The Global Warming Heretic 1190
theodp writes "In The Civil Heretic, the NYT Magazine takes a look at how world-renowned scientist Freeman Dyson wound up opposing those who care most about global warming. Since coming out of the closet on global warming, Dyson has found himself described as 'a pompous twit,' 'a blowhard,' and 'a mad scientist.' He argues that climate change has become an obsession for 'a worldwide secular religion' known as environmentalism. Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, calling him climate change's chief propagandist and accusing him of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models and promoting 'lousy science' that's distracting attention from more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet."
Dyson himself wrote about the need for heretics in science not long ago.
Re:Repent now, the end is near (Score:4, Interesting)
AKA, it's not a matter of "if."
Read his actual opinions (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm sure this discussion will be flooded with global warming deniers, but if you actually read Dyson's opinions, he believes that global warming IS happening and we ARE to blame.
His only complaint with the science is that he feels that some of the computer models are fudged to make the results look worse than they might actually be.
Of course, his opinion on this seems utterly pointless to me. The man is a physicist, specializing in solid-state and quantum physics. He's no more qualified to analyze the science behind climate change than an electrical engineer is to build a bridge.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes,
and searching for 'gore "science get in the way"' similarly turns up nothing useful (except for maybe a video I am too lazy to watch).
Mostly I see forums discussing it and it not even attributed to Gore. Sometimes I see it attributed to him similar to the GP. I don't see evidence that is was actually said by Gore though.
I believe it is a more relevant search because it removes the possibility of contractions throwing off the results.
Re:His story is typical. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ummmmm, every ideology has a subset of people who behave this way.
Saying stuff like this helpfully labels you as being the kind of rabid fundamentalist you're accusing your opponents of being.
Re:The world is now in a cooling trend (Score:3, Interesting)
Nope that is what is so crazy about this.
Everytime they models don't predict the results there is an excuse. Global Warming has become as unfalsifible as any Religion every has been.
Oh well the ICE caps got bigger, umm umm, CO2 is makeing more clouds and keeping us cooler for the moment but its going to get hot we sware..just wait
Oh well core samples and focile records show we have been though much more extreeme temperature swings and more fequently in the past long before industrialization.., umm umm, yea some stuff and whatnot but this time its diffent. Just wait for this next *Nino Cycle to end then the wether is gonna get crazy...
Oh forget global warming, its global cooling.... ...
Oh forget global cooling/dimming its global warming... ...
Ok Ok global climate change, we have not idea whats happening but we know we are somehow responsible for it and its going to be a catastrophe. - Sounds oddly religious to me.
Re:His story is typical. (Score:3, Interesting)
Any time someone has a dissenting opinion against a liberal the liberal only seems capable of defending their argument with insults and threats.
And how is this different from how a "conservative" deals with the same situation? There are dogmatic believers on both sides (and honestly there are far far more sides than just Liberal/Conservative). People that believe you have to chose between Liberal or Conservative are already taking a step into a world of Us Vs Them that instils in their followers a world view that scares me; and leaves many of them incapable of dealing with Reality in a reasonable and pragmatic manner.
People are people whatever party/faction/group they support. The Us Vs Them mentality is the death of debate, reason and democracy.
Re:Thank goodness (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny, I found two results pretty quickly.
For a different search, how surprising. Not two mention to hits to somone's comments on Digg, don't count as an actual source for a quote of that nature. Looks like a bloody lie.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually this is quite a bit of the problem.
Let me give you an example. I have been living here in Europe since 1994. In the past five years here in Switzerland we have been getting Canadian seasons. Yes the summers are warmer as well, but the winters are colder and more snow.
The media hypes the summers because they are hotter, but does not hype on the winter. They say, "oh this can be expected and normal". That bothers me completely because anybody who researches climate knows Europe is being kept warm by the Atlantic conveyor. If the Atlantic conveyor turns around further south then as paradoxical as it sounds with increased global warming Europe gets colder! The UK had its first snowfall in October in 74 YEARS!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/3278378/Snow-covers-parts-of-England-as-winter-weather-sets-in.html [telegraph.co.uk]
I remember a report in National Geographic about 5 years ago, and documentaries on TV that said Europe with increased global warming would become cold! The reason was the Atlantic conveyor. What was scary about this is that research has shown that the conveyor can shut down in a matter of a decade, but requires thousands upon thousands of years to restore itself.
I think it is happening! Though do you read about this in the media? NOOOOO because we all associate climate change with warming not change! It is much easier to sell deserts, no water, etc than people freezing their butts... Mentally we associate deserts = death, but cold as just being something we need to deal with...
Though look at the latitude of North Europe... It is freaken Labrador! Definitely not a place I want to live in... (due to its weather...)
Re:Global warming is a politically painful subject (Score:2, Interesting)
Global warming is politically difficult to sell to people when they are experiencing record cold.
That's because people tend to take 'global warming' as literally meaning that 'everywhere gets hotter'. Of course, some places get warmer and some get cooler but the average global temperature increases and the planet experiences more erratic and extreme climactic behavior as a consequence. 'Climate change' is a more useful term.
I could be wrong (Score:4, Interesting)
This is what Kuhn was saying in the Structure of Scientific Revolution. Paradigms, as defined and used in the book, not in the modern sense corrupted by brain dead executives, are created by an elite group of scientists and these paradigms are mistaken for truth. It is a priori truth instead of a posteriori truth, but if we are actively searching for the ultimate nature of the divine, and not just the static representation, then truth is of no use.
History has shown that our static representations of the truth are always incomplete. In An Incomplete Guide to the Art of Discovery [cornell.edu] Oliver asserts that such incompleteness can be the basis of science. By finding the one verifiable phenomena that does not seem to fit perfectly, we can do science, either by showing an error in the measurement or interpretation of the phenomena or showing that the theory used to describe the phenomena is incomplete.
Which is to say we should really think about what we are talking about. For the most part when scientists argue about this stuff, they are fighting over old and new paradigms. It is often not about whether humans are impacting the climate, which is a conclusion, but often how we go about collecting data and developing the processes used to quantify those changes. Because the average person only cares about conclusions, they really don't see the subtle difference, and they just see a person who says that people they disagree are wrong. But it is not about right or wrong. It is not about really about whether the earth is 10,000 years old or 10,000,000,000. It is about whether we are being honest and developing ideas that reflect the observations we make, and not just what we are raised to believe.
Re:History... (Score:3, Interesting)
They keep propagating this nonsense with statements just like yours. "If I say it is so it is" is not fact it is vapor.
I am all for cleaning up the air and environment and have been for 30 years but this global warming nonsense is a huge power and wealth grab and nothing else.
"A United Nations document on "climate change" that will be distributed to a major environmental conclave next week envisions a huge reordering of the world economy, likely involving trillions of dollars in wealth transfer, millions of job losses and gains, new taxes, industrial relocations, new tariffs and subsidies, and complicated payments for greenhouse gas abatement schemes and carbon taxes â" all under the supervision of the world body."
Re:History... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:This has all happened before (Score:5, Interesting)
I have some first-hand experience in the field of climate science.
I got tired of fighting with trolls on forums, because people somehow think that their gut feeling is better than real science.
The current warming trend is NOT a natural cycle, its parameters are all wrong.
force (Score:2, Interesting)
"they won't do it unless forced"..well, that can work, but it is the "stick" method, you get bludgeoned by government to do something, because they sayso and threaten you with dire consequences if you don't jump.
There *is* another method to bring about constructive change that the government can do, that is called the "carrot" method. You give tax credits for those technologies and practices that seem a lot better.
Now, what isn't going to work, but is what they want to do because it also gives them a lot more power over other humans, which is what they also really like to have, is force-instituting another huge global "market" skimming industry. Ya know, middleman traders who do nothing but buy and sell those "war on carbon" credits.
Looking at the biz headlines, seems we already have enough of them sort of money vampire dudes mucking up the economy as it is. And now they are going to want to tax you on top of that. The taxes will primarily go to running the new government (federal, UN global, whatever they scheme up) department of accepting the carbon tax monies department, to fund busywork "broken window economic theory" jobs.
I'm for conservation, clean air, clean water, diversified and decentralized alternative energy and so forth, and have been since I was a young man and got into solar power and so forth. The easiest way for people and corporations to afford this is to let them take a chunk of their money that now goes to the government busywork jobs industry and buy into newer cleaner and more efficient tech. Oh noes, gov gets less money! But the tech gets adopted then, and much faster than the double whammy of forced purchasing of carbon credits, then getting taxed on top of that. You make it a much better deal for people and companies to "go green", they will do it gladly and more or less voluntarily, whereas if you double whammy them on costs plus threaten fines and whatnot, they are going to look at the whole situation as another bogus ripoff and power grab, which the current schemes are, in spades.
Here's an example: You want to know why SUVs took off so much, even for people who apparently didn't need a big station wagon with 4wd? Joe government made it very lucrative for them with their tax deductions, they offered a bunch of carrots, it was cheaper for them to get those sorts of vehicles than anything else.
Now, if they want much better mileage cars and cheaper to afford, all they would need to do is offer a REAL tax credit incentive, and you'd see those car companies burning the midnight oil to get 20 grand cars that got 60 mpg and be plugins plus and were built good out there. Same with solar power, same with what I think makes the most sense today, retrofitting buildings to "superinsulated" levels, eliminating a lot of the demand for electricity and natgas, meaning less is burnt, meaning less of that e-vile greenhouse gas stuff. If it also helps the climate on a macro scale, it probably would, that's just frosting, more good news.
Carrot or stick, and who likes to be bludgeoned over being fed again? Ya, they are both examples of government social engineering, but which seems more attractive and more likely to succeed and cost the actual real consumer less, when you look at what they get? Tax money volume X is already a blackhole the way it is now, if you could have the same amount, and wind up with a cool ride in the driveway and solar panels on the roof, which would you rather have, that stuff, or knowing you were paying for more bureaucratic jobs? Either way, that loot is coming out of your wallet, so that's a wash. I will ponder on this.... me, I'd prefer the carrot and having the cool new high tech ride in the driveway and the solar panels on the roof.
Re:History... (Score:4, Interesting)
FauxPasIII... once again, you prove how much closer the green movement is to religion than to science.
You basically have paraphrased "Pascal's Wager". Which is basically "If you believe in God and are wrong, you loose nothing (and maybe gain some things) -- but if you DO NOT believe in God and are incorrect, fire and pain, etc... Therefore being an atheist is illogical".
If you replace "God" with "Global Warming" and "atheist" with "global warming doubter"... got got your argument.
There are a couple reasons why Pascal's Wager (and by extension your argument) is incorrect. Let me answer your questions...
"if we follow the consensus and it turns out they're wrong, the consequences of that are what?"
- The lack of study on real issues, the lack of honest and directness can decay science as a whole. We could have global cooling, or some other major issue going on -- that we choose to overlook because of our obsession with follow a consensus rather than fact. I believe there are many dangers in this.
"We've dramatically cleaned up our environment,"
- Possible a real benefit
" achieved energy independence,"
- Maybe, with a massive investment in nuclear power, but I think if you look at the fundamentals of most of the other energy streams, you will be sadly disappointed. Look into how much energy it takes to MAKE a solar cell, look at how much energy it takes to TRANSMIT wind power... etc, etc.
"freed ourselves from the political constraints of fossil fuels"
- I assume this is a reference to 'no blood for oil' and similar chants. I will just gloss over it, as it is more politics.
"and massively bolstered our economy with a whole new class of green businesses." ... it isn't based on any facts.
- This isn't a fact, it isn't even a logical follow-on, this is hope. You "hope" a green economy will explode creating new jobs. Read some of the old clippings about nuclear power and you will do the time warp again! My point is, this is blind hope / faith -- like believing in a fancy place in the clouds waiting for you
"Explain again why you're so against this?"
- Because, I want science to be driven by truth... even when that truth is unpopular, even when that truth is frustrating, even when that truth goes AGAINST political causes. I want science to be unburdened by such things.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Interesting)
If the Gulf Stream turned around, you'd see far worse effects on the climate than some snow in October. I'm @ 60ÂN on the coast of Norway, so I'd expect temperatures at least below freezing for most of the months between November and March. No monthly average has been below freezing for a few years now. Technically, we don't have winter.
The reason why you've stopped hearing about the potential reversal of the Gulf Stream is that it's been thoroughly researched and found highly unlikely to happen.
Re:Repent now, the end is near (Score:3, Interesting)
And everything is perfect now?
Why is it guaranteed that when things get "quite difficult" it's worse than the difficulties we currently have? Or the difficulties we'll have if we "fix" global warming?
You're promising a worse future if we do something and a better future if we do something else. Why should we believe you can predict these outcomes accurately?
The world's climate and economy and social and political systems are complex. The global warmenists would have you believe they've mastered the understanding of all of them together and can navigate toward the best possible outcome, predicting events and steering a course 20 years in advance. They haven't. They can't.
Re:I am not a climate scientist, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
I am skeptical about our ability to accurately predict the future using current mathematical models. They can't even accurately predict the weather a week in advance.
You should recognize the fallacy in this reasoning. Scientists can't tell me if it's going to rain two weeks from Monday. They can, however, tell me it is going to snow next February. They climatology can predict large trends based upon past data, even if they can't make micro-predictions about what is going to happen a given day. In fact, the models in use to predict overall temperature changes have been fairly accurate, but they don't make predictions on small enough of a scale to predict what will happen in a given year even, just what is likely to happen in a given decade.
For another example, scientists can't tell you what day you're going to die, but they can tell you the general trend as to how many people will die at a given age. Not being able to predict the former does not make the latter any less possible.
Re:Global warming is a politically painful subject (Score:2, Interesting)
Unless, of course, by your comment you meant: "I agree with the polar_red's main point/comment, and am angry that you have made an observation about him that potentially taints the reception of his main point/comment", in which case I do understand.
I find myself constantly frustrated when nutjobs defend something I believe in. This is not aided by the fact that the other side in a debate has a tendency to focus on the extremists instead of the substance of the argument. But for me, I try to point out the extremists/dogmatists/zealots no matter what side of the debate they fall on.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:1, Interesting)
Global Warming: A theory based reams of data with the support of a majority of the scientists who have worked in the field of climate studies.
Global Cooling: A theory that was invented by George Will but retroactively attributed to unnamed "scientists", based on his selective reading of often-inaccurate popular media interpretations of scientific data from a few decades back, with the explicit purpose of discrediting Global Warming.
So "Global Warming" is bunk because:
- It fails to take into account the opinions of scientists who have never worked in the field of climate studies, such as Dyson.
- It fails to take into account the opinions of non-scientists like George Will
- It is EXACTLY like Global Cooling, as defined above, and we all know that turned out to be wrong.
Clearly the only thing guiding the Global Warming crowd is religious zealotry and their attempt to hold onto their vast amounts of money and influence (which they keep hidden away in their hippie dreadlocks where nobody can see any sign of them)
famous person says crazy shit when older (Score:5, Interesting)
Not exactly news. Ray Bradbury said all sorts of horrible things about Michael Moore and Fahrenheit 911 and was a huge supporter of the Bush wars. Issac Newton believed in alchemy and conducted all sorts of pseudo-scientific experiments in nonsense. Edison spent the last years of his life working on a spook phone to talk to the dead. Orson Scott Card is a Mormon and says bad things about gay people. George Lucas went from Beloved Creator of Star Wars to the Beard, Defiler of the Films.
People start saying and believing stupid shit when they pass their prime. They'll also mistake specialist expertise in one field for generalist expertise in everything.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:5, Interesting)
1970's smog: Pollution laws changed car emissions drastically
1980's Ozone layer: Pollution laws got rid of CFCs
1990's Acid rain: Pollution laws put scrubbers in factory exaust pipes
2000's Global Warming? remains to be seen where this goes. Dyson seems to be a very bright guy, and he is doing good service to science by being skeptical. He's not denying the global warming issue outright, he's saying there is not enough data to conclude either way, and that he's doubtful.
The article states he was also against the Hubble telescope, arguing against the cost. There's no question that Hubble has advanced the science of astronomy greatly, it's his judgment that the money could have been spent on more important things, which is also his concern on expensive solutions to the global warming issue.
It doesn't mean that Dyson is standing up for the antienvironmentalists who don't want to be held responsible for their own actions.
Comment removed (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:This has all happened before (Score:5, Interesting)
The last figure is from ice-core samples in Antarctica. And it's very misleading.
Look at the scale. One pixel on this diagram is about one _thousand_ years, and it takes tens of thousands of years for significant changes.
Yet we see MUCH more rapid changes. As in 100x more rapid than the changes on your graph.
The cycles on this graph are very well known, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles [wikipedia.org] - they were first derived by purely mathematical methods.
PS: Do you REALLY think that all climate scientists are stupid idiots and/or parts of global conspiracy?
The 800 Year Gap (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:This has all happened before (Score:1, Interesting)
Climate scientists? No. "Environmentalists"? Yes.
I can simply point to the irrational fear of nuclear power by environmentalists as evidence of this.
However, a climate scientists doesn't need to be a stupid idiot in order to be wrong. Much of what we were taught in school concerning fundamentals of physics were "wrong" (e.g. 4 phases of matter; 3 spatial dimensions + 1 temporal dimension; proton is the smallest fundamental particle, etc). Not because of conspiracy or stupidity, but because of ignorance. By that same token I hold the opinion that the AGW/Climate Change argument is ridiculous.
I personally don't care if it's true or not. If you really believe it, then there are solutions to solving it that don't require control of others. Let's go nuclear. Let's seed the oceans with iron (which also has the added side effect of increasing fish populations). Let's put up the solar shades. Let's move the earth to a wider orbit. Let's sequester the CO2 on Mars.
All I see is debate after debate about whether it's real or not. I don't see people implementing the solutions that already exist.
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:4, Interesting)
The greenhouse effect of CO2, on the other hand, is related to how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere (I think the bulk of the effect is due to how CO2 strongly absorbs infrared light, as discovered in 1896 [wikipedia.org]. So, the effect of the CO2 is not as strong and you need more of it (which we do in fact).
However, what I think is not really taken into account much yet is possible positive and negative feedback effects that might become more noticeable at higher CO2 concentrations.
Freeman Dyson mentioned a negative feedback effect: that trees would be happy to absorb more CO2 (esp. his idea of genetically engineered CO2 eating trees). This might be a good mitigating idea, especially combined with "bio-charring" [wikipedia.org] them to put a bit of the sequestered carbon in the ground, out of the biological cycle.
<speculative_rant>
What worries me more is *positive* feedback effects. When the arctic cap melts, the sea underneath is probably darker than the white ice we have currently, so the albedo of the planet might change a little bit and reflect less of the sunlight. When or maybe if the methane clathrates at some places of the seabottom [wikipedia.org] burp up and the Siberian permafrost melts, large amounts of methane get in the atmosphere, and they'd either add to the greenhouse effect (stronger than an equivalent amount of CO2) or if there's enough methane maybe they'd even burn, warming the tundra up even more (and who knows how long it takes to put that out, if a large area is on fire fueled by deposits of long-frozen rotten stuff; e.g. coal mine fires can last long [blogspot.com])
</speculative_rant>
Re:Repent now, the end is near (Score:2, Interesting)
With respect to claimed consequences being taken seriously, we know one thing for certain: many more people will die if it becomes colder than if it becomes warmer. How do we know this? Because it happens every year. My theory on AGW is that people are fundamentally irrational, credulous and unbelievably stupid. Recent research shows that people lose their ability to be rational when confronted by an "expert". People like Hansen and Gore claim to be "experts", but they are only interested in promoting their own ideas, not in discovering truth.
In my view a rational response to Global Warming would be to get out a deck-chair and crack open a beer.
Re:Same old same old. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:There is money and publicity (Score:3, Interesting)
Capitalism means government stays out of the economy completely.
No, capitalism without government is warlordism, might makes right.
Government is about stopping all the negative ways that people can compete (e.g. protection rackets, deceptive advertising, monopoly market manipulation, dangerous products, externalities such as pollution, child/vulnerable exploitation, violent crime) while still allowing positive competition (e.g. better products, cheaper prices, honest advertising, no spamming).
That doesn't mean that business people are absolved of any ethical responsibility for not competing positively. Government is just a backstop to control the sociopaths.
Being a human institution democratic government (one person, one vote versus one dollar, one vote) makes mistakes all the time but it's the best we've got.
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Anonymous company communication is unethical and can and should be highly illegal. Company legal structures require accountability.
Re:Professor Dyson is a very smart man (Score:2, Interesting)
Uh, yeah?
So Al Gore is acting (to a degree) as a spokesperson for the scientific consensus.
(Consensus based on repeatable results, not just "we all agree with that guy", by the way.)
Anyone taking a contrary position to the scientific consensus will need to have some fairly impressive scientific results backing them up, if they want to claim the majority of climatologists working in their own specialist field have got it all wrong. If you haven't got some real compelling research, and it's not even your field of expertise, then you run the risk of looking like a crank.
Re:Not out of his mind, just not terribly rooted i (Score:3, Interesting)
Wow. Nice character assassination. You take some speculative examples Dyson gave about what we might be able to do with bioengineering and sneer at him ("how do we get there, einstein?") because he didn't spell out all the details for a Mars mission? Then you bring up flying cars?
Then you mention Al Gore. Al Gore, who's private residence is a record setting example of conspicuous consumption. But Al Gore buys carbon offsets! What's one of the major components of carbon offsets? Tree planting. How ironic.