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.
geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 1:04 pm
On the issue of belief, my mind is not closed on this subject. Nay, it is some of the readers here that are so committed to an opinion that they will not or can not admit that there is evidence contrary to their belief. So rather than seek my approval of a refutation or affirmation, I suggest that you examine the evidence, apply the proper tests and affirm or refute. You can always come to a new understanding based on new data.
———————-
Geo –
Let me explain what Stealey is looking for by stating my own answer. What would it take for me to accept that mainstream / IPCC views regarding CO2 and AGW are correct? I would accept as correct just about any reasonable AGW theory that made useful and accurate predictions. By reasonable, I mean, don’t tell me fairies and unicorns are behind it. Don’t blatantly violate our understanding of physics either like the slayers do. I would never have bothered to go looking into the science in the first place, except that I’d heard dire warnings of pending temperature rises and flooding due to expected accelerations in sea level rise for literally my entire life that never manifested. Now that I have looked into it, I understand why.
So, short and simple – if somebody ‘corrects’ the theory, and five, and ten, and fifteen years down the line the predictions made by the theory are confirmed by observations, I’ll be inclined to accept it.
This is the sort of statement Stealey is asking you for, I believe. Specifics. What would it take to persuade you to change your position.
Stealey, jump in and correct me if I’m wrong (I know you would anyway without being asked 😉 )
Moderators:
I do not know if this is possible but ask that you try to discern if geohydro2011 is a bot.
I, and I am sure others, would like to read opinion concerning Freeman Dyson, his work, life and views. Instead, the many and irrational posts from geohydro2011 are disrupting the thread.
And those posts show every indication of being a computer program and not a person.
Richard
Climate is a period of weather. A prolonged energy imbalance in the Earth’s climate system will lead to either warming (or cooling) as the case may be, but not stasis, in climate, or at least not stasis until a new equilibrium is achieved. Thus we find flux in air temperature and moisture, in this case, fluctuations in weather. It is what it is. Warming of the Arctic and melting of Arctic Sea ice has led to changes in the jet stream leading to the crazy weather we are seeing today. Still nothing that refutes the notion that climate is changing.
geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 1:49 pm
“Still nothing that refutes the notion that climate is changing.”
Geohydro2011, nobody here denies that climate is changing. Didn’t you notice that? What most of us say is that climate change is not significantly influenced by anthropogenic CO2 emissions. Because there’s no evidence, no correlation, no successful prediction by the CO2AGW scientists.
Glad that we have cleared that up. I don’t hink he’s a bot, BTW. Too few repetitions, too clean sentence structure.
I think they are very frightened of Freeman Dyson. They know their scientists come in 5 sizes smaller. So that threadbomber should be seen as a compliment.
geohydro2011 says:
“…melting of Arctic Sea ice…”
Wrong. Global ice cover is now above its long term average [the red chart line]. The discussion is about global warming, therefore your argument fails.
You say:
“…the crazy weather we are seeing today. ”
Wrong again. The Null Hypothesis has never been falsified, therefore what is observed today is in no way unusual or unprecedented. It has all happened before, and to a greater degree.
Your comments are the product of a true believer’s mind, which is made up and closed tight. There is no room for counter evidence, because that causes cognitive dissonance.
The fact is that nothing unusual is occuring. But you cannot admit that verifiable fact, because if you admit it your whole wild-eyed conjecture comes crashing down. You are not addressing science, you are merely being an advocate for your falsified belief system.
geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 11:00 am
“some of my friends here succumb to the “Monte Hall” problem where given new and updated information, a Bayesian would indeed change their initial choice based on the new information. ”
Did you give anyone information? Now I can’t exclude that one of your dozens of comments contain information, but, I won’t read them all because the ones I saw were idiotic drivel. Please don’t take that as an ad hom attack. I use “idiotic” simply as a qualifier; slightly below “imbecilic”.
An old post by ChiefIO about the wet Sahara / Sahara pump theory.
Sahara Heat pump, Hotter Sahara = Wetter Sahara
https://chiefio.wordpress.com/2010/08/10/cold-dry-sahara-hot-wet-savanna/
geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 1:49 pm
…has led to changes in the jet stream leading to the crazy weather we are seeing today….
———-
See Geo, this is not evidence. This is what we call around here hand waving. Do you have data to support your assertion that we’re seeing crazy weather? This site has resources in the reference section (see http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/climatic-phenomena-pages/extreme-weather-page/) that suggest that we are seeing nothing unusual in cyclones, tornadoes, precipitation, drought, snowfall, and so on.
Data my friend. Back up your assertions if you want to be taken seriously here.
Geohydro2011 says: “Still nothing that refutes the notion that climate is changing.”
Did someone on WUWT ever say the climate was not changing? Most questions are why, how much, and in what direction.
Simon says:
April 5, 2013 at 4:32 pm
Lars P says “Simon says”
Ummm … no I didn’t. It was a quote from Stephen Hawking. I am and never will be as sharp as he is.
Of course not.
And when the thoughts of a wise person are so easy to refute by anybody who has access to the information and wants to search for it, one asks himself to what information did he had access?
geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 11:05 am
climate is a long term record of weather–the current period of climate is statistically different from previous periods of climate.
Through what would it be statistically different from previous periods of climate?
You seem to have the common “warmista” approach to deny any climatic variations before industrialisation. Believing there could be only slow very slow, very very slow changes of 0.1 degree per century with Milankovitch cycles and nothing else.
Medieval Warm Period period is a good start if you want to learn for such changes:
http://hockeyschtick.blogspot.co.at/2012/11/new-papers-showing-medieval-warming.html
The arctic had less ice 6000 years ago:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/10/081020095850.htm
Greenland was populated in several waves which disappeared when the cold returned.
http://climate4you.com/ClimateAndHistory.htm#General%C2%A0
Try to read about the 8200 event – that was fast climatic change (btw. you see nothing of it in Marcotts paper as the proxies do not have resolutions for such fast changes: abrupt 3°C cooling over a period of 100 years:
http://www.geo.arizona.edu/palynology/geos462/8200yrevent.html
Read here about fast climate changes:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/paleo/abrupt/data4.html
John Coleman April 5, 2013 at 10:55 am
Any future history of the Greatest Science Fraud of all time should include a deep analysis of the ideological basis of this scam, of the infection of academia by the left ideologues; how the left found enviromentalism (sic) via Gro Brundtland to be the salvation of their ideology after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Don’t forget, these Watermelons still want to destroy capitalism, reverse civilization and make themselves arbiters of all human activity. i.e. Communism.
Peter Gleick: Dyson’s position on #climate will forever tarnish and diminish his legacy. Smart people aren’t always smart about everything.
I’m speechless.
atarsinc says:
April 5, 2013 at 10:32 pm
“…in the toilet…”? Hardly. Marcott, et al is the first (and so far only) effort to quantify the temperatures of the entire Holocene. So far, their results have not been refuted in any journal. If errors are found in their work in the future, it will only add to our knowledge of the Holocene. That’s Science. JP
There have been many reconstructions of the Holocene, you can go wikipedia and see Marcott & all have brought nothing new to it.
Their paper is missing any high variations as their proxies were not recording such – see 8200 event or other Bond events – such are missing completely in their study.
So you smooth the whole history and then put a stick in the end? So yes, of course, the paper is in the toilet.
What they brought new was the proxy hockey stick – which was shown to be an artifact.
http://clivebest.com/blog/?p=4790
The amusing thing about all this is that Dyson’s has a pretty mild interest in climate change and spends very little time on it. When I visited him last year he was reluctant to even talk much about it. His opinions on the topic have been blown way out of proportion by the media.
By the Dyson himself has said that he finds the comparison with Einstein silly.
I was looking for quotes on the topic of “failing better” the other day, and came across a dynamite one by his daughter, Esther.
So Freeman Dyson was on my mind for a few moments. It’s good to see that that brilliant man has weighed in with a cautionary nod to realism and the scientific method of data-driven truth-seeking, properly applied.
Not the agenda-driven variety which is ever so much in vogue.
I really object to the sly attempt to either get the moderators to censor a dissenter or to smear the dissenter and undermine his credibility through false means.
You cannot surely have read his or her comments and concluded it is a “bot”. You disagree, fine.
[Reply: no one is censoring geohydro2011 or anyone else here. — mod.]
geohydro2011 says:
April 6, 2013 at 1:04 pm
On the issue of belief, my mind is not closed on this subject. Nay, it is some of the readers here that are so committed to an opinion that they will not or can not admit that there is evidence contrary to their belief.
====================================================
Well, why don’t you post some then?
Geohydro2011 says: “Still nothing that refutes the notion that climate is changing.”
AAARRGHH!! It is always the climate alarmist cult that believes the climate never changed prior to human CO2 emissions! They all follow Michael Mann’s hokey stick belief that the hockey stick handle was flat, until the start of the industrial revolution — when global temperature suddenly began to rise exponentially.
The truth is that scientific skeptics have always known that the climate changes, constantly. It is pure psychological projection to claim that skeptics don’t think the climate always changes. That is the exclusive belief of the climate alarmist crowd, which is, as usual, playing word games with the facts.
…Lookin’ at YOU, geo.
Glad to find out that Freeman Dyson is still around. I had the pleasure of hearing him speak at UBC in the 1980’s and he was clearly an independent thinker then. Given his stature in the physics community, it’s curious that the MSM hasn’t given more publicity to his ideas.
More CO2 helps plants grow and that is one of the most under-reported pieces of information in the world today. Presumably, to “environmentalists”, that is a bad thing since it means that the world’s population can keep increasing instead of mass starvation taking place as they have been predicting for decades.
For someone like Dyson who worked on the Orion project, the increasing insularity of what passes as science on earth must be maddening. The cancellation of the Orion project was one of the first cases of politics interfering with science and the process has gotten steadily worse over the decades.
Geo is making repeated broad assertions about others, and climate. He consistently does not list the name and time of the comment he is responding to, and does not quote them. His “science” assertions are broad based, and not spported by links.He may not be a bot, but he is somewhat mindless.
I had forgotten about Dr. Freeman Dyson. At least that other most worthy skeptic, Dr. William Happer, one of the 16 signatories of the Wall Street Journal op-ed, is in good company. Maybe Prinbceton hasn’t caught the AGW disease like so many other places – institutions in Pennsylvania, Virginia and Kansas come ti mind – or not as badly, at least.
Also the Australian calling for skeptics to be put to death is Richard Parncutt, a music professor at the University of Linz in Austria (he is Australian by birth). Information oin him, and the text of his statement calling for the death penalty for skeptics, in available through Google.
Speakinjg of death to skeptics, now that the AGW crowd have taken to calling skeptics “terrorists,” and in the wake of the alarmist toady/Judge-Jury-and-Executioner’s summary execution of an American citizen accused of terrorism, never mind that individual’s Sixth Amendment rights – now that he’s lost his virginity with respect to summary executions – should we skeptics (aka “terrorists ” in the alarmies’ Nazibabble) be on the lookout for drones coming after us? (I earnestly hope that is farfetched, but can’t quite convince myself that it is.)
You notice I said “toady” instead of the slurs used by his leftist friends against people like Dr. Ben Carson, Dr. Condoleezza Rice, Herman Cain, John McWhorter, Charles Payne).
Just an awesome post and commentary. For a while I missed the old slower pace WUWT where a subject discussion often went a week or two…
But the faster pace of today has so much top shelf quality and freshness to it. Wish Wal~Mart sold time off our daily work for reading WUWT!
For starters, refute Pielke’s work on human caused changes in land use land cover and it’s subsequent effect on convection to show me that humans can not cause changes in weather. Then refute Tyndall, Fourier, and Arrhenius and their work on the efficacy of CO2 induced warming of the Earth to show me that CO2 can not warm the Earth. Show me the preponderance of peer reviewed evidence that shows that Pielke and or these others are wrong.
Geo, you are babbling non sense.