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| Freeman Dyson, Professor of Physics |
This piece is about the power of the Axis of Indoctrination, which consists of Media, Academia and Hollywood. In this case, we focus on the power of Hollywood -- and how it not just reflects, but shapes perception and opinion on culture and politics.
We start with a man named Freeman Dyson. Who is Freeman Dyson? How smart is he? And why has this Obama-supporting liberal become one of the world’s leading “climate change skeptics”?
Here’s what The New York Times magazine said, in 2009, about this world-renowned physicist:
“Dyson is a scientist whose intelligence is revered by other scientists -- William Press, former deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, calls him ‘infinitely smart.’ Dyson -- a mathematics prodigy who came to this country at 23 and right away contributed seminal work to physics by unifying quantum and electrodynamic theory -- not only did path-breaking science of his own; he also witnessed the development of modern physics, thinking alongside most of the luminous figures of the age, including Einstein, Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Witten, the ‘high priest of string theory’ whose office at the institute is just across the hall from Dyson’s.”
You get the point.
At 90, Dyson’s mind remains vital. A few years ago, he began to examine the widely accepted notion that man-made “global warming” or man-affected “climate change” represents a threat to our existence. He soon became what many call a “climate-change skeptic.” The Times said:
“it was [in 2005] that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that 'all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.' Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that “the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all” and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an ‘obsession’ -- the primary article of faith for ‘a worldwide secular religion’ known as environmentalism.
“Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, whom Dyson calls climate change’s ‘chief propagandist,’ and James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Gore’s film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s ‘lousy science’ for ‘distracting public attention’ from ‘more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet.’”
Dyson is married. His wife, accompanied by him, goes to the theatre to see Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” Her reaction? Did she immediately dismiss it as propaganda? After all, she alone is in unique position to listen to and benefit from the musings on the subject from one of the world’s smartest minds, right?
But, no, she felt Dyson had been deceptive:
“A particularly distressed member of that public was Dyson’s own wife, Imme, who, after seeing the film in a local theater with Dyson when it was released in 2006, looked at her husband out on the sidewalk and, with visions of drowning polar bears still in her eyes, reproached him: ‘Everything you told me is wrong!’ she cried.
“’The polar bears will be fine,’ he assured her.”
If a one-sided, propagandistic documentary by a grade-D science student can, in 100 minutes, undo the brilliant Dyson’s influence on his own wife, Lord help the rest of us.
We start with a man named Freeman Dyson. Who is Freeman Dyson? How smart is he? And why has this Obama-supporting liberal become one of the world’s leading “climate change skeptics”?
Here’s what The New York Times magazine said, in 2009, about this world-renowned physicist:
“Dyson is a scientist whose intelligence is revered by other scientists -- William Press, former deputy director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and now a professor of computer science at the University of Texas, calls him ‘infinitely smart.’ Dyson -- a mathematics prodigy who came to this country at 23 and right away contributed seminal work to physics by unifying quantum and electrodynamic theory -- not only did path-breaking science of his own; he also witnessed the development of modern physics, thinking alongside most of the luminous figures of the age, including Einstein, Richard Feynman, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Edward Witten, the ‘high priest of string theory’ whose office at the institute is just across the hall from Dyson’s.”
You get the point.
At 90, Dyson’s mind remains vital. A few years ago, he began to examine the widely accepted notion that man-made “global warming” or man-affected “climate change” represents a threat to our existence. He soon became what many call a “climate-change skeptic.” The Times said:
“it was [in 2005] that Dyson began publicly stating his doubts about climate change. Speaking at the Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University, Dyson announced that 'all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated.' Since then he has only heated up his misgivings, declaring in a 2007 interview with Salon.com that “the fact that the climate is getting warmer doesn’t scare me at all” and writing in an essay for The New York Review of Books, the left-leaning publication that is to gravitas what the Beagle was to Darwin, that climate change has become an ‘obsession’ -- the primary article of faith for ‘a worldwide secular religion’ known as environmentalism.
“Among those he considers true believers, Dyson has been particularly dismissive of Al Gore, whom Dyson calls climate change’s ‘chief propagandist,’ and James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York and an adviser to Gore’s film, ‘An Inconvenient Truth.’ Dyson accuses them of relying too heavily on computer-generated climate models that foresee a Grand Guignol of imminent world devastation as icecaps melt, oceans rise and storms and plagues sweep the earth, and he blames the pair’s ‘lousy science’ for ‘distracting public attention’ from ‘more serious and more immediate dangers to the planet.’”
Dyson is married. His wife, accompanied by him, goes to the theatre to see Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth.” Her reaction? Did she immediately dismiss it as propaganda? After all, she alone is in unique position to listen to and benefit from the musings on the subject from one of the world’s smartest minds, right?
But, no, she felt Dyson had been deceptive:
“A particularly distressed member of that public was Dyson’s own wife, Imme, who, after seeing the film in a local theater with Dyson when it was released in 2006, looked at her husband out on the sidewalk and, with visions of drowning polar bears still in her eyes, reproached him: ‘Everything you told me is wrong!’ she cried.
“’The polar bears will be fine,’ he assured her.”
If a one-sided, propagandistic documentary by a grade-D science student can, in 100 minutes, undo the brilliant Dyson’s influence on his own wife, Lord help the rest of us.
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Undue? Really? Shouldn't that be "undo"?
ReplyDeleteKirk (my older's brother's name),
ReplyDeleteThanks for catching that.
Larry