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Freeman Dyson Has Died

nytimes.com

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Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#221

Post by eesmith »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #219
eesmith wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They were put out in six months. This was never celebrated. Red Adair was already a celebrated oil well firefighter in the 1960s, when 'Hellfighters' was filmed. His fame continued to grow. I remember a number of pieces praising Red Adair Company and others involved in putting out the Kuwait oil well fires. Putting out an oil well fire with a jet engine made for eye-grabbing news. Obituaries about him include prais…

Do you have a citation for the desert bloom? It was something I saw in a print magazine a long time ago. I can't cite it. It's easy to pull out a single phrase, like "never celebrated," and nitpick it. In comparison to the handwringing in the news at the time about the imminent global catastrophe we were facing, the success of getting it out out and averting the level of global atmospheric catastrophe that was expect…

"It's easy to pull out a single phrase, like "never celebrated," and nitpick it."

Sure. And it's easy to exaggerate. Why not say "underappreciated"?

"People were stockpiling guns and give years of flour in their basements"

Sure. And yet no one I knew did that. If one points to extremes and ignore the average case, isn't that an exaggeration?

"Instead, we complain about overpopulation"

Perhaps because Norman Borlaug was right in saying "But the frightening power of human reproduction must also be curbed; otherwise the success of the green revolution will be ephemeral only."

"it's partly because we choose to focus on the negative"

Perhaps you are the one to see a desert flower bloom in the midst of great environmental damage. Does that mean the damage is not there and there's nothing to do?

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#222

Post by versteegen »

b0sk wrote: post #34
hirundo wrote: post #17

"When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations and the superficiality of our theories" "We have no reason to think that climate change is harmful if you look at the world as a whole. Most places, in fact, are better off being warmer than being colder. And historically, the really bad times for the environment and for…

the ridiculously hot summers in Australasia resulting in bushfires, famine and drought... seas taking over the cities are all demonstrable effects of climate change. Did he live in UK? Yea the winter was milder I guess.

Famine in Australasia?? No idea where you got that. I live in NZ.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#223

Post by titzer »

briantakita wrote: post #210
titzer wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wikipedia is not science. That Wikipedia article has 158 sources cited. You? Zero . > Repeating it won't make it so. http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/data/acorn-sat/#tabs=ACORN%E2%... I mean, you can go trawl through the data yourself. The graph is in the last expandable fold. The page describes the data collection practices, peer review, the entire god damn thing right there. But you know what? You don't care. Becaus…

Freeman Dyson did speak out against climate alarmism. He provides some insightful counterpoints to the prevailing APW narrative, particularly about taking models on faith & the provisional nature of science. Given he was directly involved with some of the initial climate models, it's an interesting take on how models of complex nonlinear systems often oversimplify reality with assumptions. It seems like good general…

Thanks for the link. I watched a bit of that.

Freeman Dyson's opinion is one of skepticism, not denial. Unfortunately I don't think he's deeped in the science or the messiness of climate modeling, so I think he's just not an expert here. Bright, even eminent scientists can be wrong, even in their areas of expertise. For example, Ernst Mach was famous for not believing atoms exist, even declaring it loudly after having heard a lecture by Boltzmann. Einstein firmly opposed the nondeterminism underlying quantum mechanics, refusing to believe that physics is not deterministic (this is the source of his famous "God does not play dice" quote.)

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#224

Post by vixen99 »

Daishiman wrote: post #207
CamperBob2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point has been debunked time and time again. ... by arguments that themselves are subject to debunking. You've used a thought-terminating phrase here. The fact is, we've been coming out of an ice age for the past several millennia, and life has generally gotten better as a result. The rate at which that process happens is very important, though. If Dyson did overlook any important counterpoints, that seems like a…

Yeah, he's overlooking the entire field of climate science and all the associated environmental sciences that predict to an amazing level of detail the impact of climate change in each and every imaginable location in the planet. We know exactly what the Arctic is going to look like and its impacts. We have known and are observing the melting of glaciers in the Alps, Andes and Himalayas to catastrophic effects in dow…

If you read the literature it's clear that model determinations of very high climate sensitivity (4°C, 5°C, 6°C and up) have increasingly been determined to be in error.

Moreover, “Contrary to popular accounts, very few scientists in the world – possibly none – have a sufficiently thorough, 'big picture' understanding of the climate system to be relied upon for a prediction of the magnitude of global warming. To the public, we all might seem like experts, but the vast majority of us work on only a small portion of the problem.” (Roy Spencer)

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#225

Post by john4534243 »

astrophysician wrote: post #5

About 4 years ago, I was a grad student in astrophysics at Princeton. Dyson worked at the Institute for Advanced Study which, while not officially part of the university was essentially an extension of the various departments (shared colloquiums, any researcher there was a valid thesis adviser, etc.). The grad students have a tradition (or used to) called “Thunch” (Thursday Lunch) where they invite someone to come ha…

What makes some people remain sharp at old age ? My observation is it can be attributed to practicing intellectually challenging jobs continually. For example Don Kunth, Marvin Minsky are and were sharp. Is this observation a surviour ship bias or is it mostly genetics ?

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#226

Post by Oletros »

djsumdog wrote: post #69
m0zg wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Excess carbon in the air is good for plants, and global warming might forestall another ice age. How is it not "rooted in science" that excess carbon is good for plants? We're already seeing significant global greening, and yields are up. Excess CO2 also reduces the amount of water the plants need.

He's gone, so this isn't really the place for this discussion at all. However, I'm glad this is mentioned and how it shows that there are a lot of intelligent people who have concerns with the current science debate. Consensus isn't science, it's politics, and challenging ones ideas is how we both reinforce the truth as well as dispel myths.

> Consensus isn't science, it's politics,

What?

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#228

Post by [deleted] »

Daishiman wrote: post #207
CamperBob2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His point has been debunked time and time again. ... by arguments that themselves are subject to debunking. You've used a thought-terminating phrase here. The fact is, we've been coming out of an ice age for the past several millennia, and life has generally gotten better as a result. The rate at which that process happens is very important, though. If Dyson did overlook any important counterpoints, that seems like a…

Yeah, he's overlooking the entire field of climate science and all the associated environmental sciences that predict to an amazing level of detail the impact of climate change in each and every imaginable location in the planet. We know exactly what the Arctic is going to look like and its impacts. We have known and are observing the melting of glaciers in the Alps, Andes and Himalayas to catastrophic effects in dow…

[deleted]

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#229

Post by imglorp »

bori5 wrote: post #113
gbronner wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've met him and his other daughter. They are/were wonderful people. There were a lot of "solutions" using nuclear weapons looking for a problem. There was a proposal to blow a new canal through nicaragua, to blast harbors into Alaska, etc. My roommate's father showed me his paper that anticipated fracking: drill a deep well in oil shale, through a small nuclear weapon in the bottom, blow it up and watch as the press…

In a similar vein there’s a story and YouTube video of Russians plugging an out of control burning oil well with a small nuke. Edit. It was a gas well here’s the link https://youtu.be/S57Xq03njsc

Successfully. I wonder if that trick will ever be needed again in the future. It sounds like they had a special situation with a thick layer of permeable rock on the surface preventing them from capping it.

Re: Freeman Dyson Has Died

#230

Post by ArnoVW »

DoreenMichele wrote: post #181
kissickas wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't realize that about the original predictions for the Kuwaiti oil well fires, that's interesting. They are still cleaning up the oil from the sands on the eastern coast of Saudi Arabia 30 years later though.

It was predicted that the fires would burn from two to five years before losing pressure and going out on their own, optimists estimating two years and pessimists estimating five while the majority estimated three years until this occurred. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuwaiti_oil_fires

You seem definitely better informed on the subject than I am (and on other subjects btw!) But I can't help but point out that the wiki quote talks about the time needed for the fires to go out by themselves, and the 6 months were for them to be extinguished.

Still something to be celebrating I suppose, but less of an inconsistency.

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