Guest Post by Bob Tisdale
The Vancouver Sun recently published a video interview with “Princeton University’s preeminent” theoretical physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson, as part of their “Conversation that Matters” series hosted by Stuart McNish. (Correction: Freeman Dyson is a professor emeritus of the Institute for Advanced Study, which is not affiliated with Princeton University. Thanks, Phil.) If you don’t know who Freeman Dyson is, see his condensed biography here and detailed biography here. Freeman Dyson is also skeptical of catastrophic CO2-driven global warming/climate change.
McNish’s interview with Freeman Dyson is titled Conversations that matter – Earth is actually growing greener and can be found through that link. The written introduction begins:
This week’s Conversation that Matters features Princeton University’s preeminent physicist Freeman Dyson who says models do a good job of helping us understand climate but they do a very poor job of predicting it.
It is an excellent interview. The 20 minutes flew by. Thank you, Stuart McNish and, of course, Freeman Dyson.
[H/T to Josh at BishopHill.]
related:
Josh writes: Click the image to take you to wonderful video of Freeman Dyson in conversation with Stuart McNish – it’s twenty minutes of refreshing brilliance.
H/t Hilary Ostrov.
It’s still here (at least seen for New Zealand)…try this link:
http://www.conversationsthatmatter.tv/
Cheers!
Thanks a lot for the link, you have just saved my day! 🙂
Video doesn’t seem to want to load, been waiting several minutes. Refreshed the page, still won’t load.
Yes, I too found it frustratingly slow to load and only got to hear about 2 minutes at a session…but it’s worth persevering with. Try not refreshing too much…just let it do its thing in its own time!
The Sun link is currently working.
http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/Conversations+that+matter+Earth+actually+growing+greener/10944052/story.html
I am amazed once again that this was moved on so quickly. This posting is probably one of the most potentially influential ant-AGW interviews ever that would actually have an effect of mainstream thought.
It is fairly clear that at least some of the PTB want “mainstream thought” to stay in prescribed channels.
What a great interview. A nice summary that articulates many of the points I try to make with my ‘AGW’ friends. Also, I saw a story this morning on the dangers of ‘Big Salt’. You can easily subtitute ‘C02’ for ‘salt’ in the paragraph below. Unfortunately it will be a cold day in hell before the WaPo prints anything like the Dyson interview.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/06/more-scientists-doubt-salt-is-as-bad-for-you-as-the-government-says/
“The current [salt] guidelines are based on almost nothing,” said Oparil, a distinguished professor of medicine at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. “Some people really want to hang onto this belief system on salt. But they are ignoring the evidence.”
Interesting discussion in the Independent:
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/letters-to-a-heretic-an-email-conversation-with-climate-change-sceptic-professor-freeman-dyson-2224912.html
Dyson eviscerated this journalist and exposed why journalists are so unsuited to discussing the topic at hand. They are more interested in spreading their narrative, based upon the propaganda they hear and credulously believe instead of asking more questions. That is because their education in j-school has been incredibly shallow and reinforcing of their prevailing prejudices.
Link to video here:
Either download or watch in your browser. The embedded flash player is by-passed.
Josh is right. A brilliant twenty minutes. I started it and could not sto0p watching.
No doubt some people will say that at age 91 Freeman Dyson is senile. If they do, it should be pointed out that only 3 years ago he co-authored a brilliantly original paper on the mathematical Theory of Games. I wish I was that senile!
It is a chilling reminder to me that most of the scientist that do speak out against CAGW are old and in Freeman Dyson’s case, very old. They have very little to lose career- and money-wise. I think there would be many more younger scientist speak out if there were no more serious threats to their livelyhoods. We still have a long way to go to turn this around and I think that the MSM is the key.
For the reasons I state above, if MSM is the key, we are all in a lot of trouble.
So sad that it seems novel for a scientist to differentiate between observation and conjecture! Great interview but it makes the erosion of science by hack scientists and their MSM enablers that much harder to bear.
Is there any possibility of a transcript of the interview?
The existence of such would be exceedingly helpful.
This great man has great influence. I think the magnitude of world harm being done by climatologists in the service of misanthropist government/NGO totalitarians should make climate change science a top priority for study at the Institute for Advanced Study. If climatologists are “no Einsteins”, then let’s have this singular man made calamity a job to sort out by those who are “Einsteins”. If it’s so important, so critical, it is then too important to be left in the hands of rent seeking opportunists of average intelligence and distopian politicians who love the power and tax revenue and who are paying for this result. Even climatologists should be able to see the logic in this! (That’s a stretch, I guess). Seriously, is there an avenue to request that the Institute for Advanced Study undertake this? If they don’t, it will be clones of the hockey team that will be eventually taking over the Institute – especially if they want to silence Dyson.
Certainly Dyson is a brilliant mathematician and theoretical physicist, but how does that qualify him to speak on climate science (and religion, international relations, and other things he speaks on)? If he were so brilliant on all these topics, why don’t we elect him President? Oh wait, I guess you have to be pretty stupid to want to be President.
For a lot of people, yesterday was a day off and many may have been logging in to watch. I had trouble getting the video to load yesterday but it started right up this am at http://www.conversationsthatmatter.tv/ And I am on a slow satellite connection so perhaps too many people accessing it yesterday. A good thing.
Steven Mosher April 7, 2015 at 8:31 am
He was also a great data adjuster.
—————————————————————————————————————————————
Mosher,
I assume you can back this up with evidence, right? Or is it just a drive by snipe against a man who is not only smarter than you by an enormous margin but also one who questions your work?
I suspect I know the answer already.
Eric
Eric,
Mosher was part of the BEST team. They have NO business criticizing others for ‘data adjusting‘.
Are those who can’t see atmospheric carbon dioxide as a resource the same ones who can’t see older people as a resource?
Dyson is a physicist and a mathematician. If global warming / anthropogenic climate change was significantly supported by the physics or the mathematics, Dyson would have to acknowledge that much.
Anything that is not supported by the physics or the mathematics is ‘magic’. The stock-in-trade of the magician is making lies believeable.
Referring to a friend who constructed the first climate models, Dyson says at about 10.45
This quote will go totally over the heads of the climate community. For them climate models are the primary, built on irrefutable basic physics. When the data from the real world differs it is because we have measured it wrong, or there is something else we have not measured yet, or there is a lagged response.
The models would be spot-on accurate but for …. reality. Other than that, their output serves their design purpose, which has nothing to do with science.
Bob,
When are you going to provide your detailed biography so that everyone can decide if you are really qualified to discuss climate change without any bias?
I think your followers deserve to know what your background really is.
Says a man with an obvious bias in his remark. Are you unable to judge for yourself from all of the work he has presented here over the years?
All I am asking for is a little transparency from someone that puts himself out into the public forum as a self-proclaimed authoritative figure on the subject. If he can post someone else’s biography when he refers to them a blog posting, why can’t Bob do it for himself? What is he hiding?
There’s a Flat Earth do tonight in my town! All are welcome! Food and drink aplenty!
Anyone who had even 10% of the awards and honorary degrees of Dyson would be considered to have had a fabulous career. Can anyone really challenge his credentials to comment on climate science. Some of the high profile so-called climate scientists were using teething rings when he was making a real difference in science.
Those who are having difficulty viewing the video might want to try the Vimeo version:
Thank you 🙂
Pretty good but he makes two errors/omissions. There is no proof of Man-induced warming. And he fails to mention the impending end of the current interglacial and certain drop in temps of an average of -6C for 100,000 years. In the climate prognostication game, it’s the only certainty. Well, I guess there is a 1 in a million chance the extreme warmists are right and we will get that much warming from CO2 and are spared the next glacial period.
Tab Numlock commented: “There is no proof of Man-induced warming.”
Urban Heat Island?
I hope this in no way sounds smug, but what really struck me about this interview is that, with the exception of his comments about growing up in the 30s, Mr. Dyson’s responses are basically the same answers I would have given had I been interviewed.
I suspect that many here would also have given very similar answers.
Did you feel the same way?
Max Photon commented :
“… with the exception of his comments about growing up in the 30s, Mr. Dyson’s responses are basically the same answers I would have given had I been interviewed. I suspect that many here would also have given very similar answers. Did you feel the same way?” Yes, struck me the same way and I am by no means even in the same galaxy as his scientific intellect.
Correct, Max. Nothing Prof Dyson said conflicts in any way with my world view.
But with the name Freeman Dyson saying them, those same words are much more difficult to ignore by folks at science magazines (principally Science and AAAS in the USA). It is easy for their inflated egos to ignore science peons. They will lose serious sleep struggling with their conscience if they watch a man of Dyson science stature take down their belief system.
“Depends on where you start.” is a great conclusion to the interview, and a great answer to the question, how can you impart your sense of optimism to others? Dyson explained with simple eloquence, that he had grown up in the 30’s, and “…didn’t expect to survive. It just depends on where you start.”