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So, it has come to this! Universities are now offering courses on how to argue against climate change denialists! (Note, even mentioning such courses could be illegal in Florida, but fortunately this is in Australia.)
Starting 28 April, 2015, the University of Queensland is offering a free Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) aimed at “Making Sense of Climate Science Denial”.
You know you've made it when they start teaching about you in college! Well done, climate change deniers!!!
And a MOOC? Hmmm, is there a "certificate" one might earn?
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University Offering Free Online Course to Demolish Climate Denial
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belief, n:
Something you do not believe.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Sunday April 26 2015, @04:54PM
http://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article12983720.html [miamiherald.com]
Its the usual doublespeak stuff being enforced by management of their own environmental protection agency.
Its sloppy to claim its illegal, just you'll get fired from your job if you work for the florida environmental protection agency and claim in public that various things might exist.
Its pretty much a poster child for why (government) employees need a union.
As for why management has banned the environmental protection agency from protecting the environment, look into Florida being one of the corruption capitals of the entire nation, right up there with New Orleans, Chicago, NYC, and the entire state of Alaska. In a way, if this is as bad as it gets at one of the most corrupt and incompetent states in the nation, then its not so bad, I mean, nobody's as messed up as Florida. I think it was FARK that used to have a section called "Florida" to make fun of FL's legendary low IQ/corrupt population.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 26 2015, @10:39PM
DEP is not a university; universities have mechanisms for protecting academic freedom, while non-academic state agencies have little more than Dilbertian managers who kowtow to what they think higher powers migh want.
(Score: 2) by VortexCortex on Monday April 27 2015, @01:24PM
universities have mechanisms for protecting academic freedom.
Yes, while that may be true it doesn't mean they actually work. Take Harvard for example. [youtube.com] Their head was cut off for merely hypothesizing that less females than males in STEM may be biological -- not that he actually held the belief, mind you, just speaking it out loud got him drummed out of office. Now, if the head of Harvard can't speak his mind, then what makes you think the rest of the colleges aren't equally ruled by thought police? Especially when we have mountains of evidence that they lack basic academic freedoms, such as speech? [thefire.org] Colleges have become little more than indoctrination camps, search them up at the prior link and see how your favourite campus fares. For decades standardized testing has sought to make K-12 just as bad [youtube.com], if not worse, via federal personality databases. In elementary school there is now a "right" answer for which opinions to hold. Failing, being expelled or fired for having the wrong political opinion or attitude... One can hardly call that "academic freedom".
Protip: Every hot button issue is chock full of propaganda, misleading "statistics", and omissions of fact. Live a few more decades and you'll see. With that in mind ask yourself, is climate change a hot button issue? How much said about it is propaganda from either side? We are awash in propaganda to manufacture consent for war, population reduction, etc. Could climate change scaremongering be a method of manufacturing consent for these? How would you inoculate an agency against propaganda? Certainly, censorship of hot-button issues is heavy handed. I think better education and fact-checking would be the answer, unfortunately even the media is in the pockets of the corrupt spinsters. [youtube.com] The tide is slowly changing for the better with the advent of less biased information (the better to self educate with, my dear [wikipedia.org]) but the coming censorship of the Internet seeks to prevent much progress.
I put it to you that nearly all information outlets now have "little more than Dilbertian managers who kowtow" a higher power's narrative. [digitalnewsasia.com] I've inundated you with facts that run contrary to your belief that things aren't so bad; Whether you chose to consume them and re-evaluate your stance is up to you.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @06:30PM
I checked the database you mentioned. The University of florida gets a "green" rating for freedom. https://www.thefire.org/schools/university-of-florida/ [thefire.org] I don't see a problem here except for paranoid overgeneralizations on your part, the same sort that led the OP to make unwarranted comments about Florida in the first place. We've worked hard to build a good climate science program in an environment of academic freedom, and our reward is to be told by strangers who rely on political propaganda that we've been outlawed (we haven't), that we're somehow affected by the bizarre management struggles in some non-academic state department (we're not them), and that we are an "information outlet" with insufficient academic freedom (even your database contradicts you). It's amazing how in the fog of politics the character and actions of those of us trying to do the right thing, by investigating the truth through science, can be so completely ignored.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 27 2015, @09:03PM
* cough *
'green' rating kindly sponsored and supplied by people with the same idiotic agenda, thus rendered meaningless.