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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
He’s up there with Hawking, Oppenheimer, Einstein, Feynman.
The Camp of the Saints: Book.
Discusses at length every possible driver of the "revolution by the absolute bottom of the world's cultures," led, of course, by a few demagogues.
(In the book they all get their comeuppance)
I have not yet finished the book. I can only digest it in small doses.
Thanks, ctdonath2
It is worth pointing out that in the same speech in which he warned of the Military-Industrial Complex, Eisenhower also warned of the Government-Big Science Complex.
“Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers.
The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present – and is gravely to be regarded.
Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite.”
Some on FR (me included ....) have long said that our ability to pollute the the environment we live in so badly, that it will become uninhabitable far, FAR exceeds our so-called ability to cause global warming.
I point to the EPA's dumping 3 million gallons of contaminated mine water into the Las Animas river in Colorado as proof.
I’ll = ill.
He’s 91. That’s a truism for someone that old.
I was addressing post #21.
I think climate change has been occurring since the earth has been here. I haven’t subscribed to man-made global warming/cooling, ever. I’m impressed Dyson has come out so forcefully.
Uhm, I’m not screaming, nor liberal, nor am I pushing. But, you’re free, of course, to assume whatever you like.
Dyson’s federal research grants just dried up.
The Republicans are right in their approach. Some Republicans accept global warming as happening, but most would agree with Dyson - it’s real but we dout have to immediately stop using fossil fuels, restrict human freedom and lower our standard of living. He’s saying the problem is fixable without social dislocation.
Obama takes the wrong side on everything.
I immediately feel skeptical and suspicious of anyone who uses "a very long time frame" as a foundation for argument and persuasion.
The warming scaremongers are rife with it.
And they got doctored computer "models" to "prove it!"
WTF?
Apes with access to high technology...
HE SURE KNOWS HOW TO BUILD A VACUUM CLEANER!
I thought they were against nuclear reactors?
Have at it.
Show me where someone is shoving anything anywhere.
I am easily amused.
Moonbat climate “science” bump for later.....
She sure did.
She also taught me that being right is useless against the dogmatic. And also that clarity in communicating avoids needless conflict.
The current discussion is about alternatives, not militancy.
I didn’t read xzins as indignantly hurling anything at you, just an honest inquiry as to whether you knew Dyson yourself and could she’d some light on all this.
Diversion is a proven tactic
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