FREEMAN DYSON: IPCC MODELS/PREDICTIONS AREN'T SCIENCE; GLOBAL WARMING ISN'T ANTHROPOGENIC - AND IT ISN'T HARMFUL

FREEMAN DYSON (EXCERPT FROM A RECENT INTERVIEW):

"Syukuro Manabe, right here in Princeton, was the first person who did climate models with enhanced carbon dioxide and they were excellent models. And he used to say very firmly that these models are very good tools for understanding climate, but they are not good tools for predicting climate. I think that’s absolutely right. They are models, but they don’t pretend to be the real world. They are purely fluid dynamics. You can learn a lot from them, but you cannot learn what’s going to happen 10 years from now.

What’s wrong with the models. I mean, I haven’t examined them in detail, (but) I know roughly what’s in them. And the basic problem is that in the case of climate, very small structures, like clouds, dominate. And you cannot model them in any realistic way. They are far too small and too diverse.

So they say, ‘We represent cloudiness by a parameter,’ but I call it a fudge factor. So then you have a formula, which tells you if you have so much cloudiness and so much humidity, and so much temperature, and so much pressure, what will be the result... But if you are using it for a different climate, when you have twice as much carbon dioxide, there is no guarantee that that’s right. There is no way to test it."

"...No doubt that warming is happening. I don’t think it is correct to say “global,” but certainly warming is happening.

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.

There’s a lot made out of the people who died in heat waves. And there is no doubt that we have heat waves and people die. What they don’t say is actually five times as many people die of cold in winters as die of heat in summer.

And it is also true that more of the warming happens in winter than in summer. So, if anything, it’s heavily favorable as far as that goes.

It certainly saves more lives in winter than it costs in summer.

So that kind of argument is never made. And I see a systematic bias in the way things are reported. Anything that looks bad is reported, and anything that looks good is not reported.

A lot of these things are not anything to do with human activities. Take the shrinking of glaciers, which certainly has been going on for 300 years and has been well documented. So it certainly wasn’t due to human activities, most of the time. 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."

"...if they find any real evidence that global warming is doing harm, I would be impressed. That’s the crucial point: I don’t see the evidence...

And why should you imagine that the climate of the 18th century — what they call the pre-industrial climate — is somehow the best possible? ... That’s sort of what I would call part of the propaganda — to take for granted that any change is bad."

SUMMARY:

1. THE PREDICTIONS BASED ON THE MODELS ISN'T REALLY SCIENCE BECAUSE IT'S NOT TESTABLE.
2. GLOBAL WARMING ISN'T ANTHROPOGENIC.
3. GLOBAL WARMING ISN'T BAD.

DYSON'S THREE MAIN POINTS ADD UP: THEY MEAN WE SHOULDN'T TAKE ANY RADICAL STEPS TO STOP MAN-MADE CO2.

NONE.