Professor Freeman Dyson:
Heretical thoughts about global warming
FREEMAN DYSON is professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, in Princeton. His professional interests are in mathematics and astronomy. Among his many books are Disturbing the Universe, Infinite in All Directions Origins of Life, From Eros to Gaia, Imagined Worlds, and The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet. His most recent book, Many Colored Glass: Reflections on the Place of Life in the Universe (Page Barbour Lectures), is being published this month by University of Virginia Press.
"My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.
Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.
Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak.
But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do.
The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans.
They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests.
They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in.
It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds.
That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.
The politicians and the public expect science to provide answers to the problems.
Scientific experts are paid and encouraged to provide answers.
The public does not have much use for a scientist who says, “Sorry, but we don’t know”.
The public prefers to listen to scientists who give confident answers to questions and make confident predictions of what will happen as a result of human activities.
So it happens that the experts who talk publicly ... make confident predictions about the future, and end up believing their own predictions.
As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions.
When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist.
I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science.
The predictions of science-fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate.
... unfortunately I am an old heretic.
When you hear an old heretic talking, you can always say, “Too bad he has lost his marbles”, and pass on.
What the world needs is young heretics.
I am hoping that one or two of the people who read this piece may fill that role.
The main subject of this piece is the problem of climate change.
The science is inextricably mixed up with politics.
Everyone agrees that the climate is changing, but there are violently diverging opinions about the causes of change, about the consequences of change, and about possible remedies.
There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global."