Freeman Dyson Talks Interstellar Travel, Climate Change, and More (theregister.co.uk) 330
New submitter Tulsa_Time writes with this interview in The Register with Freeman Dyson. They cover a wide range of topics including climate change to which Dyson says Obama has picked the "wrong side". The Reg reports: "The life of physicist Freeman Dyson spans advising bomber command in World War II, working at Princeton University in the States as a contemporary of Einstein, and providing advice to the US government on a wide range of scientific and technical issues. He is a rare public intellectual who writes prolifically for a wide audience. He has also campaigned against nuclear weapons proliferation. At America's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dyson was looking at the climate system before it became a hot political issue, over 25 years ago. He provides a robust foreword to a report written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cofounder Indur Goklany on CO2 – a report published [PDF] by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)."
Climate modeling (Score:2, Insightful)
He also said that climate models were a joke, and are getting worse and are deviating more and more from what is actually happening. But he is only one of the worlds most distinguished physicists. I trust Al Gore more. His carbon trading system will save the planet!
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What he's not is a climatologist, and one should be very cautious about any scientist speaking out of their area of expertise. That you rely on him as an authority suggests you've bought into a fallacious appeal to authority.
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The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction, but there really ought to be many by now. We see new ones made in the press quite often...
Don't call me a troll — simply try to put together a list of such predictions, and you too will come to realize, it is an impossible task... The list must consist of pairs of links: first link in each pair will be to a prediction, the secon
Re: Climate modeling (Score:5, Insightful)
I saw predictions before the end of 2014 that it would be the hottest year on record. Those predictions were right.
Similarly right now I am seeing predictions that 2015 is going to be the new hottest year on record - it has already set record for 6 months of the year being the hottest ever.
I think these predictions are out there, you just have your head in the sand.
Because these predictions are talking about the global average temperature, they are climate predictions. When you put a decade of "hottest year on record" years together, the average thinking person should start asking for an explanation - whether that be Sun spots or anthropogenic warning, there should be some explanation.
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References please.
Also, land based temperatures are the most important for many purposes (e.g., predicting crop failures). It's true you said "land based measurements" rather than "temperatures on land", and perhaps I mistranslated that.
This is weather rather than climate, but locally it hasn't been this hot in any October within memory. That may bias my willingness to believe you...but I'd need hard evidence before I credited your assertions against the assertions that I've read in places like Science Ne
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Funny, how you don't demand references from the other AC — the one, who made the unsubstantiated statement [slashdot.org] about 2014 being "the hottest" on record.
Re:Climate modeling (Score:4, Informative)
OK, lets see what single prediction you have checked that didn't come true.
100% of the time so far, the "prediction" was one never made. Just a misquote of a rewording of something that was said, but never predicted what was claimed of it.
You know, like "Al Gore said Florida would be under water by 2100 in AIT", which never happened. He said when the WAIS and GIS melt, Florida would be under water. Never when that would happen.
Here, meanwhile, are a few denier predictions that failed to materialise (and compared to the predictions of the realists' models):
http://skepticalscience.com/comparing-global-temperature-predictions.html
But go ahead, let us know which predictions you've found and tested as having failed the prediction.
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80% predicted value... lets see. Temperature is an absolute quantity. The average temperature of the earths surface is currently about 15C (57F), in absolute terms, that is 295 K.
You will be happy if the models predict average temperature with 80% accuracy, so if the models can predicted average temperature for any given year between 236K (-35F) and 368K (202F) this will pass your test?
Guess what? That can do that!
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Can you put together the list I described above? Kindly hold your peace until you can — and only post a follow-up, if you've found at least two pairs to list. Thank you.
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They are different, but even if cnaummann sincerely misunderstood them to be much more lax, than I intended, well, he did not offer a list anyway.
To clarify, the 80% would apply to the predicted changes. For example, if somebody predicted in 2005, that by 2015 the oceans will rise 10 cm, I would consider a rise of 8 cm as confirmation of the prediction.
Not at all predictions are quantifiable — statements like "Arctic will be ice-free by 2013" [bbc.co.uk] or Scotl [theguardian.com]
Re:Climate modeling (Score:5, Informative)
The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction, but there really ought to be many by now. We see new ones made in the press quite often...
Several times I've pointed out to you a scientific paper that compares temperature and sea level rise projections to observations up to 2011. Link [iop.org] You reject it since it is not in your required format. That's arguing like a lawyer not a scientist. You should care more about the information that is presented than how it's formatted.
In the realm of more general predictions scientists have said that increased CO2 would cause temperatures to rise. Temperatures on the Earth have risen and continue to rise. They said that the warming would cause land and sea based ice to melt. Land and sea based ice has melted. They said the combination of melting land based ice and warming oceans would cause sea level to rise. Sea level is rising (over 3 inches since 1993) and continues to rise. They said that increased CO2 in the atmosphere would cause ocean acidification. The oceans continue to acidify.
You can argue about it all you like but the real world and physics just doesn't care. It will do what it will do regardless of your (or my) feelings. I just don't see any good reasons to disbelieve the climate scientists.
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They've also predicted more specific signals particular to the greenhouse mechanism which have come true: increased infrared emissivity in atmosphere from more greenhouse gases, cooling of stratosphere, particularly increased polar heating, larger effect at night than daytime, larger effect in winter than summer.
In fact, I see few generally accepted and investigated predictions which have been disproven.
The details of regional impacts are less known at the time.
Re:Climate modeling (Score:5, Informative)
Those several times should've been enough for you to understand the point: predictions lauded after coming true aren't acceptable. That — despite several months of being challenged, you remain unable to come up with a prediction publicized before its "success", tells everyone, that no such predictions exist.
WTF are you talking about? The projections in that paper were made in the IPCC AR3 (2001) and IPCC AR4 (2007) which were published well before the paper was written. You can read those reports to verify that.
Well, the obvious conflict of interest would be one reason — if climate is not a problem, there go their grants and the very employment. But even besides such dark suspicions, their seeming inability to make a falsifiable statement [vcu.edu], that is not eventually falsified, is a reason for scepticism in itself.
If there were no global warming we would still be studying climate and scientists would still be getting grants to do so. Maybe the attention to the subject has increased the money going into it but by no means would there be no grants for study of climate if AGW wasn't happening.
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Yes, you stated this before, but for some mysterious reasons never published a single link to those predictions — angrily calling me names instead. No, I can not read them, until you post the links to them.
there are plenty (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
JASONs and National Academy of Sciences, 1979:
In 1979 the subject was addressed by the JASON Committee, the reclusive group of scientists with high-level security clearances who gather annually to advise the U.S. government; its members have included some of the most brilliant scientists of our era.
The JASON scientists predicted that atmospheric carbon dioxide might double by 2035, resulting in mean global temperature increases of 2 to 3 degrees Celsius and polar warming of as much as 10 to 12 degrees. This report reached the Carter White House, where science adviser Frank Press asked the National Academy of Sciences for a second opinion. An academy committee, headed by MIT meteorologist Jule Charney, affirmed the JASON conclusion: "If carbon dioxide continues to increase, [we] find no reason to doubt that climate changes will result, and no reason to believe that these changes will be negligible."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/31/AR2007013101808.html
And then there is of course the big one, Roger Revelle writing in a report to Lyndon Johnson on ecological problems. 1965.
http://www.dailyclimate.org/tdc-newsroom/2015/02/president-johnson-carbon-climate-warning
In 1979 and 1965 there was not significant and reliable data firmly indicating global warming (we now know that greenhouse forcing was compensated by increased pollution in N hemisphere); the predictions were made entirely from basic physics and thermodynamics, and their underlying principles still stand today. The fundamental predictions: increased infrared emissivity from additional carbon dioxide, warming surface and troposphere, cooling stratosphere, global warming, and relatively higher in polar regions, are all specific markers of increased global warming from increased greenhouse forcing (vs aerosols and increases in solar forcing), and subsequent major observational programs showed them to be true.
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Re:there are plenty (Score:4, Informative)
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/hansens-1988-projections/
And models and knowledge are stronger now than then.
The other predictions are more qualitative---in 1965 or in 1979 there wasn't any strong global warming signal available in the data. Now there clearly is.
Greenhouse warming was until then masked by natural fluctuation and anthropogenic increase in aerosol pollution which can be cooling..
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I wonder, if you are slow, or am I so unclear... Did you not see the requirement for pairs of links? One to a prediction, the other — to its confirmation?
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The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction, but there really ought to be many by now.
What about the predictions of climate denialists that nothing will happen if we megatons of CO2 into the atmosphere? Should we trust those predictions?
Burden of Proof (Re:Climate modeling) (Score:2)
I don't really care, who you trust. But if you want to convince and force me to change my ways, the burden of proof is on you, not on "denialists".
Prediction versus reality [Re:Climate modeling] (Score:5, Informative)
The truth remains — there have not been many climate-related predictions published, that came true in due time. In fact, I can't find even a single one such prediction
Actually, an interesting question. The oldest "scientific consensus" I can find that gives a number that can be used as a prediction is the 1979 National Academy of Sciences report. This predicted that the climate sensitivity was between 1.5 and 4.5C per doubling: that is, 3 plus or minus 1.5. Citation: Carbon Dioxide and Climate: A Scientific Assessment. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 1979. http://www.nap.edu/catalog/121... [nap.edu] (you can go back earlier than this, but this is the first one where a panel of scientists came together to evaluate all the models available at the time, and not just a single team making a model.)
That's 36 years ago, so it's long enough to compare prediction to reality. In 1979, carbon dioxide (annual average) was 336.8 ppm; in 2014 concentration was 398.6 ppm. citation: http://co2now.org/Current-CO2/... [co2now.org] That's an increase of 118%, log(2) of that is 0.243. So given that CO2 increase, the predicted temperature rise between 1979 and 2014, if the NAS value was correct, is 0.81 plus or minus 0.4.
Actual temperature rise, according to the GISS temp, is 0.17 above datum in 1979, 0.75 above datum in 2014, for a temperature rise of 0.58C. citation: http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gist... [nasa.gov]
The prediction of 0.81 plus or minus 0.4 is within the error bars of the actual measurement, 0.58. So I will rate this as a correct prediction.
Re:Climate modeling (Score:4, Insightful)
What he's not is a climatologist, and one should be very cautious about any scientist speaking out of their area of expertise. That you rely on him as an authority suggests you've bought into a fallacious appeal to authority.
Martian, I generally like your contributions so I'm going to help you out. Note:
I trust Al Gore more.
See any "fallacious appeal to authority" there regarding someone who is not a climatologist?
As someone else said: whoosh.
Re:Sarcasm is invisible on the internet (Score:4, Funny)
More than a Nike superstore.
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How is this marked insightful? Dyson has studied climatology before most of the "experts" were born. Climatology is NOT outside of his area of expertise.
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That's what an expert is.
Yes it is outside his area of expertise, any more than finding one climatologist telling that the CERN simulation codes and analysis of particle results of Standard Model are wrong, when thousands of experimental and theoretical particle physicists find them to be generally correct.
Re: Climate modeling (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not a member of the right priesthood.
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Dyson has studied climatology before most of the "experts" were born.
That may be true, but if it is, he hasn't studied climatology since most of the "experts" were born, either.
Re:Climate modeling (Score:4, Interesting)
I don't know whether that statement is actually true (but it is testable) but I suspect that neither of us are climatologists, but we could both gather and analyze the data and could ourselves reach the same conclusion. There's a difference between saying all of climatology is bunk and pointing out that the predictions made by their models have been wrong and that also that the magnitude of the error is larger for newer models. The only potential error made is that we're trusting that as a scientist he really has conducted a rigorous study (i.e. looked as as much available data as possible) to reach his conclusions. I would almost expect that if he went to the trouble of actually looking into this himself, that he would have documented his methodologies and published his findings.
Also, just because all of the models have been wrong or imperfect does not imply that we can't create a working one, simply that it might take a long time so it's not a good idea to put a lot of faith into an arbitrary model unless it starts to show good long-term prediction abilities. It supposedly took Edison hundreds of attempts to get a working light bulb. It may take that many failures in our climate models until we can accurately account for the things that we're currently missing.
Re:Climate modeling (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know whether that statement is actually true (but it is testable)
Good news, its already been tested!
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
Coincidentally in response to Dyson's opinion. A blanket claim that models are wrong should cite at least one. And before anyone pulls up the "95% of climate models are wrong graph", that was thoroughly debunked here:
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201... [hotwhopper.com]
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And before anyone pulls up the "95% of climate models are wrong graph", that was thoroughly debunked here:
Nope, it remains a valid example. I notice the "debunker" follows up with ad hominem attacks when Roy Spencer defends his work.
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Graph [drroyspencer.com]
There you go, an ACTUAL graph of IPCC TEMPERATURE predictions vs reality. What you gave were a bunch of graphs that didn't show IPCC predictions vs reality. You know you are lying and misleading people and are hoping to god that no one calls you on it.
I checked your links and was initially shocked because the graphs match the predictions, and EVERY time I've attempted to see that they haven't matched. Then I read the details and not a ONE of them showed temperature. If you want to make a claim abou
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At America's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Dyson was looking at the climate system before it became a hot political issue, over 25 years ago. He provides a robust foreword to a report written by Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change cofounder Indur Goklany on CO2 – a report published [PDF] today by the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
Just from the article.
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You don't think Obama always being on the right side of history is a joke?
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I'm not claiming science is wrong. I was making a joke about Obama always being on the right side of history.
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No, he has not, and since almost every expert in that actual field says he's wrong, not only is he not an authority, but his continued insistence that his largely layman understanding is equivalent to that of a researcher that has actually dedicated themselves to studying climatology is, to be quite blunt, deeply dishonest. Dyson I condemn for what even he must know is a dishonest set of claims. You I condemn because you're a fucking ignoramus.
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Which is utterly irrelevant. He is not a climatologist. He may be somewhat more equipped to look at the models, but not much more equipped. He's playing on passing familiarity with the subject a quarter of a century ago, which would not have been enough even then to declare him an authority.
He is not an authority, he isn't recognized by anyone except a pack of science deniers as an authority. And frankly, I don't think Dyson is even considered that profound an authority in his area of expertise. He's rather
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None of them are Freeman Dyson, however. He is not a climate expert, it is not his field of expertise. Qualifications are more than a degree, so no, he is not an expert, no matter how much he or pseudo-skeptics say he is. Beyond that, it's hard to tell if his skepticism is even real, he seems to regard himself as a provocateur.
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Yes, he isn't qualified. It's been years since he was involved in any kind of research of this kind, and you're massively overstating the involvement he had. Not even Dyson claims to be a climate expert.
AGW is happening. Period. Clinging to an exceedingly small minority, including people like Dyson who are not experts in the field, is a sign of your stupidity and pathetic cowardice. Grow up, moron. CO2 traps heat in the lower atmosphere and reacts with seawater to fuck up ocean Ph levels. Not even Dyson arg
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Not in that article he didn't. He said the models were now precise enough to show that they aren't correct, which is a *very* different statement. Different enough that what he said was true and your paraphrase was false.
That said, it's true that he doesn't consider CO2 rise to be a problem, outside of a few minor things like causing the oceans to rise. I disagree with him, but neither of us are either climatologists or biologists (and esp. marine biologists).
P.S.: Anyone who thought that the climatolog
U.S. Cities and Sea Level Threats .. (Score:3)
"More Than 400 U.S. Cities May Be 'Past The Point Of No Return [huffingtonpost.com]' With Sea Level Threats: But there are still cities that could be saved by reducing carbon emissions..
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http://i.imgur.com/CTAQszd.jpg [imgur.com]
Don't bother to look it may upset you.
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And don't let this:
http://blog.hotwhopper.com/201... [hotwhopper.com]
Upset you. Seriously, don't be upset. Learn from it!
It's easy to not worry about climate change (Score:2, Insightful)
It's easy to not worry about climate change when you'll probably be dead in a few years anyway.
The whole picture. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:The whole picture. (Score:4, Interesting)
Thank you for that link! When I was reading TFA, I found his assertion that climate change was doing more good than harm rather startling, and was wondering if there was some research that I was unaware of which might change my opinions somewhat. From that exchange you linked to:
"Second, we do not know whether the recent changes in climate are on balance doing more harm than good. The strongest warming is in cold places like Greenland. More people die from cold in winter than die from heat in summer." ...which is just a really special kind of logical fallacy. Special like it rides the short bus to school. He might be a brilliant physicist and/or mathematician, but when it comes to climate change he is just (as another suggested) an old codger.
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He has a very British regional bias.
People not in U.K. will die when their crops fail and agricultural climate changes. People not in U.K. will die when the excess heat in tropical oceans contributes to massive typhoons and hurricanes, and increasingly violent and intense rainstorms and flooding.
and he is probably just wrong:
http://www.statista.com/statistics/267708/number-of-deaths-globally-due-to-heat-or-cold-waves/
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After doing a lot of reading about this man, I have come to this conclusion about his views: Basically he has said "you're {climate scientists} all wrong because I don't like your models and if you try to ask me about specific technical flaws in those models I will defer to my status as a physicist and not a climatologist" So which is it?
You did a lot of reading on Dyson and all you can talk about is his views on climate change? (Or rather all you can do is disparage his views on climate change.) Doesn't sound to me like you really did that reading.
As to the link you find interesting, I notice that Steve Connor, the journalist/editor interrogating Dyson via email, acts an awful lot like a lawyer trying to discredit a witness for the other side. That plus making the exchange public afterward indicates to me that he was grandstanding for t
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You did a lot of reading on Dyson and all you can talk about is his views on climate change?
You may not have noticed this, but it's kind of a hot issue these days.
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You may not have noticed this, but it's kind of a hot issue these days.
I don't buy it, especially when all the original poster tried to do was discredit Dyson's opinions on climate change. Sounds more like a tribal thing. Chuck rocks and sticks at the Earth Burner tribe.
Not a climate science denier (Score:2)
I have respect for Freeman Dyson and would not call him a climate science denier but a "lukewarmer". He admits that increased CO2 will have effects but doesn't think they will be so bad that it won't be a major disruption to our civilization. I think he is wrong in that judgement and wish he'd take the time for some deep talk with actual climatologists but he may be to set in his ways for that to have an effect.
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
What's even more intersting than the article (Score:2)
Which is pretty interesting itself, is filter effect on the current slashdot community. It's amazing how many people who are always flocking to anything AGW related just stayed away. Have to wonder if being denied their favorite weapons (anti-science etc etc) just soured them on the fight.
He's hiding in plain view, people! (Score:4, Funny)
Don't you get it?
Freeman Dyson
Freeman Dyson
Freemason!
Pure benefit, right. (Score:2)
Freeman Dyson on climate change .. (Score:2)
Elderly physicist syndrome (Score:2)
Freeman Dyson IS a Climate Scientist (Score:2)
Dyson - good at physics, bad at predicting behavio (Score:5, Insightful)
This is NOT where the major problems associated with global warming come from. It's the changing of natural resources everyone is used to. It could require massive engineering projects or moving tens of millions of people and abandon whole cities near sea level. It could cause massive heat waves that could kill tens of thousands like what is starting to happen in India. It could require whole regions to abandon the familiar agriculture practices, and in some areas leave no alternative production. It could destabilize whole regions of the world and cause massive wars killing millions - far worse than any direct effect.
This is the real danger of global warming, not simply a few degrees of temperature rise on an otherwise bearable average value.
Dyson knows nothing about climate change (Score:3)
Dyson has succeeded in destroying his reputation as a serious and credible observer and commentator of society and his times by propagating pseudo-science around climate change. His actual scientific achievements are of course spared.
Freeman Dyson is not a climate scientist. He's a scientist who dabbles in theorizing about the climate because he wants to. He is trading on his name and reputation, to the detriment of both. It doesn't matter how smart you are or how accomplished you are in other areas; if it's not your specific area of expertise, then you're in over your head.\
If you want to see Dyson's theorizing on climate systematically and thoroughly destroyed - (amongst other things he gets caught in just plain old logical fallacies) by actual climatologists, here's what that looks like:
http://www.realclimate.org/ind... [realclimate.org]
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
http://initforthegold.blogspot... [blogspot.com]
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
What's to be ashamed of? (Re:The Register) (Score:3)
Why should one be ashamed of publicizing his own sincerely-held views?
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Why should we assume they're sincerely-held views, instead of someone with an ideological agenda?
Pretty much the only people saying it's not happening seem to be on the payroll of oil companies, or otherwise stand to make money off the status quo.
So, we question if they're actually "sincerely-held views", or merely self serving bullshit.
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First of all, you seem to be seeing a contradiction, where there is not one. "An ideological agenda" can — and usually is — stemming from one's sincerely held beliefs.
And your proof of that is?..
RDP made no sugges
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Given that you shamelessly cut up his quote, I have a tendency to believe him more than you do. Selective quoting is not a sign of a man confident that the facts will bear out his opinion.
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I do not know, which part of the world you are coming from, Anonymous Coward, but here in the West we believe in presumption of innocence. If you wish to call them liars, then you have to offer proof (or, at least, some evidence) of it.
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> The Reg is shamelessly used to push these views.
Exacty. That is why proposed laws against challenging settled science are so important. The scientists have already voted.
Voting creates truth? Scientists lie all the time when someone pays them enough money. They are all whores but their honour varies in price.
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Scientists tend to tell the truth as they see it. Some are liars, but not the majority.
Voting does not create truth. However, if almost all of the smart people who have studied a subject in great depth agree on something, it's likely to be true.
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That "assumption-based modeling" is called physics, and the reliability of the assumptions are rigorously checked.
| The simple fact is that the amount of empirical data necessary to measure the significance of the impact of CO2 on climate will take hundreds of years to sample
This is
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Re:The right side of history (Score:5, Informative)
Consider that Dyson, an AGW denialist ...
Dyson is NOT a denialist. He accepts that climate change is happening and that it is caused by humans. But he also feels that humanity has much bigger problems, and AGW is getting far more attention than it deserves ... and he is right. If we focus on population control, 3rd world poverty, eradicating malaria, and raising literacy rates, then AGW will be a much easier problem to deal with in the future. My wife got a $10k taxpayer subsidy on her Tesla. That could have paid for a thousand anti-malaria bed nets. That is misplaced priorities.
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My wife got a $10k taxpayer subsidy on her Tesla. That could have paid for a thousand anti-malaria bed nets. That is misplaced priorities.
I suppose it could have, but so could $10k spent on anything else, and the U.S. government spends a lot of $10ks on much less worthy priorities.
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My wife got a $10k taxpayer subsidy on her Tesla. That could have paid for a thousand anti-malaria bed nets. That is misplaced priorities.
I suppose it could have, but so could $10k spent on anything else, and the U.S. government spends a lot of $10ks on much less worthy priorities.
Anyone that can afford a Tesla doesn't need $10K from the taxpayers. And just because they do other stupid things with our money doesn't make this any better. Take the money given to 3 rich folks for their Tesla's and buy some poor person a LEAF. At least then I'll feel like my money is doing some good.
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Take the money given to 3 rich folks for their Tesla's and buy some poor person a LEAF. At least then I'll feel like my money is doing some good.
The goal is to encourage the replacement of gasoline cars with electric cars, not to give people free cars. The way you would do it, would be about only one third as effective in achieving the policy goal. Also, according to the Wikipedia article on the incentives [wikipedia.org]. The LEAF actually qualifies for a large federal subsidy than the Tesla Model S, thus getting both an absolutely larger subsidy and a subsidy that covers a larger percentage of the cost.
And just because they do other stupid things with our money doesn't make this any better.
No, the actual goals of reducing dependency on foreign oil
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You would be wrong.
Unless you listen to mainstream media alarmism and a few of the extremists on that side, even the IPCC barely points to barely more than half "could" be man made and they have absolutely no idea if its bad or not.
The tipping point argument holds no water and has no evidence.
But the questions you mention are valid ones, I just think you believe they are answered when they are not.
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Consider that Dyson, an AGW denialist ...
Dyson is NOT a denialist. He accepts that climate change is happening and that it is caused by humans. But he also feels that humanity has much bigger problems, and AGW is getting far more attention than it deserves ... and he is right. If we focus on population control, 3rd world poverty, eradicating malaria, and raising literacy rates, then AGW will be a much easier problem to deal with in the future. My wife got a $10k taxpayer subsidy on her Tesla. That could have paid for a thousand anti-malaria bed nets. That is misplaced priorities.
Not if the tesla drives energy innovation that helps deal with AGW.
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Considering that the greatest negative impacts of climate change tend to occur in low-income parts of the world, no, this isn't misplaced priorities at all. Furthermore, aggressive climate change mitigation only costs a small fraction of GDP (recent estimates put it at under 2%), so there is no reason whatsoever to believe that aggressive action to halt climate change would have any negative impact on other ways of improving quality of life around the world.
Re:The right side of history (Score:5, Insightful)
What you're saying is that his conclusions are politically incorrect and don't agree with what you feel compelled to believe, for whatever reasons.
I am not qualified to say who's right and who's wrong here. But I keep an open mind and listen to reasoned argument. The extremes (flat out deniers on one side and cataclysm mongers on the other) do neither.
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What you're saying is that his conclusions are politically incorrect and don't agree with what you feel compelled to believe, for whatever reasons.
The AC said no such thing. He said he doesn't put much weight into what a non-climate scientist says about climate science when actual climatologists say differently.
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Who do you think are climatologist?
They are all Geologists, statisticians, economists, mathematicians, psychologists, physicists, etc...
So you are saying Dyson is not as capable at basic understanding of the "high school grade SETTLED science" that is climate science?
You simple minded ideologists cant have your cake and eat it too. Its either simple grade school science or its not. Its either settled or its not.
Your argumenting from emotion and have absolutely no idea what you are talking about.
Re:The right side of history (Score:4, Insightful)
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Well from what I keep hearing the argument is that if we don't focus on climate change now it will be too late to try in the future.
Funny, that's not in the actual research. What's actually being claimed is that if we don't want to experience any serious consequences of global warming, we need to keep temperature increase from 1850 below 2 C. I think that's exaggerated.
While the stuff he stated is true and those are important problems none will lead to the amount of death and extinction as climate change.
Except that high level of death and extinction is not predicted by actual research or modeling either. It's also worth noting here that habitat destruction, invasive species, and overharvesting are the primary causes of species extinction and they will remain so even in t
More complicated than a denier (Score:5, Insightful)
The denialists want to claim him as one of them, but if you read what he actually says (and not what other people rephrase what he says), he's not; he's a skeptic, all right, but not a denier, or, at least, he doesn't parrot the deniers' (mostly stupid) talking points. His arguments are more complicated than that.
He does, however, think that climate models are not reliable. When you dig down into why, you see that he admits taht he hasn't actually studied them, he's just distrustful of numerical models in general.
A large part of his argument, however, is that global warming just isn't a problem, and if it is, it's one we can solve. (In the very short interview referenced, for example, he says that we should look at ways of increasing snowfall in Antarctica as a solution.)
I think, unfortunately, that there is a complete contradiction here. You can't solve a problem if you don't have a model that tells you the effect of your prposed actions. So-- if you don't believe the models, then you can't model what the effect of your solution is. Contrawise, if you are asserting that you can solve the problem (by, for example, increasing snowfall in Antarctica), this means that you think that you can model the problem, and be confident that your solution the effect of solving the problem. So: you can assert that you don't believe the models, or you can assert that we can solve the problem, but you can't logically assert both.
Re:More complicated than a denier (Score:5, Insightful)
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The whole debate is exactly what you just said, "Extent and impact!".
Those who want to shutdown the debate would like you to believe its settled, when its far from it.
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I distinguish between skeptics like Dyson and deniers. Deniers make firm false statements, and believe in a scientific conspiracy. Skeptics express themselves in less definite terms, and don't believe in a conspiracy. I'm not real impressed by Dyson's opinions here, but he's clearly a skeptic.
Re:More complicated than a denier (Score:5, Informative)
I've made my living running numeric models. Everybody _should_ be distrustful of them.
The definition of 'competent modeler' is 'can make the model tell him anything he wants'. I know, I'm a competent modeler.
In the utility industry modeling is an adversarial process. Like lawyering. It takes months, with experts on both sides to validate a relatively simple dataset.
We do it that way because of experience. Otherwise you just end up with dueling models talking past each other.
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Re:The right side of history (Score:4, Insightful)
You forgot to call him an anti-science shill for the oil companies.
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Yes, he did invent the vacuum cleaner. You know, the one that makes that WHOOSHING noise.
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Given what I expect your age is, maybe you just haven't learned much yet.