Posted on 03/29/2009 7:29:05 AM PDT by sionnsar
"In The Civil Heretic, the NYT Magazine takes a look at how world-renowned scientist Freeman Dyson wound up opposing those who care most about global warming. Since coming out of the closet on global warming, Dyson has found himself described as 'a pompous twit,' 'a blowhard,' and 'a mad scientist.' He argues that climate change has become an obsession for 'a worldwide secular religion' known as environmentalism. Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, calling him climate change's chief propagandist and accusing him of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models and promoting 'lousy science' that's distracting attention from more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet."
Dyson himself wrote about the need for heretics in science not long ago.
Science is about facts and data, not religion. There should be no heretics or true believers when it comes to science.
Beam Me up Scotty, There is "ZERO" intelligent life down here.
I'll be interested in how much of what he actually says made it into the Times piece, and how much of that piece is pure distortion. It's 8 pages so I'll read it later. But I am very interested in Dyson so thanks for posting this here. I don't always check Slashdot and I don't subscribe to the NY Times.
Unfortunately the oracles of “manmade global warming” are flooding publications (scientific and non-scientific) with articles purporting to be based on fact, but which are instead results of computer modeling based on hidden assumptions and questionable logic. The gullible journalistic world (NYT, WaPo, NBC, CBS, ABC et. al.) swallows this bilge, promotes it to the level of a religion and uses it to propagandize our children and the people whose intellectual activity consists of pondering who the next American Idol will be. Someone has to be a skeptic.
You’re right. I have yet to find a climate model study using the number one greenhouse gas.
To be fair, people were saying that about him long before he said anything about global warming. One might get the impression that the descriptions are accurate, if irrelevant.
Dyson is brilliant. I know his daughter, and based on the kind of person she is he appears to have been a very good parent as well.
I agree. The burden of proof is on those who claim that there is such a thing as significant anthropogenic global warming. To date, they have not been able to do so. My point is that the word heretic is probably not the propoer use of the word when describing a scientific process. However, I understand why it is being used because environmentalism has become akin to a religious cult.
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