Freeman Dyson’s HERETICAL THOUGHTS ABOUT SCIENCE AND SOCIETY as expressed in “the Edge” are a source of some disappointment and frustration to me. Skepticism about a bandwagon is always appropriate, and even more so is it about the various claims for proposed solutions. But to require a rigorous standard of proof in the face of a possible threat that is great enough to merit the precautionary principle and to present spurious “solutions” like adding .01inches of topsoil on every sqare foot of exposed land on earth (when in fact worldwide wherever we live we do many times the reverse of that) are just irresponsible.
Here’s a recent article about Dyson from the New York Times.