The Heretical Freeman Dyson

dublin writes "Big-thinker Freeman Dyson has written a new essay in which he points out the need for heretics in science, and goes on to gore some sacred cows, including global climate change: 'My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated ... There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global ... When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories ... All our fashionable worries and all our prevailing dogmas will probably be obsolete in fifty years. My heresies will probably also be obsolete. It is up to [the people of 2070] to find new heresies to guide our way to a more hopeful future.'"

Comments

Heretic!

[Dunbal]

He spoke out against global warming!

BURN HIM!!!!

also, first

Re:Heretic!

[kir]

Wait a minute. Did you just say that Freemon Dyson is ignorant ". . .of both the scientific method and the subject at hand?"

No really. Did you?

He's right.

[WK2]

He is correct. It is important that people speak against the common wisdom, otherwise we would never learn anything. That being said, 99% of the time when people claim stuff against common sense, they are talking bullshit.

Re:We need more people like him

[eln]

How can you defend this guy? He's responsible for Skynet, for God's sake! Either that or he sells vacuum cleaners. Either way, he's dangerous and must be stopped.

His conclusion says it all

[vlad_petric]

"The moral of this story is clear. Even a smart twenty-two-year-old is not a reliable guide to the future of science. And the twenty-two-year-old has become even less reliable now that he is eighty-two."

Ultimately what he attacks is being stuck in an ideology, and that heresies are essential for science. He isn't claiming that his heresies are true - just that scientists are too stuck in an ideology to even give them proper attention.

Re:On heresy.

[ppanon]

Well, I like Freeman Dyson's attitude and analysis better than any I've seen from the GW-skeptic camp.
He's not trying to dispute what's going on with Climate Change, or even that we're partially responsible. Instead he's saying there may be much better ways to deal with it than the current proposed economic approaches. I'll take his input over a hundred McIntyres' worth, for as long as we can still get it, given that he's 80. I'm not convinced about his finding an upside in the possible wetting of the Sahara, but any single one of his points is better argued than all the GW-skeptic points I've yet read on the subject in slashdot.

In the past Dyson's proven to be a lot closer to Einstein than Bozo the Clown and I think he deserves some slack on this one. For the role of genius moonlighting as clown, I think Roger Penrose has my vote for 'Emperor's New Mind', where he let his personal desires and beliefs overcome the pointers and evidence of evolutionary biology, chaos theory, and complexity theory. But I don't think Dyson's fallen off his pedestal yet, even if his balance looks shaky at times.

Re:Heretics?

[ttfkam]

Are humans capable of producing more CO2 per decade than say, a single volcanic eruption?

Yes. T.M.Gerlach (1991, American Geophysical Union) notes that human-made CO2 has dwarfed the estimated global release of CO2 from volcanoes by at least 150 times. The small amount of global warming caused by eruption-generated greenhouse gases is offset by the far greater amount of global cooling caused by eruption-generated particles in the stratosphere (the haze effect). Greenhouse warming of the earth has been particularly evident since 1980. Without the cooling influence of such eruptions as El Chichon (1982) and Mt. Pinatubo (1991), greenhouse warming would have been more pronounced. As those eruption-generated particles leave the stratosphere, the haze effect will diminish, and the original greenhouse effect will be more pronounced.

Does the amount of organisms capable of removing CO2 from the atmosphere increase as this new atmosphere provides an environment closer to the optimum for them?

Yes, but not enough to counter our influence. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2004/09/04093 0122712.htm

Does the increase of CO2 (which is far denser than oxygen or nitrogen) at relatively LOW altitudes (because of this density) have ANY effect on the upper atmosphere? In fact, is heat really retained at ALL by a thin surface layer of CO2?

Yes and yes.

The "facts" are not as clear cut as you would like them to be. Of course it's easy if you only listen to what you WANT to hear.

For example, if most of your talking points come from conservative "think tanks" rather than planetary climatologists. Please cite your assertions and be sure that all come from scientific journals and the like as opposed to the aforementioned think tanks or political pundits.

Honestly. I'd love to see your evidence that calls global warming into question. I will read it and give it an honestly critical eye. I only ask that you cite your sources.

Re:Heretics?

[TheNetAvenger]

So you two will sit here and argue over whether the CO2 is mankind's fault or not, and yet both acknowledge that CO2 will increase global temperatures.

Bottom line, if this is the end of an ice age, or mankind screwing up the earth it doesn't matter. Scientists need to find a way to MAINTAIN the 'sweet' spot that humans need for survival.

This is no longer about who's fault it is, nor saving the earth, this is about saving a large population of people.

1) If mankind is 'adding' to the problem, we need to stop accelerating it.
2) If mankind has nothing to do with it, we need to find a way to artificially slow it down.

Here are the ramifications of either scenario, the caps are melting. Yes, this is FACT, no matter how much people want to bitch about whose fault it is.

The shelf that dropped off a couple of years ago at the South Pole was a dramatic indicator.
The fact that Greenland is 'becoming' green again is another major problem.

The fact that US subs at the north pole have measured the ice thickness go from 10s of meters, where they couldn't surface, to under 1 meter where they can surface should be enough evidence to scare the hell out of people.

So after you two and people like you get worrying about who's fault all of this is, it is time to get together and work on a solution. An asteroid collision would not be manmade, but if one comes hurling at the earth, we would need to take action to deflect it. And this is the same freaking thing. PERIOD.

All this recent bitching about whether the temperatures are going up 5 degrees or only 2 degrees DOESN'T MAKE A FREAKING DIFFERENCE, they are going up, or the caps would not be melting.

What happens when the caps melt? Well first the ocean streams are messed up as fresh water is added in large amounts to crucial areas that salinization are needed to return heavy water back to the equator. In effect Europe and parts of North America freeze over.

The second problem is even if the streams in the ocean somehow keep working as needed to keep mankind alive, sea levels WILL continue to RAISE. This means bye, bye Miami, most of New York City, the Netherlands, and a large portion of Asia areas and islands.

And we are only talking a meter or two difference to affect 100s of millions of people on the coastlines everywhere.

So go back to your bitching about who is at fault, while the rest of the scientific community tries to find solutions to save your ass.

Re:Heretics?

[krou]

Oh? Really? Well, here are some responses then.

From New analysis counters claims that solar activity is linked to global warming:

The data shows that even though the sun's activity has been decreasing since 1985, global temperatures have continued to rise at an accelerating rate.

The solar hypothesis was championed publicly in March by the controversial Channel 4 documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle. [...] "The temperature record is simply not consistent with any of the solar forcings that people are talking about," said lead author Mike Lockwood at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in Oxfordshire.

"They changed direction in 1985, the climate did not ... [the temperature] increase should be slowing down but in fact it is speeding up." [...] Nir Shaviv, an astrophysicist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a proponent of the solar hypothesis, has tried to rescue the idea by invoking a time lag between changes in the sun and its effect on the Earth's climate. But Prof Lockwood dismissed this as "disingenuous".

"Nobody has invoked that kind of lag before. It's only been invoked now as a way out," he said. Even if the lag were 50 years then he believes we would begin to see the rise in global temperatures slowing down.

When asked to comment on this later finding, the show's producer, Martin Durkin, refused.

A statement from the British Antarctic Survey says:

Much of the programme was based around a diagram, shown several times, that purported to be world temperature for the last 120 years. This showed a curve, labelled "NASA", extending to the year 2003. The curve was produced by NASA nearly twenty years ago. Although it showed data only until 1987, it had been stretched and relabelled to suggest it showed the temperature record to 2003. The resulting distortion excludes the significant warming that has occurred since 1987. Other figures similarly misrepresented the current state of knowledge, especially as regards the influence of the Sun on climate, and the strength of the recent climate warming

Further evidence is presented here that the show intentionally mislabelled and distorted data. In addition to the "NASA" distortion above (which the producer admitted was "a fluff") there are others:

Other graphs used in the film contained known errors, notably the graph of sunspot activity. Mr Durkin used data on solar cycle lengths which were first published in 1991 despite a corrected version being available - but again the corrected version would not have supported his argument. Mr Durkin also used a schematic graph of temperatures over the past 1,000 years that was at least 16 years old, which gave the impression that today's temperatures are cooler than during the medieval warm period. If he had used a more recent, and widely available, composite graph it would have shown average temperatures far exceed the past 1,000 years.

The 1991 data comes from Friis-Christensen who has tried, several times, to prove the solar theory, but each time the theories have been debunked. For example, the journal Eos noted that Friis-Christensen's 1991 theories were based on "incorrect handling of the physical data". Later work seems to suffer from the same problems. Regardless, Friis-Christensen released a statement noting his concerns with usage of data, stating:

We have concerns regarding the use of a graph featured in the documentary titled 'Temp & Solar Activity 400 Years'. Firstly, we ha