Reminds me of that joke about
coach: “are you ignorant or just apathetic?”
player” “I don’t know and I don’t care.”

Two of Dyson’s mostly highly-regarded theoretical results are a) (1949) proving the equivalence of Feynman’s path integral formulation (Feynman graphs or diagrams) for quantum electrodynamics and the operator method as developed by Schwinger and Tomonaga. The other is b) (1966) his work with A. Leonard proving rigorously that the stability of matter depends upon the ‘exclusion principle’ (see: Wolfgang Pauli). This proof was derived at the same time but independently as that by Lieb and Thirring.

These were theoretical and highly mathematical results (the likes of which not many people understand).

More practically, he led the design team for the TRIGA nuclear reactor. A small and inherently safe nuclear reaction used throughout the world in hospitals and universities. Inherently safe? Isn’t that another of Dyson’s preposterous and groundless claims? No, ‘inherently safe’ is true and a great many of these small reactors are very usefully employed in the real world. Look it up.

Moreover Dyson first formally studied climate science in 1979. I think he knows a thing or two about climate models. Climate models figure very importantly into the argument that he makes and that’s objected to here.

I generally listen when Dyson has something to say.

Finally Dyson almost always says of these ideas “I think this is an idea worth considering”.

Dyson, a famous (and great) dilettante, may well fall into that category: Rather be interestingly contrarian than boringly correct.

I wish Dyson hadn’t said that too. Just like I wish this article didn’t repeatedly refer to Freeman Dyson as a crackpot, and simply repeat his idea for propulsion as self-evidently absurd.

Orion was not a ridicilous project. Dyson was not alone in thinking orion was a feasible idea, you cant claim that Ted Taylor, the leading man of the project, was a theoretician with his head in the clouds. Orion was the brainchild of some of the greatest minds of the day and there is no doubt that it would have worked and would have been far superior to the current chemical rockets.

Whether or not Dysons critique against AGW is correct it still does not give anyone the right to badmouth him, show the man the respect he deserves and critique his arguments and not the man.

Statements like that (which Chrichton, Inhofe, etc. pretty much all use) are really just pre-packaged propaganda-type slogans developed by PR people. They’re supposed to cause people to doubt climate change by making them think the people working on it are not “normal people” like them but more like Dr. Strangelove, isolated from the real world with bizarre theories and models, or else just scumbags trying to con people out of money (i.e. scaring people “to get funding”). I wouldn’t be surprised if he was paid by some think tank to say that.

Personally I don’t care what Dyson did in the past, he’s now just a scumbag and a liar like Crichton. Most likely since it’s well past the space race and NASA’s golden age, with little chance for glory or fame for an engineer who wants to design trillion-dollar shuttles that blast off using nuclear weaponry, he wanted a little attention and chance to feel like he’s relevant.

Reading about his work for the RAF during World War II is just heartbreaking. He told about his valiant but futile attempts to enlarge the escape hatches on the British Lancaster bombers just another inch or two to allow easier egress if shot down. Had the authorities listened they could have saved thousands of British airman lives. He also tried to get them to ditch the turret guns on the Lancasters which would have made them faster and more maneuverable which would have also saved lives.

His book also introduced me to the great physicist Richard Feynman. I have not read Dyson’s essay but when I read he was on the global warming skeptic side of the fence (not a denier like Crichton) I was disappointed. I thought, well, he’s outside the area of his expertise. Dyson has an impressive body of work. But like any scientist he can be wrong. That is the defining characteristic of any scientist is knowing that you could be wrong. His writing taught me the value of uncertainty, though Feynman’s taught me how hard it is not to fool yourself. He is the kind of global warming skeptic/critic you want to deal with not people like Michael Crichton. Yes, the deniers will welcome Dyson with open arms as a useful tool until they are ready to discard him.

I would agree that Freeman Dyson is most likely wrong, but I have not read the essay yet. So I cannot dismiss him outright. He may have some valid points. I know as a layman I am satisfied with the evidence that the current global warming is anthropogenic and that we must do what we can to mitigate it.

One final note. Project Orion is technically feasible (it was demonstrated with conventional explosives on a test rocket). It may be impractical but it is not absurd. It’s value is that it gets us to think about other ways of propelling spacecraft.

I agree that negative feedbacks will prove insignificant by comparison to positive feedbacks, and should not be cited as excuses for inaction.