Climate ‘consensus’: ‘Is carbon dioxide the new cholesterol?’ Freeman Dyson: ‘Science of course is always correcting mistakes. That’s what it’s all about’
New Jersey Star Ledger's Paul Mulshine: Washington Post wrote an editorial stating, "Government agencies must constantly make recommendations on the basis of just this kind of incomplete but suggestive evidence, and there is a consensus on what to do." That sounds like the current debate over climate change, doesn’t it? Nope. That editorial is from 1980. The issue was not levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere but levels of cholesterol in the diet.
In that case, the consensus was that the amounts of saturated fats and cholesterol in the diet are related to the levels of cholesterol in the blood and "that reducing the one will lower the other," the Post wrote.
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"It used to be that even considering the possibility of the alternative hypothesis, let alone researching it, was tantamount to quackery by association," Taubes wrote. "Now a small but growing minority of establishment researchers have come to take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along."t is indeed, and I would encourage my fellow journalists to keep that in mind in light of the highly touted "consensus" on the role of carbon dioxide in promoting global warming.
Climate science is infinitely more complicated than human physiology. Once all of the data are in, we may find that atmospheric carbon dioxide‚ actually has the effect predicted by physicist Freeman Dyson of the Institute of Advanced Study in Princeton. The 90-year-old Dyson, whom many consider to be the smartest guy on Earth, argues that far from harming the planet, atmospheric C)-2‚ may have a positive effect by increasing plant growth.
Perhaps you disagree. Fine, but you’re disagreeing with a guy who calculated the number of atoms in the sun when he was 5 years old and who’s been at the institute since Einstein was walking the grounds. Science requires taking the long view, said Dyson when I called him the other day. "Science of course is always correcting mistakes," he said. "That’s what it’s all about." It is indeed. What it’s not about is consensus.
