Dyson agrees that anthropogenic
global warming exists, and has written that "[one] of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."
[55] However, he believes that existing simulation models of climate fail to account for some important factors, and hence the results will contain too much error to reliably predict future trends:
The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world we live in ...
[55]
and, in 2009:
What has happened in the past 10 years is that the discrepancies between what's observed and what's predicted have become much stronger. It's clear now the models are wrong, but it wasn't so clear 10 years ago.
[56]
He is among signatories of a letter to the UN criticizing the
IPCC[57][58] and has also argued against ostracizing scientists whose views depart from the acknowledged mainstream of
scientific opinion on climate change, stating that "heretics" have historically been an important force in driving scientific progress. "[H]eretics who question the dogmas are needed ... I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies."
[55]
Dyson says his views on global warming have been strongly criticized. In reply, he notes that "[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but its rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have."
[59]
In 2008, he endorsed the now common usage of "global warming" as synonymous with global anthropogenic climate change, referring to "measurements that transformed global warming from a vague theoretical speculation into a precise observational science."
[60]
He has, however, argued that political efforts to reduce the causes of climate change distract from other global problems that should take priority:
I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I'm saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans.
[61]
Since originally taking interest in climate studies in the 1970s, Dyson has suggested that
carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be controlled by planting fast-growing trees. He calculates that it would take a trillion trees to remove all carbon from the atmosphere.
[62][63]
In a 2014 interview, he said that "What Im convinced of is that we dont understand climate ... It will take a lot of very hard work before that question is settled."
[2]
Facebook
Twitter