The Modesto Bee | News and Notes

Climate change discussion at MJC

Today's installment of the Science Colloquium at Modesto Junior College will feature a talk by meteorologist Hugh Ellsaesser, who argues that people are not causing climate change. Ellsaesser, who worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for 23 years, will speak from 1 to 2 p.m. in Forum 110 on the east campus. An alternative view will be presented Oct. 2, same time and place, by former Livermore Lab scientist David Simon.

The World's Leading Climate Scientists, in Their Own Words

In his interview, Dyson points out from long experience that models packed with numerous "fudge factors" are worthless.

As a mathematician and physicist, Dyson is known for the unification of three versions of quantum electrodynamics, as well as for contributions to space flight and the development of a safe nuclear reactor used today by hospitals and universities around the world. But today he is known more widely as a scientific heretic for disagreeing with claims of a central human role in global warming.

In his 2005 winter commencement address at the University of Michigan, Dyson said the mathematical computer models on which the alarmist claims are based "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."