How is it not "rooted in science" that excess carbon is good for plants? We're already seeing significant global greening, and yields are up. Excess CO2 also reduces the amount of water the plants need.
The statement is completely true, but it misses the point as to why people are concerned and glosses over a lot of negatives.
edit: the report has 18 pages on the benefits and 12 pages on the costs of elevated CO2.
I agree with what I think Dyson believed: that it's NOT obvious that global warming is net-negative (long term).
Another ice age would be pretty terrible too.
The most obvious cost is the threat to densely populated real estate along coasts as sea level rises. You have to build sea walls or move. Building walls is a huge direct cost. But forced moving creates huge indirect costs as the price of real estate above the new waterline soars--at the same the people with land under the waterline all file flood insurance claims (or go bankrupt).
Freeman Dyson was a brilliant physical scientist, but the problems of global warming will be primarily social, not physical.
Building sea walls is a trivial cost compared to moving (and giving up the real estate to the sea). Ask the Netherlands - 26% of the country is below sea level - up to (or down to) 6.7m below.
"The South Holland coast region is home to approximately 4 million people who live below normal sea level" https://www.ice.org.uk/what-is-civil-engineering/what-do-civ...
Roughly 1300 Euros per person protected. How much would it cost to move those people? And what is the total value of the real estate where they live/work/farm?
So yes, "Building sea walls is a trivial cost compared to moving (and giving up the real estate to the sea)."
Some of the disaster scenarios seem to assume people would just stay as the water rose, until they all drowned, shortest people first.
OK, but the next rational step would be to ask which scenario is presenting the greater risk. Just raising an issue without following through is not helpful, and, I am sorry to say, that is what Dyson tended to do on this issue.
However, I'm glad this is mentioned and how it shows that there are a lot of intelligent people who have concerns with the current science debate. Consensus isn't science, it's politics, and challenging ones ideas is how we both reinforce the truth as well as dispel myths.
That's what they said when Galileo Galilei was on trial for not trusting the "consensus" about geocentric view of the world.
To use a more recent example, that's what they said of Dr. Barry Marshall who discovered that it was Heliobacter Pylori, and not "stress" that's causing ulcers in the stomach. Dude was very nearly laughed out of his field, to the point where he had to take the unconventional step of infecting himself with h. pylori to prove the point, and then curing himself of it with antibiotics.
In a politicized field especially, it can very easily cost one their scientific career if they "disagree with consensus" if one is less prominent than Dyson, whereas "agreeing with consensus" is strongly beneficial.
What?