
Freeman Dyson on climate change, interstellar travel, fusion - blue1
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/10/11/freeman_dyson_interview/
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vixen99
Question to Dyson: "Are climate models getting better? You wrote how they have
the most awful fudges, and they only really impress people who don't know
about them."

"I would say the opposite. What has happened in the past 10 years is that the
discrepancies between what's observed and what's predicted have become much
stronger. It's clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn't so clear 10 years
ago. I can't say if they'll always be wrong, but the observations are
improving and so the models are becoming more verifiable."

"It's now difficult for scientists to have frank and honest input into public
debates. Prof Brian Cox, who is the public face of physics in the UK thanks to
the BBC, has said he has no obligation to listen to "deniers," or to any other
views other than the orthodoxy. That's a problem, but still I find that I have
things to say and people do listen to me, and people have no particular
complaints."

Further illustration: [http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/14/top-french-
weathe...](http://www.bishop-hill.net/blog/2015/10/14/top-french-weatherman-
suspended-for-forbidden-views.html).

"France's top weatherman, Philippe Verdier has been suspended from work for
publishing a book about climate change which suggests that the IPCC might be
just a tad unreliable and more than a little politicised."

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TeMPOraL
Basically, we're fucked. When a problem becomes big enough that it becomes
issue of general public, you can't get anything done about it in democracies.
It becomes just another tool for political games. With some issues becoming
politicized I can live. Women rights are one, with the new wave of feminism
you can't really talk about it anymore without risking getting your head cut
off in a media shitstorm, but that topic is generally of little consequence.
We will eventually figure it out, even if it takes more time than needed, and
everyone will be happy.

Climate change is different. We're talking about real danger to the future of
human civilization, an issue that will play out in following decades -
probably well within lifetimes of most of us here. And many politicians (and
businesses) are - I'm sorry for venting out - such big, greedy fucking
assholes, that they want to play games with it instead of fucking solving it.
They will doom us to misery and death to win a fucking election or make next
Q3 sheet look good. Disgusting.

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meeper16
Extending human lifespan is the solution. Think about this.

~~~
adrianN
If the number of people who save enough money for retirement is any
indication, people don't even care about their future selves.

~~~
meeper16
Exactly. If people lived for 10,000 years, thier entire outlook on climate
change would change. Another reason companies like Google, Craig Venter and
Genentech are working on extending human lifespan via researchers like Cynthia
Kenyon and CalicoLabs.

~~~
adrianN
No, exactly not. Right now people don't care about their financial situation
forty years in the future. They also fuck up their future health with alcohol,
tobacco and unhealthy food. What makes you think that they will care what
happens with the ecosystem in a hundred years if they don't care whether they
get cancer in thirty?

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chopin
You can predict what happens to your savings forty years in the future?

Take eg. a person who had savings from twenty years in 1914's Germany. It
would have all gone 10 years later. Likewise when you had savings in stocks in
1929. It took almost 30 years to recover.

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adrianN
You can predict it about as well as you can predict the climate I would say.

