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 … - Freeman Dyson
" "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. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. 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.
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About Freeman Dyson
Freeman John Dyson (15 December 1923 – 28 February 2020) was an English-born American physicist, mathematician, and futurist, famous for his work in quantum mechanics, nuclear weapons design and policy, and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. He was the winner of the Templeton Prize in the year 2000.
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Freeman John Dyson
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Freeman J. Dyson
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Additional quotes by Freeman Dyson
In contrast to Kuhn, Galison in his classic work Image and Logic, published in 1997, describes the history of particle physics as a history of tools rather than ideas. According to Image and Logic, the progress of science is tool-driven. The tools of particle physics are of two kinds, optical and electronic. The optical tools are devices such as cloud chambers, bubble chambers, and photographic emulsions, which display particle interactions visually by means of images. The images record the tracks of particles. An experienced experimenter can see at once from the image when a particle is doing something unexpected. Optical tools are more likely to lead to discoveries that are qualitatively new.
On the other hand, electronic tools are better for answering quantitative questions. Electronic detectors such as the Geiger counters that measure radioactivity in the cellars of old houses are based on logic. They are programmed to ask simple questions each time they detect a particle, and to record whether the answers to the questions are yes or no. They can detect particle collisions as at rates of millions per second, sort them into yes's and no's, and count the number that answered yes and the number that answered no. The history of particle physics may be divided into two periods, the earlier period ending about 1980 when optical detectors and images were dominant, and the later period when electronic detectors and logic were dominant. Before the transition, science advanced by making qualitative discoveries of new particles and new relationships between particles. After the transition, with the zoo of known particles more or less complete, the science advanced by measuring their interactions with greater and greater precision. In both periods, before and after the transition, tools were the driving force of progress.
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