The New York Times has a well written profile by Nicholas Dawidoff about Freeman Dyson, a brilliant scientist who has been branded a “heretic” because he disagrees with the prevailing “wisdom” about global warming.
I don’t follow the topic of global warming that much – but I am amused by the hysterics of those who predict the end of the world as we know it, based on very little data.
It seems that there are others, much more qualified than I (at least from a scientific standpoint) that are also somewhat bemused by the “new religion”, and have no problem questioning it.
“When Dyson joins the public conversation about climate change by expressing concern about the “enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories,” these reservations come from a place of experience.”
…writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an “obsession” — the primary article of faith for “a worldwide secular religion” known as environmentalism. Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, whom Dyson calls climate change’s “chief propagandist,” and James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Gore’s film, “An Inconvenient Truth.” Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s “lousy science” for “distracting public attention” from “more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet.”
This is a worthwhile read, especially for those who admire people who call the shots as they see them – even if it is against the prevailing wisdom.
West Bank Mama 
Mar 30, 2009 @ 08:38:48
This is nothing new.
Global warming is indeed a religion and any proof that contradicts it is greeted as “heretical”. It’s like “Peace Now” in the Western world.
This just further proves that everybody needs religion, even if it is a secular one.
Apr 07, 2009 @ 15:07:36
I disagree with your feelings on global warming, but to me, the far more upsetting thing about Dyson’s work either way is his overweaning interest in genetic engineering.
He has said that he hopes the future will bring customizable animals available to consumers — so that instead of giving your child a “build-a-bear” kit to create a teddy bear, our grandchildren will have such kits MADE FROM ACTUAL BEARS.
I’m not kidding. The man has no respect for nature — he sees it as a game, and hopes science will evolve to become more and more consumer-driven and less and less inhibited by natural laws.
Personally, I pray that as science continues to develop, we will grow to revere nature’s wisdom and replicate its mechanisms in ways that honor what we’ve been given — not manipulate it for the purpose of instant gratification.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that that same spirit of instant gratification without understanding or respecting nature — and the resulting over-industrialization of human society — are exactly what caused global warming and other such problems in the first place.