Reflective reading

Time to read lastnight
Basically while "sitting" getting prepared for minor medical procedure, I read a few chapters of the following book.

Sorry that NYReview of books keeps the full text in the "pay-per-view" archive, and may transcribe some further excerpts as I think that they are most interesting... calling into question "Global Warming" while acknowledging Climate Change.

I greatly enjoy Freeman's writing and have had the pleasure of occasional conversations at PCForum.

What a World! - The New York Review of Books: "Review

What a World!
By Freeman Dyson

The Earth's Biosphere: Evolution, Dynamics, and Change

by Vaclav Smil

MIT Press, 346 pp., $32.95

"It is refreshing to read a book full of facts about our planet and the life that has transformed it, written by an author who does not allow facts to be obscured or overshadowed by politics. Vaclav Smil is well aware of the political disputes that are now raging about the effects of human activities on climate and biodiversity, but he does not give them more attention than they deserve. He emphasizes the enormous gaps in our knowledge, the sparseness of our observations, and the superficiality of our theories. He calls attention to the many aspects of planetary evolution which are poorly understood, and which must be better understood before we can reach an accurate diagnosis of the present condition of our planet. When we are trying to take care of a planet, just as when we are taking care of a human patient, diseases must be diagnosed before they can be cured."

Some of Freeman's further comments on the subject here:
University of Michigan

"Unfortunately, I am an old heretic. Old heretics don't cut much ice. What the world needs is young heretics. I am hoping that one or two of you may fill that role. So I will tell you briefly about three heresies that I'm promoting.

The first of my heresies says that all the fluff about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of twilight model experts and the crowd of diluted citizens that believe the numbers predicted by their models. Of course they say I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak.

But I have studied their climate models and know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics and do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields, farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in.

The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That's why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

There's no doubt that parts of the world are getting warmer, but the warming is not global. The warming happens in places and times where it is cold, in the arctic more than the tropics, in the winter more than the summer, at night more than the daytime.

I'm not saying the warming doesn't cause problems, obviously it does. Obviously we should be trying to understand it. I'm saying that the problems are being grossly exaggerated. They take away money and attention from other problems that are much more urgent and important. Poverty, infectious diseases, public education and public health. Not to mention the preservation of living creatures on land and in the oceans."

But we are in the political season, and "Global Warming" is the rallying cry.
Tectonic forces of politics are shifting under our feet.

I will reiterate - energy savings, in and of itself can be good, regardless of one's thinking about "greenhouse effect" but mandates of behavior based on incomplete science should be questioned.