Dyson Follow-up Interview on Global Warming

Started by hughbartlett, 06/12/2009 10:19PM
Posted 06/12/2009 10:19PM | Edited 06/12/2009 10:24PM Opening Post
A couple of months ago, theoretical physicist Freeman Dyson caused quite a stir due to his opinions about global warming in an article in the New York Times Magazine (March 3, 2009). Many in the AGW community were outraged that this self-described fuddy-duddy without any training in climate science was getting such publicity for his opinions on the subject. In his first interview since the Times article, he explains his views in an interview with Yale Environment360, a publication of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, that took place about a week ago. For your enjoyment, here are some of the more profound snippets from that conversation. The entire interview may be found at:

http://www.e360.yale.edu/content/feature.msp?id=2151

Dyson: … No doubt that warming is happening. I don't think it is correct to say "global," but certainly warming is happening. I have been to Greenland a year ago and saw it for myself. And that's where the warming is most extreme. And it's spectacular, no doubt about it. And glaciers are shrinking and so on.

But, there are all sorts of things that are not said, which decreases my feeling of alarm. First of all, the people in Greenland love it. They tell you it's made their lives a lot easier. They hope it continues. I am not saying none of these consequences are happening. I am just questioning whether they are harmful.

There's a lot made out of the people who died in heat waves. And there is no doubt that we have heat waves and people die. What they don't say is actually five times as many people die of cold in winters as die of heat in summer. And it is also true that more of the warming happens in winter than in summer. So, if anything, it's heavily favorable as far as that goes. It certainly saves more lives in winter than it costs in summer.

So that kind of argument is never made. And I see a systematic bias in the way things are reported. Anything that looks bad is reported, and anything that looks good is not reported.

A lot of these things are not anything to do with human activities. Take the shrinking of glaciers, which certainly has been going on for 300 years and has been well documented. So it certainly wasn't due to human activities, most of the time. There's been a very strong warming, in fact, ever since the Little Ice Age, which was most intense in the 17th century. That certainly was not due to human activity.

And the most serious of almost all the problems is the rising sea level. But there again, we have no evidence that this is due to climate change. A good deal of evidence says it's not. I mean, we know that that's been going on for 12,000 years, and there's very doubtful arguments as to what's been happening in the last 50 years and (whether) human activities have been important. It's not clear whether it's been accelerating or not. But certainly, most of it is not due to human activities. So it would be a shame if we've made huge efforts to stop global warming and the sea continued to rise. That would be a tragedy. Sea level is a real problem, but we should be attacking it directly and not attacking the wrong problem.

I am certainly willing to change my mind about details. And if they find any real evidence that global warming is doing harm, I would be impressed. That's the crucial point: I don't see the evidence...

And why should you imagine that the climate of the 18th century "what they call the pre-industrial climate" is somehow the best possible?

That's sort of what I would call part of the propaganda, to take for granted that any change is bad.

e360: It's more that any change is disruptive. You don't think that's reasonable?

Dyson: Well, disruptive is not the same as bad. A lot of disruptive things actually are good. That's the point. There's this sort of mindset that assumes any change is bad. You can call it disruptive or you can call it change. But it doesn't have to be bad.

e360: One thing is that if the temperature change projections are accurate for the next 100 years, it would be equivalent to the change that took us out of the last Ice Age into the present interglacial period, which is a very dramatic change.

Dyson: Yes, that's highly unlikely. But it's possible certainly.

e360: And the further argument is that this would happen much more quickly than that change happened. So it is hard to imagine that, at least in the short run, it could be anything but highly destructive.

Dyson: There's hidden assumptions there, which I question, that you can describe the climate by a single number. In the case of the Ice Age, that might be true, that it was cold everywhere. The ice was only in the northern regions, but it was also much colder at the equator in the Ice Age.

That's not true of this change in temperature today. The change that's now going on is very strongly concentrated in the Arctic. In fact in three respects, it's not global, which I think is very important. First of all, it is mainly in the Arctic. Secondly, it's mainly in the winter rather than summer. And thirdly, it's mainly in the night rather than at the daytime. In all three respects, the warming is happening where it is cold, not where it is hot.

e360: So, the idea is that the parts that are being disrupted are the parts that are inhospitable to begin with?

Dyson: Mostly. It is not 100 percent. But mostly they are, Greenland being a great example.

I feel very strongly that China and India getting rich is the most important thing that's going on in the world at present. That's a real revolution, that the center of gravity of the whole population of the world would be middle class, and that's a wonderful thing to happen. It would be a shame if we persuade them to stop that just for the sake of a problem that's not that serious.

And I'm happy every time I see that the Chinese and Indians make a strong statement about going ahead with burning coal. Because that's what it really depends on, is coal. They can't do without coal. We could, but they certainly can't.

So I think it is very important that they should not be under pressure. Luckily they are, in fact, pretty self-confident; (neither) of those countries pays too much attention to us.

"Praise the Lord for the expanding grandeur of creation, worlds known and unknown, galaxies beyond galaxies, filling us with awe and challenging our imaginations." 2007 Reform Siddur