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Thanks for the ping and link. Mr. Dyson seems to be a well-educated original thinker. I think he enjoys being considered a “heretic” by “establishment scientists”.

Here’s a link to one of his speeches:

http://www.umich.edu/news/index.html?DysonWinCom05

Starting with the eighth paragraph:

“...The first of my heresies says that all the fluff about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of twilight model experts and the crowd of diluted [”deluded”?] citizens that believe the numbers predicted by their models. Of course they say I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak.

“...But I have studied their climate models and know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics and do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields, farms and forests. They 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’s why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

“...There’s no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global. The warming happens in places and times where it is cold, in the arctic more than the tropics, in the winter more than the summer, at night more than the daytime.

“...I’m not saying the warming doesn’t cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I’m saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans...”

Actually, when Mr. Dyson said, “...the problems [of global warming] are being grossly exaggerated...”, I thought he was agreeing with ME.

My wife and I walked our property last Saturday and saw that several large azaleas along our east driveway had been killed by our recent “record” cold snap. When I replace those azaleas next month, I will be encourged by the idea that young plants “fix” more CO2 than old plants.

Expanding (and restoring) my garden is the method that I have chosen to “buy carbon credits”. IMHO, my method is much more effective than Al Gore’s self-dealing scam. Not to mention a boon to my “visual” environment.

Did you miss the part about stratospheric cooling and its potential affect on ozone in the artic?

You nicely cherry-picked the skepticism about warming - which I also pointed out. But Dyson still advocated reducing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. He advocated focusing on vegetation and sequestration to do so, but as far as I could read kept silent on industrial emissions other than to say it was unclear what signficance they had and that computer models are only as good or bad as the input.

Anyone who is paying attention to this entire debate recognizes that even those who don’t buy into the sky-is-falling wacko left theories, still realize that we need to do something for a variety of reasons. It is not an EMERGENCY, but rather a clear problem that is easier to solve step-by-step with intelligent market-based mechanisms and real science. But I believe I am now preaching to the (converted) choir.