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Friday, May 15, 2015

The problems with the arguments against GM crops

Copyright: Flickr/ Ollivier Girard, CIFOR

Original link:  http://www.scidev.net/global/gm/opinion/arguments-against-gm-crops.html#sthash.zlrO1gLo.dpuf

Speed read

  • A report says 18 million farmers, mostly smallholders, grew GM crops in 2013
  • Anti-GM debates have problems, such as hidden agenda and double standards
  • GM crops should be grown to aid food security and environmental sustainability
New evidence shows that arguments against GM crops are unfounded, says Margaret Karembu.

The year 2013 marked the 18th consecutive year of commercial cultivation of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) or now commonly referred to as biotech crops.

And in just under two decades, the volume of land on which biotech crops are grown has increased from 1.7 million hectares in 1996 — the first year of commercial planting — to about 175 million hectares in 2013, according to a global report on GM crops released by the International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-biotech Applications (ISAAA) in 2014. [1]

In 2013, more than 18 million farmers in 27 countries across the world made independent choices to grow biotech crops. [1]

Yet, despite these figures showing a technology on the upward trajectory in terms of adoption, the anti-GMO lobby has continued to hold its position that farmers shouldn’t grow biotech crops due to a myriad of excuses. It is important to note such excuses are perpetuated through the most advanced and efficient use of information and communication technologies.

“Contrary to widely held opinion that GM technology will only benefit multi-nationals and is meant for large-scale farmers, the latest trends reveal otherwise.”

Margaret Karembu

How then can this contradiction be explained? Is it okay for one segment of society to access the best technology available for their communication (or is it mis-communication?) but unacceptable to avail similar opportunities and choices to farmers to make farming more efficient? Could such a large number of farmers be fooled for nearly two decades with a technology that is not delivering? Would the governments of these countries growing or approving use of biotech crops be so indifferent and reckless as to allow and support application of the technology in their territories?

Differentiating perception from reality  

The first problem with the whole debate against biotech crops is differentiating between perception and reality.  A German philosopher, Friedrich Nietzsche once said: “The most perfidious way of harming a cause consists of defending it deliberately with faulty arguments”. While I don’t subscribe to Nietzsche’s philosophical theories, this one statement could hold true in this context. Contrary to widely held opinion that GM technology will only benefit multi-nationals and is meant for large-scale farmers, the latest trends reveal otherwise.

At least 90 per cent of the 18 million farmers who grew biotech crops in 2013 were small-scale resource-poor farmers in developing countries. One of the findings in the ISAAA report, for instance, shows that national benefits to Bt cotton farmers in Burkina Faso were estimated at US$26 million, representing 67 per cent of total benefits with only US$12 million accruing to the technology developers.

Other documented benefits of biotech crops go beyond agricultural improvement to climate change mitigation and environmental sustainability. GM technology has demonstrated the power to provide a better environment and breed crops resilient to harsh climatic conditions such as drought.

For instance, in 2012 biotech crops alone contributed to a reduction of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 26.7 billion kilograms, which is equivalent to taking 11.8 million cars off the road for one year. [2] By reducing the amount of chemical sprays by more than half for a crop such as biotech cotton, GM technology is probably the only agricultural technology that can boast of making this kind of contribution to environmental conservation.

Hidden agenda of activists

The second problem is overcoming vested interest. A look into the source of funding for anti-GM activities reveals that although they are often portrayed as grassroots movements, many are part of a much larger coalition of social activists, environmental NGOs and social-investment organisations backed by a reservoir of funding from special interest foundations.

Almost all anti-GM activists back, and in turn receive support from, organic or so called ‘socially responsible’ investment industries. Competition from cheaper and safer biotech products is seen as a threat, thus the use of anti-biotechnology rhetoric and support for activist groups to validate their products and grow their markets.

The third problem is a strong desire by some interest groups to romanticise poverty and hunger. Ironically, poverty and food insecurity provide booming businesses and a form of ‘tourism’ for several anti-GM lobbyists who know nothing about farming, especially in Africa. While lobbyists spend three quarters of their time globe-trotting and peddling unsubstantiated claims against biotech foods, farmers — especially women — are breaking their backs weeding with their hands and scouting for pests in a merciless scorching sun.

Blocking novel technologies may mean an end to dependency on others for food and diminishing control and access to the continent’s natural resources and ‘free tourism’ disguised in numerous ‘monitoring and farming  inspection’ trips. Continuing to deny farmers the choice of proven, safe and efficient agri-biotechnologies would be equated to ‘protecting poverty’ and obstructing them from optimising chances of enhancing their social welfare as well.

Proven to be safe

According to the WHO, the GM foods currently available on the international market have passed safety assessments and are not likely to present health or environmental risks. In addition, no negative effects on human health have been shown as a result of consuming foods by the general population in the countries where they have been approved.

Extensive and independently reviewed health studies — including long-term animal studies — conducted over the past 20 years using the same biotech crops have found no negative results and confirm the safety of biotech foods.

“Blocking novel technologies may mean an end to dependency on others for food and diminishing control and access to the continent’s natural resources and ‘free tourism’ disguised in numerous ‘monitoring and farming  inspection’ trips, and, with the most efficient jet.”

Margaret Karembu

The few researchers who have made claims on negative effects refuse to share their data and research protocols for review with regulators or independent academic authorities. When they have shared the data, food safety, health and regulatory agencies have rejected the findings as flawed and misleading. For example, a study published in 2012 that indicated negative safety effects of GM maize was found to have questionable study design. [3] It was retracted last year. [4]

Impacts of GM crops

A study by the African Development Bank and the International Food Policy Research Institute in 2012 concluded that under ideal conditions, the use of GM crops grown by smallholder farmers could improve gross margins by 114 per cent, reduce pesticide costs by 60 to 90 per cent, and improve yields by 18 to 29 per cent. [5] This could make a significant contribution in lifting farming communities out of abject poverty, subsistence farming and improve their health.

Considering these overwhelming progress and opportunities, regardless of the widely spread fears about GM crops, one thing remains certain: That biotech crops have already demonstrated a crucial contribution in fighting food insecurity and environmental degradation.

Coincidentally, in 2015, as the world leaders will meet to re-assess the success and challenges of meeting the Millennium Development Goals, biotech crops will also be marking 20 years of sustained commercial cultivation.

Genetically modified crops will have just turned 20 and in a humanly way, can therefore be considered as young adults, ready to help the global community address these three nagging challenges of poverty, hunger and environmental sustainability.

Margaret Karembu is the director of ISAAA AfriCenter and is also the chair of the Open Forum on Agricultural Biotechnology (OFAB) Kenya Chapter Programming Committee. She has vast experience in managing, implementing and coordinating technology transfer projects as well as diffusion studies on modern biotechnology. She is a science communication specialist, and holds a PhD degree in environmental science education from Kenyatta University, Kenya. She can be contacted at mkarembu@isaaa.org.
at

Sam Harris (author)


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sam Harris
Sam Harris 01.jpg
Harris, pictured c. 2007
Born Samuel B. Harris[1]
(1967-04-09) April 9, 1967 (age 48)
Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation Author, philosopher, neuroscientist, non-profit executive
Nationality American
Education Philosophy (B.A. 2000), Neuroscience (Ph.D. 2009)
Alma mater Stanford University
UCLA
Genre Non-fiction
Subject Religion, philosophy, neuroscience
Notable works
Notable awards PEN/Martha Albrand Award
Spouse Annaka Harris (m. 2004)
Signature
Website
www.samharris.org

Samuel B. "Sam" Harris (born April 9, 1967) is an American author, philosopher, neuroscientist, and the co-founder and chief executive of Project Reason, a non-profit that promotes science and secularism.[2] He is the author of The End of Faith, which was published in 2004 and appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list for 33 weeks. The book also won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for First Nonfiction in 2005.[3] In 2006, Harris published the book Letter to a Christian Nation as a response to criticism of The End of Faith. This work was followed by The Moral Landscape, published in 2010, in which Harris argues that science can help answer moral problems and can aid the facilitation of human well-being.[4] He subsequently published a long-form essay Lying in 2011, the short book Free Will in 2012, and Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion in 2014.

Harris is a critic of religion and proponent of scientific skepticism and the "New Atheism". He is also an advocate for the separation of church and state, freedom of religion, and the liberty to criticize religion.[4] Some commentators have claimed Harris's writings encourage aggression towards and intolerance of Muslims, while others have praised his criticism as unapologetically direct and long overdue.[5] Critics who read him as advocating ethnic profiling of Muslims and waterboarding have accused Harris of Islamophobia.[6] Harris and others have said the term is misused and that such labeling is an attempt to silence criticism.[7]

Harris has written articles for The Huffington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsweek, and the journal Nature. His articles touch upon a diversity of topics including religion, morality, neuroscience, free will, terrorism, and self-defense.[8] He regularly gives talks around the United States and Great Britain, including a speech at TED, where he outlined the arguments made in his book The Moral Landscape.[9]
Harris has also made numerous television appearances, including interviews for Nightline, Real Time with Bill Maher, The O'Reilly Factor, The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Last Word, among others. He has also appeared in the documentary films The God Who Wasn't There (2005) and The Unbelievers (2013).

Early life and education

Sam Harris was born on born April 9, 1967 in Los Angeles.[10] Harris grew up in a secular home, the son of actor Berkeley Harris and TV producer Susan Harris, who created The Golden Girls.[11] His father came from a Quaker background and his mother is a secular Jew.[6] Harris has stated that his upbringing was entirely secular,[12] and his parents rarely discussed religion, though it was always a subject which interested him.[13][14]

In 1986, as a young student at Stanford University, Harris experimented with the drug ecstasy, and has since written and spoken about the powerful insights he felt psychologically under the drug's influence.[15][16]

Harris became interested in spiritual and philosophical questions when he studied at Stanford University. He was fascinated by the idea that he might be able to achieve spiritual insights without the use of drugs.[17] Leaving Stanford in his second year, he went to India, where he studied meditation with Hindu and Buddhist religious teachers,[17][18] including Dilgo Khyentse.[19] Eleven years later, in 1997, he returned to Stanford, completing a B.A. degree in philosophy in 2000.[14][20] Harris began writing his first book, The End of Faith, immediately after the September 11 attacks.[14]

He received a Ph.D. degree in cognitive neuroscience in 2009 from the University of California, Los Angeles,[14][21][22] using functional magnetic resonance imaging to conduct research into the neural basis of belief, disbelief, and uncertainty.[14][22] His thesis was titled "The moral landscape: How science could determine human values", and his advisor was Mark S. Cohen.[23]

Views

Religion

Harris says that religion is especially rife with bad ideas, calling it "one of the most perverse misuses of intelligence we have ever devised."[24] He compares modern religious beliefs to the myths of the Ancient Greeks, which were once accepted as fact but which are obsolete today. In a January 2007 interview with PBS, Harris said, "We don't have a word for not believing in Zeus, which is to say we are all atheists in respect to Zeus. And we don't have a word for not being an astrologer". He goes on to say that the term will be retired only when "we all just achieve a level of intellectual honesty where we are no longer going to pretend to be certain about things we are not certain about".[25]

Harris states that he advocates a benign, noncoercive, corrective form of intolerance, distinguishing it from historic religious persecution. He promotes a conversational intolerance, in which personal convictions are scaled against evidence, and where intellectual honesty is demanded equally in religious views and non-religious views.[26] He also believes there is a need to counter inhibitions that prevent the open critique of religious ideas, beliefs, and practices under the auspices of "tolerance".[27] He has stated on his blog that he has received death threats for some of his views on religion.[28]

Columnist Madeleine Bunting quotes Harris from his book The End of Faith: "Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them." Bunting declares that Harris's statement "sounds like exactly the kind of argument put forward by those who ran the Inquisition".[29] Quoting the same passage, theologian Catherine Keller asks, "[c]ould there be a more dangerous proposition than that?" and says that the "anti-tolerance" it represents would "dismantle" the Jeffersonian wall between church and state.[30] Writer Theodore Dalrymple described the passage as "quite possibly the most disgraceful that I have read in a book by a man posing as a rationalist".[31] A fellow contributor at The Huffington Post, R. J. Eskow, has written a number of columns commenting on Harris’s statements. In one column, Eskow characterized Harris as espousing a "brand of evangelical atheism," and questioned whether it was a creed of "intolerance."[32]

In response to some of the most frequent criticisms of his work—many of which he says are unfair and which misunderstand or distort his true positions—Harris maintains a long and frequently updated post on his personal website where he addresses each claim.[33]

In positive book reviews of The End of Faith, Nina Burleigh agrees with Harris' premise that religious "faith" is leading humanity into ruin, and the world would be better off without the three major religions,[34] and Richard Dawkins cheers the fact that while the book won't "change the minds of idiots," it will encourage other intelligent people to come out and raise their voices.[35]

Islam


Sam Harris speaking in 2010 at TED

Compared to some other major world religions, Harris considers Islam to be "especially belligerent and inimical to the norms of civil discourse." He asserts that the "dogmatic commitment to using violence to defend one’s faith, both from within and without" to varying degrees, is a central part of the doctrine of Islam not found in many other religions, "and this difference has consequences in the real world."

In 2006, after the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Harris wrote, "The idea that Islam is a 'peaceful religion hijacked by extremists' is a dangerous fantasy—and it is now a particularly dangerous fantasy for Muslims to indulge. It is not at all clear how we should proceed in our dialogue with the Muslim world, but deluding ourselves with euphemisms is not the answer. It now appears to be a truism in foreign policy circles that real reform in the Muslim world cannot be imposed from the outside. But it is important to recognize why this is so—it is so because the Muslim world is utterly deranged by its religious tribalism. In confronting the religious literalism and ignorance of the Muslim world, we must appreciate how terrifyingly isolated Muslims have become in intellectual terms."[7][36][37][38] He has voiced support for profiling, stating, "We should profile Muslims, or anyone who looks like he or she could conceivably be Muslim, and we should be honest about it."[39]

Anthropologist Scott Atran has criticized Harris for what he believes is an unscientific highlighting of the role of belief in the psychology of suicide bombers. Atran later followed up his comments in an online discussion for Edge, in which he criticized Harris and others for combating religious dogmatism and faith in a way that Atran believes is "scientifically baseless, psychologically uninformed, politically naïve, and counterproductive for goals we share".[40]

In an article in The Nation reviewing three of Harris’ books, Jackson Lears, states that, when Harris’ arguments are evaluated "according to their resonance with public policy debates, the results are sobering...", continuing:
"From him we learn, among other things, that torture is just another form of collateral damage in the "war on terror"—regrettable, maybe, but a necessary price to pay in the crucial effort to save Western civilization from the threat of radical Islam… As in the golden age of positivism, a notion of sovereign science is enlisted in the service of empire. Harris dispenses with the Christian rhetoric of his imperialist predecessors but not with their rationalizations for state-sponsored violence".[41]
After two columns, one in Al Jazeera and one in Salon, accused Harris and the New Atheists of expressing irrational anti-Muslim animus under the guise of rational atheism, Glenn Greenwald wrote a column saying he agreed: "The key point is that Harris does far, far more than voice criticisms of Islam as part of a general critique of religion. He has repeatedly made clear that he thinks Islam is uniquely threatening ... Yes, he criticizes Christianity, but he reserves the most intense attacks and superlative condemnations for Islam, as well as unique policy proscriptions of aggression, violence and rights abridgments aimed only at Muslims."[39] Harris wrote a response to this controversy, which also aired on a debate hosted by The Huffington Post on whether critics of Islam are unfairly labeled as bigots:


Harris doesn't consider the term "Islamophobia" valid. He emphasizes that his criticism is aimed not at Muslims as people, but at the doctrine of Islam as an ideology, acknowledging that not all Muslims subscribe to the ideas he is criticizing. "My criticism of Islam is a criticism of beliefs and their consequences," he wrote following a controversial clash with Ben Affleck in October 2014 on the show Real Time with Bill Maher, "but my fellow liberals reflexively view it as an expression of intolerance toward people."[44] "Islamophobia is a term of propaganda designed to protect Islam from the forces of secularism by conflating all criticism of it with racism and xenophobia. And it is doing its job, because people like you have been taken in by it."[7] In a February 2015 interview with The Washington Post, Harris reported that he was co-authoring a book titled Islam and the Future of Tolerance with Maajid Nawaz.[38]

Many atheists have endorsed Harris' theory that the term "Islamophobia" has been used to silence critics of Islam.[42][45][46][47][48] Writing in the New York Post, Rich Lowry defended Harris and Maher by arguing that their liberals critics are unable to "talk frankly about the illiberalism of much of the Muslim world" as "[i]t entails resisting the reflex to consider any criticism of the Third World as presumptive racism."[49]

Christianity

Harris has roundly criticized Christianity, and has reserved additional and particular derision for specific branches. He has described Mormonism as less credible than most Christianity, "because Mormons are committed to believing nearly all the implausible things that Christians believe plus many additional implausible things", such as Jesus returning to earth in Jackson County, Missouri. Harris has referred to Catholicism as "ghoulish machinery set to whirling through the ages by the opposing winds of shame and sadism", and criticized the Catholic Church for spending "two millennia demonizing human sexuality to a degree unmatched by any other institution, declaring the most basic, healthy, mature, and consensual behaviors taboo." Harris has also criticized the Catholic Church's structure and forced celibacy within its ranks for attracting pedophiles, and blames its opposition to the use of contraception for poverty, shorter lifespans, and proliferation of AIDS.[50]

Judaism

Harris, who was raised by a secular Jewish mother and a Quaker father, has stated that his upbringing was entirely secular. Fellow religion critic Christopher Hitchens once referred to Harris as a "Jewish warrior against theocracy and bigotry of all stripes".[12]

In The End of Faith, Harris is critical of the Jewish faith and its followers:


Harris has said he holds somewhat paradoxical views about Israel and Judaism, and is still genuinely undecided on some things. "I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state. I think it is obscene, irrational and unjustifiable to have a state organized around a religion. So I don’t celebrate the idea that there’s a Jewish homeland in the Middle East. I certainly don’t support any Jewish claims to real estate based on the Bible. Though I just said that I don’t think Israel should exist as a Jewish state, the justification for such a state is rather easy to find. We need look no further than the fact that the rest of the world has shown itself eager to murder the Jews at almost every opportunity. So, if there were going to be a state organized around protecting members of a single religion, it certainly should be a Jewish state. Now, friends of Israel might consider this a rather tepid defense, but it’s the strongest one I’ve got. I think the idea of a religious state is ultimately untenable."[51]

On spirituality, mysticism, and the paranormal

Despite his anti-religion sentiments, Sam Harris also claims that there is "nothing irrational about seeking the states of mind that lie at the core of many religions. Compassion, awe, devotion and feelings of oneness are surely among the most valuable experiences a person can have."[17] Similarly, Margaret Wertheim,who considers herself to be an atheist, contends that Harris's account of religious faith as the source of many social evils should be viewed "with considerable skepticism". "I would like to stand up for religion and the value of faith", she said, and concluded after her mother told her it was Catholicism which motivated her extensive charitable works, "that the left hand of God is also one of the greatest powers for social change on this planet."[52]

In January 2007, Harris received criticism from John Gorenfeld, writing for AlterNet.[53] Gorenfeld took Harris to task for defending some of the findings of paranormal investigations into areas such as reincarnation and xenoglossy. He also strongly criticized Harris for his defense of judicial torture. (Harris has stated that he believes torture should be illegal, but that it in certain extreme circumstances it may be ethical to break the law.)[33]
Gorenfeld's critique was subsequently reflected by Robert Todd Carroll, writing in The Skeptic's Dictionary.[54] On his website Harris disputed that he had defended these views to the extent that Gorenfeld suggested.[33]

Science and morality

In his third book, The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values, Harris says that "Human well-being is not a random phenomenon. It depends on many factors—ranging from genetics and neurobiology to sociology and economics." Harris says that it is time to promote a scientific approach to normative morality, rejecting the idea that religion determines what is good. He believes that once scientists begin proposing moral norms in papers, supernatural moral systems will join "astrology, witchcraft and Greek mythology on the scrapheap".[55]

A number of reviews in the media have criticized various arguments advanced by Harris in the book.[56][57][58][59][60][61] Soon after the book's release, Harris responded to some of the criticisms in an article for The Huffington Post.[62]

In a review of The Moral Landscape published in The National Interest, anthropologist Scott Atran stated that
"Contrary to Harris’s latest screed, there is no such thing as a science-based universal morality. And abolishing religion will do nothing to rid mankind of its ills."[63]
Academic philosophers have also criticized The Moral Landscape. Massimo Pigliucci evaluates the attempt by Harris to "mount a science-based challenge to Hume's famous separation of facts from values" as errant, while identifying himself as a "moral realist", along with Harris. In his review of the book, Pigliucci notes that Harris is a consequentialist, and states
"...Harris entirely evades philosophical criticism of his positions, on the simple grounds that he finds metaethics "boring." But he is a self-professed consequentialist -- a philosophical stance close to utilitarianism -- who simply ducks any discussion of the implications of that a priori choice, which informs his entire view of what counts for morality, happiness, well-being and so forth. He seems unaware (or doesn't care about) the serious philosophical objections that have been raised against consequentialism, and even less so of the various moves in logical space (some more convincing than others) that consequentialist have made to defend their position".[64]

Free will

Harris says the idea of free will is incoherent. Humans are not free and no sense can be given to the concept that we might be.[65] According to Harris, science "reveals you to be a biochemical puppet."[66]

Commenting on Harris's book Free Will, Daniel Dennett disagrees with Harris' position on compatibilism, and asks if Harris is directing his arguments against an unreasonably absolute or "perfect freedom" version of compatibilism, which Dennett would describe as an incoherent, straw man version.[67][68]

Social and economic politics

Harris describes himself as a liberal, and states that he supports raising taxes on the wealthy, decriminalizing drugs, and the rights of homosexuals to marry. He was critical of the Bush administration's war in Iraq, fiscal policy and treatment of science.[69]

Organizational affiliations

In 2007 Harris and his wife, Annaka Harris, founded Project Reason, a charitable foundation devoted to spreading scientific knowledge and secular values in society.[70]

Harris is also a member of the advisory board of the Secular Coalition for America,[71] a national lobbying organization representing the interests of nontheistic Americans.

Neuroscience

Building on his interests in belief and religion, Harris completed a PhD in cognitive neuroscience at UCLA.[18][22]
He used fMRI to explore whether the brain responses differ between sentences that subjects judged as true, false, or undecidable, across a wide range of categories including autobiographical, mathematical, geographical, religious, ethical, semantic, and factual statements.[72]

In another study, Harris and colleagues examined the neural basis of religious and non-religious belief using fMRI.[73] Fifteen committed Christians and fifteen nonbelievers were scanned as they evaluated the truth and falsity of religious and nonreligious propositions. For both groups, statements of belief (sentences judged as either true or false) were associated with increased activation of ventromedial prefrontal cortex, a region of the brain involved in emotional judgment, processing uncertainty, assessing rewards and thinking about oneself.[22] A "comparison of all religious trials to all nonreligious trials produced a wide range of signal differences throughout the brain," and the processing of religious belief and empirical belief differed in significant ways. The regions associated with increased activation in response to religious stimuli included the anterior insula, the ventral striatum, the anterior cingulate cortex, and the posterior medial cortex.[73]

Writings and media appearances

Harris's writing focuses on neuroscience and criticism of religion, for which he is best known. He blogs for the Washington Post, the Huffington Post, and formerly for Truthdig, and his articles have appeared in such publications as Newsweek, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, and the British national newspaper The Times.[74]

Harris has made numerous TV and radio appearances, including on The O'Reilly Factor, ABC News, Tucker, Book TV, NPR, Real Time, The Colbert Report, and The Daily Show. In 2005, Harris appeared in the documentary film The God Who Wasn't There. Harris was a featured speaker at the 2006 conference Beyond Belief: Science, Religion, Reason and Survival. He made two presentations and participated in the ensuing panel discussions. Harris has also appeared a number of times on the Point of Inquiry radio podcast. Harris engaged in a lengthy debate with Andrew Sullivan on the internet forum Beliefnet.[75] In April 2007, Harris debated with the evangelical pastor Rick Warren for Newsweek magazine.[76] In April 2011, he debated William Lane Craig on the nature of morality.[77][78]
In September 2011 Harris's essay Lying was published as a Kindle single.[79]

Harris has appeared as a guest on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast four times, most recently in April 2015. The conversations have each lasted around three hours and have covered a variety of topics related to Harris's research, books, and interests.

On September 28, 2012, Harris spoke at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney, Australia.[80] His speech was on the delusion of Free Will,[80] which is also the topic of his book of 2012.[81]

On April 7, 2013, Harris announced his book, Waking Up: Science, Skepticism, Spirituality, which describes his views on spiritual and contemplative experiences.[82] The book was published in late 2014.

Personal life

Harris was a serious student of the martial arts and taught ninjutsu in college. After more than twenty years, he began practicing two martial arts again,[83] including Brazilian jiu-jitsu.[84]

Harris has been reluctant to discuss personal details such as where he now lives, citing security reasons.[85] Harris married Annaka Harris, an editor of nonfiction and scientific books in 2004.[86] They have two daughters.[87]

Books

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Cheese: The GMO food die-hard GMO opponents love (and oppose a label for)

& | May 15, 2015 |
 
Original link:  http://www.geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/05/15/cheese-gmo-food-die-hard-gmo-opponents-love-and-oppose-a-label-for/

CheeseGroup014_400x250_85A

Slammed by critics, Chipotle has been forced to back track on its non GMO claims. Its beef, pork and chicken are sourced from farm animals fed with GMO grain. And all of its calorie-packed sodas are sweetened with GMO sugar.

But it has yet to come clean on its most controversial GMO ingredient: all of its cheese is genetically modified. That’s right. The clotting agent used to curdle the milk into cheese is genetically engineered. So much for Chipotle’s bragging claim of transparency.

In fact, almost all the hard cheese made in the United States, and in much of the West, uses a genetically engineered protein that is made from genetically engineered yeast and bacteria to make cheese. That includes cheese made in Vermont, which has passed a mandatory GMO labeling bill–that curiously exempts its iconic Vermont cheese from carrying a GMO label. So much for the consumer’s ‘right to know.’

In fact, critics of GMOs almost never acknowledge the fact that almost all hard cheeses are GMOs. In cheese production, coagulants called rennet are used to clot milk. The primary enzyme in rennet driving the clotting process is called chymosin, which acts on milk proteins like casein and makes milk curdle.

Traditionally, rennet is obtained from the fourth stomach lining of an unweaned calf. Calves have a higher amount of rennet in their stomachs compared to adults as they use it to digest milk, their main source of food. The rennet extracted from the stomach linings is usually a mixture of chymosin, pepsin (another enzyme) and other proteins.

Beginning in the 1960s, the price of rennet, a byproduct of the veal industry, rose and became less stable as the animal rights movement grew. Demand for cheese also soared, and cheese-makers began looking for alternative sources of rennet from plants and microbes.

Some plants and microbes naturally produce enzymes that have coagulating properties like rennet. However, rennet from these sources tend to produce other side reactions in cheese production, leading to undesirable results in taste.

So how did biotechnology come to play a role? In the late 1980s, scientists figured out how to transfer a single gene from bovine cells that codes for chymosin into microbes, giving microbes the ability to produce chymosin. These genetically modified microbes are allowed to multiply and cultivated in a fermentation process while they produce and release chymosin into the culture liquid. The chymosin can then be separated and purified. Chymosin produced using this method is termed fermentation-produced chymosin, or FPC.

FPC was given Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS) status by the Food and Drug Administration in 1990 after 28 months of review. The FDA found that FPC was substantially equivalent to rennet produced from calves, thus it needed no special labeling or indication of its source or method of production. FPC is actually more pure than calf rennet, as it does not contain other proteins from the calf stomach lining that cannot be separated from calf rennet during production. “The real advantage is that it is probably a much cheaper way of producing this substance than to grow calves,” said William Grigg, an FDA employee.

Today ninety percent of the cheese in the United States is made using FPC. In the past two decades, FPC has been considered the ideal milk-clotting enzyme. FPC has been regarded as suitable for meeting vegetarian, kosher and halal requirements. However, some vegetarians consider FPC to be derived from animals as the microbes were genetically modified using bovine genetic material. In response, scientists began synthesizing the gene needed to produce a synthetic form of FPC that does not have any genetic material from animals.

GMO concerns about FPC are few compared to those directed at genetically modified crops. Recent campaigns in Vermont, a major cheese-producing state that just passed a GMO-labeling law did not address the use of FPC to make cheese; dairy products are simply exempt. FPC is not allowed in organic cheese based on the certification rules in the United States, Europe and Canada, providing an option for consumers who wish to avoid FPC.

FPC is an important but little-known success of biotechnology. Cheese-makers still use animal rennet, but to a large extent, FPC has removed the need for animal rennet in the production of cheese.

Jon Entine, executive director of the Genetic Literacy Project, is a senior fellow at the World Food Center Institute for Food and Agricultural Literacy, University of California, Davis. Follow @JonEntine on Twitter
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Freeman Dyson


From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Freeman Dyson
Freeman Dyson.jpg
At the Long Now Seminar
in San Francisco, 2005
Born Freeman John Dyson
(1923-12-15) 15 December 1923 (age 91)
Crowthorne, Berkshire, England
Nationality British
Fields Physics, Mathematics
Institutions Royal Air Force
Institute for Advanced Study
University of Birmingham
Duke University
Cornell University
Alma mater Trinity College, Cambridge, Cornell University[1]
Academic advisors Hans Bethe
Known for Dyson sphere
Dyson operator
Dyson series
Schwinger-Dyson equation
Circular ensemble
Random Matrix Theory
Advocacy against nuclear weapons
Dyson conjecture
Dyson's eternal intelligence
Dyson number
Dyson tree
Dyson's transform
Project Orion
TRIGA
Influences Richard Feynman,[2][3][full citation needed] Abram Samoilovitch Besicovitch[4]
Notable awards Heineman Prize (1965)
Lorentz Medal (1966)
Hughes Medal (1968)
Harvey Prize (1977)
Wolf Prize (1981)
Andrew Gemant Award (1988)
Matteucci Medal (1989)
Oersted Medal (1991)
Fermi Award (1993)
Templeton Prize (2000)
Pomeranchuk Prize (2003)
Poincaré Prize (2012)
Children Esther Dyson, George Dyson, Dorothy Dyson, Mia Dyson, Rebecca Dyson, Emily Dyson
Website
http://www.sns.ias.edu/dyson
Notes
He is the son of George Dyson.

Freeman John Dyson FRS (born 15 December 1923) is an English-born[5][6] theoretical physicist and mathematician, known for his work in quantum electrodynamics, solid-state physics, astronomy and nuclear engineering. Dyson is a member of the Board of Sponsors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.[7]

Biography

Early life

Born at Crowthorne in Berkshire, Dyson is the son of the English composer George Dyson, who was later knighted.
His mother had a law degree, but after Dyson was born she worked as a social worker.[8] Although not known to be related to the early 20th-century astronomer Frank Watson Dyson, as a small boy Dyson was aware of him and has credited the popularity of an astronomer sharing his surname as having helped to spark his own interest in science.[citation needed] At the age of five he calculated the number of atoms in the sun.[9] As a child, he showed an interest in large numbers and in the solar system, and was strongly influenced by the book Men of Mathematics by Eric Temple Bell.[2]

From 1936 to 1941, Dyson was a Scholar at Winchester College, where his father was Director of Music. On 25 July 1943, he entered the Operational Research Section (ORS) of the Royal Air Force’s Bomber Command,[10] where he developed analytical methods to help the Royal Air Force to bomb German targets during the Second World War.[11] After the war, Dyson was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge,[12] where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts degree in mathematics.[13] From 1946 to 1949 he was a Fellow of his college, occupying rooms just below those of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, who resigned his professorship in 1947.[14] In 1947 he published two papers in Number theory[15] [16]

Career in the United States

In 1947 Dyson moved to the US, as Commonwealth Fellow at Cornell University (1947–1948) and the Institute for Advanced Study (1948–1949). Between 1949 and 1951, he was a teaching fellow at the University of Birmingham (UK).[17]

In 1951 he joined the faculty at Cornell as a physics professor, although still lacking a doctorate, and in 1953 he received a permanent post at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey—where he has now lived for more than fifty years.[18] In 1957 he became a naturalized citizen of the United States and renounced his British nationality. One reason he gave decades later is that his children born in the US had not been recognized as British subjects.[5][6]

Dyson is best known for demonstrating in 1949 the equivalence of two then-current formulations of quantum electrodynamics—Richard Feynman's diagrams and the operator method developed by Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga.[19] He was the first person (besides Feynman) to appreciate the power of Feynman diagrams, and his paper written in 1948 and published in 1949 was the first to make use of them. He said in that paper that Feynman diagrams were not just a computational tool, but a physical theory, and developed rules for the diagrams that completely solved the renormalization problem. Dyson's paper and also his lectures presented Feynman's theories of QED (quantum electrodynamics) in a form that other physicists could understand, facilitating the physics community's acceptance of Feynman's work. Robert Oppenheimer, in particular, was persuaded by Dyson that Feynman's new theory was as valid as Schwinger's and Tomonaga's. Oppenheimer rewarded Dyson with a lifetime appointment at the Institute for Advanced Study, "for proving me wrong", in Oppenheimer's words.[20]

Also in 1949, in a related work, Dyson invented the Dyson series.[21] It was this paper that inspired John Ward to derive his celebrated Ward identity.[22]

Dyson also did work in a variety of topics in mathematics, such as topology, analysis, number theory and random matrices.[23] There is an interesting story involving random matrices. In 1973 the number theorist Hugh Montgomery was visiting the Institute for Advanced Study and had just made his pair correlation conjecture concerning the distribution of the zeros of the Riemann zeta function. He showed his formula to the mathematician Atle Selberg who said it looked like something in mathematical physics and he should show it to Dyson, which he did. Dyson recognized the formula as the pair correlation function of the Gaussian unitary ensemble, which has been extensively studied by physicists. This suggested that there might be an unexpected connection between the distribution of primes 2,3,5,7,11, ... and the energy levels in the nuclei of heavy elements such as uranium.[24]
From 1957 to 1961 he worked on the Orion Project, which proposed the possibility of space-flight using nuclear pulse propulsion. A prototype was demonstrated using conventional explosives, but the 1963 Partial Test Ban Treaty (which Dyson was involved in and supported) permitted only underground nuclear testing, so the project was abandoned.

In 1958 he led the design team for the TRIGA, a small, inherently safe nuclear reactor used throughout the world in hospitals and universities for the production of medical isotopes.

A seminal work by Dyson came in 1966 when, together with Andrew Lenard and independently of Elliott H. Lieb and Walter Thirring, he proved rigorously that the exclusion principle plays the main role in the stability of bulk matter.[25][26][27] Hence, it is not the electromagnetic repulsion between outer-shell orbital electrons which prevents two wood blocks that are left on top of each other from coalescing into a single piece, but rather it is the exclusion principle applied to electrons and protons that generates the classical macroscopic normal force. In condensed matter physics, Dyson also did studies in the phase transition of the Ising model in 1 dimension and spin waves.[23]
Around 1979, Dyson worked with the Institute for Energy Analysis on climate studies. This group, under the direction of Alvin Weinberg, pioneered multidisciplinary climate studies, including a strong biology group. Also during the 1970s, he worked on climate studies conducted by the JASON defense advisory group.[18]

Dyson retired from the Institute for Advanced Study in 1994.[28] In 1998, Dyson joined the board of the Solar Electric Light Fund. As of 2003 he was president of the Space Studies Institute, the space research organization founded by Gerard K. O'Neill; As of 2013 he is on its Board of Trustees.[29] Dyson is a long-time member of the JASON group.

Dyson is a regular contributor to The New York Review of Books.

Dyson has won numerous scientific awards but never a Nobel Prize. Nobel physics laureate Steven Weinberg has said that the Nobel committee has "fleeced" Dyson, but Dyson himself remarked in 2009, "I think it's almost true without exception if you want to win a Nobel Prize, you should have a long attention span, get hold of some deep and important problem and stay with it for ten years. That wasn't my style."[18]

In 2012, he published (with William H. Press) a fundamental new result about the Prisoner's Dilemma in PNAS.[30]

Marriages and children

With his first wife, the mathematician Verena Huber-Dyson, Dyson has two children, Esther and George. In 1958 he married Imme Jung, a masters runner, and they eventually had four more children, Dorothy, Mia, Rebecca, and Emily Dyson.[18]

Dyson's eldest daughter, Esther, is a digital technology consultant and investor; she has been called "the most influential woman in all the computer world." [31] His son George is a historian of science,[32] one of whose books is Project Orion: The Atomic Spaceship 1957–1965.

Character

Friends and colleagues describe Dyson as shy and self-effacing, with a contrarian streak that his friends find refreshing but his intellectual opponents find exasperating. "I have the sense that when consensus is forming like ice hardening on a lake, Dyson will do his best to chip at the ice", Steven Weinberg said of him. His friend, the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, said: "A favorite word of Freeman's about doing science and being creative is the word 'subversive'. He feels it's rather important not only to be not orthodox, but to be subversive, and he's done that all his life."[18] [clarification needed] In The God Delusion (2006), biologist Richard Dawkins criticized Dyson for accepting the religious Templeton Prize in 2000; "It would be taken as an endorsement of religion by one of the world's most distinguished physicists."[33] However, Dyson declared in 2000 that he is a (non-denominational) Christian,[34] and he has disagreed with Dawkins on several occasions, as when he criticized Dawkins' understanding of evolution.[35]

Honors and awards

In 1952 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[36]

Dyson was awarded the Lorentz Medal in 1966, Max Planck Medal in 1969, the J. Robert Oppenheimer Memorial Prize in 1970,[37][38] and the Harvey Prize in 1977.

In the 1984–85 academic year he gave the Gifford lectures at Aberdeen, which resulted in the book Infinite In All Directions.

In 1989, Dyson taught at Duke University as a Fritz London Memorial Lecturer. In the same year, he was elected as an Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, University of Cambridge.

Dyson has published a number of collections of speculations and observations about technology, science, and the future. In 1996 he was awarded the Lewis Thomas Prize for Writing about Science.

In 1993, Dyson was given the Enrico Fermi Award.

In 1995 he gave the Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, sponsored jointly by the Hebrew University and Harvard University Press that grew into the book Imagined Worlds.[39]

In 2000, Dyson was awarded the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion.

In 2003, Dyson was awarded the Telluride Tech Festival Award of Technology in Telluride, Colorado.

In 2011, Dyson was received as one of twenty distinguished Old Wykehamists at the Ad Portas celebration, the highest honour that Winchester College bestows.

Concepts

Biotechnology and genetic engineering

My book The Sun, the Genome, and the Internet (1999) describes a vision of green technology enriching villages all over the world and halting the migration from villages to megacities. The three components of the vision are all essential: the sun to provide energy where it is needed, the genome to provide plants that can convert sunlight into chemical fuels cheaply and efficiently, the Internet to end the intellectual and economic isolation of rural populations. With all three components in place, every village in Africa could enjoy its fair share of the blessings of civilization.[40]
Dyson cheerfully admits his record as a prophet is mixed, but "it is better to be wrong than to be vague."[41]
"To answer the world's material needs, technology has to be not only beautiful but also cheap."[42]

The Origin of Life

Dyson favors the dual origin concept: Life first formed cells, then enzymes, and finally, much later, genes. This was first propounded by the Russian Alexander Oparin [43] and unfortunately became mixed up with Marxism and the theories of Lysenko. J. B. S. Haldane developed the same theory independently, and was also a Marxist.[44] Dyson has simplified things by saying simply that life evolved in two stages, widely separated in time. He regards it as too unlikely that genes could have developed fully blown in one process, because of the biochemistry. He proposes that in a primitive early cell containing ATP and AMP, DNA was invented accidentally because of the similarity of the two. Current cells contain Adenosine triphosphate or ATP and adenosine 5'-monophosphate or AMP, which greatly resemble each other but have completely different functions. ATP transports energy around the cell, and AMP is part of RNA and the genetic apparatus. Dyson proposes that in a primitive early cell containing ATP and AMP, RNA and replication were invented accidentally because of the similarity of the two. He suggests that AMP was produced when ATP molecules lost two of their phosphate radicals, and then one cell somewhere performed Eigen's experiment and produced RNA.

Unfortunately there is no direct evidence for the dual origin concept, because once genes developed, they took over, obliterating all traces of the earlier forms of life. In the first origin, the cells were probably just drops of water held together by surface tension, teeming with enzymes and chemical reactions, and a primitive kind of growth or replication. When the liquid drop became too big, it split into two drops. Many complex molecules formed in these "little city economies" and the probability that genes would eventually develop in them was much greater than in the prebiotic environment.[45]

Dyson sphere


Artist's concept of Dyson rings, forming a stable Dyson swarm, or "Dyson sphere".

One should expect that, within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star.[46]
In 1960 Dyson wrote a short paper for the journal Science, entitled "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation".[47] In it, he theorized that a technologically advanced extraterrestrial civilization might completely surround its native star with artificial structures in order to maximize the capture of the star's available energy. Eventually, the civilization would completely enclose the star, intercepting electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths from visible light downwards and radiating waste heat outwards as infrared radiation. Therefore, one method of searching for extraterrestrial civilizations would be to look for large objects radiating in the infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Dyson conceived that such structures would be clouds of asteroid-sized space habitats, though science fiction writers have preferred a solid structure: either way, such an artifact is often referred to as a Dyson sphere, although Dyson himself used the term "shell". Dyson says that he used the term "artificial biosphere" in the article meaning a habitat, not a shape.[48] The general concept of such an energy-transferring shell had been advanced decades earlier by author Olaf Stapledon in his 1937 novel Star Maker, a source that Dyson has credited publicly.[49][50]

Dyson tree

Dyson has also proposed the creation of a Dyson tree, a genetically-engineered plant capable of growing on a comet. He suggested that comets could be engineered to contain hollow spaces filled with a breathable atmosphere, thus providing self-sustaining habitats for humanity in the outer solar system.
Plants could grow greenhouses…just as turtles grow shells and polar bears grow fur and polyps build coral reefs in tropical seas. These plants could keep warm by the light from a distant Sun and conserve the oxygen that they produce by photosynthesis. The greenhouse would consist of a thick skin providing thermal insulation, with small transparent windows to admit sunlight. Outside the skin would be an array of simple lenses, focusing sunlight through the windows into the interior… Groups of greenhouses could grow together to form extended habitats for other species of plants and animals.[51]

Space colonies

I've done some historical research on the costs of the Mayflower's voyage, and on the Mormons' emigration to Utah, and I think it's possible to go into space on a much smaller scale. A cost on the order of $40,000 per person [1978 dollars, $143,254 in 2013 dollars] would be the target to shoot for; in terms of real wages, that would make it comparable to the colonization of America. Unless it's brought down to that level it's not really interesting to me, because otherwise it would be a luxury that only governments could afford.[46]
Dyson has been interested in space travel since he was a child, reading such science fiction classics as Olaf Stapledon's Star Maker. As a young man, he worked for General Atomics on the nuclear-powered Orion spacecraft.
He hoped Project Orion would put men on Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970. He's been unhappy for a quarter-century on how the government conducts space travel:
The problem is, of course, that they can't afford to fail. The rules of the game are that you don't take a chance, because if you fail, then probably your whole program gets wiped out.[46]
He still hopes for cheap space travel, but is resigned to waiting for private entrepreneurs to develop something new—and cheap.
No law of physics or biology forbids cheap travel and settlement all over the solar system and beyond. But it is impossible to predict how long this will take. Predictions of the dates of future achievements are notoriously fallible. My guess is that the era of cheap unmanned missions will be the next fifty years, and the era of cheap manned missions will start sometime late in the twenty-first century.
Any affordable program of manned exploration must be centered in biology, and its time frame tied to the time frame of biotechnology; a hundred years, roughly the time it will take us to learn to grow warm-blooded plants, is probably reasonable.[51]
Dyson also has proposed the use of bioengineered space colonies to colonize the Kuiper Belt on the outer edge of our Solar System. He proposed that habitats could be grown from space hardened spores. The colonies could then be warmed by large reflector plant leaves that could focus the dim, distant sunlight back on the growing colony. This was illustrated by Pat Rawlings on the cover of the National Space Society's Ad Astra magazine.

Space exploration

A direct search for life in Europa's ocean would today be prohibitively expensive. Impacts on Europa give us an easier way to look for evidence of life there. Every time a major impact occurs on Europa, a vast quantity of water is splashed from the ocean into the space around Jupiter. Some of the water evaporates, and some condenses into snow. Creatures living in the water far enough from the impact have a chance of being splashed intact into space and quickly freeze-dried. Therefore, an easy way to look for evidence of life in Europa's ocean is to look for freeze-dried fish in the ring of space debris orbiting Jupiter.
Freeze-dried fish orbiting Jupiter is a fanciful notion, but nature in the biological realm has a tendency to be fanciful. Nature is usually more imaginative than we are. [...] To have the best chance of success, we should keep our eyes open for all possibilities.[51]

Dyson's transform

Dyson also has some credits in pure mathematics. His concept "Dyson's transform" led to one of the most important lemmas of Olivier Ramaré's theorem that every even integer can be written as a sum of no more than six primes.

Dyson series

The Dyson series, the formal solution of an explicitly time-dependent Schrödinger equation by iteration, and the corresponding Dyson time-ordering operator \mathcal T\,, an entity of basic importance in the mathematical formulation of quantum mechanics, are also named after Dyson.

Freeman Dyson in 2007 at the Institute for Advanced Study

Quantum Physics and the Primes 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, ...

Dyson and Hugh Montgomery discovered together an intriguing connection between quantum physics and Montgomery's pair correlation conjecture about the zeros of the Zeta function. The primes 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, ... are described by the Riemann Zeta function, and Dyson had previously developed a description of quantum physics based on m by m arrays of totally random numbers. [52] What Montgomery and Dyson discovered is that the eigenvalues of these matrices are spaced apart in exactly the same manner as Montgomery conjectured for the nontrivial zeros of the Zeta function. Andrew Odlyzko has verified the conjecture on a computer, using his Odlyzko–Schönhage algorithm to calculate many zeros. Dyson recognized this connection because of a number-theory question Montgomery asked him. Dyson had published results in Number theory in 1947 while a Fellow at Trinity College, Cambridge and so was able to understand Montgomery's question. If Montgomery had not been visiting the Institute for Advanced Study that week, this connection might not have been discovered.

Views

Metaphysics

Dyson has suggested a kind of cosmic metaphysics of mind. In his book Infinite in All Directions he writes about three levels of mind: "The universe shows evidence of the operations of mind on three levels. The first level is the level of elementary physical processes in quantum mechanics. Matter in quantum mechanics is [...] constantly making choices between alternative possibilities according to probabilistic laws. [...] The second level at which we detect the operations of mind is the level of direct human experience. [...] [I]t is reasonable to believe in the existence of a third level of mind, a mental component of the universe. If we believe in this mental component and call it God, then we can say that we are small pieces of God's mental apparatus" (p. 297).

Global warming

Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written that "[one] of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas."[53] However, he believes that existing simulation models of climate fail to account for some important factors, and hence the results will contain too much error to reliably predict future trends:
The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they 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 and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world we live in ...[53]
He is among signatories of a letter to the UN criticizing the IPCC[54][55] and has also argued against ostracizing scientists whose views depart from the acknowledged mainstream of scientific opinion on climate change, stating that "heretics" have historically been an important force in driving scientific progress. "[H]eretics who question the dogmas are needed ... I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies."[53]

Dyson says his views on global warming have been strongly criticized. In reply, he notes that "[m]y objections to the global warming propaganda are not so much over the technical facts, about which I do not know much, but it’s rather against the way those people behave and the kind of intolerance to criticism that a lot of them have."[56]

More recently, he has endorsed the now common usage of "global warming" as synonymous with global anthropogenic climate change, referring to "measurements that transformed global warming from a vague theoretical speculation into a precise observational science."[57]

He has, however, argued that political efforts to reduce the causes of climate change distract from other global problems that should take priority:
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.[58]
Since originally taking interest in climate studies in the 1970s, Dyson has suggested that carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere could be controlled by planting fast-growing trees. He calculates that it would take a trillion trees to remove all carbon from the atmosphere.[59][60]

In a 2014 interview, he said that "What I’m convinced of is that we don’t understand climate ... It will take a lot of very hard work before that question is settled." [2]

Nuclear winter

From his 1988 book Infinite in All Directions, he offered some criticism of then current models predicting a devastating nuclear winter in the event of a large-scale nuclear war:
As a scientist I want to rip the theory of nuclear winter apart, but as a human being I want to believe it. This is one of the rare instances of a genuine conflict between the demands of science and the demands of humanity. As a scientist, I judge the nuclear winter theory to be a sloppy piece of work, full of gaps and unjustified assumptions. As a human being, I hope fervently that it is right. Here is a real and uncomfortable dilemma. What does a scientist do when science and humanity pull in opposite directions?[61]

Warfare and weapons

At the British Bomber Command, Dyson and colleagues proposed ripping out two gun turrets from the RAF Lancaster bombers, to cut the catastrophic losses due to German fighters in the Battle of Berlin. A Lancaster without turrets could fly 50 mph (80 km/h) faster and be much more maneuverable.
All our advice to the commander in chief [went] through the chief of our section, who was a career civil servant. His guiding principle was to tell the commander in chief things that the commander in chief liked to hear… To push the idea of ripping out gun turrets, against the official mythology of the gallant gunner defending his crew mates…was not the kind of suggestion the commander in chief liked to hear.[62]
On hearing the news of the bombing of Hiroshima:
I agreed emphatically with Henry Stimson. Once we had got ourselves into the business of bombing cities, we might as well do the job competently and get it over with. I felt better that morning than I had felt for years… Those fellows who had built the atomic bombs obviously knew their stuff… Later, much later, I would remember [the downside].[63]
I am convinced that to avoid nuclear war it is not sufficient to be afraid of it. It is necessary to be afraid, but it is equally necessary to understand. And the first step in understanding is to recognize that the problem of nuclear war is basically not technical but human and historical. If we are to avoid destruction we must first of all understand the human and historical context out of which destruction arises.[64]
In 1967, in his capacity as a military adviser Dyson wrote an influential paper on the issue of possible US use of tactical nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War. When a general said in a meeting "I think it might be a good idea to throw in a nuke now and then, just to keep the other side guessing," [65] Dyson became alarmed and obtained permission to write an objective report discussing the pros and cons of using such weapons from a purely military point of view. (This report, Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia, published by the Institute for Defense Analyses, was obtained, with some redactions, by The Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability under the Freedom of Information act in 2002.)[66] It was sufficiently objective that both sides in the debate based their arguments on it. Dyson says that the report showed that even from a narrow military point of view the US was better off not using nuclear weapons. Dyson stated on the Dick Cavett show that the use of nuclear weaponry was a bad idea for the US at the time because "our targets were large and theirs were small." (His unstated assumption was that the Soviets would respond by supplying tactical nukes to the other side.)

Dyson opposed the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, and the invasion of Iraq. He supported Barack Obama in the 2008 US presidential election and The New York Times has described him as a political liberal.[18]

Civil Defense

While teaching for a few weeks in Zurich, Dyson was visited by two officials from the Swiss civil defense authority. Their experts were telling them that fairly simple shelters on a large scale would enable them to survive a nuclear attack, and they wanted confirmation. They knew that Dyson had a security clearance. Dyson reassured them that their shelters would do the job. The US doesn't build such shelters because it would be contrary to the doctrine of Mutual assured destruction and destabilize things, because the US would be able to launch a first strike and survive a retaliatory second strike.[67]

The role of failure

You can't possibly get a good technology going without an enormous number of failures. It's a universal rule. If you look at bicycles, there were thousands of weird models built and tried before they found the one that really worked. You could never design a bicycle theoretically. Even now, after we've been building them for 100 years, it's very difficult to understand just why a bicycle works – it's even difficult to formulate it as a mathematical problem. But just by trial and error, we found out how to do it, and the error was essential.[68]

On English academics

My view of the prevalence of doom-and-gloom in Cambridge is that it is a result of the English class system. In England there were always two sharply opposed middle classes, the academic middle class and the commercial middle class. In the nineteenth century, the academic middle class won the battle for power and status. As a child of the academic middle class, I learned to look on the commercial middle class with loathing and contempt. Then came the triumph of Margaret Thatcher, which was also the revenge of the commercial middle class. The academics lost their power and prestige and the business people took over. The academics never forgave Thatcher and have been gloomy ever since.[69]

Science and religion

He is a non-denominational Christian and has attended various churches from Presbyterian to Roman Catholic. Regarding doctrinal or Christological issues, he has said, "I am neither a saint nor a theologian. To me, good works are more important than theology."[70]
Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but they look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.
Trouble arises when either science or religion claims universal jurisdiction, when either religious or scientific dogma claims to be infallible. Religious creationists and scientific materialists are equally dogmatic and insensitive. By their arrogance they bring both science and religion into disrepute. The media exaggerate their numbers and importance. The media rarely mention the fact that the great majority of religious people belong to moderate denominations that treat science with respect, or the fact that the great majority of scientists treat religion with respect so long as religion does not claim jurisdiction over scientific questions.[70]
Dyson partially disagrees with the famous remark by his fellow physicist Steven Weinberg that "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."[71]
Weinberg's statement is true as far as it goes, but it is not the whole truth. To make it the whole truth, we must add an additional clause: "And for bad people to do good things—that [also] takes religion." The main point of Christianity is that it is a religion for sinners. Jesus made that very clear. When the Pharisees asked his disciples, "Why eateth your Master with publicans and sinners?" he said, "I come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance." Only a small fraction of sinners repent and do good things but only a small fraction of good people are led by their religion to do bad things.[71]
While Dyson has labeled himself a Christian, he identifies himself as agnostic about some of the specifics of his faith.[72][73] For example, here is a passage from Dyson's review of The God of Hope and the End of the World from John Polkinghorne:
I am myself a Christian, a member of a community that preserves an ancient heritage of great literature and great music, provides help and counsel to young and old when they are in trouble, educates children in moral responsibility, and worships God in its own fashion. But I find Polkinghorne’s theology altogether too narrow for my taste. I have no use for a theology that claims to know the answers to deep questions but bases its arguments on the beliefs of a single tribe. I am a practicing Christian but not a believing Christian. To me, to worship God means to recognize that mind and intelligence are woven into the fabric of our universe in a way that altogether surpasses our comprehension.[74]

Works

External video
Freeman Dyson at Harvard cropped.jpg
Freeman Dyson: Let's look for life in the outer solar system, TED Talks, February 2003.
Freeman Dyson 1 - My middle class upbringing, Web of Stories (1st of a series)
Big Ideas: Freeman Dyson on Living Through Four Revolutions, TVO, 1 June 2011 at Perimeter Institute, Waterloo, Canada.

In popular culture

The fictional character Gordon Freeman from the Half Life series is named after Freeman Dyson.
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