dumbing down

Kenneth Brower profiles the great physicist, Freeman Dyson (left), 'perhaps our most prominent global-warming skeptic'.

The question that phrases itself now, in the minds of many, is: how could someone as smart as Freeman Dyson be so dumb?

Brower surveys a number of theories from 'contrariness' and 'he doesn't really mean it' to 'educated fool' and 'old age'. The answer, Brower concludes, lies in Dyson's unshakeable faith in the technological fix.

The notion that science will save us is the chimera that allows the present generation to consume all the resources it wants, as if no generations will follow.

(H-t. AL)