ululate!

The great Freeman Dyson, scientist extraordinaire, has died at the ripe old age of 96 after suffering a fall and succumbing to complications from his injuries. He was born in England but became an American. Some people might vaguely know of Dyson for his concept of "the Dyson sphere," a celestial megastructure built around a star, such that the structure's inner surface would be bathed in the constant glow of the star's radiation, supplying energy to any civilization that lived on that inner surface. (According to Wikipedia, Dyson popularized the idea of such a sphere, but he wasn't the originator of the idea.) Climate-change fanatics might know and hate Dyson for the skepticism he (in)famously brought to discussions of anthropogenic global warming: Dyson questioned whether such warming was in fact global, arguing that it might only be a patchwork phenomenon. He also argued that global warming might not be an objectively or universally bad thing: for example, a warmer north Canada would enjoy the use of thawed tundra that is currently uninhabitable. Finally, he felt that the fanatical focus on global warming was distracting us from more urgent environmental problems—a point of view that I've argued for on this blog.

Without a doubt, the world is a dimmer place without Dr. Dyson.