Freeman Dyson - The balance of carbon in the atmosphere (144/157)
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- Опубліковано 26 лип 2016
- To listen to more of Freeman Dyson’s stories, go to the playlist: • Freeman Dyson (Scientist)
Freeman Dyson (1923-2020), who was born in England, moved to Cornell University after graduating from Cambridge University with a BA in Mathematics. He subsequently became a professor and worked on nuclear reactors, solid state physics, ferromagnetism, astrophysics and biology. He published several books and, among other honours, was awarded the Heineman Prize and the Royal Society's Hughes Medal. [Listener: Sam Schweber; date recorded 1998]
TRANSCRIPT: I was a friend of Alvin Weinberg who was the Director of Oak Ridge for many years. He's a great physicist who had... a very close friend of Wigner - they worked together on the early reactor work - and he stayed at Oak Ridge for 40 years. He's still there. He's now retired, he's 83 and he still plays a vicious game of tennis. He's an excellent leader and Oak Ridge has always been first rate scientifically. They've had their problems with nuclear energy like everybody else, but in the meantime they've done a lot of excellent science. One of the things that Weinberg did long before it was fashionable, was worry about carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and what it was doing to the climate. And so he invited me to go down to Oak Ridge and work on this 20 years ago, and I went there regularly for quite some years until it became fashionable and then I gave up because obviously I wasn't going to compete with the huge influx of people who came into it later. But in those early years Oak Ridge was really the only place that was worrying about carbon dioxide, and we had a very good group there: Ralph Rotty, who was collecting the information from all over the world about what was actually going on, and Greg Marland who is interested in vegetation in particular. And so my interest has always been in... in finding out what was actually happening in the real world, as opposed to doing computer models. So we fought very hard to get observations, and that's remained a central concern of mine ever since; that the huge industry which has grown up is doing computer models of the climate and trying to determine effects of carbon dioxide from computing what's going to happen, and this is a very dubious business if you don't have good inputs. The out... output of a climate model looks very impressive to the non-expert; the experts know that it's no better than the input. And in this case we simply don't yet know what's going to happen to the carbon in the atmosphere because we don't know what already has happened. We don't know what is happening, and the only way to find out is by observing.
So anyway we were at Oak Ridge, this little group put together a programme, and the Department... the Department of Energy who runs Oak Ridge didn't pay much attention to us, instead they put all their money into computer modelling. And that remains true even today. But, so what I was mostly doing at Oak Ridge was actually just looking at the balance between the vegetation and the atmosphere, which to me has always seemed to be the central problem; that there's more carbon in the vegetation on the earth than there is in the atmosphere, so that the atmosphere is the tail and the ground is the dog in this case. I mean, it's a... vegetation is really controlling what happens rather than the atmosphere. In fact, what one needs in order to understand the problem is to understand the vegetation first, whereas the emphasis in the climate models, of course, has always been on the atmosphere. But you can't understand the atmosphere by itself; the vegetation is absolutely essential. Well, what do we know about the vegetation? Not very much, and so the elementary questions are: How much carbon dioxide is going into the vegetation through... the photosynthesis, and how much is coming out through respiration, and what is the balance? Well the first good measurements of this were done only a couple of years ago by Wofsy at Harvard, who has a very wonderful technique called eddy flux measurement I think he calls it; it's a figure for eddy flux measurement and it's a very clever trick. He puts a tower up above the forest, if we're talking about trees; it doesn't have to be trees, it could be any sort of vegetation. He puts a tower, and at top of the tower you have instruments which measure accurately the speed of motion of the air, second by second or even 1/10th of a second at a time, and also measure carbon dioxide abundance, 10 times per second. This can now be done with modern instruments very precisely. And the remarkable thing is that there's a very high correlation, second by second, between the movement of the air up and down, and the carbon concentration. [...]
Read the full transcript at www.webofstories.com/play/free... - Наука та технологія
Wow.
The vegetation is the dog. The atmosphere is the tail.
R.I.P Freeman Dyson!
It is so refreshing to here intelligence with no political agenda.
You were right then, and still.
This is over 20 years old...
@@1vespa So was Al Gore with his hard words
It is indeed
It is always a great learning experience to listen to Freeman Dyson.
According to Dr. Tim Palmer, an Oxford Physicist that works on the leading edge of climate modelling, modelling has ongoing issues with clouds, which are not well understood and are critical to understanding the climate in the real world and in the accuracy of modelling results. In addition, due to current computing restrictions, sub grid parameterization (still as of 2020), also is an area causing model uncertainty. He also talks about the fact that with regard to the multiple and extreme formulas, such as the Navier-Stokes formula, initial conditions are critical to the outcomes. Due to mathematics and propagation of error, extremely small variations lead to widely variable outcomes. Climate is non-linear and chaotic. The actual physics is beyond 99.99% of us but that doesn’t mean we have to roll over and accept the worst case scenario as the only likely outcome. I think Freeman Dyson and many others make valid arguments that the ‘alarmists’ cannot accept. Somewhere along the way, CO2 has gone from being the elixir of life to the elixir of death and destruction. The models all seem to run hot when compared to actual measurements. I will leave my mind open to the possibility that those with differing points of view are equally valid.
We don't need to believe that the worst case is the only likely outcome. We just need to accept that if the worst case is possible we damn well better react. To do otherwise is to play Russian roulette with civilized existence. That isn't being alarmist, it is basic contingency planning. You of the do nothing brigade assume that the best case scenario is the only likely outcome and there is no scientific basis for that whatsoever.
@@vickybethell9921 It is very possible that the Yellowstone Super Volcano will erupt in our lifetime. We need to accept that if the worst case is possible we damn well better react. Not preparing for it would be to play Russian roulette with civilized existence. The best preparation would be to vacate America, and migrate everyone to Asia. Why don't we plan for that?
@@RonArts Exactly. The climate alarmists are pure sociopaths who know nothing of valid philosophy. The only reason they ever got their hands on any power at all was that America adopted government-run "schooling"(indoctrination, really) under the Prussian model that was designed to make obedient soldiers of Germans. (Gosh, how did that turn out for them? Wildly successful! ...Unless you measure success by benevolent results.) The lifeboat foundation has lots of other existential threats that are being tracked at computational speeds...why focus on the one that even the dumb-asses can all understand? ...I think I just answered my own question. As for the Prussian model of education Germany had had 170 years of it in...1938 (The year of Kristallnacht). The USA has had 170 years of the same educational model in ...2022. Government-run education de-philosophizes society. The result of living in a society that has lost philosophical hierarchies is...Nazi Germany. (Technologically advanced, but too stupid, unwise, and evil to ask the right questions about where to apply that technology.) ...And that's the real explanation for climate alarmism.
@@RonArts No. You are making a huge error. You cannot compare these two kinds of risk. The risk of yellowstone exploding can be quantified because geologists know the frequency at which yellowstone has erupted in the past. Calculating this risk is very simple. This risk is extremely low. Also there is nothing we can do about yellowstone exploding. On the other hand, compare it to the risk from climate change. Although it is possible the climate models are wrong this does not mean much. Why? Because we know climate is extremely complicated; small changes in initial conditions can lead to vastly different outcomes some with terrifying consequences. This risk is not as you assume on the order of that as yellowstone is. This is because the risk of an extreme outcome from climate change is not gaussian. What this means is that in a normal gaussian distribution your extreme events are somewhere in the tails of the distribution. When you go out into the tails of the distribution the risk of an extreme event occurring drops by orders of magnitude the further you go out. However, due to the nature of climate, as it is an extremely volatile thing, you cannot use gaussian distributions to guess the likelihood of extreme events. Rather, the risks associated with climate change are fat tailed. This means that the more extreme you get the risk does not drop by orders of magnitude - in fact a lot less. Looking at history and examining this you see that risks associated with this kind of fat tailed type distribution occur time and time again. For example, think about the economy. We have had numerous recessions that no one could predict. In the same way we might have extreme consequences to the climate. But then we might also not. This is all about risk management and here because climate is fat tailed risk, you cannot take the risk of changing the conditions of the climate and possibly leading to these extreme outcomes.
@@vickybethell9921 Which worst case scenario basket are you putting your eggs in? Serious question: How often do you check your car’s tire pressure before you drive? How about the oil? Windshield washer fluid? All blinkers and brake lights?
This video was posted 6 years ago. Interview was recorded in 1998. I wonder if there are in fact hundreds of those towers up by now or not? I'd guess not; not much promise of reaping carbon tithings from funding that form of research. RIP Professor Dyson; you are and will forever be, an exemplar of the good scientist.
Hello to all from Oak Ridge.
An honest man can admit when he "doesn't know".
The real scientist knows what he does not know. The more one knows - the more he understands the limits.
I notice there is a great transcript in the "show more" section. So my question is, why not make that into the "translate" feature of clips? Sure, a little more work but the usability factor goes up by double digits. So, why not?
A true, real scientist using the " scientific method " for analysis. Not computer programmers writing " guesstimate probable environmental scenario " programs spitting out same said outcomes.
I don't know if I am hearing Richard Feynman's ghost as he spoke about the way NASA was investigating the shuttle disaster. "Test the O-rings!" "Test the O-rings!" "Test the O-rings!"
For some climate models: Garbage in, garbage out.
Garbage in, billions of dollars worth of lucrative socialist propaganda out.
Hey now, that propaganda resulted in the nice U.N. climate change warning that's been placed before this very video. How can you call it "garbage" if it feeds the families of thousands of government-connected sociopaths? Come on, where's your feelings? Where's your empathy? I thought that what made empaths easy prey for office-holding sociopaths? Why isn't "the trick" working? LOL
Climate alarmism is like learning a language of a country that you will never visit
I wish Emanuel Velikovsky and Freeman Dyson are colleague complementing each other in natural science.
Freeman Dyson hombre.
I learned more about the real science of climate-change in these six minutes than in the last ten years from the media. This is why one physicist trumps a dozen media anchors.
@Vendicar Kahn Well said.
@Vendicar Kahn Monitored but not experimented with hardly at all and no history of this science to base it off of. This scientist is being honest when he says "I don't know" unlike the other ones who are pushing a carbon tax that will help nobody except politicians. Account for all variables before making an absolute statement. Consider yourself not as smart as you act✌️
Then you're taking things out of context only an ideologue would. This interview with Dyson was done 20+ years ago. Since then, we have taken a lot more data and measurements, but the lesson you took away is, "even Dyson didn't totally believe it 20+ years ago."
I had once more than a passing familiarity with Freeman Dyson's theorem concerning time-ordered Green's functions (that's about the theory of quantum mechanics), but I was an experimental physicist; he is a mathematician with no laboratory or instrument experience. This is no place to present a treatise on the subject, so I just want to declare that no such flux measurement would be accurate enough to use for any purpose. Several things could and would go wrong.
I read his paper wolfsee.
It's not about perfect accuracy it's about showing rates of flow.
With proper funding they could have further developed the CO2 flux testing strategy.
Climate models are extrapolations of enormously complex systems. As with any extended extrapolation, tiny variations in startling conditions and assumptions about parameter values that perturb the model result in a wide, unpredictable error bars on the end value. Hundreds of parameter estimates/guesses go into climate models including vegetation consumption, worldwide economic growth, and proportion of energy production types. How accurately are any of these known? 🤷
Interesting perspective, but this conversation is 22 years old. There is a lot of water under the bridge (or "gasoline in the engine" might be more apt!) since then.
There arw more recent interviews where he holds the same position, 3 years ago is the latest ive seen. I dont deny humans are affecting the climate, just that CO2 isn't the problem, when you realise other chemicals including water vapour are more of a greenhouse gas than CO2, it makes the whole argument pointless.
@Heisenberg-SchrodingerEmc2 holy dude, you wrote an essay to strike me down but you lack basic reading comprension so its all wasted effort. All I said was CO2 is not to blame. I also said humans are affecting the climate. Learn to reread something a couple times before you go on a pseudo-intelectual power trip.
@@thesteve4235 That can happen when we use double negatives. Just sayin.
I'm not about to present much evidence, but I do have questions. One comes from the observation that CO2 has been rising in the atmosphere in recent decades (nay, centuries or millennia), the temperature has been rising, the sea level has been rising, all in accordance with what the climate models predict. So there is a theoretical basis for this work and it seems to be producing reasonably accurate predictions. My question is: what do you think is wrong with this approach?
Nobody denies the greenhouse effect of atmospheric H2O. The question is: how is it changing, and is it a driving or lagging indicator?
We agree that humans are changing the climate. It is a complex system, with multiple feedback loops. Such systems tend to have multiple different equilibrium points, and rapid transitions between them. Freeman Dyson was a great scientist who freely admitted when he didn't know. In this video from twenty years ago he makes a case for ground truth. AFAIK not much of that work has been done, I suspect because of the limited money available to researchers.
Thousands of climate researchers around the world believe that CO2 is the key driver. It is the thing that we have been changing for two millennia. You suggest H2O as a possibility. What evidence is there that it is the driver?
Regards, Andy
@@AndrewBlucher I'm not try to deny human created climate change, my point was that there are factories in basically every country producing chemicals (as waste) that have up to an 8300x greater contribution to the Greenhouse Effect than CO2. While these chemicals are produced in lower volumes than CO2 added together, their combined effect is much greater than CO2. If I remember correctly if we reduce the CO2 by half it would reduce the Greenhouse Effect around 13-17% percent. I am for reducing carbon emissions, but I think we need to focus on the other pollutants(notably NO2), to be honest the biggest problem is consumerism, the culture of buying useless things, which is mainly driven by the USA, but to a lesser extent Canada and Western Europe. This leads to more factories being made, so if we can cut back on the consumerist capitalism we can cut back on pollution.
@@thesteve4235 Excellent point about consumerism. Most of us in the West are part of that problem. For me, there are two questions. How to build or remodel our economies so that they are stable while in a steady state in relation to our environment, and how to convince people to do it. There are a many vested interests in keeping the current exploitation going. While some parts of Europe may embrace a new economic model, I can imagine much of the USA refusing to have any part of what they will call "socialism" or "communism". As for the real communists, China, I'm sure they will not give up on "progress". And when I consider developing countries I thin they won't either.
So it will be up to middle sized developed countries to lead the way.
It will not be quick or easy.
I fear some don't want the last idea as it might disprove their theories of climate change and, being activists, they don't want this. Dyson is a voice of sanity in a messed-up world where some would turn science into a dogmatic religion
SEER
Am I the only one annoyed by the coughing in the background? Maybe it's the times....
Paddle Shift Dyson also found his cough somewhat concerning....lung cancer maybe as covid unlikely.
It's very important to get both sides of an issue, that's what makes this valuable. However, I would like to offer a rebuttal. Dyson noted the uncertainties of the interactions between carbon and biomass, yet he didn't dispute the interactions between carbon and the oceans, which cover the majority of earth, not land. The ocean has been proven to be unable to absorb carbon. Furthermore, there is a clear link between warm water and tropical storms. The warmer the water, the more storms.
Have you heard about algae?
It converts CO2 to carbon that oxygenates the water.
The ocean already contains 30-50 times more carbon than atmosphere. It loses CO2 when temperatures grow and absorbs as it gets colder.
But it takes about 800 years for CO2 to follow the ocean temperatures.
By the way it also shows that acidification of the ocean (that ‘alarmists’ talked about) is impossible.
The warmer Earth atmosphere - the less storms.
Climate Modelling or G.I.G.O. (Garbage In Garbage Out).
Can anyone give me a definition of 'CLIMATE SCIENTIST'? Which college or university does one attend to gain the degree and what IS the degree?
To become a meteorologist, a person must take at least one undergraduate university degree in meteorology. Those who study meteorological phenomena are meteorologist in research while those using mathematical models and knowledge to prepare daily weather forecast are called weather forecasters or operational meteorologists. Research meteorologists are specialized in areas like climatology, air quality, atmospheric convection and the modeling of the atmosphere and the development of numerical weather prediction.
Operational meteorologists, also known as forecasters, collect weather data in some country, but it is mostly done by technicians elsewhere, analyze data and numerical weather prediction model outputs to prepare daily weather forecasts, provide weather advice and guidance to private or governmental users, collaborate with the researchers for integrating science and technology into the forecast process, in particular for indices and model outputs, for weather-dependent users such as farming, forestry, aviation, maritime shipping and fisheries, etc...
Meteorologists can also be consultants for private firms in studies for projets involving weather phenomena such as windfarms, tornado protection, etc... They finally can be weather presenters in the medias (radio, TV, internet).
Climatology is regarded as a branch of the atmospheric sciences and a subfield of physical geography, which is one of the Earth sciences. Climatology now includes aspects of oceanography and biogeochemistry.
All this you could've found by doing a couple of searches in the Wikipedia, instead of being a smarmy asshole in a UA-cam comment section.
@@Heldarion Well you are triggered aren't you!
You haven't answered my question though have you? All that time you spent waffling on about meteorologists when I specifically asked about 'CLIMATE SCIENTISTS'. The answer, as I suspect you already know, is that there is no such qualification... Oh and since the models can't even reproduce the past with any degree of accuracy, they don't do much for the future, do they!
PikPobedy actually I asked 3 questions. You only answered the first one... Incidentally, it’s ‘snoWflake’.
@@thetraveller869 Don't be coy, he showed you a list of degrees you can get which fall under the umbrella term "climate scientist", a term he also went ahead and defined. You are welcome to engage with what he wrote and maybe argue that he made some error or engaged in some fallacy but don't straight up pretend to not understand what he wrote, you come across as either dishonest or incredibly dull.
I really like being in a tree to get fresh air. I see treehouses online that look cool but unless I had climbed some trees I wouldn't guess that suburban hells from riots and reckless driving were relieved a lot when a person gets up that tree. For me, high up, it's a paradise. I was offered a stanfort hardship scholarship at 66 after about 50 years of being a US political prisoner that foreign born celebrities using fake ID from Mick Jagger to John Lennon and then US born foreign leaders like Iran's Mahmoud Abenejan took out with drugs in the 1960s to prevent non fossil fuel development. Cointelpro told me that in 1974 after high school graduation that I was the only student with a workable knowledge of non fossil fuel tech who was not killed. I remember the young but brutal oil industry thugs who told me briefly that I was "out" because of the chance I would be active in science in college with non fossil fuel tech.
More measurement is always welcome, but we know the co2 concentration is rising to levels humans have never seen. We know that excess heat-trapping gases are accumulating in the atmosphere, and we know global average temperature is rising in tandem as we would expect.
>but we know the co2 concentration is rising to levels humans have never seen
This does not say as much as you think.
>but we know the co2 concentration is rising to levels humans have never seen
This does not say as much as you think.
The heat is not rising in tandem with co2 period
Sean Maher, CO2 in your room is probably 1000-1500 ppm. So even you have seen it (if you are human).
And the temperatures are no rising since 1998. So NASA and NOAA have to make "corrections@ in their datasets to show the rising trend.
Here I oppose Prof. Dyson and mention the "precautionary principle". When you don't know you should always chose the least dangerous route. Yes, always!!! If you later find out, with better "input data", as Prof. Dyson called it, the results are not as fearsome as you previously feared, *_only then_* you can decide differently.
I respect researchers that want the "truth" and only the truth. But when you don't know and lives are at stake, and even the world as we know it today, then precaution is the superior factor. Only when we know for sure that something we once feared in fact is safe we can change our former decisions.
Chemical substances are a perfect example. If we suspect a certain chemical is dangerous, why allow it right now? If later studies show that this chemical in fact is safe--whether within certain limits or not--what did we lose? Humanity did not lose anything at all!!! A company may have lost income. But the message is, humanity did not lose any lives. The opposite is simple (if the substance was dangerous): The company earned a lot of money but humanity lost many lives, or many persons now suffer from various illnesses.
Next time watch the whole video. Talk to me about flux. And the only climate models that got money we're the ones that showed warming
@@willwarden5304 This is just a troll comment without any facts or anything else to prove either this or that. If you like to comment, go ahead and bring up your evidence. Right now you are an Internet troll.
So then you have a million reasons to be precautionary. Start digging a big hole to day so you can hise from all of them.
"non-expert" perfectly describes Freeman Dyson when it comes to climate science.
I'd wager he knew more about the methods and flaws of "climate scientists" than you do.
If the substance of Dyson's talk (without all the name dropping) were presented to anyone at all familiar with climate science, the conclusion would be: well here is someone who clearly has very little knowledge of the subject, along with a fair amount of prejudice and a considerable and irrational dislike of computer models.
When you discover that it was presented by someone who used to have some reputation as a physicist, the most charitable reaction is just to feel sad that he should spend his old age making a fool of himself.
A model is just that: a model i.e. supposition based on evidence, but not evidence itself. There are many factors which a model does not take into account. Freeman Dyson is, like the Web of Stories' by-line says, a remarkable person.
Why the ad hominem argument? Is he wrong because he's not young? Because he''s a sceptic rather than a believer? Because he happens to know other people in the field?
Dyson was old enough, at the time of this video to be a skeptic and not face consequences, other than slander.
Geez, you sure made this very personal.
@@williamtaylor5193 Yes. Brave enough to be a heretic. We need more heretics.
I don't agree. it is very clear from our data within the ice that we've been analysing so far. our graphs which show the trend (rate of change) clearly indicates an abrupt increase in co2 due to human activities. do you want an accurate model of what is going to happen? no problem! look no further than our close sister: Venus. Mr. Dyson focused too much on the vegetation. maybe at the time of this interview the present data weren't there or was simply ignored but today is very clear that human activities, in particular, the farming of stock live pile (animals for human consumption -- luckily I'm a vegetarian) drives most of the co2 with a high ratio
Alexandru Gheorghe Global Warming is a huge business. So one should be very careful about what to believe and what is just propaganda. In such a case common sense can help. If you follow the aruments of Prof. Dyson, they seem very reasonable to me. And he has definitely no monetary interest in what I would like to call the "Global Warming Industy".
Global Warming Industry? You mean the concerted effort to wean energy off fossil fuels to lessen the impact on the greenhouse effect? I'm sure the opposition to that has nothing to do with lobbying from the fossil fuel industry...
Alexandru Gheorghe This was probably 20 years ago but his comments totally hold up. We still have borderline models and little hard science.
It seldom pays to ignore what Dyson has to say.
Alex What exactly are you disagreeing with when you say "OUR" data within the ice ? It's been established that not even 1 climate models has/is been proven correct. It's also been established that the data has been tampered with.
That is true. Politicians like Al Gore - as it was recently revealed - make hundreds of millions of dollars being on top of the climate change cabal. It is one more reason why the debate is going (essentially) nowhere.
Curious (uncharacteristic?) lack of morality from Dyson. You could not pay me enough to work with someone with Teller's politics. Life in physics and mathematics is not all just about making great discoveries. Oppenheimer did well to avoid Teller, even though suffering as a result. I do not begrudge Teller his fear of totalitarianism out of his Hungary post-war trauma, but like a spoiled brat you can make legitimate emotions the enemy of the good.
I'm sure Teller would have no problem not working with a spoilt westerner trying to implement political systems they've never lived in...
He seems massively arrogant on this issue. Surely his half knowledge on the issue is not comparable with that of experts who all agree on the eminent and clear danger.
Indeed. Physicists are not climate scientists.
@@timaddison868 But climate is physics.
@@Mark_Lacey
Yes Mark, everything can be reduced to physics.
Be that as it may, I wouldn't see a theoretical physicist if I had significant health issues; I would see a medical doctor. In the same way, I also would defer to climate scientists on matters concerning global climate change.
@@timaddison868 neither are chiropractors, nor Dumbledore, who are counted as scientists who know the climate.
Dyson was questioning the output of computer climate models.
You can do the same of econometric models and meteorological models.
We know what is happening to the carbon in the atmosphere and it is raising temperature. You don't need an adding machine to figure that out. Look at the weather lately. It is not a coincidence. You don't need an IBM card reader.
Nah, that's what the sheep think, look up other pollutants and thier effect on the environment, CO2 is a scapegoat for left-wing politics. Aditionally water vapour causes more of a greenhouse effect than CO2. Get your science from somewhere other than CNN or MSNBC.
@@thesteve4235 Follow the science not FUx New's uneducated crap.
Carbon is a black substance which can be used to write with. CO2 is a gas.
Changes in temperature happen first. CO2 levels follow. Basic physics.
Unlike weather climate is measured over hundreds of years - not day to day...
PikPobedy not here it isn’t.