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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)."
What he's not is a climatologist, and one should be very cautious about any scientist speaking out of their area of expertise. That you rely on him as an authority suggests you've bought into a fallacious appeal to authority.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction, but there really ought to be many by now. We see new ones made in the press quite often...
Don't call me a troll — simply try to put together a list of such predictions, and you too will come to realize, it is an impossible task... The list must consist of pairs of links: first link in each pair will be to a prediction, the second — to its confirmation within, say, 80% of predicted value (if applicable). The linked pages must be dated a few years apart — that is, a "prediction" celebrated after coming true does not count.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
What he's not is a climatologist, and one should be very cautious about any scientist speaking out of their area of expertise. That you rely on him as an authority suggests you've bought into a fallacious appeal to authority.
Martian, I generally like your contributions so I'm going to help you out. Note:
I trust Al Gore more.
See any "fallacious appeal to authority" there regarding someone who is not a climatologist?
As someone else said: whoosh.
Do you have ESP?
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.
After doing a lot of reading about this man, I have come to this conclusion about his views: Basically he has said "you're {climate scientists} all wrong because I don't like your models and if you try to ask me about specific technical flaws in those models I will defer to my status as a physicist and not a climatologist" So which is it? Are the models flawed, and if so, how? OR are you just a contrarian old codger whose views on climate science are about as reliable as my plumber's opinions on thermonuclear generators? Here is an interesting exchange
OK, lets see what single prediction you have checked that didn't come true.
100% of the time so far, the "prediction" was one never made. Just a misquote of a rewording of something that was said, but never predicted what was claimed of it.
You know, like "Al Gore said Florida would be under water by 2100 in AIT", which never happened. He said when the WAIS and GIS melt, Florida would be under water. Never when that would happen.
Here, meanwhile, are a few denier predictions that failed to materialise (and compared to the predictions of the realists' models):
http://skepticalscience.com/comparing-global-temperature-predictions.html
But go ahead, let us know which predictions you've found and tested as having failed the prediction.
He doesn't need to be a climatologist to look at climate models and see that their predictions firstly do not hold after a certain point and second that for more recent models, that the amount of deviation after some threshold is larger than it was for earlier models.
I don't know whether that statement is actually true (but it is testable) but I suspect that neither of us are climatologists, but we could both gather and analyze the data and could ourselves reach the same conclusion. There's a difference between saying all of climatology is bunk and pointing out that the predictions made by their models have been wrong and that also that the magnitude of the error is larger for newer models. The only potential error made is that we're trusting that as a scientist he really has conducted a rigorous study (i.e. looked as as much available data as possible) to reach his conclusions. I would almost expect that if he went to the trouble of actually looking into this himself, that he would have documented his methodologies and published his findings.
Also, just because all of the models have been wrong or imperfect does not imply that we can't create a working one, simply that it might take a long time so it's not a good idea to put a lot of faith into an arbitrary model unless it starts to show good long-term prediction abilities. It supposedly took Edison hundreds of attempts to get a working light bulb. It may take that many failures in our climate models until we can accurately account for the things that we're currently missing.
Consider that Dyson, an AGW denialist ...
Dyson is NOT a denialist. He accepts that climate change is happening and that it is caused by humans. But he also feels that humanity has much bigger problems, and AGW is getting far more attention than it deserves ... and he is right. If we focus on population control, 3rd world poverty, eradicating malaria, and raising literacy rates, then AGW will be a much easier problem to deal with in the future. My wife got a $10k taxpayer subsidy on her Tesla. That could have paid for a thousand anti-malaria bed nets. That is misplaced priorities.
You forgot to call him an anti-science shill for the oil companies.
I agree that fusion is unlikely to solve any of our problems in the near future, but what I've read about thorium reactors is very promising.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction, but there really ought to be many by now. We see new ones made in the press quite often...
Several times I've pointed out to you a scientific paper that compares temperature and sea level rise projections to observations up to 2011. Link You reject it since it is not in your required format. That's arguing like a lawyer not a scientist. You should care more about the information that is presented than how it's formatted.
In the realm of more general predictions scientists have said that increased CO2 would cause temperatures to rise. Temperatures on the Earth have risen and continue to rise. They said that the warming would cause land and sea based ice to melt. Land and sea based ice has melted. They said the combination of melting land based ice and warming oceans would cause sea level to rise. Sea level is rising (over 3 inches since 1993) and continues to rise. They said that increased CO2 in the atmosphere would cause ocean acidification. The oceans continue to acidify.
You can argue about it all you like but the real world and physics just doesn't care. It will do what it will do regardless of your (or my) feelings. I just don't see any good reasons to disbelieve the climate scientists.
Obama is always on the right side of history
Obama signed an extension of the PATRIOT act within two years of taking office. Pull your head out of your ass.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
James Hansen:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
JASONs and National Academy of Sciences, 1979:
In 1979 the subject was addressed by the JASON Committee, the reclusive group of scientists with high-level security clearances who gather annually to advise the U.S. government; its members have included some of the most brilliant scientists of our era.
The JASON scientists predicted that atmospheric carbon dioxide might double by 2035, resulting in mean global temperature increases of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius and polar warming of as much as 10 to 12 degrees. This report reached the Carter White House, where science adviser Frank Press asked the National Academy of Sciences for a second opinion. An academy committee, headed by MIT meteorologist Jule Charney, affirmed the JASON conclusion: "If carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we] find no reason to doubt that climate changes will result, and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/31/AR2007013101808.html
And then there is of course the big one, Roger Revelle writing in a report to Lyndon Johnson on ecological problems. 1965.
http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2015/02/president-johnson-carbon-climate-warning
In 1979 and 1965 there was not significant and reliable data firmly indicating global warming (we now know that greenhouse forcing was compensated by increased pollution in N hemisphere); the predictions were made entirely from basic physics and thermodynamics, and their underlying principles still stand today. The fundamental predictions: increased infrared emissivity from additional carbon dioxide, warming surface and troposphere, cooling stratosphere, global warming, and relatively higher in polar regions, are all specific markers of increased global warming from increased greenhouse forcing (vs aerosols and increases in solar forcing), and subsequent major observational programs showed them to be true.
What you're saying is that his conclusions are politically incorrect and don't agree with what you feel compelled to believe, for whatever reasons.
I am not qualified to say who's right and who's wrong here. But I keep an open mind and listen to reasoned argument. The extremes (flat out deniers on one side and cataclysm mongers on the other) do neither.
Don't you get it?
Freeman Dyson
Freeman Dyson
Freemason!
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.
I don't know whether that statement is actually true (but it is testable)
Good news, its already been tested!
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
Coincidentally in response to Dyson's opinion. A blanket claim that models are wrong should cite at least one. And before anyone pulls up the "95% of climate models are wrong graph", that was thoroughly debunked here:
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201...
Those several times should've been enough for you to understand the point: predictions lauded after coming true aren't acceptable. That — despite several months of being challenged, you remain unable to come up with a prediction publicized before its "success", tells everyone, that no such predictions exist.
WTF are you talking about? The projections in that paper were made in the IPCC AR3 (2001) and IPCC AR4 (2007) which were published well before the paper was written. You can read those reports to verify that.
Well, the obvious conflict of interest would be one reason — if climate is not a problem, there go their grants and the very employment. But even besides such dark suspicions, their seeming inability to make a falsifiable statement, that is not eventually falsified, is a reason for scepticism in itself.
If there were no global warming we would still be studying climate and scientists would still be getting grants to do so. Maybe the attention to the subject has increased the money going into it but by no means would there be no grants for study of climate if AGW wasn't happening.
The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction
Actually, an interesting question. The oldest "scientific consensus" I can find that gives a number that can be used as a prediction is the 1979 National Academy of Sciences report. This predicted that the climate sensitivity was between 1.5 and 4.5C per doubling: that is, 3 plus or minus 1.5. Citation: Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1979. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/121... (you can go back earlier than this, but this is the first one where a panel of scientists came together to evaluate all the models available at the time, and not just a single team making a model.)
That's 36 years ago, so it's long enough to compare prediction to reality. In 1979, carbon dioxide (annual average) was 336.8 ppm; in 2014 concentration was 398.6 ppm. citation: http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/... That's an increase of 118%, log(2) of that is 0.243. So given that CO2 increase, the predicted temperature rise between 1979 and 2014, if the NAS value was correct, is 0.81 plus or minus 0.4.
Actual temperature rise, according to the GISS temp, is 0.17 above datum in 1979, 0.75 above datum in 2014, for a temperature rise of 0.58C. citation: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist...
The prediction of 0.81 plus or minus 0.4 is within the error bars of the actual measurement, 0.58. So I will rate this as a correct prediction.
Who do you think are climatologist?
They are all Geologists, statisticians, economists, mathematicians, psychologists, physicists, etc...
So you are saying Dyson is not as capable at basic understanding of the "high school grade SETTLED science" that is climate science?
You simple minded ideologists cant have your cake and eat it too. Its either simple grade school science or its not. Its either settled or its not.
Your argumenting from emotion and have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
What the AC failed to do, though, was explain why a climate scientist is more qualified to talk about relative scales of problems than anybody else is. Climate scientists are better at what they do than anyone else, but that doesn't mean they're good public policy makers, sociologists, economists... all of whom will need to be involved in determining what public policy should be.
Examine even your most deeply held beliefs. Nobody is always right.
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.
He's not a member of the right priesthood.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
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