Freeman Dyson on Heretical Thoughts and Climate Change

Previously I wrote about Camille Paglia’s view of “fancy-pants, speculative, climate models”. Like Paglia, Freeman Dyson is listed as one of the top 100 intellectuals in the world today, rated at number 25.

In an essay, Dyson writes:

 “My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models.”

That’s quite a statement. But this one is really what hit home with me, because it captures the essence of what my www.surfacestations.org project is all about:

“It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models. ” and also “When I listen to the public debates about climate change, I am impressed by the enormous gaps in our knowledge.”

Too much of climate science today is removed from the measuring environment. I wonder, would such scientists have invested so heavily in studies of the surface temperature record if they knew the condition it was in?

Read Dyson’s full essay here on his website.

Vote for the Blog that Changed US Climate History

You may remember reading about my surfacestaions.org project and the climate monitoring station at Detroit Lakes, MN surveyed by Don Kostuch. There were two air conditioners within feet of the station, and a big jump in temperature the same year they were placed next to it. I surmised the A/C units had something to do with that, and the “usual warming suspects” went nutty with criticisms. The resulting hullabaloo they created attracted a lot of attention, and statistics expert Steve McIntyre of Climate Audit noticed that there was another reason for the jump.

 It was bad data handling by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) .  They fouled up at the year 2000 in joining data sets. As a result of McIntyre’s work, NASA was forced to revise the data, and the result was that the much touted year 1998 formerly known as “the hottest year on record in the USA” fell to a close second behind 1934 during the peak of the dust bowl years.

The Weblog Awards are the world’s largest blog competition, and Climate Audit has been nominated as a finalist for “Best Science Blog. Note that Climate Audit and Mr. McIntyre are also responsible for proving the “Hockey Stick” was based on faulty analysis of tree ring data, and thus was minimized in the latest IPCC report.

A blog with this magnitude of contribution deserves to win over blogs that just report things and accept commentary. I provide the hosting server for Climate Audit, (after the traffic from the latest discover took it down) so voting for it is also indirectly a vote for me too.

Vote for best science weblog here; and if so inclined, click on Climate Audit. Voting is permitted once every 24 hours. Vote early, vote often.

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Voting closes November 8th