Climatologists Are No Einsteins, Says His Successor
by Paul Mulshine, The Star Ledger via the GWPF
Freeman Dyson is a physicist who has been teaching at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since Albert Einstein was there. When Einstein died in 1955, there was an opening for the title of “most brilliant physicist on the planet.” Dyson has filled it.
So when the global-warming movement came along, a lot of people wondered why he didn’t come along with it. The reason he’s a skeptic is simple, the 89-year-old Dyson said when I phoned him.
“I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic,” Dyson said.
…
Then in the late 1970s, he got involved with early research on climate change at the Institute for Energy Analysis in Oak Ridge, Tenn.
That research, which involved scientists from many disciplines, was based on experimentation. The scientists studied such questions as how atmospheric carbon dioxide interacts with plant life and the role of clouds in warming.
But that approach lost out to the computer-modeling approach favored by climate scientists. And that approach was flawed from the beginning, Dyson said.
“I just think they don’t understand the climate,” he said of climatologists. “Their computer models are full of fudge factors.”
A major fudge factor concerns the role of clouds. The greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide on its own is limited. To get to the apocalyptic projections trumpeted by Al Gore and company, the models have to include assumptions that CO-2 will cause clouds to form in a way that produces more warming.
“The models are extremely oversimplified,” he said. “They don’t represent the clouds in detail at all. They simply use a fudge factor to represent the clouds.”
Dyson said his skepticism about those computer models was borne out by recent reports of a study by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in Great Britain that showed global temperatures were flat between 2000 and 2010 — even though we humans poured record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere during that decade.
That was vindication for a man who was termed “a civil heretic” in a New York Times Magazine article on his contrarian views. Dyson embraces that label, with its implication that what he opposes is a religious movement. So does his fellow Princeton physicist and fellow skeptic, William Happer.
“There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.”
To show how uncivil this crowd can get, Happer e-mailed me an article about an Australian professor who proposes — quite seriously — the death penalty for heretics such as Dyson. As did Galileo, they can get a reprieve if they recant.
I hope that guy never gets to hear Dyson’s most heretical assertion: Atmospheric CO2 may actually be improving the environment.
“It’s certainly true that carbon dioxide is good for vegetation,” Dyson said. “About 15 percent of agricultural yields are due to CO2 we put in the atmosphere. From that point of view, it’s a real plus to burn coal and oil.”
In fact, there’s more solid evidence for the beneficial effects of CO2 than the negative effects, he said. So why does the public hear only one side of this debate? Because the media do an awful job of reporting it.
“They’re absolutely lousy,” he said of American journalists. “That’s true also in Europe. I don’t know why they’ve been brainwashed.”
I know why: They’re lazy. Instead of digging into the details, most journalists are content to repeat that mantra about “consensus” among climate scientists.
The problem, said Dyson, is that the consensus is based on those computer models. Computers are great for analyzing what happened in the past, he said, but not so good at figuring out what will happen in the future. But a lot of scientists have built their careers on them. Hence the hatred for dissenters.
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Plainly spoken good sense.
Didn’t Michael Mann or another member of The Team refer to Dyson as a “mere physicist” once? Wish I could track down that quote.
Dyson’s skepticism is simplicity itself: ““I think any good scientist ought to be a skeptic,” His declarations on the usefulness of models versus experiment is also simple and pretty much what thinking skeptics have been saying. Nice to be in such company!!
This has been a really bad few weeks for the Alarmists. No wonder they are unusually cranky.
I’m glad to hear my home town was trying to use real science to learn about climate change. Of course, if they didn’t practice real science in Oak Ridge, the place wouldn’t have still existed in the seventies.
Not only lazy but very much infested with leftist leanings and a considerable amount of envy for those who are enterprising and make a good living from a bit of calculated risk-taking. Journalism in my experience attracts two kinds of people, those in it for the love of reporting and investigating and misanthropes, delighting only in telling their audience off. Most of the former turn into the latter under the yoke of publishers who only see them as a means to sell advertising while squeezing them for every penny of budget. The rest takes flight and becomes successful writing books or in other endeavors, reinforcing the cycle of envy for those left behind. And I say that as someone who has worked in the profession for over a decade.
Dr. Dyson is a hero of mine. However, his media comment calls for some input from a man who has been in the television news media for 60 years.
At it’s peak during the 70’s through the 90’s the TV media was not lazy. There were some solid science reporters. However, the Management above them was all most universally politically liberal motivated in all judgements. Global Warming came to the media via Al Gore and that was the “ballgame”. Whatever this leading liberal said was taken as absolute and any efforts by science reporters to balance coverage were rejected.
As TV began to decline in 2000 and after, science reporters were among the first to be eleminated. The liberal bias, for the most part, continued and their were no people and no money to explore scientific issues. In the meantime the Al Gore position had been accepted by all important scientific organizations and the Federal research dollars were producing a steady stream of pro Global Warming papers. The “lazy” and biased media accepted them without any doubt in their correctness.
In this internet and smart phone dominated time, the lazy and biased media is losing its power. Now a more balanced presentation of the issues is available thanks to WUWT and other fine internet blog sites. The special presentationsw are there on You Tube as well. A new survey has found that 37% of Americans are now skeptical of Global Warming. There is hope. We skeptics need to continue to make our case as professionally and in as scientifically sound manner as we can.
Dr Dyson, we old men should not give up.
Oh the truth hurts! The CAGW religion is failing along with the hopes and dreams of the false prophets who peddle their special brand of snake oil. May the liars and cheats suffer the same fate as the poor disadvantaged people who have suffered and died as a result of cruel energy policies.
So good to hear the views of a real scientist. Trouble is, our politicians think he is the chap who invented the bagless vacuum cleaner.
My hero in science for many decades. A giant, fair and imaginative intellect now under attack from farcical anthropophagian midgets.
mmmm – fudge
Dyson is my hero. I first heard about him when he was hired by NASA to investigate the Challenger disaster in the late 1980’s. They hired him because they knew he’d find the cause of the disaster and he wouldn’t sugar coat the findings. And that’s exactly what he did.
Warmists have often told me that we can’t carry out an experiment to see if AGW is valid as we don’t have 2 Earths. They can’t see the Wood For The Trees.
..and yet, no one questions why CO2 levels were so low, and stayed so low, to begin with…..
for the dimwits, there’s a reason, and it’s not a good one
“They’re absolutely lousy,” he said of American journalists. “That’s true also in Europe. I don’t know why they’ve been brainwashed.”
When 5 people control 95%+ of the media it is not a stretch to think in terms of top down “editorial parameters” that must be followed. So do those 5 people have a vested interest in the warmista religion?
It is wonderful when the old and wise share their wisdom, but not all respect their elders. Some Alarmists will simply sneer, “He is old; what does he know about new stuff?” What I’d really like to see is more and more young scientists displaying the courage (and risk to their careers) that the old and wise are displaying. Have the young no guts? (That’s a challenge, in case you wondered.)
Oh, and by the way, the science is NOT settled.
Who are you going to believe – an old crank like Dyson or a stellar young genius like Michael Mann?
If I don’t add /sarc there are those who will miss the fissionable sarcasm in that statement.
Great article. Only mistake was missing Feynman’s tenure as most brilliant living physicist.
Wow, I got two quotes out of this one post to add to my personal Great Quotes list. Thank you Prof. Dyson and Prof. Harper. My other quotes are from Ghandi, Churchill, Ben Franklin, Keynes, and Bertrand Russell….I love this science blog site.
To show how uncivil this crowd can get, Happer e-mailed me an article about an Australian professor who proposes — quite seriously — the death penalty for heretics such as Dyson. As did Galileo, they can get a reprieve if they recant.
That really does say it all about the Warmist crowd doesn’t it? What is scientific about views like that?
But that approach lost out to the computer-modeling approach favored by climate scientists. And that approach was flawed from the beginning,
But? I thought Mosher kept telling us to trust their models and algorithms, even when real world data disagreed?
Was it Fermi or Bethe who said: “Give me four variables and I’ll let an elephant appear, give me five and he will wag with his trunk!” ?? R.Feynman told it in one of his popular books!
Did Richard Feynman ever opine on the subject of AGW or climate change? I would be interested to hear some of that.
When one of the popular press skeptic organizations gives climate science a fair going over instead of dropping steaming warmist dogma in their readers’ laps, then all will know the end is at hand. BWAHAHAHAHAHA.
Unsurprisingly, the more pure scientists I meet on each side and in between, the more I see who is the most open, investigative, and carry the most common sense about the CO2 issue.