Letters to the Editor
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I wish you had asked Dyson about the reactions he has gotten from the Global Warming Cognescenti for his views
I am curious about the reaction Dyson has gotten for his heretical speech on Global Warming.
Also if he has any thoughts how he may disagree in many many ways with the various agendas of the culture warriors that make their bones by denying global warming.
There are forces of political correctness rife in our society -- Salon suffers and promulgates it in spades with regard to feminism.
I wonder how Freeman Dyson sees this.
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Dyson gives us a great example of empathy-free thinking
So, "Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being colder." Well, not if you live in Bangladesh, or Shanghai, or even Florida (or New Orleans). Also, things might get a little problematic if you live in a city along a glacial-fed river, like the Mekong (featured on NBC News tonight) - already, salt water is leaching upstream because of the diminished river flow.
Further, since we have already increased the carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere far above anything experienced naturally in the last three-quarters of a million years, who is to say that that temperature increases will come slowly enough, or be moderate enough in magnitude, for humans and all other life to cope, at least without really catastrophic harm and death. In fact, it is precisely the fact that we do not know the full extent of the consequences of the experiment we are performing that generates alarm in reasonable people. Maybe we'll luck out. But maybe we won't. And the bet is the ultimate in high-stakes wagers.
There is something I really don't understand about Dyson. Back almost thirty years ago, I read his lengthy article in a review journal (I believe Reviews of Modern Physics) where he scoped out the long-term evolution of the universe, with time scales of stars, planetary systems, galaxies, and longest of all, the eventual slow evaporation of black holes through Hawking radiation. (This was long before the discoveries of "dark matter" and "dark energy", which changes the picture quite a bit.) So how, I wonder, is anyone capable of thinking that broadly - to time scales of order of the year 10 to the 100th power - the same person that is now so glib about the future and its potential problems in just the next century?
He strikes me like some disconnected reporter or economist, talking about the loss of jobs to globalization, without even sensing that families get torn apart, people go crazy and do violent things, and society gets meaner as a result. Just "collateral damage" I guess.
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Freeman's enslaved to outmoded views
Dyson's an old coot riding into the sunset; a lot of the stuff he blows off so blithely are things he won't have to worry about, because he'll be long dead before they happen and/or come to fruition.
And he's kind of having it a lot of different ways, invariably favoring highly technological "miracle solutions" to complex problems that point to an ever less natural, more precarious existence for human beings, with the magic of new discoveries held out as a tempting prize -- "people won't have to change; we'll change the world, instead!" -- it's the slogan of the carnival barker and the charlatan, the false prophet, the snake oil salesman. The payoff never matches the product pitch -- the philosopher's stone in a new package.
Conflating natural shifts in climate temperature with human-generated climate change is specious, and lets polluters off the hook entirely. His cavalier attitude with biotechnology, that whacked-out DIY home biotech kit notion willfully misses the whole point of biotech, which is patentable products.
The firms in the business of biotech are busy inventing chimeras to make money for them; not by letting everybody make their own little critters -- and the notion of Chimeras-R-Us is kind of upsetting, cheapens life, turns it into a plaything. We need more respect for ourselves, for the world we inhabit, and for the living things around us; the world's getting too small for that kind of attitude, anymore.
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the ulitimate double standard
I like how he has one set of ethics that forbids messing with human genes and another set of ethics that allows for letting anyone muck about with the genetics of EVERYTHING else that lives.
This guy does not sound like any scientist I know, a perfect example of why mushy headed physicists should stay the hell away from biology.
what a dope.
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I don't suppose it's occurred to him ...
... that in the three decades since he was studying climate change, we might have learned a few things we didn't know then?
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There is no good title for this comment
Food science (the producing, not the cooking) is really screwed up in many ways and the way we muck around to "improve" our food is a lot of what makes Americans so fat. While there are certainly many good things we have done with food engineering I wouldn't be so gung-ho given how many bad things we've done, systematically sucking the nutritional value out of nearly everything.
His overall view is an optimistic one: science can solve all our problems. I normally dislike it when people say "hey don't worry, science will take care of that" but at least he is a real scientist. Most of the time people who say that are counting on other, smarter people to do the work for them.
(Although his most important work was some time ago)
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Maybe Next Time
What a lovely man. A true sensate. The facts are the basis, speculation and intuition a part of the process, but not the beginning and not the end. Preaching athiests aren't any different from fundamentalist coercers, but is anybody listening any more?
The politics are not worth the effort when the facts are so intriguing--the math--like an art, a process, an occupation for the mind like meditation, like writing, like painting, like playing music.
I hope he's right about global warming. I don't like learning that the institute formed to look at the question has been politicised, but this is one of those cases were erring on the side of the wrong facts could be a disaster. He doesn't mention his own more recent research. Could he be behind the "times?" (Forgive my Professor Dyson, but I want my grandchilden to live to your age too.)
I'm afraid I dont' trust people as mucy as he does, at least in terms of his public persona. I've seen too much of what greed can do. I haven't lived behind an academic wall that allowed me to pursue my passion and I tend to focus on the negative. The monsters who control our culture could care less about the truth as long as their coffers are full.
I'd have wondered what his response would have been to: "What do you think of the efforts to replace the theory of evolution with "creationism?"
Maybe next time.