has owned this area since the early 1990’s!
http://www.rspb.org.uk/supporting/campaigns/flowcountry/future.asp
“in the 1990s, the RSPB bought 17,600 acres in the centre of this threatened habitat, to keep it safe for birds and other wildlife. Here we have created our Forsinard nature reserve.”
Since the RSPB took over Forsinard all they have done is killed off the daddy longlegs. Next they will be erecting wind turbines on the site.
In my view this is an article is an attempt to heal yesterdays massive harm over wind Farms. It is trying to make out that RSPB is a conservationist organisation.
I’ll not being giving generously to the RSPB ever again.
Well maybe when I go up to see my Ospreys at The Lock of the Lowes.
Yes yes yes I’ll give generously.
Freeman Dyson!!
I have had a good day reading
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html
“The fundamental reason why carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is critically important to biology is that there is so little of it. A field of corn growing in full sunlight in the middle of the day uses up all the carbon dioxide within a meter of the ground in about five minutes. If the air were not constantly stirred by convection currents and winds, the corn would stop growing. ”
All the CO2 in 5 minutes.
Wow, never knew that, never thought about it.
“To stop the carbon in the atmosphere from increasing, we only need to grow the biomass in the soil by a hundredth of an inch per year. Good topsoil contains about ten percent biomass, [Schlesinger, 1977], so a hundredth of an inch of biomass growth means about a tenth of an inch of topsoil. Changes in farming practices such as no-till farming, avoiding the use of the plow, cause biomass to grow at least as fast as this.”
So is intensive farming – ploughing – causing CO2 to rise?
Is this taken into account with sophisticated computer models?
“if the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is allowed to continue, shall we arrive at a climate similar to the climate of six thousand years ago when the Sahara was wet? [I]f we could choose between the climate of today with a dry Sahara and the climate of six thousand years ago with a wet Sahara, should we prefer the climate of today?”
Ahhhh!!
Well, I think that I would choose, eh..
What a man what a brain.
Hi Tony,
Gloves and hats only to protect hair and nails from soot. When I mentioned clothes I said they were capable of wearing jackets even in the summer because they didn’t feel the full effect of the sun like we do today, unless they ventured far from the cities.
We can see that as the Clean Air Act took effect the use of hats, gloves and heavy clothing dropped off at the same rate that the smog vanished. From the 60s-70s onward people no longer had to protect themselves from soot and they started to enjoy more sunlight on their skin. Conversely popular use of hats and gloves took off in the first place as cities began to get dirtier and smokier in the 1600s.
There was a great site full of Victorian stuff, a really treasure trove full of first hand accounts, issues of Punch, news articles, short stories, etc. It explained a lot about the fashions of the day.
I think it was http://www.victorianweb.org but it looks completely different from the one I used to visit.
I was looking at some old photos at work of our business’s founder back in the late 1800s. I found in almost every photo there was smog, even in the country surrounding London.
You might also want to see Albert Kahn’s collection of photos. He had many taken in Japan in the early half of the 20th century. Again we see smog from wood and coal fires, again even in the country. Many of the photos were shown in this TV programme
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00jdvv1/Japan_in_Colour_The_Wonderful_World_of_Albert_Kahn/
Aron (13:32:06) :
“Gloves and hats only to protect hair and nails from soot. When I mentioned clothes I said they were capable of wearing jackets even in the summer because they didn’t feel the full effect of the sun like we do today, unless they ventured far from the cities.
We can see that as the Clean Air Act took effect the use of hats, gloves and heavy clothing dropped off at the same rate that the smog vanished. From the 60s-70s onward people no longer had to protect themselves from soot and they started to enjoy more sunlight on their skin. ”
Yes the Clean Air Act what a difference it made to our cities.
Living in a large rural town in SW Scotland the Clean Air Act does not exist.
Chimneys belch out a grey come yellow sulphur clouds. Cough cough cough…
I often put on the cars air re-cycle when I drive through Cairnryan; trust me you need it, especially when you cannot see the road ahead due to chimney smoke. Cough, cough cough ….
One of my students had very bad Asthma and one winter he was on his knees.
I asked him which University he was going to.
He said Glasgow.
Good I said your Asthma will clear up, the air is so much better in Glasgow than here. Guess what??????????
Yet you would think, or told, that country air is better.
“DJ (21:58:23) : The fact that he signed the discredited Oregon petition speaks volumes”
This petition has more potential to do damage to AGW hysteria than any other thing. This is why people like DJ reserve their best attacks for it.
Every name on the Oregon Petition was verified befored it was presnted to the President.
The Oregon Petition has never been discredited.
In the pretend world of a greened Wikipedia it may have been called in to question, but not in the real world.
The fact that you would say this DJ “speaks volumes” about you.
“policyguy (22:18:22) : A living icon…”
Thinking scientists who are believers in AGW but then see that Freeman Dyson is not may find cause for pause.
” evanmjones (22:43:41) :
Evan, You may recall I’ve offered you a guest post on this subject. – Anthony
No, I didn’t. And I’ll be happy to! I’ll be in touch. ”
I am looking forward to seeing it Mr Jones!!
For what it is worth, there are other contemporary fields of inquiry in which the dogma of the overtenured has become the opiate of undergraduates.
Three cheers for amateurs! — who do what they do from love of a subject, not for advancing a career among the “experts.”
-psi (MA, PhD)
Good I said your Asthma will clear up, the air is so much better in Glasgow than here. Guess what??????????
haha
Well, asthma can be caused by genetics, illness and viruses.
I wrote the other day that environmentalists were linking CO2 to an increase in asthma when there is no evidence to suggest such a link. There is however evidence to suggest that some asthmatics have been cured using breathing exercises which retain more CO2 in the lungs for the duration of the exercises. My brother’s asthma was cured by this method.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buteyko_method
B Kerr and Aron
I always used to suffer badly from Asthma, perhaps caused by pollution in my younger days, perhaps by being allergic to our various dogs. I had an operation to deal with an eye problem 10 years ago and from that day to this I have not suffered from Asthma even during the summer when I used to get hay fever which aggravated the condition.
I put it down to the anaesthetic purging the system in some way as the Asthma had literally cleared up when I woke from the operation. Strange but true.
TonyB
You guys are missing the point. Dyson’s expertise WAS theoretical physics. He was one of the pioneers of Quantum Electrodynamics, the “Strange theory of the interaction of light with matter”, and prototype for ALL Quantum Field Theories, which are so important both to all particle physics and to attempts to discover a quantum theory of gravity.
But WHAT has he done since then? And HOW is any of that relevant expertise to issues of climatology and atmospheric science?
The answers to these questions do NOT encourage me to believe that he is being scientific when he criticizes global warming/climate change.
Also, even if he is free from the various age-related dementias, that is no guarantee that his thinking process is as sound as in his youth. Sometimes people just get crochety and opinionated as they get old.
That could be what happened here.
John F. Hultquist (11:52:00) :
This may be a bit convoluted but I hope you stay with me….
Not convoluted at all. This model of working with nature is what true environmentalism is all about…a story.
I am from the Pacific Northwest but now live on the east coast. Two summers ago I got up off my duff and spent a week backpacking in the Sierras. It was truly a lifechanging experience for me at 50, to return to real mountains and do some serious backpacking.
I got in about 25 miles, to a place called High Lake, just north of the Yosemite wilderness, about 9,000 feet in elevation.
This watercolor will give you a feeling for what the lake is like:
http://www.sierrawesternart.com/images/High%20Sierra%20Reverie%20-%20web.jpg
While I was there, I met two local ranchers, who had come up by horseback. They explained to me something about the recent history of the lake: “environmentalists” had been trying to blow up the shallow concrete damn that forms the lake, which was built in the 1930’s as a WPA project.
I was shocked. I consider myself an environmentalist, and at one point in my life was actively anti-nuclear power (now I am still pro-solar, etc, but not so anti-nuke, especially because of pebble bed reactors, which I realize are a huge improvement over older technologies).
But I could not for the life of me understand why anyone would want to destroy that beautiful mountain ecosystem, created by human engenuity working with nature to enhance what was given to us….I think of the long history of the Japanese aesthetic of rock gardens, etc., where human labor is used to cultivate an originally natural space, so that what is produced is with nature but also an expression of the human spirit.
Why is that so many Americans have such foolishly narrow notions of an imposed and artificial distinction between man and nature?
To me, the great Califorian poet and environmentalist Robinson Jeffers said it best when he exhorted us:
The greatest beauty is organic wholeness,
the wholeness of life and things,
the divine beauty of the universe.
Love that, not man apart from that . . .
Jeffers spent a good part of his life building a house, stone by stone, and he understand that we are not separate from the stone, and the stone is not separate from us.
Sorry if I’m getting too metaphysical. I guess I’ve been waiting to share that story….
Antony, keep up the great work.
-psi
TonyB (15:02:29) :
there has been found a link between asthma and essential fatty acids deficiency. I’m sure you can find lots about it on the internet. BTW, I’m not a doctor, but this is what ive heard
OT i know, but just wanted to inform him.
MattJ (16:48:14) commits the ultimate completely baseless ad hominem attack.
I agree with MattJ. I think we should only listen to scientists under the age of 10 to be sure that age has not degraded their thinking capacity.
MattJ,
“Sometimes people just get crochety and opinionated as they get old.”
Why you young whippersnapper, it looks like you might be a little opinionated yourself. Why don’t you try to say something nice about your elders?
Besides, what makes you think that Mr Dyson even knows how to crochet? And what’s wrong with crocheting, anyway?
Maybe if you took up crocheting or even knitting your fingers would be to busy to be launching these unfounded attacks against a great man of science…
Knit one purl two,
Mike Bryant
“if the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is allowed to continue, shall we arrive at a climate similar to the climate of six thousand years ago when the Sahara was wet? [I]f we could choose between the climate of today with a dry Sahara and the climate of six thousand years ago with a wet Sahara, should we prefer the climate of today?”
I’ll not take the Ice Age. IPCC, Keep your grimy hands off my CO2. I like growing things to eat. I also like the antifreeze capabilities of C02. Keeps them IceAge Gremlins at bay.
Start worrying about getting crops moved to warmer climes as this Deep Solar Minimum drags on into a Grand Minimum.
evanmjones, the reason WWII did not see a major spike in CO2 output was 2 fold. First, the buildup really began in 1937, and was more a transition from one product to another. Plants making cars began making tanks, plants making desks made riffles, etc.
The stops were not pulled out until 1940 in England. Germany did not go to full war production until 1943. To say nothing of the Great Burning. But more on that later.
Second is MAN IS NOT THE MAIN REASON CO2 IS GOING UP.
The lack of a spike may well be evidence for that. Also, Antarctic proxies were used (and there are other problems with ice cores that are enumerated in the earlier comment).
To the others: Working on it.