Freeman Dyson

I have longed for intelligent critiques of global warming but until last week's Sunday Times cover story, had not really found anything. Last week's article was about Freeman Dyson, a relatively famous scientist who started out in physics but is now more of a generalist. He is noted for his ability to gain in-depth understanding of different complicated sciences.

Hearing his critiques, as they were explained by the author of the article, did not change my mind. Some I found a bit absurd, but others did provide some interesting questions.

One of his critiques that I found to be pretty absurd was his belief that we should focus on more important issues, like poverty, famine and war, and deal with global warming when we know more about it. The problem with this argument is that the effects of global warming, if predictions are true, will be borne most by those that are most vulnerable.

We already see that the Sahara desert is growing and the Sahel region of Africa is expanding north. This has caused scarcity of resources in these areas which will only increase as warming continues - leading to famine and conflict. Further, wet areas are projected to get wetter, which will again be borne by those most vulnerable. If we make progress now on poverty issues but not global warming, we'll likely have greater poverty issues in the future.

Furthermore, that critique assumes we can only accomplish one thing at a time, which I do not agree with at all. This argument comes up in many different policy areas, and it never makes sense to me.

Where he prompts good questions is his use of biology in global warming. He is right that the prediction models focus mainly on atmospheric changes and do not seem to incorporate how biological changes could interact with the changes (they track biological changes without incorporating them). In fact, he says that higher carbon may be better for plant and animal species. At one point he says how increases in plant and animal diversity came at times of much higher carbon levels.

Before I go on, I think we need some serious clarification about historical carbon levels. Al Gore and others claim that carbon levels now are far higher than they have been in the last 20,000 years. So is Dyson claiming that is wrong, or is he saying that carbon levels were higher but looking farther back? To me, this is probably the most important question of global warming.

Dyson also has interesting and optimistic proposals for ways to use biology to help decrease carbon levels, and it will definitely be worth learning more about that (trees that can capture carbon).

Finally, the article portrays the way that dissenters are treated. In some policy areas, those who dissent are dismissed not by debating their points on the merits, but by suggesting that their intentions are bad. This happens in policy on the Middle East, and comes up here too. I agree that in cases where oil companies are paying for shoddy research, it makes sense to question the motives. But Dyson seems to have no motivation other than to be contrarian and challenge people's assumptions. The world needs more, not less, of these people - even when they are wrong.