
Freeman Dyson takes on the climate establishment (2009) - jashkenas
https://e360.yale.edu/features/freeman_dyson_takes_on_the_climate_establishment
======
bobbyd2323
All models are wrong. Some are useful approximations for understanding and
others for forecasting. In Econ for example, DSGE models are useful for asking
counterfactuals but not great for forecasting. Lots of models are particularly
susceptible to assumptions that can be tuned in an Upton Sinclair like way.
Climate modeling appears to be one of these areas where the black box can be
filled with all sorts of debatable assumptions, yet questioning what’s in the
black box carries great reputational risk.

~~~
nabla9
Climate modeling is one of those areas where debatable assumptions are
relatively small.

Existing climate models are really good. They are used with little
modification to correctly model climate of Mars, Venus, tidal locked exoplanet
and previous historical eras on Earth. You just set the parameters and they
pretty much produce the climate that exists on those planets or time periods.
Yet constant shade thrown at them.

~~~
audessuscest
> They are used with little modification to correctly model climate of Mars,
> Venus, tidal locked exoplanet and previous historical eras on Earth. You
> just set the parameters and they pretty much produce the climate that exists
> o

why are they wrong all the time then ?

~~~
DagAgren
They are not. They are very accurately tracking the current changes in
climate.

~~~
briantakita
However they are not able to accurately forecast solar activity & climate into
the future, making them need to frequently readjust their models to fit the
data of the past & present. i.e. Curve Fitting.

~~~
DagAgren
Their entire job is to forecast climate into the future, and they do that
well. Solar activity is an input, and is obviously not predicted. Your comment
is gibberish.

~~~
briantakita
> Solar activity is an input, and is obviously not predicted. Your comment is
> gibberish.

If you can't predict certain known inputs, and theres unknown unknowns, how
can your model have predictive accuracy? If you believe that the model is
accurate, what makes the model falsifiable? One of the indicators of a
pseudoscience is nonfalsifiability.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudoscience)

~~~
sonofgod
A model that can't predict inputs can provide a mapping from any given inputs
to a predicted value. We can then, after the fact, demonstrate whether the
actual value is equal to the predicted value (i.e. within expected error
bars). Repeated failure to predict at the expected probability of your error
bars would falsify the model. (i.e. commit to what your model is, then run it
with now known inputs after the fact)

It's possible some of these inputs may be of the form "the Gulf Stream
continues to operate within historically observed parameters", i.e. we make no
attempt to claim accuracy for the model outside of its studied conditions.
That's fine: there are a large number of accurate models which are known to
have breakdown conditions.

It is literally impossible for any model to be robust to unknown unknowns. All
we can do is endeavour to drag them into the light and become known unknowns,
then attempt to quantify them as known knowns. Sadly, our ability to
experiment repeatedly in the same conditions with the environment is deeply
limited, in a way much akin to astronomy.

~~~
briantakita
> Repeated failure to predict at the expected probability of your error bars
> would falsify the model. (i.e. commit to what your model is, then run it
> with now known inputs after the fact)

That doesn't help if you are not gathering the correct proxy data to represent
the actual physical system. For example, CMIP6 includes particle forcing while
CMIP5 & before did not. The global & solar electric circuits are not
considered. Are xrays, which have a large variance with solar cycles, included
in CMIP6? I don't think the Birkeland Current is considered.

What also doesn't help is adjusting historical measurements such as
temperature. It's like changing the rules mid-game, which indicates that past
observations are mutable to fit the models. Also note the incomplete data, as
modern satellite observations span a tiny window compared to Earth's lifespan.
The solar system travels through different parts of the Galaxy, crossing the
Galactic Current Sheet at times, passing through ionized dust, among other
phenomena.

> Sadly, our ability to experiment repeatedly in the same conditions with the
> environment is deeply limited, in a way much akin to astronomy.

We can experiment with ions, plasma, & high voltages applied to plasma. Note
the Birkeland Current between Sun & the Earth, ions being ejected from the
Sun, XRay emission varying wildly with solar activity, cosmic rays, etc.
There's also a Birkeland current sheet in the solar system & a galactic
current sheet.

One of the major issues is that the standard model does not consider plasma &
electricity, in light of recent observations of the prevalence of Plasma in
space, effectively blinding large parts of the astronomical theory to it's
impact. This led to a legacy of ad hoc, non-observable (thus non-falsifiable)
inventions such as "dark matter", "dark energy", "black holes", "neutron
stars", "the big bang", "space/time", "magnetic line snapping", "parallel
universes", "11 dimension space" & whatever other mathematical patches are
used to fit the observations. Note inconsistencies with the assertion that
redshift equals distance with observations such as examples of a Quasar with a
high redshift being connected to a Galaxy with a low redshift.

Point is climate science is built on a tower of assumptions built on
assumptions where some of the foundational pieces are called into question. Ad
hoc tweaking of observational data & ad hoc tweaking of models to fit the
transformed observed measurements makes it easy to doubt the accuracy,
predictive ability, & knowledge of applicable boundary conditions of the
model. It sounds like a tough job to get it right.

------
kevinavery
> e360: Are there people who are knowledgeable about this topic who could do
> the job of pointing out what you see as the flaws?

> Dyson: I am sure there are. But I don’t know who they are.

> I have a lot of friends who think the same way I do. But I am sorry to say
> that most of them are old, and most of them are not experts. My views are
> very widely shared.

One plausible explanation is that as people become knowledgeable, they no
longer share his view.

~~~
w3mmpp
Another plausible explanation is those who share his view won't admit it
publicly to not destroy their career.

~~~
titzer
It's not helpful when scientists share their views outside their specialty and
get things wrong. As much as I appreciate and respect Freeman Dyson, I wish he
would have kept his views to himself on this particular issue, as he was
remarkably ill-informed and stubbornly so. But that said, there's a difference
between sharing your view and going on a crusade, which he didn't really seem
to do. Now, if he had gone on a crusade, that'd be a different matter.

~~~
poilcn
If you have a group of people with Sacred Knowledge™ who are the only capable
of judging on things and you have to literally believe them (and dare you
not!) as their proofs lie in the realm of sketchy models in which they ignore
billions of variable, it's not science, it's at least scientism. But there is
more. They have a whole set of signs of a pseudo-religion. Their own Original
Sin, apocalypse, Messiah.

Judging by the consequences for those public figures who made a mistake of
doubting these believes, it's a whole totalitarian sect.

~~~
titzer
Except these people (Scientists(tm)) have to _show their work_ and anyone can
follow along and participate, provided they aren't so afraid of their own
ignorance and terrified of feeling stupid that they strike out with disbelief
and denial.

Sure, scientists make mistakes. Their models need adjustment. They ignore
variables because they don't have the computational power to model every
electron in the universe. Yeah, imprecise models make imprecise predictions.
No one has accuracy of 100%. Sometimes it's 90%, sometimes it's 50%. Sometimes
it's 99.9%. It's rarely, rarely ever 0%. People just don't publish scientific
results that are 100% wrong with no checking whatsoever.

But that's not the level of conversation we are having. We usually aren't
talking about adjusting and tinkering or adding sub-models for systems that
aren't fully understood yet. We aren't asking what we missed, we aren't
examining the assumptions from the outset, trying to get to something that
works. We aren't talking details of climate models or pointing to something in
the inner guts of their computer simulations that we can fix up, remove,
replace, etc. All of that is really complicated and hard! And we aren't doing
that specifically because you frame that stuff as "Sacred Knowledge" which you
reflexively and categorically reject--it's a shortcut thinking that doesn't
require you to understand math, code, or read a goddamn paper. It's a shortcut
that allows you to keep reasoning in a vacuum and go about your daily life
because you actually hate the idea of being an (xyz) scientist.

As such, we end up in a situation where you are forced to argue a position
that results from all-or-nothing thinking, and have to start accusing them of
being a religion, a totalitarian sect, usually because one of them got pissed
off at some really outrageously stupid disinformation spread deliberately by
politicians. But you are forced there because you either can't or don't want
to cede _any_ rhetorical ground of being fully and utterly more right than
"they" are, because you have no idea what will happen if you cede any ground
at all. So instead the othering intensifies. Reject everything they say! We
must throw them out! It's a religion! Look, one of them got pissed off one
day! They were wrong that one time! I don't trust a word they say!

And you only frame things this way because that's how _you_ think--in terms of
religion and power. Moreover, it's how you think _they_ think.

No. I absolutely and unequivocally reject the framing of your comment. It's
lazy and it's a lie.

There is no "Sacred Knowledge." Go dig. Scientists welcome it. But _don 't be
a denialist moron_. There are too many of those. Denialist morons reject even
the basics of what scientists do. Sometimes they couch it in more-scientific-
than-thou-art framing like yours, sometimes they don't. But they come out in
anger and denial. You know what? That pisses off anybody. To have your work
shat on, you better believe that pisses people off. We end up circling back
over and over and over again to the same basics and it's just exhausting,
because people aren't motivated by a desire for the truth, they are motivated
by their tribal instincts which underpin your framing, whether you recognize
it or not.

~~~
tanseydavid
"Denialist morons" \-- what justifies this sort of name-calling?

You do nothing to help your argument by resorting to this type of language.

~~~
titzer
> what justifies this sort of name-calling?

terse catharsis.

~~~
w3mmpp
> terse catharsis

Doesn't sound healthy, or wise.

------
briantakita
Here's an interview of Freeman Dyson in 2015 re: APW & faith in models of
complex nonlinear systems.

Also goes into solar activity (electric, magnetic, & ion ejections) as a
driver of climate change. Note that CMIP6 includes particle forcing to its
model. CMIP5 & earlier versions did not include particle forcing.

[https://youtu.be/BiKfWdXXfIs](https://youtu.be/BiKfWdXXfIs)

------
keiferski
This is a pretty decent article with a misleading headline. Dyson himself
doesn’t claim to be the representative of any counter-movement, he simply
raises some (admittedly interesting) questions. I don’t know enough about
climate science to verify his claims, but pointing out that more people die
from the cold than heatwaves (and thus warming will result in less deaths) was
something that I hadn’t considered. That’s assuming his data is correct, of
course.

~~~
wwweston
Also assumes that higher temps don't have secondary effects cascading into
more extreme weather or disrupted ecologies with attendant resource issues.

~~~
Gibbon1
We can solve all that be having the central banks print more money. That's
what we've been doing since the RTOI of oil and gas fell off a cliff in the
early 2000's. Working so far.

------
8bitsrule
Dyson (re Oak Ridge experiments): _So if you change the carbon dioxide
drastically by a factor of two, the whole behavior of the plant is different.
Anyway, that’s so typical of the things they ignore._

'Different'. 'Ignore'. Not Dyson's best day. Oak Ridge was hardly a climate
lab. Many studies have followed. This two year-old SA article, _Ask the
Experts: Does Rising CO2 Benefit Plants?_ [0]starts with this summary:
"Climate change’s negative effects on plants will likely outweigh any gains
from elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide levels"

[0] [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-
experts-d...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/ask-the-experts-does-
rising-co2-benefit-plants1/)

------
haunter
It was strange to see on reddit that his death was celebrated as another
climate change denier gone. I mean it never ouccured me people don't respect
him or anything. Maybe I'm just too naive.

~~~
vanniv
When your political power comes from the ability to regulate every aspect of
life due to a supposed existential threat that comes from all economic
activity, an educated, informed, and well-spoken critic of the supposed
existential threat is dangerous.

~~~
ximeng
This works both ways. There is a very strong incentive to create plausible
scientific models that show climate change is not a problem if that is in fact
the case. Even Dyson says he doesn't know any informed people who disagree
with the mainstream climate change theories. This interview shows that he
accepts the key premise that there is likely to be significant warming.

Realistically, the bigger problem is that massive changes to society are
required to mitigate the risks of climate change. However as Dyson says, some
people will likely benefit from climate change, or at least will be in a
position where their personal costs of doing something about it are much more
than what they stand to gain.

This is the political problem: overall richer people are the greatest
contributors to climate change, and they stand to lose the least from the bad
effects of climate change.

Trump and Scott Morrison come closer to admitting this than most, and
politically it seems to have worked in their favour.

~~~
vanniv
If anybody were to produce such a model, they would be utterly destroyed.

If anybody were to even attempt to apply for grants to do that work, they
would be expelled from the university community, and their professional
reputation immediately destroyed.

There is no incentive to even look to see if you can find a flaw in the
orthodoxy.

~~~
hhas01
Paranoid drivel. Why on Earth would these brave maverick scientists of yours
_choose_ to remain part of scientific and university communities that are so
corrupt? Surely if they’ve any principles they’d be first out the door!

It’s not like they need to fight for academic grant money when they can go tap
Big Oil any time they like. Also plenty of governments who’d like to hear
everything’s fine, nothing to see, business as usual.

Heck, even climate scientists, being purely pragmatic, would like to be wrong.
After all, they live on this rock too, so it’s not like they _want_ this for
their kids.

Nobody _wants_ climate change. Nobody _likes_ climate change. But the best
science says that’s what’s happening, so deal. Or ignore it; your choice. But
don’t _lie_ about it; because, honestly, you’re absolutely rubbish at it and
fooling no-one but yourself.

~~~
Udik
Nobody wants climate change, it's true. But do you really believe that the
scientists who have become public advocates for climate change mitigation,
that have contributed building the international climate research organism
that was awarded a Nobel prize, and whose research ends up regularly on the
front page of international newspapers and shapes the decisions of world
politicians in economic matters- do you really think these people are putting
all their daily effort in proving themselves wrong? They're human beings like
everyone else, they become invested in their own ideas. And the stronger the
message, the harder it is to be completely dispassionate about it.

This is not to say they're wrong. But I strongly doubt that many of them would
be looking for signs that climate change is not that bad after all.

------
mikelward
[2009]

~~~
dang
Added. Thanks!

------
Causality1
>Dyson believes we can just do some genetic engineering to create a new
species of super-tree that can suck up the excess.

You can just stop reading right there. Not only do we not have the ability to
do that, even if we had such a tree, we would destroy the biosphere by cutting
down all the world's trees to replace them with our magical carbon capture
trees.

~~~
montalbano
Your point about genetic engineering capability is true (source: spent two
years working in an advanced plant science lab).

The latter one I'm not sure about, it's complicated.

The downvoting of this comment seems a little strange to me.

Edit: Thanks for explaining, I get it now, I shouldn't have mentioned it
anyway, I was just interested in the scientific substance of parent comment
and wondered why others seemed not to be (I get it now, it wasn't the
scientific aspect of the comment which was against HN guidelines).

~~~
dang
I imagine it was downvoted because of "You can just stop reading right there",
which is an internet trope (-> repetitive -> bad for HN) and also needlessly
aggressive. The comment would be just fine without that bit—well, plus the
snarky "magical". Snark is deprecated on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html).

~~~
DenisM
Can you add sarcasm next to snark in the guidelines? I’ve never seen sarcasm
improve a conversation and it inflames passions unnecessarily. Thanks for
considering this, whatever you decide.

~~~
dang
How would you define the difference?

~~~
DenisM
It’s not to signify a difference, but to expand coverage. I wouldn’t want to
argue with someone saying “I was sarcastic, but not snarky”.

There are many comments ending with /s to signify sarcasm or even /sarcasm or
such. It’s easier to point out a transgression when the user has agreed in his
mind or his words that he was in fact being sarcastic.

~~~
dang
I think we'd just reply that they're close enough to count as the same thing
for HN purposes. "Don't be snarky" is nice and short.

~~~
DenisM
It’s not so much for you as it is for me. I often quote the rules, this would
make it easier for me.

~~~
dang
Ah I see. If it comes up, you can point to this subthread, or you can always
ping us at hn@ycombinator.com. Thanks for quoting the rules and helping to
preserve this place!

------
inkaudio
Climate change is a red herring, air pollution is a clear and present danger.
India and China have ignored this in the past and now they are making some
efforts to correct course because people are dying from it.

~~~
linuxftw
Air pollution is a big problem. The biggest problem IMO is water and soil
pollution. We're putting far worse chemicals into our food and water (and in
household products we absorb) than what we're putting into the air (in the
developed world, anyway).

------
cryptoz
> I have been to Greenland a year ago and saw it for myself. And that’s where
> the warming is most extreme. And it’s spectacular, no doubt about it. And
> glaciers are shrinking and so on.

> But, there are all sorts of things that are not said, which decreases my
> feeling of alarm. First of all, the people in Greenland love it. They tell
> you it’s made their lives a lot easier. They hope it continues. I am not
> saying none of these consequences are happening. I am just questioning
> whether they are harmful.

His arguments on the topic are bizarrely anecdotal and unscientific. He
suggests that the happiness of locals over the past few years of warming is
sufficient reason to doubt that it could get worse for Greenland in the
future? Making dramatic changes to human environments is not good, people
react poorly and things like resource wars can start / have started.

Super weird to see such anecdotal experiences extrapolated to "locals love it,
so what's the problem?" while dismissing decades of intensive scientific
research (not even including modals) that suggest a global chaotic event is
happening presently.

Also, this:

> There’s been a very strong warming, in fact, ever since the Little Ice Age,
> which was most intense in the 17th century. That certainly was not due to
> human activity.

What does this mean? I went to wikipedia
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age)
and it lists multiple possible / probable causes of the little ice age that
are directly human-related. He dismisses yet another field of scientific
research as "certainly not due to human activity" without any evidence to back
that up. He makes stuff up, dismisses decades of real science, and claims that
major problems aren't real simply because local people don't understand large-
scale chaotic events are are 'happy' with warming local climates for now.
Bizarre.

~~~
elorenz
I also went to that Wikipedia page. The “multiple possible / probable causes”
listed are:

“orbital cycles; decreased solar activity; increased volcanic activity;
altered ocean current flows; fluctuations in the human population in different
parts of the world causing reforestation, or deforestation; and the inherent
variability of global climate change”

Only one of those is human related. Bizarre.

