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United States22883 Posts
This appeared in the Sunday NYT Magazine last week and it's an amazing read. For those who don't know, Freeman Dyson is a lifelong contrarian, humanist and brilliant theoretical mathmetician and physicist. He holds a seat at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies, the same place Einstein, Oppenheimer, and Edward Witten worked, and he's also a major critic of the global warming movement.
This is creating a lot of controversy, largely because he's not trained in climatology, but also because he rejects the infallibility that society affords to professional experts. He believes man contributes to global warming, but not as greatly as has been concieved and he thinks the "effects" of global warming, as have been modeled and shown in films like Inconvenient Truth, are horribly inaccurate and are simply that - models. He's especially concerned with the way he feels science has been turned into political ideology. Climatologists don't account for biology very well, and even if their models could, there's still too many unknowns currently to make a useful prediction.
This, of course, gets him lots of crap and I'm sure micronesia has some thoughts on him, but I essentially agree with his take on science, and that it is more subjective, especially in the presentation of results, than most people are aware of. And I do think it's worth emphasizing that IMO Dyson is one of the most brilliant people in the history of the world, and he's contributed profoundly in a huge number of fields.
Oh, and this guy was named after him. That's how smart he is. 
Thoughts on the article? Dyson? His opinion on science/global warming?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
  
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United States24772 Posts
The game of telephone that often gets played between an experiment in a laboratory and two people talking on the street is horrifying.
I agree with what you said Jibba about his take on science.
I pretty much abstain from conversations on global warming entirely. All I've noticed is that many people on both sides are completely full of shit (big surprise!)
I haven't formed an opinion on Dyson. But, I'm sick of people (not pointing fingers at anyone in particular here) using a "what's the deal about global warming" argument to avoid having to worry about how to deal with the observed trends in global climate. If you bring up the topic of reducing emissions.. some people will scream at you how dumb you are for 'buying into that global warming propaganda" and will refuse to discuss things we could do to help the environment, whereas other people will be so busy frothing at the mouth about how avidly they align with the global warming movement that they don't have time to actually do anything about it.
Has the EPA or another significant government agency taken a full-out stand on this issue and provided an in-depth report, or is this still back-and-forths of conflicting reports from different public and private studies and minds? I find this topic to infuriating to try and follow and I am becoming more and more ignorant as time goes on.
My personal belief is that we should work towards reducing our overall impact in the environment regardless of what the deal with global warming is... there's really nothing good about pumping a majority of the earth's oil up into the air.
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On April 01 2009 04:15 micronesia wrote:
The game of telephone that often gets played between an experiment in a laboratory and two people talking on the street is horrifying.
I agree with what you said Jibba about his take on science.
I pretty much abstain from conversations on global warming entirely. All I've noticed is that many people on both sides are completely full of shit (big surprise!)
I haven't formed an opinion on Dyson. But, I'm sick of people (not pointing fingers at anyone in particular here) using a "what's the deal about global warming" argument to avoid having to worry about how to deal with the observed trends in global climate. If you bring up the topic of reducing emissions.. some people will scream at you how dumb you are for 'buying into that global warming propaganda" and will refuse to discuss things we could do to help the environment, whereas other people will be so busy frothing at the mouth about how avidly they align with the global warming movement that they don't have time to actually do anything about it.
Has the EPA or another significant government agency taken a full-out stand on this issue and provided an in-depth report, or is this still back-and-forths of conflicting reports from different public and private studies and minds? I find this topic to infuriating to try and follow and I am becoming more and more ignorant as time goes on.
My personal belief is that we should work towards reducing our overall impact in the environment regardless of what the deal with global warming is... there's really nothing good about pumping a majority of the earth's oil up into the air.
Yeah I agree with most of what you said. Particularly the last bit... If it's in our power to be less destructive to the earth then we should do so, regardless of whether global warming is a threat or not.
Didn't read the Dyson article. Sorry too long.
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United States22883 Posts
I think most of us agree with that part about doing what we can, micronesia, and I think Dyson does as well. A big part of his outlook is based on humanism though, and that we should be fixing problems in humanity before we save the grey spotted owl. For instance there's protests against the use of coal, and coal is certainly a nasty pollutant, but coal has also enabled hundreds of millions of people in China and India to enter the middle class and drastically improved their living conditions.
Bio-engineered food is another example. It's easy enough for rich people to go to Whole Foods and buy only organic, but it's simply not possible to feed the entire world without enhancing foods, and it's ridiculous when that uber pro-environment ideology costs human lives.
http://www.un.org/ecosocdev/geninfo/afrec/vol16no4/164food2.htm
That's a sad example of it. During Zambia's major drought in the early 2000s, the US offered thousands of tons of genetically modified grain but the government turned it down because of health concerns, and they were largely strongarmed into doing so by Greenpeace.
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Physician
United States4146 Posts
No one here really knows Dyson's opinion on global warming - because no one has heard them or read them. You get mainly singled out quotes from that article and what the authors interpretations of what he has said or that people have said he has said.
Here is a better source: + Show Spoiler +
He has done next to zero research comparatively on the matter himself (and years ago) yet the article says he criticizes science that is not objective or based on consensus. The article says he calls current opinions on the matter an "exaggeration" but it does not say he denies global warming. In fact it quotes one of his proposed solutions (like planting co2 eating trees - which will not work, trees die - get burned or decompose - and out goes the co2 again - plus not enuf land to plant trees to absorb even if temporarily current co2 emissions).
It's sad people are focusing on these opinions given in his senile years due to their "going against the grain" nature and pretty much ignoring his other life long work (same too that went against the grain too). It is sad too how they spin his own words to say something he actually is not saying (listen or read better to his own words). I think the spin you chose to repeat Jibba is shit as the one the author of that article chose to start his article.
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United States22883 Posts
What evidence do you possibly have that he's senile, and did you ever read what I said or are you just babbling about like you usually do? I said exactly what he talked about in the video and what he's written about before.
I didn't say he denied global warming. I specifically said he agreed humans are contributing to growing CO2 levels, but I said he took a specific stance against the science used and the global warming movement (I emphasized the word 'movement' with italics, just for old people with bad vision like yourself) because the climatology models don't account for biology and are produced with bad science.
We do know what Dyson thinks because he made a whole freaking lecture on it called "Heretical Thoughts About Science and Society"?
http://www.bu.edu/pardee/documents/Lecture05-Dyson.pdf
But I assume you already know that and have read it, right?
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Physician
United States4146 Posts
On April 01 2009 10:08 Jibba wrote:
What evidence do you possibly have that he's senile That's exactly yet another spin that shit for article suggests..
yup I am babbling on as usual. His mind is definitively not what it was, he is in his 80's man - watch earlier interviews and research his latest work out.
I am not even going to argue with you - better to post his own words than some sensationalist shit for article about Dyson's opinions you posted (yes I am over reacting - it's tl no? but how that articles rambles on just annoyed the crap out of me). I am out lest I bore you with more of my own senile babbling.
+ Show Spoiler +
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United States22883 Posts
I posted his lecture, go at it.
And you are right that the article is slanted against his being senile. I think it speaks to his emphasis that most things, especially news articles, and plenty of research is filled with selection biases. The journalist has a case to make, so presenting him with clarity of mind serves that purpose.
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looks like the path bobby fisher took....
He says that consensus based science is bad. Fine.
He doesnt attempt to do research to show that the consensus is wrong.
Most scientists agree that light moves at different speeds in different media. Thats a consensus.
If I want to show its wrong, I can't just say "I'm not an expert in this field, I havent really done a lot of research, but since scientists have a consensus I dont think we should trust this to be right."
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United States22883 Posts
He has done research at Oak Ridge and Los Alamos on climate change since the 1970s. He's not a specialist, but that's in large part because he hasn't really specialized in anything. He doesn't even have a PhD.
He's definitely reaching since he hasn't even recommended detailed corrections to the models and it's annoying that he didn't think it warranted his time anymore, but I don't think he's quite making the stretch that say James Watson (human genome project) made about race and intelligence, where he's COMPLETELY unqualified to talk about it. Dyson has done a lot of work with biology and physics.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.techspot.com/gallery/data/504/medium/Gordon_Freeman.jpg)
