Freeman Dyson speaks out about climate science, and fudge

Freeman Dyson is a physicist who has been teaching at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton since Albert Einstein was there. When Einstein died in 1955, there was an opening for the title of “most brilliant physicist on the planet.” Dyson has filled it.

So when the global-warming movement came along, a lot of people wondered why he didn’t come along with it. The reason he’s a skeptic is simple, the 89-year-old Dyson said when I phoned him.

Dyson said his skepticism about those computer models was borne out by recent reports of a study by Ed Hawkins of the University of Reading in Great Britain that showed global temperatures were flat between 2000 and 2010 — even though we humans poured record amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere during that decade.

“There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.”

That was vindication for a man who was termed “a civil heretic” in a New York Times Magazine article on his contrarian views. Dyson embraces that label, with its implication that what he opposes is a religious movement. So does his fellow Princeton physicist and fellow skeptic, William Happer. “There are people who just need a cause that’s bigger than themselves,” said Happer. “Then they can feel virtuous and say other people are not virtuous.”

The mindless mob defined... beautiful...

Not to be pedantic, but it's what they call a "reverse feedback loop."

Silly me, forty years of engineering we call them "negative feedback" loops. When you write out the differential equations defining a servo loop, the feedback term should be negative if the loop is to be stable.

Positive feedback can be at best "metastable", balance a pencil on it's point, it will stand straight up until the slightest disturbance causes it's center of gravity to move slightly out of vertical alignment with the contact point. This applies a small torque increasing the magnitude of the disturbance which continues to increase as the pencil falls over. (positive feedback)

Negative feedback may be illustrated by dropping a marble into a spherical bowl. The marble will roll "downhill" into the bottom of the bowl. It will probably over shoot and roll past the bottom and up the side some but then it reverses course and rolls back down until it finally comes to a stop at the lowest point. This oscillation about the rest position is typical of a negative feedback system w/o a damping term. If you tried the experiment with various liquids filling the bowl, you would find that water has little effect, light cooking oil has more of an effect, and honey will prevent the marble from overshooting the rest position completely. The viscous drag of the liquids provides a "damping" effect the will slow the marbels's travel and cause it to stop at a stable position. Critical damping is achieved when the moving marble reaches it's rest position in the least time with out overshooting. A little less damping will allow a small overshoot and a few oscillations (under damped). A little more damping will increase the time it takes for the marble to arrive at it's rest position (over damped).

Most positioning servos system are intentionally designed to be slightly under damped as the minor oscillations near setpoint improve repeatability by reducing hysteresis.

Regards,
GtG

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