Freeman Dyson on climate change, interstellar travel, fusion

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/11/freeman_dyson_interview/

by blue1 • 11 years ago

56 27 11 years ago

theregister.co.uk

vixen99• 11 years 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-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• 11 years 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.

meeper162• 11 years ago

Extending human lifespan is the solution. Think about this.

crocal2• 11 years ago

The only way you will manage this situation is by fixing the rules so that properly taking care of the environment becomes a necessary condition to win the fucking election or make next Q3 sheet look good. It's not that hard, but indeed, will take time to seep in through democracies. For the election part, I can see that this is clearly happening already. For the Q3 sheet, we have a long way to go in some parts of the world, USA and China being on top of the list.

dsfsdfd• 11 years ago

Economics similarly suffers.

Economists are the priests of a science twisted into religion.

onnoonno• 11 years ago

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.

I think your post illustrated the problem when dealing with feminism: Everyone assumes it is of 'little consequence'.

But I think it is quite the contrary: It is directly and strongly affecting the relations between the genders/sexes. Regardless of whether you think what it proposes/does/wants/... is a good idea or not:

I think it is not a good idea to think it is just a small issue.

acqq7• 11 years 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-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-wor...

a_bonobo• 11 years 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

InclinedPlane• 11 years ago

Whether or not the problem is real does not validate the concept that the models are trustworthy. It's possible to get the "right" answer in the wrong way, especially when the "right" answer is a somewhat fuzzy binary answer and not something that is more narrowly falsifiable.

Freeman Dyson on climate change, interstellar travel, fusion

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