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from the it's-an-ill-wind-that-blows-no-good dept.
An overwhelming majority of scientists, including numerous UCLA researchers, agree that we have to take action to curb the effects of climate change.
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block joined leaders in higher education from more than 35 states today calling on incoming president Donald Trump's administration to protect the Earth's climate.
Chancellors and presidents from more than 170 colleges and universities signed on to the open letter calling for "aggressive climate action."
Trump has at times described climate change as a hoax and proposed withdrawing from the historic Paris climate agreement signed at the annual United Nations climate conference in 2015. An overwhelming majority of scientists, including numerous UCLA researchers, agree that climate change is caused by humans and will result in dramatic, disruptive changes within this century. UCLA research has projected that without drastic action, Los Angeles will heat up an average of 4 to 5 degrees by midcentury.
"As a university," Block said, "we have a deep commitment to research innovative solutions for tomorrow, to serve the greater public good and to educate the leaders of future generations. Strong federal and international climate action is critical to this mission."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday December 23 2016, @07:26PM
Other industries manage to employ paid scientists to "shill" for them all the time. Big pharma, food additives and nutritional research -- we all know that where ambiguous data CAN be exploited, industry can and has often hired researchers or financed research to help support its position. (And to be fair, I think many research scientists in these industry positions actually believe in the work they do.)
With the pockets of Big Oil and dozens of other related industries that would suffer from increased pro-environmental regulation to combat climate change, where is this army of paid scientists? And don't argue that it has something to do with tenure requirements or whatever, because Big Pharma, the big chemical companies, and the Food Industry has no problem finding scientists with graduate degrees whom they can EMPLOY and finance directly to publish research. If the data is really that open to interpretation, it should be easy to employ a bunch of debunking scientists. (And they probably wouldn't even lost a lot of money doing so, since they could probably charge huge speaking fees on the conservative circuit for these people.)
That's always the most confusing aspect of those who claim a massive conspiracy -- every other industry manages to find a significant number of scientists to shill for them when needed, despite the fact that such scientists are often bucking the research funded by non-industry groups and the government. Yet for some weird reason, it's claimed here on this issue that exactly the opposite happens: industry with big pockets is powerless to recruit an army of shills, and instead all the scientists are jockeying for the much smaller pockets of NSF money. If this is so easy for the government to do, how come it's so hard for them to achieve similar levels of consensus around problematic drugs or chemicals or food additives or whatever?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 23 2016, @09:01PM
I think you are wrong that "big oil" is against governments acting on the climate change narrative. Increased government activity creates a barrier to entry and they are already entrenched in the energy sector.