Dyson's Heresy

Science is an industry. It is a teeming and dynamic ecosystem with memes flying all over the place. One of the strongest undercurrents in the scientific ethos of the last decade has been the idea of global warming and catastrophic climate change. From a hypothetical future it has been transformed into a dogma, something taken for granted. Terms like ice cap meltdown, greenhouse effect, carbon footprint etc are being casually thrown about in even liberal art circles.
I too, had until a few months back, accepted the arguments at face value. If so many scientists are repeating something so vociferously, then it has to be true. Or so I thought, till I read this thought provoking article in the New York Times in March this year ( also this follow up article ). Freeman Dyson raised a small but powerful dissenting voice. He did not negate the claims that temperatures, in an absolute sense, are increasing or that the sea levels are rising. But what he did was ask for a pause to recollect our thoughts in this mad scramble to save the earth's climate. He questions the inherent reliability of the prediction methods, which stands independent of the outcomes of those predictors. Also, Dyson blasts the separation of the biome modeling form the atmospheric climate models and claims that we are losing the bigger picture. More damningly, he doubts the effect of human actions since 1950 on the ensuing climate change. When the choice is put starkly in front of me, wholescale human emancipation in India and China versus massive efforts to prolong the sinking of the climate ship, I balk at taking hasty and extreme measures. Perhaps, we should burn coal now and raise a billion people out of poverty than ban coal and significantly set back global development by decades. Food for thought?