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A comment on Freeman Dyson: The Question of Global Warming.

Re:Freeman Dyson: The Question of Global Warming by rickardg on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @05:50AM (#201929)
I thought it ironical that Freeman Dyson has been very sceptical to computer models of the atmosphere:

"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 do empirical research]" -- http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf07/dysonf07_index.html

but in this article seems to think that the economists have their models down cold, at least when they support his viewpoint.

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Re:Freeman Dyson: The Question of Global Warming by gruseom on Wednesday May 28, 2008 @02:25PM (#202415)
The same thought occurred to me, with reference to exactly the same earlier piece. Economic computer models surely suffer from most of the problems that the climate models do. I kept expecting him to repeat the same critique and was a little surprised when he didn't. I'm willing to cut him a little more slack than you are, though; it's true that he might just be changing his tune to suit a predefined viewpoint, but I can think of other interpretations as well. Hopefully he'll write more about it and we can see.
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