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Freeman Dyson Talks Interstellar Travel, Climate Change, and More (theregister.co.uk)
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)."
Thank you for that link! When I was reading TFA, I found his assertion that climate change was doing more good than harm rather startling, and was wondering if there was some research that I was unaware of which might change my opinions somewhat. From that exchange you linked to:
"Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer." ...which is just a really special kind of logical fallacy. Special like it rides the short bus to school. He might be a brilliant physicist and/or mathematician, but when it comes to climate change he is just (as another suggested) an old codger.