If you’ve never heard of Freeman Dyson, I don’t blame you.
He is probably one of the smartest guys on the planet right now. He has an incredible grasp of the infinitely complex, and an amazing ability to break it down into the simplest components to explain it to non-scientists.
I recently read an amazing essay by Dyson here.
He’s been throwing water on the global climate change fanatics for some time now, and his ideas are pretty revolutionary (or not quite so much if you know anything about recent scientific progress).
In a nutshell, Dyson believes that we don’t actually know if humans have anything to do with climate change (warming OR cooling). The planet is complex; so much so that we don’t even have the beginnings of the accurate computer models to predict the state of the planet.
Among his well-researched claims is one that the Earth has been going through a series of warming/cooling cycles for the past million years or so, with ice ages occurring pretty regularly, and that we are currently overdue for the start of the next one.
He also addresses some things that I’ve wondered about for a long time. Things like the fact that the Middle East used to be heavily forested, not the arid desert it is now. The fact that the Sahara used to be full of life, trees, plains of grass, and civilization. Dyson brings it all together in a striking portrayal of what the Earth could look like, and questions whether Man has (or should) have anything to do with it.
The world is more complex–and less certain–than we think.
Maybe the Mayans were right about 2012. Maybe I should start stocking up on canned foods. 
