6 ms·

Freeman Dyson on climate change, interstellar travel, fusion

56 points by blue1 11y ago

vixen99 11y ago
Question to Dyson: "Are climate models getting better? You wrote how they have the most awful fudges, and they only really impress people who don't know about them." "I would say the opposite. What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what's observed and what's predicted have become much stronger. It's clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn't so clear 10 years ago. I can't say if they'll always be wrong, but the observations are improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable." "It's now difficult for scientists to have frank and honest input into public debates. Prof Brian Cox, who is the public face of physics in the UK thanks to the BBC, has said he has no obligation to listen to "deniers," or to any other views other than the orthodoxy. That's a problem, but still I find that I have things to say and people do listen to me, and people have no particular complaints." Further illustration: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/14/top-french-weatherman-suspended-for-forbidden-views.html http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/14/top-french-weathe.... "France's top weatherman, Philippe Verdier has been suspended from work for publishing a book about climate change which suggests that the IPCC might be just a tad unreliable and more than a little politicised."
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Basically, we're fucked. When a problem becomes big enough that it becomes issue of general public, you can't get anything done about it in democracies. It becomes just another tool for political games. With some issues becoming politicized I can live. Women rights are one, with the new wave of feminism you can't really talk about it anymore without risking getting your head cut off in a media shitstorm, but that topic is generally of little consequence. We will eventually figure it out, even if it takes more time than needed, and everyone will be happy. Climate change is different. We're talking about real danger to the future of human civilization, an issue that will play out in following decades - probably well within lifetimes of most of us here. And many politicians (and businesses) are - I'm sorry for venting out - such big, greedy fucking assholes, that they want to play games with it instead of fucking solving it. They will doom us to misery and death to win a fucking election or make next Q3 sheet look good. Disgusting.
  - meeper16 11y ago
    Extending human lifespan is the solution. Think about this.
    - adrianN 11y ago
      If the number of people who save enough money for retirement is any indication, people don't even care about their future selves.
      - meeper16 11y ago
        Exactly. If people lived for 10,000 years, thier entire outlook on climate change would change. Another reason companies like Google, Craig Venter and Genentech are working on extending human lifespan via researchers like Cynthia Kenyon and CalicoLabs.
        adrianN 11y ago
        No, exactly not. Right now people don't care about their financial situation forty years in the future. They also fuck up their future health with alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy food. What makes you think that they will care what happens with the ecosystem in a hundred years if they don't care whether they get cancer in thirty?
        chopin 11y ago
        You can predict what happens to your savings forty years in the future? Take eg. a person who had savings from twenty years in 1914's Germany. It would have all gone 10 years later. Likewise when you had savings in stocks in 1929. It took almost 30 years to recover.
        adrianN 11y ago
        You can predict it about as well as you can predict the climate I would say.
- acqq 11y ago
  He is still not credible. That he "sees" the "discrepancies" doesn't prove that the science and the conclusions of climate scientists are invalid or that the problem isn't very real. http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor... "Researchers do not expect their models to reproduce weather events or El Niño phases exactly when they happened in real life. They do expect the models to capture how the whole system behaves over long periods of time. For example, in 1998 there was a powerful El Niño, when the equatorial Pacific Ocean warms ( we're in another one of that scale now). A simulation wouldn't necessarily reproduce an El Niño in 1998, but it should produce a realistic number of them over the course of many years." In short, the models aren't supposed to replace the short-term weather forecasts but to model the behavior of the very big and complex system we're living in over more years. And yes, it's the humanity's use of fossil fuels that is warming the world: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...
  - a_bonobo 11y ago
    As far as I know, Dyson doesn't say that man-made global warming isn't real - he just questions the validity of the models. It just comes out weirdly anti-global warming in this interview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Global_warming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Global_warming
    - david-given 11y ago
      Orlowski and Lewis of the Register are strongly, strongly anti-global warning; they've been gradually getting more and more radical over the years. I've pretty much given up reading their articles any more.
    - crocal 11y ago
      Exactly. The problem with the general public is that there is still a sense that science "explains" what's going on, whereas in reality, it applies models to make predictions. Some models are very good, some others less good, and in any case, science moves forward by analyzing those areas where the models don't work so well. So it's understandable that Dyson would look into these models and question them. Actually, it's what we should expect from top scientists like him. Not to be a "yes man".

56 points by blue1 11y ago

Question to Dyson: "Are climate models getting better? You wrote how they have the most awful fudges, and they only really impress people who don't know about them." "I would say the opposite. What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what's observed and what's predicted have become much stronger. It's clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn't so clear 10 years ago. I can't say if they'll always be wrong, but the observations are improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable." "It's now difficult for scientists to have frank and honest input into public debates. Prof Brian Cox, who is the public face of physics in the UK thanks to the BBC, has said he has no obligation to listen to "deniers," or to any other views other than the orthodoxy. That's a problem, but still I find that I have things to say and people do listen to me, and people have no particular complaints." Further illustration: http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/14/top-french-weatherman-suspended-for-forbidden-views.html http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/14/top-french-weathe.... "France's top weatherman, Philippe Verdier has been suspended from work for publishing a book about climate change which suggests that the IPCC might be just a tad unreliable and more than a little politicised."

TeMPOraL 11y ago
Basically, we're fucked. When a problem becomes big enough that it becomes issue of general public, you can't get anything done about it in democracies. It becomes just another tool for political games. With some issues becoming politicized I can live. Women rights are one, with the new wave of feminism you can't really talk about it anymore without risking getting your head cut off in a media shitstorm, but that topic is generally of little consequence. We will eventually figure it out, even if it takes more time than needed, and everyone will be happy. Climate change is different. We're talking about real danger to the future of human civilization, an issue that will play out in following decades - probably well within lifetimes of most of us here. And many politicians (and businesses) are - I'm sorry for venting out - such big, greedy fucking assholes, that they want to play games with it instead of fucking solving it. They will doom us to misery and death to win a fucking election or make next Q3 sheet look good. Disgusting.
- meeper16 11y ago
  Extending human lifespan is the solution. Think about this.
  - adrianN 11y ago
    If the number of people who save enough money for retirement is any indication, people don't even care about their future selves.
    - meeper16 11y ago
      Exactly. If people lived for 10,000 years, thier entire outlook on climate change would change. Another reason companies like Google, Craig Venter and Genentech are working on extending human lifespan via researchers like Cynthia Kenyon and CalicoLabs.
      - adrianN 11y ago
        No, exactly not. Right now people don't care about their financial situation forty years in the future. They also fuck up their future health with alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy food. What makes you think that they will care what happens with the ecosystem in a hundred years if they don't care whether they get cancer in thirty?
        chopin 11y ago
        You can predict what happens to your savings forty years in the future? Take eg. a person who had savings from twenty years in 1914's Germany. It would have all gone 10 years later. Likewise when you had savings in stocks in 1929. It took almost 30 years to recover.
        adrianN 11y ago
        You can predict it about as well as you can predict the climate I would say.
acqq 11y ago
He is still not credible. That he "sees" the "discrepancies" doesn't prove that the science and the conclusions of climate scientists are invalid or that the problem isn't very real. http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor... "Researchers do not expect their models to reproduce weather events or El Niño phases exactly when they happened in real life. They do expect the models to capture how the whole system behaves over long periods of time. For example, in 1998 there was a powerful El Niño, when the equatorial Pacific Ocean warms ( we're in another one of that scale now). A simulation wouldn't necessarily reproduce an El Niño in 1998, but it should produce a realistic number of them over the course of many years." In short, the models aren't supposed to replace the short-term weather forecasts but to model the behavior of the very big and complex system we're living in over more years. And yes, it's the humanity's use of fossil fuels that is warming the world: http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-world/ http://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-whats-warming-the-wor...
- a_bonobo 11y ago
  As far as I know, Dyson doesn't say that man-made global warming isn't real - he just questions the validity of the models. It just comes out weirdly anti-global warming in this interview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Global_warming https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Global_warming
  - david-given 11y ago
    Orlowski and Lewis of the Register are strongly, strongly anti-global warning; they've been gradually getting more and more radical over the years. I've pretty much given up reading their articles any more.
  - crocal 11y ago
    Exactly. The problem with the general public is that there is still a sense that science "explains" what's going on, whereas in reality, it applies models to make predictions. Some models are very good, some others less good, and in any case, science moves forward by analyzing those areas where the models don't work so well. So it's understandable that Dyson would look into these models and question them. Actually, it's what we should expect from top scientists like him. Not to be a "yes man".