Heretical Thought about Science and Society

Edge The Third Culture ^ | 8/8/07 | Freeman Dyson

[rsmoot]

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they 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 and 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 is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

[rsmoot]

The physicist Freeman Dyson has presented a very clear discussion on the issues of global warming, climatology and ecology. He is quite a contrast to the IPPC. Their statements read like a lawyer wrote them. His statements are examples of extreme clarity(plain english). The 50 billion dollars spent for global warming should be used for more urgent things.

[Mumbles]

I heard “on the radio” that humans account for only 4% of global warming. It would cost trillions to eliminate even 1%, and that is insignificant to a situation that may be a natural occurrence.

[SteveMcKing]

Slashdot has a discussion going.

I won’t link to it though. The lefty nerds are bed-wetting themselves trying to dissect this piece.

[Paradox]

Already posted HERE, but honestly, it was good enough for a repost! He makes some interesting observations. See the other thread for more comments.

[freekitty]

Global warming is a scam started for whatever political reasons and to benefit profits for only a few.

[Phsstpok]

I read this article after reading a bit about it on American Thinker earlier today.  Typical Freeman Dyson brilliance.

Dyson is one of my heroes, along with Dr. Richard P. Feynman. They're both the real deal. I also am going to check out Bjorn Lomborg based on Michael Crichton's positive review of his new global warming book at Amazon.COM (he's a global warming advocate, but a reasonable one who really takes the Gorebots to task).

I knew about Freeman Dyson fairly young, but really got turned on to him in 1980 when Larry Niven mentioned him in the forward to his sequel to his science fiction novel Ringworld.  Basically the Ringworld is a modified Dyson sphere conceptually, and much "simpler" to build.  He wrote a second book, Ringworld Engineers, because he got a lot of feedback from real science types such as an entire engineering class from MIT (chanting "the Ringworld is unstable" at an SF convention in Boston that Niven appeared at) and Freeman Dyson who wrote him a lengthy letter:

Freeman Dyson (Freeman Dyson!) has no trouble believing in the Ringworld (!), but can't see why the engineers wouldn't have built a lot of little ones instead. Wouldn't it be safer. I hope the answer I've given in this book is satisfactory.

They also made one of the best Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes, Relics (involving Scotty), about an encounter with a derelict Dyson sphere.

Dyson is on my top 10 list of people I'd like to sit down and have a conversation with.

[GOPJ]

The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities. So it happens that the experts who talk publicly about politically contentious questions tend to speak more clearly than they think.

Delightful post. Thanks for sharing.

[GOPJ]

...when Larry Niven mentioned him in the forward to his sequel to his science fiction novel Ringworld. Basically the Ringworld is a modified Dyson sphere conceptually, and much "simpler" to build. He wrote a second book, Ringworld Engineers, because he got a lot of feedback from real science types such as an entire engineering class from MIT (chanting "the Ringworld is unstable"...

That Dyson? I'm impressed.

[Coyoteman]

Good post. Thanks!

Freeman Dyson is indeed worth listening to.

[John Valentine]

It turns out that a good deal of the global warming hysteria has relied on NASA data that was full of systematic errors and fudge factors. Once the data is corrected almost all of the warming disappears entirely.

Quantifying the Hansen Y2K Error By Steve McIntyre

I observed recently that Hansen’s GISS series contains an apparent error in which Hansen switched the source of GISS raw from USHCN adjusted to USHCN raw for all values January 2000 and later. For Detroit Lakes MN, this introduced an error of 0.8 deg C. I’ve collated GISS raw minus USHCN adjusted for all USHCN sites (using the data scraped from the GISS site, for which I was most criticized in Rabett-world). Figure 1 below shows a histogram of the January 2000 step for the 1221 stations (calculated here as the difference between the average of the difference after Jan 2000 and for the 1990-1999 period.) The largest step occurred in Douglas AZ where the Hansen error is 1.75 deg C! There is obviously a bimodal distribution.

This stuff has been posted on FR several times from different sources. Once this import of this has been understood, Al Gore and a bunch of others will owe an apology to the entire world. But don't bet you'll get it.

[3niner]

...humans account for only 4% of global warming.

These kinds of statements are very misleading. Sometimes people can understand things better through analogy.

Imagine a house in North Dakota, in the middle of the winter. The thermostat is set for 70 degrees, and the residents spend an hour cooking dinner. During this time, the range puts out 4% as much heat as the furnace had been putting out. How will this affect the temperature of the house?

The answer is that it won't change, unless the thermostat is in (or close to) the kitchen, because the thermostat causes the furnace to run less, to maintain the same temperature. Of course, the kitchen will get hotter (heat island effect), but the thermostat and the furnace are the important elements for the house as a whole.

The Earth's thermostat is far more complex, but it is clear that it exists. There is also plenty of geological, ice core, and other evidence, to indicate that it has little to do with carbon dioxide. It is likely that it is governed mostly by the various states and forms of water.

[reasonmclucus]

Thanks for posting this. I’m always glad to hear about real scientists. I particularly like the following comment: “Science is organized unpredictability. The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist. I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science.”

Real scientists get bored simply repeating what is known. They want to discover new information rather than parrot what is already known.

[SatinDoll]

Peter D. Ward’s book, OUT OF THIN AIR, discusses the Earth’s ancient atmospheres. Particularly interesting was his discovery that the Permian extinction may have been caused by an oxygen crash, down to about 13%. Compelling data, this, as it coincides with the formation of Pangaea, a single huge continent.

[xcamel]

FReepmail me to get on or off

Click on POGW graphic for full GW rundown

New!!: Dr. John Ray's
GREENIE WATCH

Ping me if you find one I've missed.

---