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.
@ur momisugly Jim Clarke says:
April 5, 2013 at 10:46 pm
Well perhaps the emphasis needs to be changed in the way it is presented to the media.
It has the virtue of being true which would be novel for this topic.
It also has the potential to concentrate readers minds to a greater degree than the abstraction of “global warming” and environmentalism in general.
Some of this is already being seen with recent reports in the UK about the additional number of people who have died this winter, and over recent winters.
Instead of putting this in an antiseptic fashion, this can be expressed more forcefully, and more accurately, than by just quoting statistics, through bluntly saying “5000 PEOPLE KILLED BY ENVIRONMENTAL POLICIES”, and profiles provided of the actual people killed in this way.
Likewise for the deaths of birds etc caused by wind-power. And pollution through manufacturing solar panels causing health damage. And the people who starve because of bio-fuels.
And the realities behind and resulting from the transfers of wealth. And the fact that people like Gore will own the earth through looting civilization whilst the average person will be condemned to a reduced peasant like status.
It is all there and is more alarming than any change in climate because once fully applied it cannot be mitigated. For the average person – or any – it means something very real NOW.
So maybe what this really does take is to stop pretending that this is a scientific debate between civilized parties, and that the above should wait on its resolution.
Christoph Dollis:
At April 6, 2013 at 6:25 pm you quote the last in a series of posts from me then write
I really object to your sly and dishonest attempts to falsely claim
(a) I advocated censorship, I did not
(b) I smeared the objectionable and anonymous troll, I did not
and
(c) that I in any way attempted to undermine the troll’s credibility, I could not
At April 6, 2013 at 10:38 am I wrote to geohydro2011. That post began saying
Read it. That post was sincere, analytical and helpful.
The troll ignored it and continued to snow the thread with off-topic nonsense.
At April 6, 2013 at 11:50 am I again wrote to geohydro2011. That post began by saying
Read it. That post was sincere and analytical.
The troll ignored that, too, and continued to snow the thread with off-topic nonsense.
At April 6, 2013 at 1:47 pm I wrote to the Moderators and provided the post which you have totally misrepresented. It said in full.
Clearly, you are stating a falsehood when you assert I “cannot surely have read his or her comments and concluded it is a “bot” “.
I “concluded” nothing but asked that this be investigated because it seemed – and is – likely.
Indeed, you agree that probability when you use “it” and not “he” or “she” (Fruedian?).
As for my disagreeing with the troll: I do disagree with trolls. Their purpose is to be disruptive and I like to read posts that are constructive whether or not I agree with them. And I learn most from constructive information that disagrees with my views.
I wonder why you have chosen to grossly misrepresent my post. You have certainly NOT been constructive.
Richard
As I suspected, the theoretical underpinnings of the effects of CO2 on warming have not been refuted. And Pielke and et al (senior not junior) have shown that humans are very capable of affecting the weather. I rest my argument.
geohydro,
There are no ‘theoretical underpinnings’ of the putative effects of CO2. The claims of human induced warming are only a conjecture, not an established fact. Thus, your argument fails.
@ur momisugly dbstealey says:
April 7, 2013 at 7:16 am
I never participate in discussions of – to borrow your word and extend its application – the putative “science” of “Climate Science”. There are sufficient people at WUWT who are ready and able to dissect what is claimed to be justification for all this, so any participation by me would be redundant. In any case, I can’t get very interested in details of something that plainly has no legitimacy as something requiring a public policy response, and where there is no evidence of any real advance in any science.
I do notice the more general playing out of these things though, and how certain individuals stride manfully to battle only to slowly disintegrate. The points made by those such as geohydro seem now to fall inoxerablely into an eerily repeatative pattern, varied only by the personal style of delivery.
I had to laugh when I saw the Definitive Statement of geohydro above: “I rest my argument”.
After a brief survey indicating bluster and bravado as being his strengths, this seems just right.
I think you (and others) have worn him out. He has called on his inner Perry Mason.
But where is his sympathetic jury, certain to see the truth of the pose he strikes?
just because you say fail does not make it so–i suspect the word ‘fail’ is one that you are all too familiar with. look, i’ll make it easy for you, don’t cite the relevant literature that supports your argument–use your own words to argue and refute the work of Tyndall, Fourier, and Arrhenius on the efficacy of co2 on warming the atmosphere–you can not do it–at least not without disregarding the standard model. no, rather, you will ask me to affirm some level of evidence that shows causation. and i said before everything is a model and i would show that the axioms of Euclid are not proven (that’s why they are called axioms), that Goedel showed the folly of using mathematics to prove mathematics- indeed you can not show time exists as a physical entity nor can you prove that three dimensions exist. you can not show that i am real–it may very well be the case that you are hallucinating via your ‘user illusion.’ i digress to show that we can ‘one up’ ourselves to impossible levels of evidence. i say that the theory of co2 warming is correct, the empirical evidence showing warming is correct.
as i said before i am a skeptic–recent work shows that gravity may simply be an emergent property related to quanta–so i am open to new ideas and discarding old beliefs that are not supported by the science–i suspect many readers here are blinded by dogma and other non science based agenda–have at it.
geohydro2011 says:
April 7, 2013 at 6:56 am
As I suspected, the theoretical underpinnings of the effects of CO2 on warming have not been refuted. And Pielke and et al (senior not junior) have shown that humans are very capable of affecting the weather. I rest my argument.
You have brought no arguments to the discussion, you have answered no posts just babbled nonsense to the line that people come to think you are an “it”, a bot, due to the lack of logic in your answers.
It is great to see that sharp minds, as Dyson, are not deluded and trust themselves to name things by their name, even with the danger to be treated as heretics by the like you, who pretend to be sceptics.
You do not have to lie, you can tell you are a warmist and post here, from what I’ve seen moderation is light and alarmists posts come through.
You will find however that people argument with logic here. It is not a place where you win a discourse through noise. Screaming, spamming the thread is a typical alarmist tactic, you behave so typical troll, O/T but on message:
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/blog/2010/3/19/josh-13.html
The warming stalled, spring is delayed in Europe, global ice is over the average but you still scream your “we are doomed” (to transpire to death) message.
geohydro2011 says:
April 7, 2013 at 6:56 am
Do you think you are the only challenger? Everything you have mentioned has been discussed over and over on this site and not a single poster that supports your view has posted any conclusive evidence. Regulars that post on WUWT are extremely informed regarding climate, paleo-climate, weather records, data collection, data auditing, and all the spinning and twisting of truth from the alarmist contingent.
You are certainly not the first to try to refute the science posted here, and you will not be the last. Go through the archives and get up to speed or you risk staying in our dust.
I have mentioned many times that Dr.Dyson is a hero of mine. He has a great mind that is open an unencumbered by the limits of our current knowledge.
Dyson in a prior interview stated that when he first came to Princeton he avoided Einstein because he, Freeman Dyson, was overawed by the great man and found himself tonguetied when meeting him. After reading Einstein’s “Unified Field Theory” papers Dyson avoided Einstein because he didn’t want to have to tell him that his Unified Field Theory papers were crap- Einstein himself was no longer an Einstein when Freeman Dyson met him.
geohydro2011 says:
April 7, 2013 at 8:23 am
” i say that the theory of co2 warming is correct, the empirical evidence showing warming is correct.”
Well that’s it then, Anthony. Might as well shut down WUWT? cause geo has posted conclusive proof.
Now I may not qualify, but WUWT? needs to require an I.Q. baseline to post.
Interesting. Actually found out some new things I didn’t know. I wonder how much parking lots impact the equation.
sticks and stones
way too easy
so have at the syllogism
theory showing that co2 intercepts and re-radiates outgoing longwave radiation is valid
co2 is increasing whereas other climate forcing is static or decreasing
therefore there is an energy imbalance for the Earth’s energy budget due to increased levels of co2
Dyson actually said all of these disparaging things about Einstein? if so, I wonder what Dyson thinks about the Einstein’s theory of General Relativity?
sincerely, the geo bot
Seriously, I just have to say that some of you have deduced I am a bot–bravo, and kudos to you, I applaud your attempts at logic. Sadly, you conclusion is wrong. If this is an example of how you reason, it is no wonder that you are mad that you are married to the position that human co2 does not warm climate.
parking lots today
forest clearing in times of yore
affecting albedo
affecting co2
effect demonstrable
civilization nurtured, expanded during Holocene
Anthropocene civilization?
I must leave now, I won’t be back today for I am violating my Sabbath, otherwise.
From the looks at some of your profiles, you talk the talk but don’t walk the walk.
Peace.
REPLY: Since you bring up personal profiles, what about yours in Corvalis, OR? Show us that you “walk it”. – Anthony
Dyson reviews Gleick’s book The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood . Dyson nicely explores the topic while scrupulously avoiding commentary on the worth of Gleick’s conclusions. OTOH, on at least one occasion, Gleick has offered his negative opinion on Dyson’s legacy. Putz.
out of respect for you
since you allowed me to ramble
I saw the pixel tags
and wondered if true
my syllogism stands
a proxy for me
REPLY: So much for the Sabbath eh’ ?
geohydro2011 says:
“…i am open to new ideas and discarding old beliefs that are not supported by the science…”
“The science” of AGW is no more than a conjecture; merely the first step of the Scientific Method. There are no verifiable measurements of AGW, therefore it cannot be a testable hypothesis. Thus, your ‘new idea’ is simply your belief. And you say:
“…it is no wonder that you are mad that you are married to the position that human co2 does not warm climate.”
Since there are no measurements supporting your belief in AGW, it is you who are married to your conjecture. But of course you do not see that, because your mind is made up and closed tight…
…just like you don’t see that you were owned by Anthony’s Sabbath comment.
Boris Gimbarzevsky says:
April 6, 2013 at 8:12 pm
“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.”
Boris; Dyson himself states that it was him who computed how many extra deaths through cancer would result globally from one Orion launch due to radioactive material dispersed in the atmosphere, something that was only possible to compute due to new knowledge after the first nuclear atmospheric tests. So he had to tell the project that he’d quit. When they started the project they did not know or anticipate that the nukes used would have that effect.
Unfortunately I have no link but there’s a documentary about Orion that you might find on Utube where he states that.
geohydro2011 says:
April 7, 2013 at 11:01 am
“co2 is increasing whereas other climate forcing is static or decreasing
therefore there is an energy imbalance for the Earth’s energy budget due to increased levels of co2”
Now okay, I don’t wanna feed them, but obviously he has never looked at global cloudiness which is very much variable.
http://www.climate4you.com/images/CloudCoverAllLevel%20AndWaterColumnSince1983.gif
[snip – too far off topic – mod]
geohydro2011 says: April 6, 2013 at 10:18 pm
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.
No question that you are correct, geo.
Bu the devil is in the detail. What really matters is how significant such change is. And which factors are involved will surely affect which solution may be required, if any. And whether approaches other than taxes, cap and trade, and more expensive energy are really solutions, or just more problems.