

Freeman Dyson: The Question of Global Warming - gruseom
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494

======
hugh
Somewhere in between the raving Al Gores of the world and the equally raving
"No, global warming is totally impossible!" folks is a sparsely-populated
region of sensible opinion. It seems like Freeman Dyson is somewhere in this
region, but very few others are -- at least, very few voices who can actually
get heard in the media.

The basic problem is this: it's pretty clear that if we add extra CO2 to the
atmosphere, the planet will get warmer. And it's also clear that if the planet
gets warmer, then there will be bad effects. Thus we really should be able to
come up with some sort of dollars-per-ton value (let's call it K) for exactly
how much harm is caused by CO2 emissions and work from there, perhaps applying
some sort of tax to properly take into account the externalities of CO2
emissions.

The problem is that sensible estimates for the value of K vary by many orders
of magnitude, and values which are _not_ sensible but are nonetheless widely
implicitly accepted vary by an additional bunch of orders of magnitude on
either end. First, we have the uncertainty of exactly how much CO2 causes
exactly how much warming. Secondly, we have the uncertainty of how much
warming causes how much harm -- again, several orders of magnitude in the
sensible estimates.

And that's without getting into the additional problems of expressing total
worldwide harm in dollars (if we make Siberia into great farmland but drown
Tonga is that a net loss or a net gain?) which I'm not gonna even talk about.

Now, if we could all accept that there's a genuine question to be answered
about how big K is, and that there are still enormous error bars involved in
determining this quantity, then we might be able to get down to having the
sensible and important discussion which we as a species really need to be
having at this point in history.

Unfortunately, the majority of the voices we hear nowadays are coming from the
extremes -- either the Al Gores and Ted Turners of the world who want us to
believe that K is huge, or the folks who want us to believe that K is zero.
(Actually I'm not sure that the K = 0 folks really exist in large numbers, but
they're a convenient strawman for those who believe K is huge.)

I don't know what the solution is, but as usual it would help if the media
would hire a few more people who actually had some clue about the way science
works.

------
1gor
Oh, now it is clear why any other interpretation of the global warming is met
with name calling and personal attacks (mostly trying to engineer some link
between the opponent and the oil industry). It's because we are dealing with a
religion. Beliefs are not to be questioned by definition. That's OK, but only
up as long as the believers do not try to shut the scientists up. Which sadly
is commonplace nowadays.

Thankfully, it seems a topic like this can at least be _discussed_ on HN. I've
seen some scientists' discenting views published in mainstream British
press... The resulting outcry was not pretty.

~~~
gruseom
It's the same in Canada. I heard a phone-in show on CBC radio where a
climatologist with unorthodox views was subjected to hysterical, nasty
personal attacks like nothing I'd observed before. (Among which, you're right,
he was accused of taking bribes from the oil industry.) Meanwhile his
arguments were never addressed. Which, of course, doesn't mean his arguments
were correct. It does say something about what Dyson calls secular religion,
though.

Edit: I just remembered something funny that's related. I went with my son's
class on a field trip to the planetarium once. Instead of the nice star show
everyone was expecting, the kids were shown a film about global warming. That
wasn't so bad, except that it was the worst kind of propaganda: millions of
people are going to die in flooding and other natural disasters, millions more
will die of malaria, all kinds of cute animals are going to die, etc, etc...
_unless you kids grow up to do something about it_. How low do you have to
stoop to propagandize grade-school children by scaring the crap out of them?!
Anyway, the film ended with some advice about turning off dripping faucets (I
swear)! The lights were turned on and we all looked at each other in stunned
silence. Then one hilarious child said, quite loudly, "Do as we say, or
hurricanes will destroy your house!" The entire audience cracked up. We
laughed it out of our system and moved on happily to the next event. I swear
that kid has a future in show business...

~~~
1gor
I think it's a kind of natural selection for kids. Surviving the peer pressure
(and authority pressure). That should be OK education for some of them, not
for the majority though.

Funny, I was exposed to similar bullshit growing up in the communist USSR. All
propaganda forced on people was always justified by the most of humane
reasons. Do you want to support the oppressed of the world? The starving? The
exploited? Of course we were!

It was only later in life you start to notice some fat smirking person sitting
in the shadows and enjoying the fruits of that mass enthusiasm... and mass
scarifie. Some of the kids I new have noticed the falsehood early on, but
decided to play along. Most were clueless and later shocked when the whole
communist system collapsed around them. And a rare few had chosen to simply
stand for the truth and face the consequences.

------
rickardg
I thought it ironical that Freeman Dyson has been very sceptical to computer
models of the atmosphere:

"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 do empirical research]" --
<http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html>

but in this article seems to think that the economists have their models down
cold, at least when they support his viewpoint.

~~~
gruseom
The same thought occurred to me, with reference to exactly the same earlier
piece. Economic computer models surely suffer from most of the problems that
the climate models do. I kept expecting him to repeat the same critique and
was a little surprised when he didn't. I'm willing to cut him a little more
slack than you are, though; it's true that he might just be changing his tune
to suit a predefined viewpoint, but I can think of other interpretations as
well. Hopefully he'll write more about it and we can see.

------
stcredzero
Freeman Dyson's brilliant, as usual. His analysis of what the wiggle in the
Keeling graph means has profound implications for global warming policy.

~~~
1gor
I was thinking how you define brilliance. The problem with arguing such a
complex topic is that in order to make a point you need to understand and take
into your system the whole long chain of assumptions and conclusions that your
opponent has made. Was your model right? Let me explain my model... Which is
normally more than an average person is prepared for.

Hence, the power of the soundbite.

Freeman Dyson (and others quoted earlier on HN) however wins over the
complexity not through unsubstantiated soundbite, but by arguing a simple
logical point. CO2 is not a 'pollution' in itself. It's not an alien element
on Earth. Plants put all of the carbon through their system 'every 12 years'
on average. Plants are not alien. Forest fires and volcanic eruptions can
produce carbon, and there is a ready system to 'digest' it. Plants.

That's something of a radical shift in the thinking. All that smoke from
burning coal is not pollution???? Hm, taking the thesis to the extreme --
actually no. It's just taking one natural element from the soil and placing it
in the atmosphere. Nature does exactly the same thing all the time (forest
fires, eruptions etc.).

Obviously, even if we assume that increase of CO2 in the atmosphere is not a
disaster, it may still be unpleasant because the change would affect the
current status quo. Siberia will become fertile and Arkansas will turn into
desert. This change should be prevented or at least managed. But not by the
government austerity measures, but by gradual and natural means.

These simple ideas are powerful. They don't require complex arguing over whose
weather model is better. Hopefully they will spread.

~~~
Tichy
I don't get the "natural" part of the argument. If I carve a spear out of wood
and put it through your heart, it will still kill you, even though it is all
natural. Clearly it is what you do with it that matters...

I think earth has been terraformed by organisms several times, like there used
to be not so much oxygen floating around? But I think the organisms that
released the oxygen died after the terraforming. The same could happen to
us... Not saying it will, just warning against some sort of Gaia theory that
nature will fix everything to our benefit. Nature doesn't really care about
us.

~~~
stcredzero
His point is that the CO2 is not pollution in the same way that plastic in the
Pacific gyre or PCBs in Love Canal are pollution. The excess CO2 is like the
water from a flood caused by humans.

When you want to prevent floods, you need to find technologies and techniques
that work with the laws of physics, natural systems, and economic forces. If
you're going to build below sea level, what is the engineering required to
compensate? Does the cost/benefit pan out? Likewise, if you're going to push
the climate towards warming, what is the engineering required to compensate?
Does the cost/benefit pan out? This is what Freeman Dyson and the authors he
is reviewing are asking.

Nature doesn't care about us. But we humans have harnessed nature. Dyson is
suggesting that we could do that once again to get us out of the current
predicament.

~~~
Tichy
I understand the economics viewpoint, I just don't see how being natural makes
a difference for CO2 compared to, say, plastic. Sooner or later there will
probably be organisms that can "digest" plastics, too.

~~~
stcredzero
Soon, there may well be bacteria that produce it. That would blur the lines a
whole lot.

The difference is in the fact that there's been a Carbon Cycle for ages, just
like there's been a water cycle for ages. Hydroelectric dams use energy in the
water cycle. Gravity driven irrigation canals do as well. The point is that
there's already a natural system out there that's capable of capturing huge
amounts of carbon.

~~~
Tichy
Sure, but ultimately it just boils down to "some miraculous future technology
will fix it", biotech or whatever.

I think I read recently that the plants that were turned into oil actually are
from a time when there was no process in nature yet that could process the
bound carbon (similar to plastics today). So it was never part of the natural
cycle.

I thought more about the proposed "super-carbon-harbouring trees", but really,
how should that work? Any plant that does that would have to be more efficient
than existing plants, meaning it would replace the natural plants. Dangerous
game to play? (Those genetically engineered plants would definitely replace
existing plants, if only because humans would plant massive amounts of them).

~~~
stcredzero
How are "super-carbon-harbouring-trees" any more dangerous than "super-flesh-
growing-bovines"?

Remember that transportation is less than 1/5th of the US's use of petroleum.
Since petroleum will be getting more and more scarce, something has to become
the new chemical feedstock. Plants are an obvious choice.

~~~
Tichy
I think it takes a lot of energy to raise "super-flesh-growing-bovines", the
trees would have to work in a different way. Not sure what you mean by
chemical feedstock.

Also, bovines are not popular in the CO2 scare-opinions.

Not saying that the trees couldn't work, but so far they don't exist, so they
are nothing but a miraculous cure. Thinking about it, their mentioning makes
that article lose a lot of authority in my opinion.

~~~
stcredzero
North America was overgrown with "super-flesh-growing-bovines" until white men
up and shot them all.

Miracle game-changing technologies have been endemic in the history of human
civilization. In fact, our current level of population wouldn't even be
possible without a bunch of these happening. (From the "Green Revolution" of
the 60's back to the development of the plough.)

~~~
Tichy
Sure, but to dismiss all problems with a reference to a future miracle
technology??

------
Prrometheus
There are some good startup ideas in here. Carbon-eating trees would be fun to
make.

~~~
jcl
I think carbon-eating trees are only part of the solution. We already _have_
carbon-eating trees; all that coal and oil didn't just come from dinosaurs.
The problem is that the output of trees is so useful, we don't have to
willpower to cut them down (or even just rake up all the leaves each fall),
store them in a cave somewhere, and forget about them.

We really need the carbon in a form that doesn't decompose and is more useful
than wood. Diamond would be great...

~~~
rickardg
We also already have genetically engineered carbon eating plants. Most of our
agricultural crops have been genetically engineered (using selective breeding
or molecular biology) to be much better at getting CO2 out of the atmosphere
to produce carbohydrates than their wild counterparts. Unfortunately it seems
that taking CO2 out of the atmosphere is like taking pee out of a swimming-
pool: it's possible, but takes a lot of energy. Most crops compensate the
increased energy cost for carbon uptake by reducing their defences against
pests and droughts, which means they need to be subsidised with pesticides and
irrigation (today produced mainly using fossil fuels).

It would be great if we could design trees that catch more CO2 than they need
but, being an evolutionist, I'm not holding my breath. I imagine that even a
small energetical efficiency increase would be a big evolutionary advantage
and that plants are pretty close to their theoretical efficiency limit.

Of course IANAPNAPP (I Am Not A Physicist, Nor A Plant Physiologist), if you
are please enlighten me.

------
TrevorJ
Great read. The things is, all the planets are heating up.

[http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warmi...](http://www.livescience.com/environment/070312_solarsys_warming.html)

It would be a wonderful and improbable coincidence if the net gain in heat
from the sun gained by the earth where absolutely perfectly offset by the net
loss in heat.

------
Diogenes
Brilliant piece. Thank you for posting the link.

Likewise: Aliens cause global warming. [http://www.crichton-
official.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwar...](http://www.crichton-
official.com/speech-alienscauseglobalwarming.html)

------
Tichy
It sounded good at first, but "Environmentalism as a Religion"?? Personally, I
care about the environment because I LIKE nature, not because I feel it is
some god-given mission to be steward of the earth.

Also, nature is a common good, so if I care about someone else destroying it,
it might be less about wanting to spoil his fun, and more about me not wanting
him to effectively steal something from me.

------
patrickg-zill
Dyson admits: there is no accurate way to measure CO2 previous to 1958, when
Keeling starts. Further, CO2 varies in important ways depending on location.

------
newt0311
See <http://www.uoguelph.ca/%7Ermckitri/research/ispm.html> for a well
reasoned dissent with global warming.

