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Interviews: Freeman Dyson Answers Your Questions
A while ago you had the chance to ask mathematician and theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson about his work in quantum electrodynamics, nuclear propulsion, and his thoughts on the past, present, and future of science. Below you'll find his answers to your questions.
Why the United States?
by eldavojohn
Why did you take a fellowship at Cornell and stay in the United States? There's plenty of world renowned institutions in the United Kingdom and you were a pilot in the RAF -- what appealed to you about the United States? Do you have any comments or opinions on H1-Bs and the United States' current stance on immigration?
Dyson: During world war II I made plans to go to Russia after the war. I had fallen in love with the Russian language, and I knew that physics and mathematics in Russia were first-rate. So I planned to stay several years in Russia to study the Russian culture as well as science. Then soon after the war Stalin made it clear that he did not welcome foreign students. So my second choice was the USA. The main reason was that money was available from the Commonwealth Fund (now the Harkness Fund) for student fellowships in the USA. It was then easier to cross the Atlantic than to cross the Channel. I applied for a Commonwealth Fellowship and got generous support for two years in the USA. I went to Cornell because I happened by chance to meet G.I.Taylor who had been at Los Alamos with the British team during the war. He said, ``Go to Cornell, that is where all the bright people from Los Alamos went after the war.'' He was right. At Cornell I worked with Bethe and Feynman who were at the cutting edge of physics at that time.
I was never a pilot in the RAF, only a humble statistician collecting data about operations. The US is always schizophrenic about immigration. In those days the situation was generally worse than today, with strict immigration quotas. I benefited because I was British and we had the biggest quota. Now the situation is still bad but not so unfair as it was then. The quotas were overtly racist and designed to keep America for the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants).
Education
by flogger
How has your education helped or hindered you? You are the "ideal" educated man. In our (American) culture, we don;t seem to be producing people devoted to learning, discovering, thinking, inventing, etc. What in your opinion can an educational system do to foster what you've become?
Dyson: I was extremely lucky because I came through the British education system during the war when everything was screwed up. The whole system depended on written examinations and we did not have enough ships to import paper. So there was no paper and no exams. Also there was a high shortage of teachers since all the young people were away fighting the war. As a result, I was in class only seven hours a week. A wonderful time to get an education. We had maximum freedom, and the kids learned more from one another than we would have learned from teachers.
The kids today spend far too much time in class and as a result are turned off from the things they are supposed to be learning. That is true not only in the USA but also in other countries.
Global warming: genetic engineering and coal death
by doom
In your article The Question of Global Warming, you make the point that the Earth's vegetation acts as a big carbon sink, and suggest that genetically engineered plants might do an even better job -- thus becoming the first person in history to make environmentalists angry by suggesting that top soil management is important. I have a few questions about this: (1) you mention the fanciful-sounding notion of "carbon-eating trees", but aren't there technologies that already exist that might do the job? There are claims that "no till" agriculture via the dreaded "roundup ready" plants reduce greenhouse gas emissions substantially. (2) A big part of the argument against immediate reductions in CO2 emissions is economic. Do the analyses you've seen really make an effort to capture all the costs and benefits associated with a move like banning coal burning completely? The annual deaths estimated from coal pollution seem big enough to make it worth doing even before you put global warming on the table.
Dyson: This is a complicated subject and I only discuss it in general terms. What you say about carbon-eating trees is true. Trees eat carbon almost as fast as we can burn it. No-till farming also eats carbon. The question I raised is whether we could eat more carbon by genetically engineering trees.I did not answer the question. We cannot answer it until the science of tree genetics is much better understood. The same thing is true of the effects of carbon on climate. We cannot predict the effects of carbon on climate until we understand the science of climate much better than we do now.
The shale-gas revolution has changed the economics of energy production drastically. Shale-gas is a greenhouse gas, but it is otherwise clean, doing far less damage than coal to the environment and to human health. Shale-gas is cheap and well distributed over the planet. The replacement of coal by shale-gas is by far the most practical way to get rid of coal and clean up the planet.
What are your views on the current state of fusion
by smaddox
I am of the opinion that without economical fusion, humanity will not last more than a few thousand years. I am also of the opinion that most fusion research funding is targeted at projects with little or no application to economical fusion (I see no evidence that tokamaks or inertial confinement will ever be economical. In fact, all evidence seems to suggest they will never be economical). What are your views on the current state of fusion research? Is funding misplaced? Disproportionately allocated?
Dyson: I am not an expert on plasma physics. I know only that plasma physics is very difficult and poorly understood. In my opinion the governments of the world, not only the USA, made a wrong choice about forty years ago when they stopped exploring the science of fusion with small-scale experiments and put their money into high engineering projects. The big engineering projects such as ITER are absurdly expensive and can never lead to economic fusion power. I agree with your opinions about this. I consider the funding to be misplaced. The only hope of economically useful fusion power is a radically different design which might emerge from better understanding of the basic science of plasma physics.
I do not agree that humanity needs economical fusion power in order to survive, unless you include the sun as a fusion power source. The sun is a splendid fusion reactor that will continue running for several billion years. All we need is to learn how to use sunlight economically. There are probably many ways to achieve this.
Nuclear Freeze Movement
by rotenberry
Professor Dyson,
I had the pleasure of listening to you speak at Caltech in the 1980s about the Nuclear Freeze Movement. You were a supporter even though you indicated that since the number of nuclear weapons was decreasing (at that time), keeping the current number of nuclear weapons was not desirable. Thirty years have passed. Do you think this movement accomplished any of their goals?
Dyson: The biggest reduction of nuclear weapons was done by George Bush Senior in 1989. He removed all tactical nukes from the US army and the surface navy. This was done quietly and unilaterally without any international negotiations. He got rid of about half of all our nuclear weapons, and these were the most dangerous weapons, deployed all over the world and likely to be involved in local fighting. As a result of his action, the world is much safer.
I believe we could go much further in the same direction. Unilateral action is much quicker and more effective than negotiating treaties. The next obvious step would be to get rid of nuclear bombs on airplanes. After that, land-based nuclear missiles, leaving the nuclear missile submarines till last. I think there is a good chance that the military will support such unilateral moves. The military knows that our nuclear weapons are essentially useless for fighting real wars. The problem is to educate the politicians.
Targets for the Space Industry
by manonthemoon
Given that we finally seem to have a vital and growing private space industry, what do you think the likeliest successful target for long term space industrialization/exploitation/habitation is? The Moon, near earth asteroids, Mars?
Dyson: I think it is absurd and illusory to guess what kind of space activities will be profitable. I think of the Virginia colonists who came to America to mine gold and finally got rich by growing tobacco. This is a situation where the market will decide and the market is unpredictable. They began with about a hundred years of fishing and trading operations off the coast before settlements became profitable. Things may go faster than this in space, or things may go slower. I see no point in guessing.
On the question of near/faster-than-light travel
by SixDimensionalArray
In my understanding, the concepts of nuclear pulse propulsion that were investigated in the Orion Project had the highest real potential for generating enormous energies required for "faster" travel in space than anything we have, even today. I have always felt that it is a tragedy that this research couldn't be taken further into our modern realities of exploration.
Today, we have NASA exploring the potential (on a very small scale) of faster than light (FTL) travel using ideas such as the Alcubierre drive. In common discussion, we now hear about things such as: dark matter, quantum teleportation, FTL particles in the form of cosmic rays, the likely discovery of the Higgs Boson, spacetime, etc. These appear, to the layman like myself, to be serious discussions, with new realities and new possibilities being discovered every day.
The entirety of the NASA space program as we know it has developed within the last 60 years.
Given the advances in technology we have made in such a short time, the laws of physics, and the realities of the politics of our world, do you think it is feasible that we will develop the ability for very fast, near or faster-than-light travel in the next 60 years, and which direction seems the most feasible to you?
Thank you for your contributions to science, I am humbled to be able to ask this question of you!
Dyson: I disagree with almost everything here. There are two NASAs, the real NASA which is intensely conservative and likes to use safe and reliable technology, and the paper NASA which pretends to support radical ideas but never does anything real. The paper NASA will generate a lot of hype but will certainly not lead to anything real. Faster-than-light travel is rubbish. The Orion project was designed to travel only within the solar system and is far too slow for interesting interstellar voyages. In the next 60 years we may see a public highway system started which will bring down the costs of space operations substantially, but it will not be increasing the speed of travel substantially. The important barrier to space operations is cost, not speed.
Mr. Dyson. Is AI more important than space travel?
by gestalt_n_pepper
While space travel is important for human survival in the long term, the more I think about it, the more it seems that developing a human style, scalable, artificial intelligence has for more potential to provide humans with rapid access to a much larger set of useful answers in the general domain of practical, solvable problems.
The investment should be, relatively speaking, trivial, and we already have 7 billion or so working models, so I think it's fairly certain that this can be done. Given a choice, would you advocate more resources be allocated to space travel, or AI?
Dyson: You ask whether, given a choice, I would put more resources into space or AI. My answer is that either choice would be stupid. Politicians always want to make such choices too soon, because they imagine they can pick winners. Usually they pick losers. The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all. That is particularly true for space and AI, which are not really competing with each other. They are done by different kinds of people in different kinds of enterprise. Both can and should be supported. It would be totally stupid to starve one and over-feed the other.
My own opinion is that AI has failed to fulfill its promise because we are using the wrong kind of computers. We are using digital computers, and the human brain is probably analog rather than digital. So my guess is that AI will succeed only after we move from digital to analog computing. This is a tough intellectual problem that cannot be solved just by spending a lot of money.
Transhumanism, Moore's Law, etc...
by BorisSkratchunkov
Perhaps this has been asked already (throughout the various interviews, engagements, etc that you have had hitherto), but what are your general thoughts on the Singularity movement, transhumanism, and Ray Kurzweil's overall philosophy on human progress? Are these folks realistic, optimistic, or pessimistic? What are your beliefs about the current state of human advancement, and what we must work on as we careen toward the future?
Dyson: I do not believe in any kind of ism. I believe we understand very little about human nature, about psychology or about economics. I do not take seriously any of the people who claim to predict the future. I believe them even less when they claim to be accurate predictors.
The Future of Physicists
by werepants
The early to mid 20th century was one of the most dynamic times to ever happen in physics, with massive shifts in thinking and incredible applications of science that led to some of the greatest achievements of mankind. For a variety of reasons, it seems as though progress recently has been more incremental, collective, and focused on confirming the big ideas of previous thinkers. What attribute do you think is most needed in the upcoming generation of physicists to usher in the next era of scientific progress?
Dyson: Scientific progress happens in two ways, either driven by new ideas or by new tools. The first half of the twentieth century was the time of new ideas, the second half was the time of new tools.New ideas are more exciting but new tools are often more important. For the twenty-first century, it seems that the most important contribution of physicists is to build new tools for other sciences. Examples, chemistry and biology and astronomy and computer-technology, all driven by new tools supplied by physics. This is not so exciting as discovering the Dirac equation, but probably more useful. There is plenty of good stuff for physicists to do.
Fewer Polymaths in the Modern World?
by eldavojohn
When weighted against population, it appears that there are fewer "Renaissance men/women" than there have been historically. I've heard many regular people opine about how fields require more depth and learning to make progress in them but, as a polymath yourself, what is your opinion on it?
Dyson: It is undoubtedly true that we are today drowning in information. Each of us knows a smaller fraction of the total information than earlier generations knew. Our skills have become more specialized. But I do not see any decrease in breadth of interest. The young people today are still interested in as wide a variety of subjects as we old ones were. Tools of knowledge such as the internet and Wikipedia make it easier for young people today to spread their minds over many subjects.
Parenting Esther Dyson
by ideonexus
You're daughter Esther is one of the most incredibly inspiring women role models alive today. Do you have any parenting advice for those of out here with kids of our own who would like them to become similarly active, positive, and brilliant adults?
Dyson: Thank you for your compliment to Esther and to her parents. We do not claim credit for her achievements. She was lucky to be the oldest of six, so we had little time for her and gave her little of our attention. She befitted from our benign neglect. She learned from a young age to choose her own path through life. She chose for her motto: "Always make new mistakes." I believe that is the key to her happy and productive life.
by eldavojohn
Why did you take a fellowship at Cornell and stay in the United States? There's plenty of world renowned institutions in the United Kingdom and you were a pilot in the RAF -- what appealed to you about the United States? Do you have any comments or opinions on H1-Bs and the United States' current stance on immigration?
Dyson: During world war II I made plans to go to Russia after the war. I had fallen in love with the Russian language, and I knew that physics and mathematics in Russia were first-rate. So I planned to stay several years in Russia to study the Russian culture as well as science. Then soon after the war Stalin made it clear that he did not welcome foreign students. So my second choice was the USA. The main reason was that money was available from the Commonwealth Fund (now the Harkness Fund) for student fellowships in the USA. It was then easier to cross the Atlantic than to cross the Channel. I applied for a Commonwealth Fellowship and got generous support for two years in the USA. I went to Cornell because I happened by chance to meet G.I.Taylor who had been at Los Alamos with the British team during the war. He said, ``Go to Cornell, that is where all the bright people from Los Alamos went after the war.'' He was right. At Cornell I worked with Bethe and Feynman who were at the cutting edge of physics at that time.
I was never a pilot in the RAF, only a humble statistician collecting data about operations. The US is always schizophrenic about immigration. In those days the situation was generally worse than today, with strict immigration quotas. I benefited because I was British and we had the biggest quota. Now the situation is still bad but not so unfair as it was then. The quotas were overtly racist and designed to keep America for the WASPs (White Anglo-Saxon Protestants).
Education
by flogger
How has your education helped or hindered you? You are the "ideal" educated man. In our (American) culture, we don;t seem to be producing people devoted to learning, discovering, thinking, inventing, etc. What in your opinion can an educational system do to foster what you've become?
Dyson: I was extremely lucky because I came through the British education system during the war when everything was screwed up. The whole system depended on written examinations and we did not have enough ships to import paper. So there was no paper and no exams. Also there was a high shortage of teachers since all the young people were away fighting the war. As a result, I was in class only seven hours a week. A wonderful time to get an education. We had maximum freedom, and the kids learned more from one another than we would have learned from teachers.
The kids today spend far too much time in class and as a result are turned off from the things they are supposed to be learning. That is true not only in the USA but also in other countries.
Global warming: genetic engineering and coal death
by doom
In your article The Question of Global Warming, you make the point that the Earth's vegetation acts as a big carbon sink, and suggest that genetically engineered plants might do an even better job -- thus becoming the first person in history to make environmentalists angry by suggesting that top soil management is important. I have a few questions about this: (1) you mention the fanciful-sounding notion of "carbon-eating trees", but aren't there technologies that already exist that might do the job? There are claims that "no till" agriculture via the dreaded "roundup ready" plants reduce greenhouse gas emissions substantially. (2) A big part of the argument against immediate reductions in CO2 emissions is economic. Do the analyses you've seen really make an effort to capture all the costs and benefits associated with a move like banning coal burning completely? The annual deaths estimated from coal pollution seem big enough to make it worth doing even before you put global warming on the table.
Dyson: This is a complicated subject and I only discuss it in general terms. What you say about carbon-eating trees is true. Trees eat carbon almost as fast as we can burn it. No-till farming also eats carbon. The question I raised is whether we could eat more carbon by genetically engineering trees.I did not answer the question. We cannot answer it until the science of tree genetics is much better understood. The same thing is true of the effects of carbon on climate. We cannot predict the effects of carbon on climate until we understand the science of climate much better than we do now.
The shale-gas revolution has changed the economics of energy production drastically. Shale-gas is a greenhouse gas, but it is otherwise clean, doing far less damage than coal to the environment and to human health. Shale-gas is cheap and well distributed over the planet. The replacement of coal by shale-gas is by far the most practical way to get rid of coal and clean up the planet.
What are your views on the current state of fusion
by smaddox
I am of the opinion that without economical fusion, humanity will not last more than a few thousand years. I am also of the opinion that most fusion research funding is targeted at projects with little or no application to economical fusion (I see no evidence that tokamaks or inertial confinement will ever be economical. In fact, all evidence seems to suggest they will never be economical). What are your views on the current state of fusion research? Is funding misplaced? Disproportionately allocated?
Dyson: I am not an expert on plasma physics. I know only that plasma physics is very difficult and poorly understood. In my opinion the governments of the world, not only the USA, made a wrong choice about forty years ago when they stopped exploring the science of fusion with small-scale experiments and put their money into high engineering projects. The big engineering projects such as ITER are absurdly expensive and can never lead to economic fusion power. I agree with your opinions about this. I consider the funding to be misplaced. The only hope of economically useful fusion power is a radically different design which might emerge from better understanding of the basic science of plasma physics.
I do not agree that humanity needs economical fusion power in order to survive, unless you include the sun as a fusion power source. The sun is a splendid fusion reactor that will continue running for several billion years. All we need is to learn how to use sunlight economically. There are probably many ways to achieve this.
Nuclear Freeze Movement
by rotenberry
Professor Dyson,
I had the pleasure of listening to you speak at Caltech in the 1980s about the Nuclear Freeze Movement. You were a supporter even though you indicated that since the number of nuclear weapons was decreasing (at that time), keeping the current number of nuclear weapons was not desirable. Thirty years have passed. Do you think this movement accomplished any of their goals?
Dyson: The biggest reduction of nuclear weapons was done by George Bush Senior in 1989. He removed all tactical nukes from the US army and the surface navy. This was done quietly and unilaterally without any international negotiations. He got rid of about half of all our nuclear weapons, and these were the most dangerous weapons, deployed all over the world and likely to be involved in local fighting. As a result of his action, the world is much safer.
I believe we could go much further in the same direction. Unilateral action is much quicker and more effective than negotiating treaties. The next obvious step would be to get rid of nuclear bombs on airplanes. After that, land-based nuclear missiles, leaving the nuclear missile submarines till last. I think there is a good chance that the military will support such unilateral moves. The military knows that our nuclear weapons are essentially useless for fighting real wars. The problem is to educate the politicians.
Targets for the Space Industry
by manonthemoon
Given that we finally seem to have a vital and growing private space industry, what do you think the likeliest successful target for long term space industrialization/exploitation/habitation is? The Moon, near earth asteroids, Mars?
Dyson: I think it is absurd and illusory to guess what kind of space activities will be profitable. I think of the Virginia colonists who came to America to mine gold and finally got rich by growing tobacco. This is a situation where the market will decide and the market is unpredictable. They began with about a hundred years of fishing and trading operations off the coast before settlements became profitable. Things may go faster than this in space, or things may go slower. I see no point in guessing.
On the question of near/faster-than-light travel
by SixDimensionalArray
In my understanding, the concepts of nuclear pulse propulsion that were investigated in the Orion Project had the highest real potential for generating enormous energies required for "faster" travel in space than anything we have, even today. I have always felt that it is a tragedy that this research couldn't be taken further into our modern realities of exploration.
Today, we have NASA exploring the potential (on a very small scale) of faster than light (FTL) travel using ideas such as the Alcubierre drive. In common discussion, we now hear about things such as: dark matter, quantum teleportation, FTL particles in the form of cosmic rays, the likely discovery of the Higgs Boson, spacetime, etc. These appear, to the layman like myself, to be serious discussions, with new realities and new possibilities being discovered every day.
The entirety of the NASA space program as we know it has developed within the last 60 years.
Given the advances in technology we have made in such a short time, the laws of physics, and the realities of the politics of our world, do you think it is feasible that we will develop the ability for very fast, near or faster-than-light travel in the next 60 years, and which direction seems the most feasible to you?
Thank you for your contributions to science, I am humbled to be able to ask this question of you!
Dyson: I disagree with almost everything here. There are two NASAs, the real NASA which is intensely conservative and likes to use safe and reliable technology, and the paper NASA which pretends to support radical ideas but never does anything real. The paper NASA will generate a lot of hype but will certainly not lead to anything real. Faster-than-light travel is rubbish. The Orion project was designed to travel only within the solar system and is far too slow for interesting interstellar voyages. In the next 60 years we may see a public highway system started which will bring down the costs of space operations substantially, but it will not be increasing the speed of travel substantially. The important barrier to space operations is cost, not speed.
Mr. Dyson. Is AI more important than space travel?
by gestalt_n_pepper
While space travel is important for human survival in the long term, the more I think about it, the more it seems that developing a human style, scalable, artificial intelligence has for more potential to provide humans with rapid access to a much larger set of useful answers in the general domain of practical, solvable problems.
The investment should be, relatively speaking, trivial, and we already have 7 billion or so working models, so I think it's fairly certain that this can be done. Given a choice, would you advocate more resources be allocated to space travel, or AI?
Dyson: You ask whether, given a choice, I would put more resources into space or AI. My answer is that either choice would be stupid. Politicians always want to make such choices too soon, because they imagine they can pick winners. Usually they pick losers. The only way to improve the chances for finding winners is to keep all the choices open and try them all. That is particularly true for space and AI, which are not really competing with each other. They are done by different kinds of people in different kinds of enterprise. Both can and should be supported. It would be totally stupid to starve one and over-feed the other.
My own opinion is that AI has failed to fulfill its promise because we are using the wrong kind of computers. We are using digital computers, and the human brain is probably analog rather than digital. So my guess is that AI will succeed only after we move from digital to analog computing. This is a tough intellectual problem that cannot be solved just by spending a lot of money.
Transhumanism, Moore's Law, etc...
by BorisSkratchunkov
Perhaps this has been asked already (throughout the various interviews, engagements, etc that you have had hitherto), but what are your general thoughts on the Singularity movement, transhumanism, and Ray Kurzweil's overall philosophy on human progress? Are these folks realistic, optimistic, or pessimistic? What are your beliefs about the current state of human advancement, and what we must work on as we careen toward the future?
Dyson: I do not believe in any kind of ism. I believe we understand very little about human nature, about psychology or about economics. I do not take seriously any of the people who claim to predict the future. I believe them even less when they claim to be accurate predictors.
The Future of Physicists
by werepants
The early to mid 20th century was one of the most dynamic times to ever happen in physics, with massive shifts in thinking and incredible applications of science that led to some of the greatest achievements of mankind. For a variety of reasons, it seems as though progress recently has been more incremental, collective, and focused on confirming the big ideas of previous thinkers. What attribute do you think is most needed in the upcoming generation of physicists to usher in the next era of scientific progress?
Dyson: Scientific progress happens in two ways, either driven by new ideas or by new tools. The first half of the twentieth century was the time of new ideas, the second half was the time of new tools.New ideas are more exciting but new tools are often more important. For the twenty-first century, it seems that the most important contribution of physicists is to build new tools for other sciences. Examples, chemistry and biology and astronomy and computer-technology, all driven by new tools supplied by physics. This is not so exciting as discovering the Dirac equation, but probably more useful. There is plenty of good stuff for physicists to do.
Fewer Polymaths in the Modern World?
by eldavojohn
When weighted against population, it appears that there are fewer "Renaissance men/women" than there have been historically. I've heard many regular people opine about how fields require more depth and learning to make progress in them but, as a polymath yourself, what is your opinion on it?
Dyson: It is undoubtedly true that we are today drowning in information. Each of us knows a smaller fraction of the total information than earlier generations knew. Our skills have become more specialized. But I do not see any decrease in breadth of interest. The young people today are still interested in as wide a variety of subjects as we old ones were. Tools of knowledge such as the internet and Wikipedia make it easier for young people today to spread their minds over many subjects.
Parenting Esther Dyson
by ideonexus
You're daughter Esther is one of the most incredibly inspiring women role models alive today. Do you have any parenting advice for those of out here with kids of our own who would like them to become similarly active, positive, and brilliant adults?
Dyson: Thank you for your compliment to Esther and to her parents. We do not claim credit for her achievements. She was lucky to be the oldest of six, so we had little time for her and gave her little of our attention. She befitted from our benign neglect. She learned from a young age to choose her own path through life. She chose for her motto: "Always make new mistakes." I believe that is the key to her happy and productive life.
You didn't answer the question about the price of your vacuum cleaners!
Mass deforestation.
Even though the lumber industry is slowing down the areas that were once dense forests are more likely to be re-purposed for agricultural (or other) use.
"almost"
to much time in class that is what is bad about collage now days to much class room and a big gap in the hands on parts of learning. Trades got this right with apprenticeships.
"The same thing is true of the effects of carbon on climate. We cannot predict the effects of carbon on climate until we understand the science of climate much better than we do now. "
The thing is, Dr Dyson, that this is one of the few predictions that those who study climate for a living have made, and so far have been fairly accurate about. I agree that climatology is in its infancy, but that doesn't mean it can't accurately predict things on the level of "whatever goes up at a velocity we can manage to launch it right now always comes down again".
I am officially gone from
It may be true in an idealized sense. As in, if we took all the money we're about to put into carbon capture and alternative energy and instead put it into planting millions of acres of trees, we might be able to maintain atmospheric CO2 at current levels... for a while. Until we ran out of space, or had a drought and large scale fires, or until the trees started dying of old age and rotting on the ground. Unless you're gonna cut down the trees and sink them to the bottom of the deepest parts of the ocean... but really, any plan that relies on ongoing expenditure of effort and money is doomed to fail in the long run. Our only realistic plan is to bring the cost of clean energy sources down to the point where the dirty ones aren't economical anymore.
Ugh, I need a glass of water while I read this he's so dry.
Because "almost as fast" is not the same as "as fast", maybe?
He said that Bush senior removed all the tactical nukes which made the world safer. This is true regardless of what you think of the Bush's other actions.
I'm not sure that Dyson can easily be pigeonholed into a broad political definition. He's a very smart man who says what he thinks and doesn't really give a crap about anyone elses opinion of him. I don't always agree with him but he's generally worth listening too.
"Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
I about coughed in my coffee when he praised a Bush for making the world safer. Is this guy a conservative? If so, what is he even doing here?
Answering questions?
I can't tell if you're trying to be ironic or if you really could use another English class or three.
But hey, the classes I had to take in microbiology, astronomy and Western History Up To AD 1400 were certainly vital to my degree in IT.
A reduction in nukes is a reduction in nukes. Also on the topic of inflammatory weapons-related conversation points, Nixon believed in fairly strict gun control. Where is your god now? (Your black-and-white, two-party-system, completely facetious and entirely idiomatic god, that is.)
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
He praised Bush Sr. for reducing nuclear weapons. Something Obama wants to do but Republicans don't. Maybe he just wants less nuclear weapons in the world and appreciates the person that does it for the action rather than demeaning them based upon a letter after their name?
Is this guy a conservative? If so, what is he even doing here?
Because the sub title of this site is news for nerds not news for liberals to jerk off to.
I believe the word "almost" in his answer would be the reason.
Is buying a Harley Davidson as your first motorcycle since you were 16 at age 49 a midlife crisis issue?
Unlike you.
Not only that, vast swaths of forest are planted as pulpwood, which requires huge energy inputs to convert to paper --- the manufacture of one hardcover book uses enough energy to put roughly 8.85 pounds of CO_2 into the atmosphere.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
I'm not a fan on Bush sr. either, but there's nothing wrong with praising a world leader for working towards nuclear disarmament. Credit where credit is due.
I personally don't give a damn if Dyson is "liberal" or "conservative" - to whatever extent those terms even mean anything useful at this point. I'm just glad to hear the thoughts of an inspiring and accomplished scientist of the 20th century.
I about coughed in my coffee when he praised a Bush for making the world safer. Is this guy a conservative?
The elder Bush gets quite a bit of praise from present-day liberals for his foreign policy. (Even my brother, who is ideologically closer to the Green Party than the Democrats, agreed with me that Bush was one of the best presidents of his lifetime.) Part of this is just nostalgia influenced by the experience of his son's foreign policy, but even from an unbiased standpoint Bush I did very well. The part that gets the most credit isn't the Persian Gulf War, but the fact that the Cold War sputtered to a halt without anything blowing up. I've always thought that Bush's chief accomplishment here was having the good sense not to do anything crazy (rather than any overt acts), but in my opinion that's one of the most underrated qualities a president can have. It has nothing to do with being "liberal" or "conservative" in the sense these words are used in American political discourse.
To much time, in class that is, what is bad about collage now? Days, to much class, room --- and a big gap! In the hands, on parts of learning. Trades got this, right with apprenticeships.
^^ I hope I interpreted your missing implicit punctuation correctly in parsing this sentence? I'm afraid your sophisticated abstract poetry is a bit beyond my level of comprehension.
"The only accurate predictions I've seen climate science made are the predictions they've made about the recent past."
Yes, because you don't know that they've come true until shortly after they occur.
Unless you're a psychic.
James Hansen's 1988 model gave predictions for the next 30 years that turned out to be almost spot on. He'd gotten absolutely right if he'd had a sensitivity of 3.4C per doubling rather than 3.2C per doubling.
However, you hear from WTFUWT that the models don't work (because some barnpot tried to take a 3 year prediction and show that since it was out by less than 0.1C, that the decadal prediction rate was off by 300%). So that's what you believe because you're sure as hell not going to investigate that, since it so nicely chimes with your predilictions.
... Would have been: did he ever see the Star Trek TNG episode "Relics" which realized the vision of a Dyson Sphere?
Because more than half the admitted amount of CO2 human activities are putting out that were otherwise locked up is going into the oceans, so it's *already* "less than half".
But the CO2 levels are rising and at a level that is enough to account for the rest of the CO2 production above.
So "almost as much" is zero now???
And you just accepted his claim without checking?
You'd fail my class. And I teach 11-13 year olds, that's how badly you and he (And you others going "I believe 'almost' answers your case") fail.
Hello? ... because "almost as fast" = "slower" ... resulting in a net increase, duh!. Plus "burning it" isn't the only way that C02 is increased it's also increased by air burners breathing in and out ... so stop it!!
Do you have any facts that prove him wrong? Post them.
Rethinking email
Wouldn't be prudent :)
Thank you! Been saying this for 10 damned years.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
For any plausible meaning of "almost", 90% is really REALLY the bottom limit.
So you assert that if it weren't for the trees, the CO2 would be going up at 22ppm per annum, which would take it to around 1400ppm, which is a level toxic to humans..?
Do any of you idiot deniers EVER do any thinking for yourself? Or is it all just bluff an bluster?
Thank you Dr Dyson for sharing your views on the world with us!
I really hope you're not a college student.
Because if you are, you're confirming my worst fears about the next generation.
On the other hand, if you're a college graduate, it's even worse.
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
Answering questions?
Yes
I think his comments on FTL and all the hype about interstellar space exploration are totally spot-on. All the Alcubierre drive news that had NASA's name attached to it was traceable to one guy there who doesn't even really understand general relativity. What you have to understand about NASA is that they tend to write blank checks as far as exaggerations in press releases go; so while the work actually being done (building an interferometer) is valid, the hype attached to it about this and that could be extremely overblown (interferometer will be used to test FTL travel). The end result is "NASA working on warp drive" headlines where the real headline should be something much more humble and limited.
It hasn't *gone* slower, though, has it.
We're pumping out enough to up it by nearly 5ppm a year. Around 2.5ppm is going into the oceans. Around 2.2ppm is going into the atmosphere.
"Almost all" of it already accounted for, NONE of it accounted in the "going in the trees" column.
Unless you're gonna cut down the trees and sink them to the bottom of the deepest parts of the ocean
This is what happens. The trees fall down, decompose into soil, the soil washes into rivers, which falls into the ocean and settles on the bottom. Where do you think oil came from in the first place? It wasn't all dinosaurs.
Clearly, he's a collage student, complaining about the current state of the field by pasting together random cut-out scraps of sentences in a confusing jumble.
It depends on what field and school you're talking about. However, at least in the sciences and engineering fields, there is still a lot of hands on work. And for many of those fields, graduate school is like an apprenticeship program. Worst case scenario at many schools, is the hands on work is avoidable or optional, in which case it is the student's fault for being lazy or not taking full advantage of their environment. At least at the university I work at now, like several that close friends also work at, there are plenty of lab courses and chances for students to work hands on development and research for various projects as an undergrad. Some of it is a little less formal during the year, other examples are full time summer work that is hands on.
Though your response intimated that my basic assumptions about resource allocation by governments and industry were wrong, that too is useful insight. I'm not sure it's entirely correct, however.
Both private industry and goverments are littered with failed ideas, and I am skeptical that one really does better or worse than another at picking winners and losers. Private industry, I think, simply has more active public relations machinery.
Capitalist societies seem to act more like a bacteria colonies, successfully reacting to resource availibility and strategies with immediate results while ignoring long-term consequences of their actions. Capitalism, it might be said, doesn't think ahead. That's what governments should be for, although in a democracy with a 4-year cycle, this view is often too limited for useful long-term action on matters like hydrocarbon energy depletion and global warming.
Please do not read this sig. Thank you.
If that were true, then why is CO2 increasing?
If we cut down all the buildings in New York city and planted trees there, they'll soak up all the CO2 being produced.
Let us know when you're ready to replace civilization with jungles.
Number of nuclear warheads x average warhead yield has gone up because average yield has gone up faster than number of warheads have gone down.
I think Dyson is a bit too pessimistic about AI. AI hasn't fulfilled the promises of human-level conversational intellect, but those promises were unrealistic. I think the problem is that people want computers to emulate human minds and human souls, when we don't even know how humans work. The solution is that computers are their own type of device, with a so-far unconscious intelligence that far exceeds human intelligence. There's even a Wikipedia article about the challenge in the perception of AI.
For example:
Computers can't do what humans do, but what they do well, they do far faster, more cheaply, and more accurately than humans ever could.
Have a nice time.
Number of nuclear warheads x average warhead yield has gone up because average yield has gone up faster than number of warheads have gone down.
Except it hasn't.
The multi-megaton bombs were a thing of the '50s, when accuracies were terrible, and the solution was "just get the bomb near, and make it big."
The modern thinking on nuclear weapons is to make them small, but extremely accurately targetted. You don't need a 50-megaton Tsar-bomb if you are able to put a smaller yield weapon exactly where you want it.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I'm not sure that Dyson can easily be pigeonholed into a broad political definition. He's a very smart man who says what he thinks and doesn't really give a crap about anyone elses opinion of him. I don't always agree with him but he's generally worth listening too.
Exactly. I find him worth listening to precisely because he is identifiable neither strictly as a liberal nor a conservative.
And, indeed, "worth listening to" does not equate to "I agree with him." It means "his analyses are interesting, and often present a viewpoint that gives an unusual insight."
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Search for Hansen prediction. There are three on the subject that pertain.
One is about the hatchet-job Christy did, where he pretended the "Worst case" was the "most likely case" and picked an end year where the record had a bit of a jump and even then had to play fast and loose with the maths to make it "failed badly".
The other two are about the prediction as made, including the actual trajectory of the emissions scenaro that actually took place, then a second one for how well it's done since then.
Alternatively, you can go to Google Scholar and check out the paper yourself. I did.
Bush Sr. did a few good things, probably by mistake. Even a broken clock...
It is right to praise that policy even if they guy may have been against it or an unwitting party to it. Jr on the other hand was trying to UNDO his father's decision and bring back tactical mini nukes etc.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I've always thought that Bush's chief accomplishment here was having the good sense not to do anything crazy (rather than any overt acts), but in my opinion that's one of the most underrated qualities a president can have. It has nothing to do with being "liberal" or "conservative" in the sense these words are used in American political discourse.
Away from politics, most people would associate "slow to do anything crazy" with "conservative". All good engineers are conservative engineers.
In politics, it always amazes me when people who would not be cool with trusting everything to an untested new bridge/building/airplane engine design are all for trusting everything to an untested new social design.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
How right your are! No True Climate Scientist would ever question the consensus! The one true measure of truth is that it's spoken by "earned authority" after all. </sarcasm>
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Buying the Harley is absolutely an indicator of mid-life crisis, because if you were just interested in riding the bike rather than the "lifestyle", you'd buy a better bike for less money.
If you take reality into account, his model worked.
If you take denier "ur-reality" into account, you'd be right, but you'd be a frigging idiot do to so.
You have a better way to arrive at knowledge about reality other than the scientific method . It seems to involve romantic notions about mavericks and strong individuals speaking truth against power.
Perhaps we should refer to the Sara Palins of the world in matters involving the nature of reality.
Please, feel free to improve on the process of how science is conducted. I'm sure you're sure you're qualified. Of course the fact that practicing scientists would reject your notions as more or less insane would just prove the existence of the conspiracy you're working to expose.
Meanwhile, Dyson's counter-factual meanderings about climate change only serve to buttress and legitimize the deniers and their talking points at the end of which process lies a lot of real destruction and death of innocent people.
Reality. It's not just what you think.
Each warhead, though can contain subunits.
They, because it hadn't been thought of at the time, don't count to the warhead count.
The count of warheads for the USA is still about 5700, mind. It's 2200 that are loaded up to be used in bases that can fire them.
As poorly written as GP's post was, it zeroed in on the most interesting thing that, at least for me, was said in the interview. When someone is as accomplished in so many areas as Mr Dyson is, it stands to reason that he'd have at least some insight into the educational process. And in both his response on his own education and in the one where he talked about his daughter's education, he indicated that he thought the success of both educational processes was due to a "benign neglect" which allowed the child to actively pursue education rather than having it imposed upon them.
I'm betting that this is true for a certain type of child...one who is curious and driven to learn and that many students don't fit into that category. But thinking back on my own education, I wonder how much more successful I would have been if I'd played a bigger role in shaping my curriculum rather than having it dictated by the schools I attended.
I'm only starting to let the idea marinate a bit, but I feel like there's got to be some way to incorporate this cooperative learning phenomenon where teachers get out of the way of students and simply make themselves available as resources rather than lecturing, dictating and otherwise trying to push information into the heads of students. If feels like a pull methodology would allow students to better learn at their own pace.
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
untested new social design.
I know, right? Free the slaves? Hold up a second, buddy! My projections indicate that would cause a fourth-quarter downturn in cotton revenues. Let's not go nuts here.
Most science is conducted by making falsifiable predictions about future measurements. Confirmed (or falsified) predictions speak for themselves, the "authority" of the scientists is irrelevant. Also, it doesn't take an "authority" to call BS - the burden is on the scientist making the claims to answer skeptics. If skeptics keep asking the same dumb questions, you make a FAQ. Saying "I'm right because shut up" is not science.
Dyson is rightly pointing out that this is a new area without much track record, and without much depth of understanding of underlying mechanisms. He's not saying "you're wrong" so much as "don't get cocky yet - you still might be wrong about something important".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
know, right? Free the slaves? Hold up a second, buddy! My projections indicate that would cause a fourth-quarter downturn in cotton revenues. Let's not go nuts here.
While that was just silly flamebait, it was also wrong: slaves had largely stopped being profitable in the South when the Civil War began (thanks to automation - which works cheaper than slaves) - the issue at hand was exporting slaves to the west, which would have been a fresh revenue source for slaveholders.
It was also not an untested new idea at the time. Slavery was hardly new on this Earth, and freeing slaves in large numbers had been done many times throughout history.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Too bad this is getting downvoted as it is correct. Trees consume very little of the CO2 we produce from fossil fuels, in part because trees themselves produce enormous amounts of CO2 every night, which they then re-absorb during the day.
The vast majority of CO2 fixing occurs in the ocean, not the forest.
Source: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/space/earth-from-space.html
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
I'm betting that this is true for a certain type of child...one who is curious and driven to learn and that many students don't fit into that category.
I'd bet it would be true for lots of children, given a perspective on education at an early age that would shape them toward benefitting from this model.
If you've ever worked with toddlers, you know that the vast majority of them are eager to explore and learn. This sticks with most kids through the early years of primary school.
At some point, though, school becomes a "chore." Social attitudes about "nerds" and "geeks" take over at most schools, kids who don't succeed on particular benchmarks are alienated, and eventually by some point in secondary school you have a majority of kids who have forgotten how to learn and be curious, at least regarding most academic subjects.
Meanwhile, parents force skills in particular ways because they see them as a vehicle for success rather than learning for knowledge's or exploration's sake. But most parents and even most teachers tend to forget that it's not the kid who learns the school material that's necessarily the most successful. It's the kid who has learned how to learn and is self-motivated to continue who will succeed much more than someone who just does what's required in school. If we seek to teach learning itself as the first "skill" in school, rather than a cookie-cutter one-fits-all curriculum of "basic skills" achieved at particular age levels for everyone, we might see a lot more kids who are eager and willing to drive their own education.
Looking at today's educational system, it may seem like only a small number of kids could really be left to their own devices to drive a lot of their learning through curiosity (obviously with some guidance). But I think it could actually work for a lot more kids (though certainly not all) if our attitudes about education were different.
MOOCs without the "honor code", which censors students helping each other.
Huh, I was pretty sure my point was that some institutions are so abhorrent that they must be cast down as a moral imperative and not be indefinitely extended by the desire of those who benefit from the current state of society to avoid disrupting the comfortable status quo. But your point is good too. Maybe you have a better example of craaaazy untested ideas that non-conservatives keep trying to implement.
Away from politics, most people would associate "slow to do anything crazy" with "conservative".
Well, sure, but that's why I qualified my statement - within the bounds of US politics, self-proclaimed "conservatives" tend to leap at the chance to do something radical and crazy. (And of course self-proclaimed "liberals" are often anything but, although the resurrection of the term "progressive" has helped distinguish the more dogmatic lefty types from the rest of us.)
> The one true measure of truth is that it's spoken by "earned authority" after all.
So you think people who know nothing but have a hunch are just as likely to be right as someone who has spent years studying and learning?
Hamsters are at least as feathery as penguins. HamLix
It was also somewhat of a pissing-contest.
Hence: the Apollo program, and the Saturn V, as a demonstration of nuclear megatonnage-delivery capability. (if you don't believe that; then why did the Soviets respond with THIS program? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyus_%28spacecraft%29 - - -) answer: because it was ALL about nuclear blackmail. Pretty much all the funding NASA ever got up until the Soviet collapse, was about nuclear blackmail. After that, we somehow conned a few more decades of funding out of congress via STS, ISS, and flying surveillance birds. But this era is rapidly coming to a close.
It wasn't about what was actually practical for use. It was about what we could terrorize people with.
. . . who could have imagined that?
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
A reduction in nukes is a reduction in nukes. Also on the topic of inflammatory weapons-related conversation points, Nixon believed in fairly strict gun control. Where is your god now? (Your black-and-white, two-party-system, completely facetious and entirely idiomatic god, that is.)
Who gives a fuck about Nixon or any other politician for that matter?
I see Nixon quoted in MSM movies, but almost never in anarcho/libertarian forums.
The part that gets the most credit isn't the Persian Gulf War, but the fact that the Cold War sputtered to a halt without anything blowing up.
The less said about the gulf war the better, especially for Bush. The cold war would have sputtered to what it became which was not a halt eventually, which is what happened. What, if not a halt? A below-cost weapons sale which has led to massive violence in a number of countries since, as the cold-war stockpile has been sold off.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I think it's irrelevant - a hypothesis worthy of consideration makes falsifiable predictions, and those prove true or otherwise. If we're talking about the maturity of a discipline as a whole, I'd give credence to a scientist, sure (though someone outside the discipline in question might be more objective), and I think Freeman Dyson has the background to comment intelligently
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Yeah, those terms "liberal" and "conservative" and "libertarian" now "progressive" are all lost to reasonable discussion I fear. At least we have "classic liberal" now returning to mean "pro- individual liberty".
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Indeed, Libertarians tend not to be very big on pragmatism or learning from history.
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!
Maybe he was just undoing a bit of Reagan's damage.
Communism, Facism, the welfare state ca. 1900. One out of three variants on the theme succeeded, the others were horrific failures. All were a massive and unprecedented intrusion of government into the lives of the population. Decide for yourself how successful they were and the value of the various trade-offs.
Planting trees is just another carbon capture tech. If it's a relative loser, that's fine. By all means, capture carbon as cheaply as you can, and it certainly doesn't have to be plants (just don't totally write off the oldest most proven tech ever invented).
But...
You can't bring clean energy costs down while you're subsidizing CO2-polluting energy techs. The disincentive makes it crazy to bother with the clean energy. Why would I pay 20 cents per KWH for nuclear or solar when the carbon pollution subsidy gives me coal energy for 10 cents per KWH? Why would anyone want to sell clean energy, knowing that I don't want to pay for it? Why work on it?
If you charge me whatever it costs to plant the forests to absorb the carbon, including the space constraints and fire risk -- if you make me pay what it really does cost instead of subsidizing my pollution -- then clean energy may be a competitive deal. If it's a competitive deal, there's reason to produce it (because you want my money; 20 cent/KWH solar beats 25 cents/KHW unsubsidized coal). Other clean energy producers want that money too. Now you're competing with each other. Now you're developing the tech. Now, you just might get the cost down, because you got your foot in the door long enough to really be able to try.
But none of that can start until you remove the pollution subsidy. That should be first priority, moreso than supporting (i.e. subsidizing) any particular carbon capture tech, or clean energy tech. The first step to winning is to stop going to extra trouble to lose.
Democracy, Rule of Law, Women's Suffrage, Market Capitalism. Keep going! I'm sure you'll convince me that change is bad eventually.
If you were correct, since 2% of the landmass is the USA, even if we say that it is over-represented five times as much for wooded areas, that would mean that the trees take up 250% of the human output, leaving ZERO to go into the ocean and air.
This is not the case.
F-.
I think this was probably true for me, whilst I was completely failing at my school exams and so forth during the day I was going home at night creating mods for the likes of Quake, Quake 2 and so forth that attracted thousands of users and discovering fairly well published (at the time) software vulnerabilities. The Cs and Ds I was getting in IT at school and so forth were clearly not even in the slightest bit representative of the fact I was ahead of anyone else in not just the school, but probably most schools in my part of the country in terms of IT by a massive margin.
Eventually after having failed my first year of subjects such as Maths at college twice and then going into work for a few years I decided I'd have a crack at doing a degree and because I was doing it when I wanted to do it, on my schedule, with my money I came out with a 1st class honours in Mathematics.
The issue is that I wasn't getting Cs and Ds and failing at college because I was bad at the topics, I was getting those grades and failing because the way the topics were taught literally ripped all life and interest out of them. Should I have been left to explore the subjects myself in my own time and in my own way I suspect I would've been a straight A* student. Of course, it wasn't that simple as I didn't have the same respect for Maths at school as I did a few years later when I did a degree, at that point it was all about the computing but whilst school wanted to teach me how to write stupid documents in Word and Excel and how to do mail merges as part of the IT curriculum at the time I was way too busy thinking about new and novel ways to use DLL injection to change the way things worked on my computer.
I'm not meaning to come across as arrogant or any such thing, on the contrary there are many people way brighter than me whom I'd love the opportunity to work with and learn from, but without a doubt I think the way the current education system is set up in most of the world fails some of the students with by far the greatest potential. The system is effective for your average drone, but entirely ineffective for supporting the brightest and best in society, but also ineffective at supporting the most deprived and struggling in society also (sometimes those two groups intersect for what it's worth).
For me it's not really been a problem, I succeeded regardless of my original academic failings (though my 1st class honours in Mathematics made all of that irrelevant anyway). But even if you opt to ignore my achievements and do write them off as arrogance or bragging one surely has to admit that there's something a little wrong with the system when someone can get a 1st class honours degree in Mathematics when they studied the topic when they decided they were ready to study it despite having been a fail grade student only a few years prior. That's why I don't think I'm wrong - if our education system made sense then a dropout in a subject should never realistically be able to become a 1st class honours student only a few years later when they've done no additional preparation or study between the two. The earlier grading says "write this kid off", the latter grading says "this is one of the most sought after workers in society" - that makes no sense.
Dickhead Dyson isn't saying what you're saying, though. He's saying that trees take up our carbon. They haven't any room, they're busy trying to take up their own.
And there's another problem: 25% isn't "most" is it, never mind "almost all".
As a teacher, I want to teach children to think things through, not stop as soon as they get a meme they like the sound of.
Which is what you and these other denidiots are doing.
F-.
And "Oh, here's another hypothesis" means bugger all: YOU need to try to prove it better than the current science theory, otherwise it's a waste of time.
Which is what you want, really, isn't it? To waste the time of the scientists so you can continue raping and pillaging before you snuff it and don't care any more?
"and I think Freeman Dyson has the background to comment intelligently"
He has no experience, so when he says "we don't understand", he's talking for HIMSELF, not those whose study has been that which he is talking bollocks on. Neither of us understand how the ignition control system works, but does that mean that they can't be made? No, because people out there who DO understand how it works do it.
Dickhead Dyson
You fail. Not only as a teacher, a job which you are obviously not fit to perform, but also as a human being. To use words you might be able to understand: Go fuck yourself.
The whole point is that scientists have been making models and predicting changes derived them form them for decades now and the observed changes in the climate do indeed line up with the predictions
The fact that you can say they do not is just a testament to how profoundly people can kid themselves.
Dyson' play is a pure "argument from authority" play. As I said in the original post, he is not doing science, he's attempting to leverage his authority in one domain into authority in another.
Dyson' play is a pure "argument from authority" play. As I said in the original post, he is not doing science, he's attempting to leverage his authority in one domain into authority in another.
Except, it's not true. He proposed a long scientifically-sound solution to carbon fixing if it is needed And he spent years developing methods to measure heat in-flow and heat out-flow of forests to study effects of deforestation. His arguments are within his area of expertise. He is NOT a blowhard.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Freeman Dyson's scientific knowledge in this area is exactly nil.
The bottom line is this Dyson, like a lot of academics from his time, is an attention seeking machine who longs to be relevant and see his name in print once again; thus his trolling of slashdot (!!!) for some love and attention. He's going to be long dead by the time the full gravity of his malfeasance becomes manifest to those that follow him - a fact he's very acutely of.
Excerpted without comment from
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2007/08/15/201772/freeman-dyson-climate-crackpot/?mobile=nc
As a physicist, I have never been a big fan of Freeman Dyson. He was, after all, one of the âoegeniusesâ pushing Project Orion â" the absurdly impractical idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs â" I kid you not!
Dyson has written a new book, A Many Colored Glass, that you shouldnâ(TM)t waste your time and money on, as this extract on global warming makes clear. Dyson has basically joined the famous-confusionist camp with Michael Crichton and Bill Gray. You can read a good debunking of Dyson here. Iâ(TM)ll add my two cents.
Dyson says many things that are just plain wrong: "There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global." Uhh, no. The warming is global â" as every set of data makes clear â" thatâ(TM)s why itâ(TM)s called global warming.
He says the "fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated" because he is certain the climate models do not reflect reality. I agree they donâ(TM)t reflect realityâ" but that leads me to the opposite conclusion. Dyson fails to ask whether the simplifications and omissions in climate models lead them to overestimate or underestimate climate impacts. So far, they have underestimated things like Arctic ice loss, mass loss of the great ice sheets, and sea-level rise. They donâ(TM)t model many feedbacks very well, and we know today that most feedbacks are amplifying.
No nonsense essay would be complete without a nonsense solution. He believes "the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management" and that the entire climate problem can be solved by increasing topsoil:
We do not know whether intelligent land-management could increase the growth of the topsoil reservoir by four billion tons of carbon per year, the amount needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Actually we kinda do know. The best data suggest we are losing billions of tons of topsoil each year. A major effort will be required just to stop that loss rate from increasing sharply. Indeed, global warming itself is projected to cause both increased flooding, which washes away topsoil, and increased droughts, which destroy topsoil.
The entire essay is riddled with the kind of mistakes and dubious assertions we saw in Crichtonâ(TM)s novel. One final point. Dyson asserts:
They [climate models] do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
Uhh, no. Climate modelers are skeptical like all scientists, but contrary to what Dyson says, they do base their models on real-world data, and their models are passable at modeling what has actually happened to the climate so far. As noted, where they have been inadequate is in underestimating the impacts we have felt so far.
But what really irritates me about this statement â" which implies climate modelers are ivory tower t
Freeman Dyson's scientific knowledge in this area is exactly nil.
Dyson on Dyson, from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
"It's always possible Hansen could turn out to be right," he says of the climate scientist. "If what he says were obviously wrong, he wouldn't have achieved what he has. But Hansen has turned his science into ideology. He's a very persuasive fellow and has the air of knowing everything. He has all the credentials. I have none. I don't have a Ph.D. He's published hundreds of papers on climate. I haven't. By the public standard he's qualified to talk and I'm not. But I do because I think I'm right. I think I have a broad view of the subject, which Hansen does not. I think it's true my career doesn't depend on it, whereas his does. I never claim to be an expert on climate. I think it's more a matter of judgement than knowledge."
The bottom line is this Dyson, like a lot of academics from his time, is an attention seeking machine who longs to be relevant and see his name in print once again; thus his trolling of slashdot (!!!) for some love and attention.
He's going to be long dead by the time the full gravity of his malfeasance becomes manifest to those that follow him - a fact he's very acutely of.
Excerpted without comment from
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2007/08/15/201772/freeman-dyson-climate-crackpot/?mobile=nc
As a physicist, I have never been a big fan of Freeman Dyson. He was, after all, one of the "geniuses" pushing Project Orion- the absurdly impractical idea of creating a rocket ship powered by detonating nuclear bombs-- I kid you not!
Dyson has written a new book, A Many Colored Glass, that you shouldn't waste your time and money on, as this extract on global warming makes clear. Dyson has basically joined the famous confusionist camp with Michael Crichton and Bill Gray. You can read a good debunking of Dyson here. I'll add my two cents.
Dyson says many things that are just plain wrong: "There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global."
Uhh, no. The warming is global -as every set of data makes clear- that's why it's called global warming.
He says the "fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated" because he is certain the climate models do not reflect reality. I agree they don't reflect reality - but that leads me to the opposite conclusion. Dyson fails to ask whether the simplifications and omissions in climate models lead them to overestimate or underestimate climate impacts. So far, they have underestimated things like Arctic ice loss, mass loss of the great ice sheets, and sea-level rise. They don't model many feedbacks very well, and we know today that most feedbacks are amplifying.
No nonsense essay would be complete without a nonsense solution. He believes "the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management" and that the entire climate problem can be solved by increasing topsoil:
We do not know whether intelligent land-management could increase the growth of the topsoil reservoir by four billion tons of carbon per year, the amount needed to stop the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Actually we kinda do know. The best data suggest we are losing billions of tons of topsoil each year. A major effort will be required just to stop that loss
rate from increasing sharply. Indeed, global warming itself is projected to cause both increased flooding, which washes away topsoil, and increased droughts, which destroy topsoil.
The entire essay is riddled with the kind of mistakes and dubious assertions we saw in Crichton's novel. One final point. Dyson asserts:
They [climate models]
I don't care what think progress has to say. Their credibility in science (any science) is zilch. I know Dyson's solution for carbon sequestering and it is the best solution I have seen. It is scientifically sound. It does NOT involve dystopian destruction of society. It is even profitable for those who'd chose to implement it. He also has studied large-scale heat flow models and he does know a great deal about how to evaluate a scientific experiment for when it is sound and when it isn't. Think Progress is simply poo-pooing him because he offended their favorite religion (environmentalism). He is not the 1st scientist to be smeared by religious nuts. Do not, for a second, think that you are on the side of reason. You are not! You are an unwitting fool on the side of con men trying to sooth speak their way into public consciousness. The whole environmental movement has already done a great deal of harm to the public understanding of the scientific method. The shills like you are just another proof of it. You are trying to bring arguments from a political organization to discredit argument of a polymath who speaks about one of his areas of expertise. And your whole argument is that he is not talking about his other area of expertise.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
You only remember the successes. 90% of new ideas are really bad. Every vanished cult and commune, every 19th century "utopia", all were based on ideas that failed, but really looked good to somebody.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
What the fuck would you know about college? You've obviously never stepped foot inside one and probably dropped out of high school at age 14. If I couldn't spell "too" and "college" I'd be embarrased to show my lack of education to slashdotters.
That fact is a very good argument against the trade school you went to. Sorry, fellow, but you really REALLY sound like a moron. Your local community college could help you out with there a few remedial classes. You'll be lucky to get an interview for a job, one look at your application and it wild be shitcanned.
My guess, Joe, is that you're really 12 or 13 and trying to fool us into thinking you're and adult. It isn't working.
I yield to nobody in my admiration of the intellectual leadership of Freeman Dyson but pontifications like "Faster-than-light travel is rubbish" are asking for trouble. I'm reminded of a valuable precept - "When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong." Clarke was only an engineer turned writer of course, but we do have geostationary satellites and we haven't yet found Dyson spheres.
Let's review how this thread has gone, shall we?
First, I pointed out that Dyson has no scientific training in the highly technical subject matter from which he dramatically differs from consensus scientific view.
Then you claimed my rejection of Dyson's opinions and embrace of mainstream scientific opinion represented an argument from authority. You then proffered one of his more fanciful notions of how to mitigate carbon pollution, if that turned out to be necessary , something Dyson counts as unlikely.
I replied with analysis of Dyson's lunatical scheme and also a quote from Dyson in which he himself admitted he lacked the knowledge and training to hold forth upon the subject he is nevertheless holding forth on.
You then just replied to me that you don't care what the web page I excerpted says- even if it's merely quoting Dyson himself- because you don't trust "that thar libral webpage. " .
So what do we have? We have in your posts a perfect example of what conservatives are and what they do. They reject the processes and conclusions of legitimate science and the results that flow from therefrom and in its place substitute the unsupported theories of a crank and a fraud.
They insist that the conclusions of people who have submitted themselves to the rigors of science are some form of "argument by authority" even though in reality - a place they rarely visit - the entire process of science is dedicated to and results in the exclusion of conclusions based on fallacious reasoning including "argument by authority".
You live in a fantasy world based on the notion of self gratification where whoever tells you what you want to hear is right and everyone else is wrong, and a part of a conspiracy. Dyson lives there with you, and both of you have more in common with Joseph Stalin than anyone else.
Dyson is not qualified by his own admission. Scientists are not offering their personal opinions, they are revealing the conclusions of their studies. Those studies are the end product of the most rigorous falsehood exclusion process humankind has ever developed- the scientific method paired with the peer-review process. That falsehood exclusion process is the crowning achievement of all human history and has relieved more human suffering than any other human endeavor. It is nothing less than the basis of human civilization itself.
Of course conservatives hate it, because conservatives hate anything that interferes with their ability to maximize their own personal and immediate self-gratification . They call this proclivity a love of "freedom".
You're a study in denial,. You're not so mentally weak to understand what's going on with Dyson and his assault and contempt for science, but you don't decide things on the facts, you decide things on how well they dovetail with your preferred ideology.
You and people like you are exactly the reason that this little online war we've been waging for the past decade or so will ultimately go offline and end in a hot, real war; you simply refuse to treat facts as facts. You're incapable of it.
Something hangs in the balance here and that something is all future human civilization. So far, the tale of the tape says that groups who unilaterally attempt to destroy that future are ultimately and frankly brutally put down by the forces of civilization who prefer reality-based outcomes to ideological self-immolation.
I am pretty sure that preference is very deep inside the human psyche, you and your kind excepted, and will in time express itself with its usual ferocity and uncompromising attitude.
Until then, have fun playing your little self assigned role of science and reality denier . I can't say it's going to end well for you.
25% is just for U.S.A. trees (got that stat from U.S. Forest Service, agency of Dept. of Ag), I've heard rumors there are also trees elsewhere in the world
Unless you're an entangled boson.
he indicated that he thought the success of both educational processes was due to a "benign neglect" which allowed the child to actively pursue education rather than having it imposed upon them.
I'm betting that this is true for a certain type of child.,
Yes, mostly ones who are smarter than their teachers and have an overriding curiosity.
I drove my public school teachers crazy. Everything they tried to teach I'd already read. One science teacher in high school said he'd goven me an A on an essay because the material was over his head. It's a shame that gifted kids aren't deemed "special" like the learning-handicapped are.
For a long lasting "alternative" college program, with independent study and student-directed programs, see:
http://esg.mit.edu/about-esg/history
And check out the link at the bottom, "My Years in the MIT Experimental Study Group: Some Old Facts and New Myths," written by George Valley in 1974,
http://esg.mit.edu/about-esg/George%20Valley%20History%20of%20ESG.pdf
I was lucky enough to find ESG after flunking out my first term at MIT... Made all the difference.
First, I pointed out that Dyson has no scientific training in the highly technical subject matter from which he dramatically differs from consensus scientific view.
I didn't even realize you made a claim so absurd. But ok. That's absurd. His "training" is irrelevant. The matter at hand is the area of his expertise. In active research area of expertise is usually significantly different from ones training. Training is learning of the basics. It is the learning of what is already known. Area of expertise is generally what one knows that few others (if any) know as well. It's why it's called "expertise."
Now that we have addressed the absurdity, let's go for content residing inside the context of the absurdity. Dyson generally takes an issue with the rigor of the methodologies used by "climate scientists." Here's the problem though: series analysis is series analysis whether you are analyzing climate, astrology, or pork barrel futures prices. If an expert in series analysis says your methodology for data collection is flawed, it doesn't matter from which domain of knowledge your are collecting your data. Nor does it matter that all the colleagues who shouldered with you the burden of collecting the data are in consensus with you. All inquiry goes through data collection, processing and then deduction. If a person who has demonstrated superior ability to analyze and deduce says that the data you've collected is too vague, it simply doesn't matter from which domain of knowledge the data came. It's weak.
Then you claimed my rejection of Dyson's opinions and embrace of mainstream scientific opinion represented an argument from authority. You then proffered one of his more fanciful notions of how to mitigate carbon pollution, if that turned out to be necessary , something Dyson counts as unlikely.
Yes, yes, he is a witch. Burn him. You are nothing but a mouth for an inquisition. You are smearing a perfectly valid scientific work product.
You live in a fantasy world based on the notion of self gratification where whoever tells you what you want to hear is right and everyone else is wrong, and a part of a conspiracy. Dyson lives there with you, and both of you have more in common with Joseph Stalin than anyone else.
Ok, so if I knew you in real life, I'd hope that you got your medication on time. As it is, I don't care.
a quote from Dyson in which he himself admitted he lacked the knowledge
Oh, how foolish you are. That is sooo far from what he actually said. He said that he doesn't have a PhD in this particular subject. That is not to say he is not an expert. No one (with possible exception of trully vain people) gets multiple PhD. Once you have it, you just do research and publish. PhD is just a proof that you meet the cut as a researcher -- it's not a stamp of expertise. He is, in fact, mocking the notion that he is not considered an expert in that quote. Expertise comes from insight -- not from authority. He also mentions that because his livelihood does not depend on agreeing with consensus, he is actually free to conduct his research on the matter uninhibited. This is not true of the "official" climate scientists because they are subject not only to the funding restrictions, but also to the pitch-fork mob such as yourself.
because you don't trust "that thar libral webpage. "
Political is what I said -- not liberal. You are trying to bring political opinions to attack a scientist. That's vile.
So what do we have?
A mob, I guess.
We have in your posts a perfect example of what conservatives are and what they do.
In hiding? from lunatics who are running the asylum?
They reject the processes and conclusions of legitimate science
Nah, ah. That you D
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
At least we have "classic liberal" now returning to mean "pro- individual liberty".
Yeah, but I've also seen plenty of people claim this mantle for themselves while espousing completely contradictory positions, e.g. supporting the criminalization of sodomy. As is too often the case, they support individual liberty only so far as it aligns with their own lifestyle and economic choices. (This too is not just a conservative failing, but they tend to be the ones talking the loudest about the broad concepts of "freedom" and "individual liberty". Progressives at least tend to avoid such generalities in favor of "social justice".)
This is a conflation of two different motivations. "No Till" agricultural techniques were promoted in the 1970s (and I was taught about them in my Soil Science classes in the 1980s ; not that I ever used it seriously) for improving and preventing damage to soil meso-structure (between the scale of the sand grain and the several metres of a well-developed soil profile), and thereby promoting the development of good (or improved) drainage and access of roots to mineral resources from the sub-soil.
Distinctly, the development of powerful, broad-spectrum herbicides (and simultaneous development of GM techniques that can make particular plant strains immune to these herbicides) has allowed the concept of "no till" techniques whereby the plants are harvested and the grain separated from the chaff in the field, depositing the chaff onto the field, AND simultaneous drilling of the next harvest's seed. But there is then no stage of ploughing or harrowing to get the seed into the soil. The alleged carbon footprint changes come from the chaff not being burned.
To be honest though, I'm severely dubious about how effective this would be in the real world. If the herbicides are effective enough and broad-enough in their action, then they're going to have drastic effects on the soil microbiology ; they're going to make breakdown of the chaff by fungi and/ or insect maceration much harder ; and if the chaff doesn't get broken down, then pretty rapidly your soil is going to loose it's organic matter component. Which normally leads rapidly to loss of water absorption capacity, and you're going to either get drought or drowning.
I don't follow Soil Science any more (though it has been surprisingly useful to me in oil drilling), but I suspect that the downsides of herbicidal no-till methods as described above are going to be so prevalent that there are only going to be limited areas where it is of benefit. Of course, that doesn't mean that farmers are not going to try it. But after a decade or two of accumulating damage to their soils, they'll need to spend a century or so trying to repair the damage. Unless you trial it properly, and bear in mind that soils are variable on a metre-by metre scale, and what is the right solution *here* may not be the right solution half-way across the field. (A bit different in massive loess areas like the "Great Plains", but they're not the whole world.) A student of the history of statistics would spend an awful lot of time reading about techniques developed for soil science research, precisely because of the difficulty of determining "effects" against a variable background.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
"Trees eat carbon almost as fast as we can burn it."
*For sufficiently high values of "trees".
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
>>First, I pointed out that Dyson has no scientific training in the highly technical subject matter from which he dramatically differs from consensus scientific view.
>. That's absurd. His "training" is irrelevant. The matter at hand is the area of his expertise.
Yeah you're playing word games. Expertise and training and mastery of a domain and ability to do productive research in a field and a million other noun phrases are all the same thing- do you comprehend the technical matter and the work of the researchers in the field and can you make contributions to advance that understanding ?
Dyson has none of this in this field, by his own direct admission, which you have attempted to dance around with your word play. Have some more, liar-
From Yale's website:
http://e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151
Dyson about an interviewer:
"he wanted to write a piece about global warming and I was just the instrument for that, and I am not so much interested in global warming.
He portrayed me as sort of obsessed with the subject, which I am definitely not. To me it is a very small part of my life.
I don't claim to be an expert. I never did.
I simply find that a lot of these claims that experts are making are absurd. Not that I know better, but I know a few things.
My objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it's rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have.
I think that's what upsets me."
That "not knowing much" fact he cites, that state of "not being an expert" that he mentions, that "not knowing better" has consequences. One of those consequences is he floats notions which the people who do know the field reject out of hand as impossible. That is not some badge of honor, that is just being wrong.
Only Sara Palin and her ilk take that as a sure sign you're right.
Only narcissists believe that, when faced with that situation, the thing to do is to throw away the accumulated knowledge and hard won agreement of technical experts who have spent their professional lives comparing their predictions to reality and submitted themselves to the rigours of peer review. People whose models' predicted results have been repeatedly borne out and whose work in effect constitutes humanity's deep knowledge of a field and go by gut.
Sara Palin and, oh yeah, Freeman Dyson.
Dyson can't "take issue with the way climate science is done" or "take issue with their techniques" or "find flaws in their methodology" or any other of a million ways to express the same idea because he doesn't understand them. That's what happens when you don't DO the work- you don't understand the work.
So, heh, I guess you actually didn't address any absurdity. But feel free to raise your own hand in victory *in exactly the same way Dyson declares his meanderings to be relevant*.
>>Oh, how foolish you are. That is sooo far from what he actually said.
I think the above disposes of that idea....let the reader be the judge.
The rest of your post consists of broad, baseless and meaningless screeching about *how environmentalists have destroyed science* etc etc which are just typical of your kind. You have the belief that by speaking words, you have the power to make the ideas in those words reality.
You also have the idea, with Dyson, that if facts disagree with you, it's all political and that you should be given the power to decide what facts are facts.
That and all that flows from it, in this case denial of an impending disaster which will put the blood of millions on yours and Dyson's hands , is the reason why conservatism has moved from being just weird and sad to dangerous and an existential threat to civilization.
We had this happen once last century. For a long time, America slept . Then it awoke to the danger- and over the objects of many conservatives- did what it needed to do.
The only difference this time is it's not just America who's going to awake to the danger and do what needs to be done. It's the entire world.
- the burden is on the scientist making the claims to answer skeptics
Hey Dyson, your sphere isn't stable and your gravity generators are imaginary, prove me wrong. How much time do you think he'd put into that question? I'm pretty willing to bet none.
If you think someone isn't free to have a different definition of "freedom" you may be a tyrant.
Indeed, Libertarians tend not to be very big on pragmatism or learning from history.
Don't be a dumb ass. You clearly stated, "Where is your god now?". Learning from Nixon and worshiping him are two fucking different things. How can you live with yourself after writing that comment? How deep does the deceipt run?
That was a rhetorical device, which I went to lengths to underline. Some might even go so far as to call it a joke. Should I be surprised you can't spell "deceit"?
Bio questions? Ask me to start a Q&A journal. Computer analogies available for most topics!