Freeman Dyson on Heresy, Climate Change, and Science

While I love econtalk and listen to it every week - I'm actually a bit surprised that it's this podcast that made it to the front page. To me it felt a bit meandering and russ really seems to struggle at points in keeping the conversation going.

Some of the recent podcasts that I thought were much more deserving of front page-hood:

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/02/cowen_on_the_gr.htm... http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/01/deer_on_autism.html

http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2011/01/hanson_on_the_t.htm...

These three were incredibly thought provoking and still have my mind in a flurry. Check them out if you haven't.

I disagree with his views on climate change — but I loved his insights into space travel vs. space science. Definitely a podcast worth listening to...

Dyson does have a point about "fudge factors" incorporated into current models, which is why it's such a shame the recent Orbiting Carbon Observatory and Glory satellite launches failed. Climate change is real, but we still need more eyes in the sky.

Here's hoping SpaceX and their ilk help reduce launch costs enough that these failures aren't so disastrous.

This is old news. Freeman's "heretical ideas" were expressed in 2007 in Brockman's online journal, http://www.edge.org. There was also the NY Times article published in 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/magazine/29Dyson-t.html. Freeman Dyson is wrong in this instance; I, for one, wonder why a credible scientist and thinker would choose to take a scientifically unsupportable position.