Freeman Dyson, Global Warming Heretic

[qwnu]

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You response indicates you are a blind follower and believe anything a person with a PhD says. You accuse me of being close-minded but in truth you are the close-minded one and are not open to the possibility these people are frauds.

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The fact that you could possibly make this conclusion from my post tells me everything I need to know about your state of mind.

The entire purpose of my post was to determine whether your mind is open or closed, not to accuse you of anything (other than off-putting hubris). And I think we have our answer.

Why would anybody want to debate you when you admit that it is impossible to conceive of any possibility that you are wrong? That's not a debate, that's just you preaching the gospel according to Felix. Good luck to you.

[Felix_Nietzsche]

LOL
I accuse you of what you accuse me of and you walked off in a huff. I suppose you can dish it out but you can't take it.

Once again you focus on me rather than my arguments.
But this is the only tactic available to you because you are ignorant of the facts... Feel free to attack the illogic of my arguments....which we BOTH know you can not...

PS
I am open minded to logic and well thought out counter-arguments on this issues. Something that you have not even attempted to try.

[mrick]

freemandyson

All the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. thats downplaying the risk factor involved. world climate MIGHT be more important than everything else.

There is no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global. I am not saying that the warming does not cause problems. Obviously it does. yep

I am saying that the problems are grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are more urgent and more important ....... not to mention easy problems such as the timely construction of adequate dikes around the city of New Orleans. no sorry saving new orleans is NOT more important than understanding world climate change!!!

the problem of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is a problem of land management, not a problem of meteorology. No computer model of atmosphere and ocean can hope to predict the way we shall manage our land. well sure. i dont think meteorology is offered as kinda solution!!!! certainly land management eg AMAZON RAINFOREST DESERTIFICATION OVERCROPPING etc etc etc are urgent problems directly/possibly related to climate change as freeman also says....

For humanists, the highest value is harmonious coexistence between humans and nature. The greatest evils are poverty, underdevelopment, unemployment, disease and hunger, all the conditions that deprive people of opportunities and limit their freedoms. The humanist ethic accepts an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as a small price to pay, if world-wide industrial development can alleviate the miseries of the poorer half of humanity. The humanist ethic accepts our responsibility to guide the evolution of the planet. but WHY should INDUSTRIAL DEVELOIPMENT be the only way FORWARD???

this is a trap we set to ourselves and we are aided to it by WELL MEANING HUMANISTS such as freeman dyson and INSTITUTIONS SUCH AS THE WORLD BANK which blindly promote a specific model of progress..... WHAT ABOUT LESS PROFITS AND GOING EASY ON THE PLANET????? why that means necessarily poverty and hunger????

The humanist ethic looks forward to a time not far distant, when genetically engineered food-crops and energy-crops will bring wealth to poor people in tropical countries is GENETIC ENGINEERING is our only savior then sorry but surely we took a wrong turn somewhere!!!! you mean freeman that human evolution leads inexorably to GENETIC ENGINEERING???? wtd what about the POSSIBILITY that we are simply TOO MANY for this planet......????

[Felix_Nietzsche]

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The tone of this post is alot more reasonable than the tone of your earlier posts which implied that recent downward trends of solar output practically disproves solar input to recent warming. Somewhat dismayed that you readily accept lagging and stochastic reasons why temperature hasn't been monotonically increasing with C02 but solar reasons seems like it has a higher barrier to reach you. Is it because of the consensus of scientists? Do you not believe that the IPCC process can be susceptible to selection bias of literature to underplay opposing veiwpoints by careful selection of lead authors?

As for the recent divergence between solar output and global temperature, can it not be explained by thinking the temperature as a integrator function of solar output? Somewhat like having a pot of cold water on a stove and you turn the dial to high and two minutes later you slowly turn the stove to medium, but temperature of the water continues to go up but diverges from the trend of the dial.

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Well put....

[Phil153]

Actually it's rather poorly put. The stove analogy in particular is stupid. A more accurate analogy is removing the pot completely from the stove, and then expecting it to keep heating up.

It's not like the sun's intensity gradually wanes over time - the incoming radiation travels very fast and when it's less, there's no "residue" around left to transfer heat. It just doesn't work like that. If it does kick the climate up significantly over the long term, we have found no evidence of it.

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Do you not believe that the IPCC process can be susceptible to selection bias of literature to underplay opposing veiwpoints by careful selection of lead authors?

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All the studies done indicate a minority effect from the sun, and the mechanism is quite well understood. I'm not sure how many of the deniers truly understand the scientific community, but the are ZERO studies published in any journals that throw doubt on this interpretation. Those who claim a "cult" of global warming believers, and a conspiracy, have yet to explain why people like Richard Lindzen can happily get his face plastered over the media, embarassing his institution, while suffering no reprisal. Yet neither he nor any of the other detractors have published any scientific findings which cast doubt on the current interpretation of sun caused warming, let alone disprove it. The one paper he published years ago, on the Iris Effect (mentioned by submariner) has been shown to be false, and even he has since said it was wrong.

Think about that for a second. There are two sides going on here - on is in the media, and one is real science. In real science, no one has challenged the MCGW interpretation, even though there would be less consequence than plastering your face all over the media and potentially embarassing your university and colleagues (which apparently has no consequence at all. MASSIVE conspiracy, no?).

Anyway there's a lot of posts to answer and I will get to it over the next couple of days.

[Felix_Nietzsche]

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All the studies done indicate a minority effect from the sun, and the mechanism is quite well understood.

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Nonsense...complete and utter nonsense.
There is not enough data regarding the sun's energy output to make a conclusion...YET.....you claim this 'mechanism' is quite undertstood. You understand nothing. We need at least a 1000 years of data (which we do NOT have) and this may not be enough. You do not have the evidence to support these statements yet you keep uttering them. This speaks volumes about you.....

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In real science, no one has challenged the MCGW interpretation,

[/ QUOTE ]
Completely false...
Tim Ball, Roy Spencer, and others.... The tide is turning against the cultists. The next few years will be fun to watch as more people turn against this nonsense.....

[Exsubmariner]

Phil,
What's the highest concentration of CO2 in the atmoshpere in the geologic history of the planet? What was the temperature like at that time and how do we know this?

I would really be impressed here if you could respond to my post about ice cores only providing part of the picture about concentrations of CO2 in a rational manner instead of just ignoring my point that you are basing alot on looking at partial evidence.

[Policia]

Double technical on Wacki (ad hominem attacks) and Felix_Nietsche (dodging questions).

[qwnu]

I'm going to try this one more time, since you are just not getting my point.

A couple of things first:
1. I haven't made any judgments or assertions about your arguments.
2. I haven't made any statements about climate science, nor have I disputed any of yours.

[ QUOTE ]
LOL
I accuse you of what you accuse me of and you walked off in a huff. I suppose you can dish it out but you can't take it.

[/ QUOTE ]
Again, I didn't actually accuse you of anything. My post in essence said, "You seem closed minded about this. Are you?" And I think the basis for my question was both obvious and reasonable, as I explained.

In response, you jumped to several conclusions. Among them that I'm "a blind follower" and "believe anything a person with a PhD says". Further that I'm the one who is in fact closed-minded. There was simply no basis for these conclusions about me, and they are all, in fact, false. You seemed to find it necessary to immediately lump me in with all your enemies and opponents and begin attacking.

[ QUOTE ]
Once again you focus on me rather than my arguments.
But this is the only tactic available to you because you are ignorant of the facts... Feel free to attack the illogic of my arguments....which we BOTH know you can not...

[/ QUOTE ]
Yes, I'm deliberately focusing on you and your attitude and not your arguments. I don't have any interest in arguing the science with you. It's your hubris I find fascinating (and destructive).

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PS
I am open minded to logic and well thought out counter-arguments on this issues...

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Well, earlier, you said this:

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Well I know enough about the subject where I know with certainty they can NOT explain everything that I would ask them.

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and I just don't see how it's possible to reconcile those two statements. If all of your conclusions are so completely final and unshakable, then there is, almost by definition, no hope for any honest and reasonable debate. Is this not obvious?

Edit: Maybe this is all too "meta" for this wonderful thread about the science of GW. Perhaps I'll start a new topic on the tactics of GW skeptics. Maybe I'm wrong, but you guys seem to be copying right out of the Creationist playbook.

[Exsubmariner]

Phil writes:

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have yet to explain why people like Richard Lindzen can happily get his face plastered over the media, embarassing his institution, while suffering no reprisal. Yet neither he nor any of the other detractors have published any scientific findings which cast doubt on the current interpretation of sun caused warming, let alone disprove it. The one paper he published years ago, on the Iris Effect (mentioned by submariner) has been shown to be false, and even he has since said it was wrong.


[/ QUOTE ]

The linked article by Lindzen was published in 2006.

Lindzen Writes....

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When I, with some colleagues at NASA, attempted to determine how clouds behave under varying temperatures, we discovered what we called an "Iris Effect," wherein upper-level cirrus clouds contracted with increased temperature, providing a very strong negative climate feedback sufficient to greatly reduce the response to increasing CO2. Normally, criticism of papers appears in the form of letters to the journal to which the original authors can respond immediately. However, in this case (and others) a flurry of hastily prepared papers appeared, claiming errors in our study, with our responses delayed months and longer. The delay permitted our paper to be commonly referred to as "discredited." Indeed, there is a strange reluctance to actually find out how climate really behaves. In 2003, when the draft of the U.S. National Climate Plan urged a high priority for improving our knowledge of climate sensitivity, the National Research Council instead urged support to look at the impacts of the warming--not whether it would actually happen.


[/ QUOTE ]

Doesn't sound like he is saying his study is wrong here to me.

You have misrepresented this in a disingenous way, Phil.

A quick google also turned up this blog. A little research would have done you good before saying that Lindzen has recanted his blashpemy.

Second Edit:

This is a link to a presentation on a Harvard physics server of a lecture given by Lindzen in January 2007.

Pretty heavy arguement coming from someone who, according to you, has admitted he's wrong.