Freeman Dyson is an eccentric scientist. He’s English, tweedy, and iconoclastic. He’s also one of the greatest geniuses born in the 20th Century. For most of his life he’s been on the side of “liberal” causes, working towards nuclear disarmament and opposing projects like “Star Wars” missile defense. His concern for humanity and his ethical conscience have been demonstrated throughout his life. He is not someone that can be accused of being a pawn of business, political, or religious interests for whom he bends the truth as he sees it to satisfy them. That kind of criticism would be ignorant and off the mark.
So when he takes exception to the growing scientific consensus about global warming, I think he can’t be dismissed out of hand. He may be wrong, but my reading of history tells me that for the greatest scientific breakthroughs, almost always it is the unpopular, lone genius who is more often right than the majority of the scientific profession. Even more, it is often someone without specific credentials, who makes these fundamental advances for our civilization. Newton was a college student, Darwin was an amateur biologist, and Einstein was a recent physics graduate working as a patent office clerk.
Newton was wrong about alchemy and astrology and Einstein may have been wrong about quantum physics, though I think the jury is still out on that one. (Darwin does not seem to have been wrong about anything major, yet.) So Dyson may be wrong about global warming, but I wouldn’t be too sure.
The New York Times has just published a long magazine piece about Dyson and his thoughts on global warming. I recommend it.
