We told you a couple of months ago that a genius is no longer a genius if he refuses to buy into global warming hysteria ? at least if you follow the line of reasoning set out in an Atlantic profile of physicist Freeman Dyson.
Now a fellow university physics professor offers a well-executed rebuttal in a letter to the editor:
I have known, and occasionally worked with, Freeman Dyson for 36 years. His most distinguishing characteristic, even more than raw brainpower, is his absolute intellectual integrity. He will follow a path of reasoning wherever it leads, even if the conclusion is not what he expected or wanted to find. I know that he always has very good reasons for his conclusions, and that if I disagree, I had better have very strong arguments to support my disagreement!
Kenneth Brower?s attempted intellectual assassination fails this test. The physics of greenhouse-gas warming has been understood for more than a century. Whether warming is a threat is, however, entirely subjective. Brower defines any anthropogenic effect on climate as necessarily bad, and likely catastrophic. Dyson considers the question open, and points to at least one region (sub-Arctic Greenland) where the effect appears to be favorable. It is not possible to challenge with logic or scientific evidence the quasi-religious revealed truth of environmentalism. The crime of which Dyson is accused is that of taking a skeptical scientific attitude to the question. Without more evidence and a better definition of what is good or bad, it is impossible to decide whether climate change is something to be feared or welcomed, or something to which we should remain indifferent.
Jonathan Katz, Professor of Physics,
Washington University,
St. Louis, Mo.
