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Freeman Dyson Talks Interstellar Travel, Climate Change, and More (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by samzenpus on from the dropping-science-like-galileo-dropped-the-orange dept.

New submitter Tulsa_Time writes with this interview in The Register with Freeman Dyson. They cover a wide range of topics including climate change to which Dyson says Obama has picked the "wrong side". The Reg reports: "The life of physicist Freeman Dyson spans advising bomber command in World War II, working at Princeton University in the States as a contemporary of Einstein, and providing advice to the US government on a wide range of scientific and technical issues. He is a rare public intellectual who writes prolifically for a wide audience. He has also campaigned against nuclear weapons proliferation. At America's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dyson was looking at the climate system before it became a hot political issue, over 25 years ago. He provides a robust foreword to a report written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cofounder Indur Goklany on CO2 – a report published [PDF] by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)."

3 of 330 comments (clear)

  1. Re: Climate modeling by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I saw predictions before the end of 2014 that it would be the hottest year on record. Those predictions were right.

    Similarly right now I am seeing predictions that 2015 is going to be the new hottest year on record - it has already set record for 6 months of the year being the hottest ever.

    I think these predictions are out there, you just have your head in the sand.

    Because these predictions are talking about the global average temperature, they are climate predictions. When you put a decade of "hottest year on record" years together, the average thinking person should start asking for an explanation - whether that be Sun spots or anthropogenic warning, there should be some explanation.

  2. More complicated than a denier by XXongo · · Score: 5, Insightful
    Dyson is a smart guy, and worth listening to-- but being smart does not mean he is always right. He tends to be a contrarian-- but being contrarian, although an interesting philosophy, unfortunately doesn't make you right.

    The denialists want to claim him as one of them, but if you read what he actually says (and not what other people rephrase what he says), he's not; he's a skeptic, all right, but not a denier, or, at least, he doesn't parrot the deniers' (mostly stupid) talking points. His arguments are more complicated than that.

    He does, however, think that climate models are not reliable. When you dig down into why, you see that he admits taht he hasn't actually studied them, he's just distrustful of numerical models in general.

    A large part of his argument, however, is that global warming just isn't a problem, and if it is, it's one we can solve. (In the very short interview referenced, for example, he says that we should look at ways of increasing snowfall in Antarctica as a solution.)

    I think, unfortunately, that there is a complete contradiction here. You can't solve a problem if you don't have a model that tells you the effect of your prposed actions. So-- if you don't believe the models, then you can't model what the effect of your solution is. Contrawise, if you are asserting that you can solve the problem (by, for example, increasing snowfall in Antarctica), this means that you think that you can model the problem, and be confident that your solution the effect of solving the problem. So: you can assert that you don't believe the models, or you can assert that we can solve the problem, but you can't logically assert both.

  3. Dyson - good at physics, bad at predicting behavio by burtosis · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes it's true that climate models do have some issues (as any science does), and are constantly refined. It's also true that, from a scientific perspective, the earth will be quite habitable even under the most dire predictions.
    This is NOT where the major problems associated with global warming come from. It's the changing of natural resources everyone is used to. It could require massive engineering projects or moving tens of millions of people and abandon whole cities near sea level. It could cause massive heat waves that could kill tens of thousands like what is starting to happen in India. It could require whole regions to abandon the familiar agriculture practices, and in some areas leave no alternative production. It could destabilize whole regions of the world and cause massive wars killing millions - far worse than any direct effect.
    This is the real danger of global warming, not simply a few degrees of temperature rise on an otherwise bearable average value.