The late esteemed physicist Freeman Dyson pointed out the flawed reasoning used by many environmentalists throughout his lifetime. The American theoretical physicist and mathematician, who was born in the UK, was known for work in condensed matter physics, nuclear physics and quantum field theory, among other disciplines.
In his 2006 work "The Scientist as a Rebel," he questioned the narrative that human activity is playing a prominent role in global warming. Two years later, he shared his belief that the money spent on addressing climate change should be devoted to “other problems that are more urgent and more important such as poverty, infectious diseases, public education and health.”
Perhaps some of his strongest words on the issue came during an interview on Conversations that Matter, where he explained that the problem has been overblown and that having more carbon dioxide is positive overall. He noted: “First of all, we don’t understand the details. It’s probably much less than it’s generally claimed and the most important thing is that there are huge non-climate effects of carbon dioxide which are overwhelmingly favourable [and] which are not taken into account.”
He pointed out that carbon dioxide is actually making Earth greener, “As measured from space, the whole earth is growing greener as a result of carbon dioxide, so it’s increasing agricultural yields, it’s increasing the forests and it’s increasing growth in the biological world, and that’s more important and more certain than the effects on climate,” he added.
He made his comments after 37 years of studying how carbon dioxide in the atmosphere affects vegetation. He said that at first, he thought the effects of carbon dioxide on plants might be about 10 percent, but discovered it was actually 25 percent. He explained that carbon dioxide had increased by around 40 percent at that point and about half of it went into “raising vegetation.” According to observable evidence, “It’s enormously beneficial to both food production and also to the biodiversity, preservation of species and everything else that’s good.”
Climate models are poor predictors
He also drew attention to the fact that although climate models may help us understand the current state of the climate, they are notoriously poor predictors of what will happen because they leave out a lot of factors that can have a big impact on reality.
“The real world is far more complicated than the models,” he explained.
Dyson also took issue with the tendency of climate alarmists to ignore the effect of water vapor. He says that because it makes up around 90 percent of the atmosphere, removing it from the equation is completely illogical, like many of the other stances the anti-carbon crowd takes.
“CO2 is so beneficial in other ways, it would be crazy to try to reduce it. The fact is that carbon dioxide will increase, we will continue to burn oil and coal and probably it does us good – the Earth will get greener as a result.”
Dyson conceded that man-made climate change is indeed a real phenomenon but maintained that the real questions are how much climate change can be attributed to human activity and whether it is actually as bad as they say it is.
For him, the answer is clear: “I would say it’s on the whole good and also it’s not as large an effect as most people imagine,” he asserted.
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