Posted on 10/14/2015 4:32:39 PM PDT by xzins
Freeman Dyson, one of the world’s top theoretical physicists and a self-described “100% Democrat,” criticized President Barack Obama for his views on climate change, stating that he was on the “wrong side” of the issue and that Republicans were on the “right side” of the topic.
“I'm 100 per cent Democrat myself, and I like Obama. But he took the wrong side on this issue, and the Republicans took the right side,” Dyson told The Register last week.
Dyson’s name looms large in the scientific and political worlds. A contemporary of Albert Einstein, Dyson taught physics at Princeton University, worked as a civilian scientist for the Royal Air Force in World War II, and has advised the government on many scientific and technical matters.
Dyson is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of London. Among the honors he has received over the years are the Enrico Fermi Award, the Templeton Prize, and the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize.
Climate change "is not a scientific mystery but a human mystery,” Dyson said in his interview with The Register. “How does it happen that a whole generation of scientific experts is blind to obvious facts?"
The physics professor studied climate trends at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the 1980s before the topic appeared prominently on the political scene.
About models that predicted drastic climate change Dyson said, “What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what's observed and what's predicted have become much stronger.”
Dyson offered several of his own solutions for carbon dioxide policy.
“The rise of the oceans is a real problem and while they're not rising as fast as people say, they're still rising,” Dyson said. “That could be stopped if you could arrange that it snows a bit more in Antarctica. That's something that could be quite feasible, but it's not been looked at very much.”
Dyson also mentioned land management, “particularly building up topsoil.”
The physicist suggested that resolutions by the West to limit coal burning will not meet expectations.
“Whatever the rest of the world agrees to, China and India will continue to burn coal, so the discussion is quite pointless,” Dyson said.
He added, “Pollution is quite separate to the climate problem: one can be solved, and the other cannot, and the public doesn't understand that.”
Dyson said the lucrative nature of pushing a climate change agenda based on models predicting drastic consequences is only part of the problem.
“It is true that there's a large community of people who make their money by scaring the public, so money is certainly involved to some extent, but I don't think that's the full explanation,” he said.
Dyson compared the “mood of the times,” today to that of the pre-World War I period.
“It's like a hundred years ago, before World War I, there was this insane craving for doom, which in a way, helped cause World War I,” said Dyson. “People like the poet Rupert Brooke were glorifying war as an escape from the dullness of modern life. [There was] the feeling we'd gone soft and degenerate, and war would be good for us all.”
“That was in the air leading up to World War I, and in some ways it's in the air today,” Dyson said.
As a young man, Dyson earned a mathematics degree from Trinity College, Cambridge. He did his graduate studies at Cornell University in New York, under the direction of the world-renowned physicists Hans Bethe and Richard Feynman. J. Robert Oppenheimer, who built the atomic bomb at Los Alamos, awarded Dyson a lifetime appointment to the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton in 1953.
Dyson, born in Britain, became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1957.
There is a small group of rich lefties who are trying to use Global Warming to launch more funding into Fusion/Fission reactors.
I suspect Dyson is probably one of them.
Bill Gates is another.
At least hussein is consistent.
By extortion or is such research a natural byproduct of disagreeing with climate warmists.
Well at least they are smart enough to know that if the fossil fuel economy is torpedoed, there’s not going to be squat left over for this kind of stuff.
I hate panic mongerers.
Bkmrk.
I wonder how many don’t realize yet that their name is not on the aristocracy list but on the peon list.
Yep. And if he says your climate model is wrong because it doesn't match current data, believe him. And he's not going to have his career ruined by pissants such as Hansen or Gore, either.
EVERYBODY is going to be on the peon list if mankind heads down this blind alley.
After the Russian revolution, many who thought their names were on the new aristocracy list were actually on the “eliminate” list.
And there are a lot of science heavy hitters who don't want to be remembered as being on the opposite side from Dyson, who's reputation is as solid as a marble statue.
:-)
(By the way, has Freeman run this by certain prominent religious leaders, who seem to be leaning the Obama way on this issue? If not, I hope he eventually does.)
The Bolsheviks decided those people were not needed any more. They provided the excuse for the revolution, now it had happened, no more need for the excuse.
America being more defiant by culture, might prove harder to push under in that fashion than other parts of the world.
The more important thing about Dyson is that he’s saying even if there is Gorebull Warming, we do not need to run around with our hair on fire about it. All this “Choke back fossil fuels” is utterly unnecessary.
Please allow me to help you out there, Professor. "Global Warming" theory is driven by government grants to academics.
I’m not clear on what you mean. Dyson says global warming due to human beings is incorrect. Wrong. Scientific hogwash. In what way would he be using that conclusion to further an interest in fusion/fission reactors?
Dyson actually agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists. But he believes the I’ll effects are exaggerated, that the proposed solutions are wrong, and that the ill effects can be readily fixed without having to trap western freedom and economies.
He’s saying that if there is any such thing at all it is far smaller than the slyentists allege it to be. What are you, a screaming liberal pusher?
He will most likely be dead soon. The Cult of Liberalism accepts no dissension.
Any Jr. High-schooler could answer that!
Alternative energy that actually works!
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