Freeman Dyson & Robbert Dijkgraaf

Ever since the 1980s one of my favorite authors in the realm of science has been Freeman Dyson. The Princeton physicist has written books on a wide range of topics . It's impossible to delve into Dyson's career without concluding he is several orders of magnitude smarter than the Al Gores of the world. One of his themes is the complexity of the universe. He thus gets a good laugh at all of the simplifiers of science, such as Gore and the rest of the what I like to call the climate scientology cult.

Anyone who knows anything about science realizes that something as complex as the Earth's atmosphere offers too many variables to be understood in a matter of mere years. Research is just beginning into the role of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, yet the climate scientologists claim to know exactly what effect each tiny increment of CO-2 will have on the environment.

Here's a great magazine piece that gives an in-depth look at Dyson and how he views the problem. An excerpt:

“The climate-studies people who work with models always tend to overestimate their models,” Dyson was saying. “They come to believe models are real and forget they are only models.” Dyson speaks in calm, clear tones that carry simultaneous evidence of his English childhood, the move to the United States after completing his university studies at Cambridge and more than 50 years of marriage to the German-born Imme, but his opinions can be barbed, especially when a conversation turns to climate change. Climate models, he says, take into account atmospheric motion and water levels but have no feeling for the chemistry and biology of sky, soil and trees. “The biologists have essentially been pushed aside,” he continues. “Al Gore’s just an opportunist. The person who is really responsible for this overestimate of global warming is Jim Hansen. He consistently exaggerates all the dangers.”

Dyson agrees with the prevailing view that there are rapidly rising carbon-dioxide levels in the atmosphere caused by human activity. To the planet, he suggests, the rising carbon may well be a MacGuffin, a striking yet ultimately benign occurrence in what Dyson says is still “a relatively cool period in the earth’s history.” The warming, he says, is not global but local, “making cold places warmer rather than making hot places hotter.” Far from expecting any drastic harmful consequences from these increased temperatures, he says the carbon may well be salubrious — a sign that “the climate is actually improving rather than getting worse,” because carbon acts as an ideal fertilizer promoting forest growth and crop yields. “Most of the evolution of life occurred on a planet substantially warmer than it is now,” he contends, “and substantially richer in carbon dioxide.” ...

Dyson has always been strongly opposed to the idea that there is any such thing as an optimal ecosystem — “life is always changing” — and he abhors the notion that men and women are something apart from nature, that “we must apologize for being human.” Humans, he says, have a duty to restructure nature for their survival.

This gets to the heart of the essentially religious nature of the cult. Their argument is that man should not alter the planet at all. The CO-2 issue is just one way to make that argument. In its absence, they could easily generate another one.

Lees verder hier.

Het toeval wil dat voormalig KNAW-president Robbert Dijkgraaf, fervent aanhanger van de AGW-hypothese (AGW = Anthropogenic Global Warming), de nieuwe directeur is van het 'Institute for Advanced Study' in Princeton, waaraan ook Freeman Dyson is verbonden. Dijkgraafs lovende brief aan de kersverse president Obama staat daar natuurlijk geheel los van, maar zal waarschijnlijk toch geen kwaad hebben gedaan bij deze benoeming.  

Dijkgraaf geniet onder collega's groot gezag als wetenschapper. Maar daarnaast heeft hij bewondering geoogst voor zijn gave om in zijn publieke optredens het enthousiasme voor de wetenschap in brede kring te bevorderen. Dat is een vak apart - en belangrijk!

Ik heb goede redenen om aan te nemen dat Freeman Dyson graag met Robbert Dijkgraaf over klimaat en andere zaken van gedachten zou willen wisselen als Dijkgraaf zich eenmaal in Princeton heeft geïnstalleerd.

Dyson kwalificeert het klimaatgedoe als 'propaganda'. Hij maakt zich overigens geen illusies dat zijn bezwaren daartegen indruk zullen maken op de ware gelovigen, inclusief de leden van de Britse Royal Society (te vergelijken met onze KNAW), waartoe hij zelf behoort.

Het zou interessant zijn te vernemen wat er tussen deze twee ter zake zal worden besproken. Maar dat zal wel vertrouwelijk blijven. Helaas!