UPDATE: New video added. See below.
Dr. Bradley Schaefer really knows how to reach young college students: spouting hyperbolic proclamations of death and nuclear obliteration. The Louisiana State University astronomy professor is filmed saying some pretty ugly things, even for the typical unhinged liberal professor. But we should give him the benefit of the doubt since the YouTube clip is heavily edited. We must consider the context in which these statements were made lest it be mistaken for anything more than bravado or how high brow academics talk amongst themselves. Yet bringing up the death toll on 9/11 is usually a loser argument in any debate.
Video after the break:
From an LSU campus reform outfit:
Dr. Schaefer’s views on the subject were well-known. At one point in class, the professor compares deaths from European heat waves to American deaths in the September 11 terrorist attacks: “Now remember, how many people got killed on 9/11? What was it? One thousand? Two thousand? Something like that. Three thousand, whatever. It’s dwarfed by this. Why aren’t people reacting?”
Students who chose a limited government response to global warming were given this question to answer: “Your professed policies have a substantial likelihood of leading to the death of a billion or more people. (A) Estimate the probability that you personally will be killed in an ugly way because of your current decision? (B) What is the probability that any children of yours will die in ugly ways due to your current decision?”
UPDATE: The professor refutes critics in an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education and says he harangued both sides of the political spectrum and that the video above was edited, and show him in an unflattering light.
Here’s the unedited video http://vimeo.com/16649140
Ben Santer is now obfuscating in Congress
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN3.aspx
Bradley Schaefer seems to be the kind of individual who, when put into a room with another person with a well-supported opposing view, would say, “I don’t want to talk about it.” And leave.
As an side, the good professor apparently didn’t do all that well in English classes in school. “Me and my parents . . .” Shouldn’t it be, ” May parents and I . . .” He needs some remediation on several levels.
Dr Shaefer’s speciality is apparently the study of gamma ray bursts. I think maybe one has happened in his brain. Idiot.
Are profs now the modern soothsayers?
Since Y2K I have been threatened on the average of 1-2 absolute final catastrophies a year. What Bird flu? I do think a Professor can find himself on youtube making a silly mistake and see his employment security evaporate faster than ever imagined.
With expensive budgets, Universities can’t afford childish claims that tarnish their reputation.
More non-scienctific right wing crap being posted, Wattsupwiththat loses cred with each of these posts.
Stick to the science guys!
His indoctrination techniques are not dissimilar to those used by religious extremists, to incite holy wars, suicide bombers etc.
I would suggest his students stop attending his lectures, for their own protection.
Brad, Brad, Brad…
Look in the mirror. It is the CAGW contingent that refuses to follow the scientific method. The day they ‘stick to the science’ is the day their scam implodes.
500 years ago this guy would have been telling his class that they deserved the plague because they hadn’t burned enough Catholics/Protestants/unbelievers (pick one, depending on location, and pick carefully lest you be burned…)
What better way to get agreement from students on your personal philosophy than the threat of a low grade for disagreement with your “professor”. I suppose identifying you by seating arrangement is marginally more civil than making dissenting students wear a yellow SUV on their arm.
Only a lowlife would sink to that sort of intimidation.
I would not subject my children to the sort of University that would tolerate such abuse of free thought.
Smokey says:
November 17, 2010 at 9:41 am
Well said. I think these posts are informative, as it gives a peek into the frangible brains of these ecotards, and explains why their “science” is so convoluted as well. I think “scientists” such as these are disqualifying themselves…let them speak and raise their petard even higher!
The Canadian Senate just killed the greenhouse gas act passed in the House of Commons last year.
http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/feeltheheat/archive/2010/11/17/tory-senators-mount-sneak-attack-on-climate-change-bill.aspx
Great News!
Wow.. What a shocking video..
Distortions, lies and threats..
Fear-mongering at its worst.
I would like to watch the whole thing to be fair though..
And whats with the ‘right wing’ crap.. Brad?
Left wing.. right wing.. same bird.
That’s all just a label game to control us..
In Australia the right wing party is apparantly the Liberal party..
And this site is not right wing..
WUWT is all about the truth..
I hope so anyway.. thats is what I am here for.
Smokey-
The CAGW community does not follow the scientific method, but to lower ourselves to their standard on every board that discusses AGW from the right debases the scientific meritorious argument that can be made against AGW. Lots of boards spew crap like this, go see the GatewayPundit and listen to Hannity – some board needs to do this from a science perspective if we are to get out the message.
This post speaks only to the converted and does nothing to change minds or increase the level of discourse.
[ryanm: why are you so offended by the post — and not what the professor is saying?]
Any idea what the catalog says the curriculum was supposed to be for this course ?
Paul Westhaver says:
November 17, 2010 at 10:06 am
“The Canadian Senate just killed the greenhouse gas act passed in the House of Commons last year.”
Within the Act that the Senate rejected are the penalties for not submitting to the CAGW religion. Pardon my French.
OFFENCES AND PENALTIES
INFRACTIONS ET PEINES
Offences
12. (1) Every person who contravenes a regulation made under this Act is guilty of an offence punishable by indictment or on summary conviction, as prescribed by the regulations, and liable to a fine or to imprisonment as prescribed by the regulations.
12. (1) Quiconque contrevient à un règlement d’application de la présente loi commet une infraction et encourt, sur déclaration de culpabilité, soit par mise en accusation, soit par procédure sommaire, selon ce qui est prévu au règlement, l’amende ou l’emprisonnement prévu par règlement.
Infractions
Subsequent offence
(2) If a person is convicted of an offence a subsequent time, the amount of the fine for the subsequent offence may be double the amount set out in the regulations.
(2) Le montant de l’amende visée au paragraphe (1) peut être doublé en cas de récidive.
Récidive
Continuing offence
(3) A person who commits or continues an offence on more than one day is liable to be convicted for a separate offence for each day on which the offence is committed or continued.
(3) Il est compté une infraction distincte pour chacun des jours au cours desquels se commet ou se continue l’infraction.
Infraction continue
Additional fine
(4) If a person is convicted of an offence and the court is satisfied that monetary benefits accrued to the person as a result of the commission of the offence, the court may order the person to pay an additional fine in an amount equal to the court’s estimation of the amount of the monetary benefits, which additional fine may exceed the maximum amount of any fine that may otherwise be imposed under the regulations.
(4) Le tribunal peut, s’il constate que le contrevenant a tiré des avantages financiers de la perpétration de l’infraction, lui infliger, en sus de l’amende maximale prévue par les règlements, une amende supplémentaire correspondant à son évaluation de ces avantages.
Amende supplémentaire
Officers, etc., of corporations
(5) If a corporation commits an offence, any officer, director, agent or mandatory of the corporation who directed, authorized, assented to, or acquiesced or participated in, the commission of the offence is a party to and guilty of the offence and is liable on conviction to the punishment provided for the offence, whether or not the corporation has been prosecuted or convicted.
(5) En cas de perpétration d’une infraction par une personne morale, ceux de ses dirigeants, administrateurs, agents ou mandataires qui l’ont ordonnée ou autorisée, ou qui y ont consenti ou participé, sont considérés comme des coauteurs de l’infraction et encourent, sur déclaration de culpabilité, la peine prévue, que la personne morale ait été ou non poursuivie ou déclarée coupable.
Dirigeants d’une personne morale
Offences by employees or agents
(6) In any prosecution for an offence, the accused may be convicted of the offence if it is established that it was committed by an employee, agent or mandatory of the accused, whether or not the employee, agent or mandatory has been prosecuted for the offence.
Just imagine if this were a professor ranting about evolution — the mainstream media would be cuing it up nonstop.
At one point in class, the professor compares deaths from European heat waves to American deaths in the September 11 terrorist attacks:…
something like 2300 people died many years ago in a particularly hot year in the UK … according to age concern 23,000 die each and every year due to cold and the number was double that last winter.
The simple fact is that cold weather kills and order of magnitude more EVERY year than a once in a blue moon warm year.
DR says:
November 17, 2010 at 9:17 am
Ben Santer is now obfuscating in Congress
http://www.c-span.org/Watch/C-SPAN3.aspx
One of the testifying clucks claimed that if atmospheric CO2 hit 450 ppm the world’s oceans would be 7.7 Ph from top to bottom. No one even attempted to challenge this assertion. Unflippingbelievable!
“Your professed policies have a substantial likelihood of leading to the death of a billion or more people. (A) Estimate the probability that you personally will be killed in an ugly way because of your current decision? (B) What is the probability that any children of yours will die in ugly ways due to your current decision?”
Could I get a side of pestilence with that?
Do i see any warmist attacking the Professor because he speaks about Global Warming even though he is not a climatologist? Anyone? Hello?
Perhaps the good professor missed the global warming snowfall at LSU while he was away protesting coal mining, or something equally relevant to astronomy.
Oh, I forgot, global warming causes colder temperatures and more snow, so this video actually makes his lecture a sane one. Not!
The guy is a mad demagogue and a disgrace to the science community. Period
Is this for real or some interactive artsy fartsy installation?
If it is for real, then I would suggest we are seeing a mental chrisis in someone who needs proffessional help. And one should cinsider if it is alright to use his unfortunate collapse for entertainment purpouses.
Maybe it was a mistake to embedd the video, the professor is obviously not himself and even seems to have regressed somewhat, perhaps in an attempt to solve a cognitive dissonance problem.
Are we seeing dr Jekyll or mr Hyde, we dont know him so we cant tell.
I kept waiting for the people on the “US should do nothing” side to suddenly blow up.
No pressure, after all.
This guy does not sound like a college professor. Very ill-prepared, lacks the facts he needs to back up his position, etc. Like you said, the video is edited heavily, but I can’t imagine what sort of questions would illicit those answers as correct. I thought it was hilarious that he uses the ‘save the kids’ tactic, but advocates population control.
@Brad
‘More non-scienctific right wing crap being posted, Wattsupwiththat loses cred with each of these posts.
Stick to the science guys!’
Actually Science is defined as knowledge through study and/or practice. And it is very practical to study your opposition, so it’s very scientific.
Of course I understand that the whole group consisting of hippies are at odds with one another concerning the definition of science, some say only “hard science” is science the others want to include even the “soft science” as science as well. The “hard science” hippies say that “soft science” ain’t science because it’s soft and doesn’t make sense to include because you can’t quantify it per se. I say hippies will always be hippies and will always be the insane people who argue a moot point like arguing that a defined word doesn’t mean what it means per its own given definition or arguing the imminent end of the world without either proof nor a rational solution.
Just wait for this patch of global warming about to come down from Canada: yes, those are 60F degrees below normal:
Seeing as this chap likes comparisons let’s take a tiny England and Wales only. During the winter of 2008/09 there was an estimated 36,700 excess winter deaths in England and Wales, , compared with the average for the non-winter period. Cold is the bigger killer.
http://www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=574
The distribution of the seating chart seems just a bit skewed towards the CAGW profile methinks.
@ Ryan Maue:
60 below normal is entirely consistent with AGW projections, as northern latitudes are projected to get colder. In fact, this just proves that it is progressing faster than we had imagined and is clearly worse than anyone thought.
[ryanm: i agree completely. before i got my phd in meteorology, i had to recite verbatim the script to Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, as well as Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals]
Send him to Afghanistan/Pakistan border to alienate Al-Qaedans !! 🙂
RyanM-
I am not offended by the post, I just don’t understand posting it on a blog that claims to be science driven. Is Wattsupwiththat about the science, or is it a political blog driving a belief, no matter what the science says? (I think the science says that, or is very far from proving that, carbon dioxide is involved in warming…)
The professor is clearly unhinged…but lots of people are extreme, it like showing Palin as an average Repub or Barney Frank as an average dem. Both sides have extreme people, lets not give them a forum…
[ryanm: I guess we just disagree. This blog is clearly science driven…but climate change is clearly political, no matter that Al Gore says it is just a moral issue. This simply video highlights the misinformation and scaremongering techniques of a tenured University professor who is by default granted expert status by the unknowing public and political establishment. Anthony’s highlighting of the 10:10 gore video was a very important blog posting that drove a million clicks to this website — and helped shut that garbage down. This blog is also entertainment, as all should be. To keep it flowing, you need new stuff, opinions, and conversation.]
When I was in school professors typically presented questions to students as opposed to giving answers with which students were required to agree. But then it was an engineering school and it was 40 years ago so it seems as if our entire society has been politicized, probably by some of my own classmates. No doubt this was by those smoking dope and going to peace rallies instead of attending class. The real danger is that these shenanigans are going on in the lower levels of the educational system where the students have not yet determined that all that is presented to them by teachers is not gospel.
That’s CLIMATE BULLYING !!
Why didn’t one student say – “Dude, where would you be if we were not here?” or “Turn the lights off and save the world.”. Wimps – another class of mindless kids… Not good folks…..
Seriously, this guy obviously has a mental problem and needs medical help. He should be under medication at the very least. If he is not responsible for his actions then mocking him is not really an appropriate response. I have been in the same situation, with a bad biochemical imbalance — I’m just glad someone recognised it in time and was able to provide assistance.
Brad says:
November 17, 2010 at 11:33 am
RyanM-
“I am not offended by the post, I just don’t understand posting it on a blog that claims to be science driven. Is Wattsupwiththat about the science, or is it a political blog driving a belief,……”
=======================================================
Brad, as a conservative, I’d like to thank you for observing that this nutty professor is likely to be a left-wing lunatic and the conservatives of this world would like a more sane approach to teaching our children in the academic arena.
However, many here may not be able to make the political and rational connection between showing a raving lunatic professor and conservative advocacy. Perhaps if you spelled it out for the readers, here, exactly how exposing indoctrination and ridicule of our children in the educational environment is specifically a conservative issue, then they may be more receptive to your message.
I’m curious how does the main post “drives” a belief that encourages the readers to disregard science?
Your reaction is quite interesting. The topic is a SCIENCE pofessor teaching FALSE SCIENCE to his captive student audience using what can reasonably be interpreted as potential intimidation of the student grades. Happened to me once. The professor assigned a political topic for a speech. After the class was dismissed and there could be no witnesses to the conversation, he informed me that he was going to fail me for the class because I didn’t adopt his anti-war theme for my speech like everyone else. He went further. He also said not to bother complaining to the department chairman about it, he would just deny we ever had the conversation.
The sad fact is that there are some completely corrupt and untrustworthy professors in the colleges and universities. Their dishonesty, incompetence, and greed has an impacct upon the state of today’s science. This is not in anyway a new circumstance. Scientists have always had to cope with academic politics and governmental politics. Whenever these problems have an impact on science, you cannot make progress on the science without also making progress on removing the non-scientific distortions and obstructions to that science. Free speech has been and still is the single best remedy for the problem of defending and advancing honest science in full public view.
Your suggestion that only those people whom you judge are qualified to speak is the antithesis of free speech and the free practice of science. Democratic free speech tends to be vulgar at times, irrelevant at other times, and downright chaotic to the point of becoming a din of noise. Funny thing though, it tends to bring forth the new ideas and the new scientific solutions the vetted and well funded scientists were just too incapable of discovering. It is a pity that Congressman Baird, a Democrat, just got through disparaging the blogosphere and its rough and tumble free speech. He looked at the climate blogs, saw them, and was too blind to recognize the inherently democratic and scientific nature. Perhaps you can do better than Congressman Baird, if you truly care to try.
Brad,
Have you not noticed the “masthead” of WUWT?
It says: Commentary on puzzling things in life, . . .
If you wish to stick only with science, try this:
http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/particles/expar.html
The students shown in the clip should get a solid round of applause. I didn’t see any of them rolling on the floor laughing.
RyanM-
LOL! Maybe if you thought about what the goal of WattsUpWithThat was could make a value judgment as readers if it added to the discourse. Is the goal of WUWT to post all crazy things from one side of the political spectrum to drive thought, of a select few who come here, in one direction? Is the goal of WUWT to raise the level of discourse and show the AGW meme for the sham it is via real science (the goal I think Anthony has…)?
How either of these has anything to do with a professor screaming insanities is beyond me. Shall we talk Fred Phelps as the rep for the right? How about Tom Tancredo? How about the crazed Kucinich repping the left? Come on, every side has nuts…
[ryanm: this screaming professor was talking about climate change, which is why it is relevant. The other folks you cite are not talking about climate change. You are constructing straw man arguments with both extremes and then putting yourself in the so-called middle as the moderate arbitrator. Enough blog policing, moving on…]
The next Gate, for sure, it will be the “ASTRO-GATE”
Waiting to see your emails Doc.!
In 1965, a university physics professor invited guests and his classes to attend a question and answer seminar on the topic of interstellar space travel. Some of us had to bear the cost of traveling 100 miles to attend this event. The professor began by asking the question of whether or not humans from the Earth would ever be able to travel to the planets in other nearby star systems? The Centauri, system, Barnard’s Star, and other possible destinations were briefly raised. Then he launched into a diatribe saying why it was absolutely ridiculous for any of us in the audience to even consider the possibility of interstellar travel by humans.
He then briefly asked for questions. Rather than listen to the full question, he interrupted the audience member’s question and held the person up to ridicule while seeking his students’ approval of his superior knowledge and wisdom. The questions from the audience about interstellar space travel ended aft the first few questions, because they could see asking the questions was going to be unproductive.
It didn’t take more than about 15 minutes for all of this to occur. The professor then proceeded to change the subject to a topic his students had been covering in his classes about certain chemistries such as boron compounds, carbon tetrachloride, and so forth. he went on and on until his 120 minutes of seminar were finished.
Our host, a professor and World War Two veteran B-29 navigator, apologized for subjecting us to this profoundly rude and ignorant professor.
The obvious solution to the “too many people problem” is for people like Schaefer who believe it is a problem to eliminate themselves from the population and the gene pool. If he isn’t willing to do that he is a hypocrit as well as an idiot.
I can’t bring myself to give him the benefit of the doubt unless the editing is done in such a way as to make it seem that he holds beliefs he is making fun of. Because all of his statements here are profoundly biased and rather childish.
Mandatory birth control. For us, not for him, I presume.
Garrett Hardin, the original American ecofascist, had five kids and waited until he was nearly ninety to off his Nazi ass. For the good of the planet, one supposes.
The good news here that students who are not already cowed and brainwashed by the “righteous” Gaian pseudo-religion will listen to this assclown and see him for what he is: a miserable ranting wannabe Stalin.
Most definitely, a science blog should report about university professors abusing their authority like this. Anyone who calls this “right wing” is clearly only trying to spread confusion; as it is not a political theme at all – no matter where the AGW movement stands politically.
BTW, i love the “Eliminate All Engines” option. Where’s the “Go Full Khmer Rouge” option?
You’re all making a big mistake. This isn’t the professor. The real professor was knocked on the head and bundled into a broom closet, and his place taken by an escapee from the neighbourhood lunatic asylum.
I wonder if his doctoral dissertation is available?
We should post a link to it here for peer review.
RyanM-
Good point about the 10:10 video (which you added after I responded?).
[ryanm: my responses are essentially threaded comments, i don’t edit my own comments after I write them, since that is just too much power 😉 ]
I’m going to assume this video is real because it mirrors much of my experience at Chico State 30 years ago. I had a few good teachers, but many were arrogant, ignorant, so secure in their position they would say whatever they wanted. They would make it clear from Day One that they had the power to affect your grade point average, drop you, even get you dropped from financial aid. They would tell you their class was more important than your other classes, your job, your family obligations, etc. Some raised their voice, some made incompetent errors, but we were never allowed to point that out because we never knew who we could trust – oftentimes the dean and staff were just as incompetent. At best you’d get another teacher’s sympathetic ear, but they would tell you they were walking on the same eggshells you were.
About 10 years ago I had a young lady tenant, a political science major at Chico State. After a year she told me she was transferring to Sac State because the poli-sci professors at Chico were ranting ideologues who angrily berated anybody with a differing opinion. More than once she had to say what a professor wanted to hear in order to protect her grade. She felt it was humiliating and counter-productive, and she left town.
And now this, apparently filmed by a student who is sick of paying for this kind of “education.” Notice how poorly structured the class is, it’s more like a high school class than a college class. This makes me want to drop in on my kid’s Butte College classes just to see what the heck I’m paying for down there.
I have scanned the classes at Chico State, you can read teachers’ syllabus’s and text book lists, which are often times pretty revealing. You can google the textbooks and get previews – if your kid is in college, you might want to do this. Some of it is so offensive, it would just be de-motivating and depressing to have to listen to this kind of diatribe day after day. And then, have to be careful what you write in your tests and essays, because yeah, they will grade you on your opinion as quickly as your grammar and structure.
Enneagram
‘The next Gate, for sure, it will be the “ASTRO-GATE”’
Sigh, don’t you get it, the next Gate’ll be MS Bill Gates running for the gate before he starts his own debate. :p
Pretty amazing stuff. One would think that a professor could check the most trivial facts, such as family size in rich countries. We are not even reproducing in most of the developed world yet this bozo tries to imply that the rich countries are overpopulating the world. US fertility rate dropped below reproduction rate (of 2.1 per woman) about 40 years ago. US is in the best shape to maintain a demographically stable society. Europe and Japan are in a much worse state.
It seems this guy couldn’t make the cut so now its either take a regular job or get paid to feed PC bullshit to students. Question is only, why would anybody pay him for this. The dark ages do not seem so bad after seeing this clip.
Brad says:
November 17, 2010 at 9:33 am
More non-scienctific right wing crap being posted:
Strange posting, I only saw left wing crap spouted.
Brad says:
November 17, 2010 at 11:33 am
RyanM-
“I am not offended by the post, I just don’t understand posting it on a blog that claims to be science driven. Is Wattsupwiththat about the science, or is it a political blog driving a belief, no matter what the science says? (I think the science says that, or is very far from proving that, carbon dioxide is involved in warming…).”
If you click the About link up on the title bar you find this,
About Watts Up With That? News and commentary on puzzling things in life, nature, science, weather, climate change, technology, and recent news by Anthony Watts
I haven’t seen any posts lately that fall outside the limits of that mission statement.
As a further burr under own irritating saddle blanket, I’ll offer up this OT but interesting link.
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/253233/sea-life-flourishes-gulf-lou-dolinar?page=2
It enumerates the dramatic recovery of the Gulf biosphere from the existential destructiveness that was supposed to result from the Deep Horizon spill.
Brad is what you call a “Concern Troll”. Typical operating procedure: “oh, I agree with your goals of course, but you are doing it so badly, you shouldn’t be pointing these things out, blahbitty blah blah blah.” The Concern Troll always claims to be in favor of your goals, but does nothing but attack you and anyone else who tries to argue in favor of them. Nothing is ever good enough to please the Concern Troll, and he is always sure to make that clear.
Whoa, what kind of sick abusive teacher is this? If your teachers are like this it’s no wonder that people are so messed up. Has this guy been fired yet?
I’m an old dope-smokin’ hippie. A literal tree-hugger (try it, you might like it!). Some tree-huggers do know what trees eat. Some of my friends are warmists, to be sure, but many are not.
If “you people” (you know who you are) persist in buying into this foolish “all hippies are warmists” stereotype, you’ll be rejecting potential allies. I tell you this for your own good!
Sorry for the off-topic rant, but I’ve “had it” with these slurs! Do you believe the warmist stereotype that we’re all “right wing”? All “funded by big oil”? All “anti science”? “Flat-earthers”? No? Well don’t buy this one, either!
Love, Peace, and Happiness,
Frank
Why is this person permitted to stand in front of a University class and spout this tripe?
“Too luxurious OF a lifestyle”???
“Too luxurious A lifestyle” would be correct English.
The Prof needs to be made to take and pass bonehead english.
Brad:
Come on, every side has nuts…
But CO2CAGW “proof” is nuts – i.e., not scientific – which makes the example of Dr. Bradley Schaefer’s method – begging the question, intimidation, blaming, and fear-mongering – very apropos of CAGW “science”.
Clever. Also, how about posting the “grade” his students give him in their online professor-reviews.
(And let’s check out what they say about the profs. at Chico State.)
Frank Kotler says:
November 17, 2010 at 2:16 pm
‘I’m an old dope-smokin’ hippie. … Sorry for the off-topic rant, but I’ve “had it” with these slurs! Do you believe the warmist stereotype that we’re all “right wing”? All “funded by big oil”? All “anti science”? “Flat-earthers”? No? Well don’t buy this one, either!’
Me too Frank, good on ya mate. To turn this fight into some partisan left-right polarisation is both counter-productive and potentially self-defeating – after all we have to convince people of all shades of opinion that this agw scam is a delusion and a travesty of reason and science. We have to accept that we’re an eclectic grouping of many different poltical viewpoints under the same banner. This scam isn’t just happening in the States and isn’t just a conservative-liberal split.
Climatology is the shadiest branch of science, fattened with excessive government green monies and devoid of knowledge or conscience
No Fool Like A New World Order TOOL
http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/30062
This is like the Shirley Sherod video. It’s an hour long lecture condensed into a few inflammatory sentences, each of which is taken out of context.
I’ve had classes with this guy. He’s a good teacher that pushes students to defend their views. He plays devil’s advocate as a teaching style. He wants the students to follow their ideas to their logical conclusions.
He’s an aggressive teacher; he will NOT let you get by with half-assed thinking. If your ideas aren’t solid, he WILL find the flaws in your thinking and try his best to expose them. Some people can’t handle that, like the group that went into this class and made the film.
Also notice: the film doesn’t show him talking about the science behind global warming or the consequences of it. If they did, there would be less to blow out of proportion and get upset about.
[ryanm: Shirely Sherod admitted that she used race as a factor in her dealings with the farmer family that she eventually reconciled with. I’m still baffled why an astronomy professor is talking about the sociopolitical implications of global warming. As a tenured professor issuing grades, the free flow of ideas in that classroom is not clear to me…]
Brad,
Why are you attacking Sarah Palin? She is a mainstream conservative. The RINOs have deserted Republican principles. Palin and the Tea Party are calling them back to conservative roots. Barney Frank has nothing in common with the strong traditions of the Democrat Party leaders like Harry Truman and JFK. Barney Frank is an extremist but not Sarah Palin.
BTW, be sure to watch Sarah Palin’s Alaska. It is riveting television. It’s like going on vacation with the Palins … to Alaska! Rock climbing Mt. McKinley, fishing in bear country, a bear fight just feet from the fishing boat. Palin looks to be the second coming of Teddy Roosevelt, Amen?
Well, I’ve just checked out Dr Brad (is he and our concerned commenter one and the same incarnation ?) on Wikipedia. Worth a look – while it stays up.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradley_E._Schaefer
‘Schaefer is a visiting speaker at the Greys Institute of Technology in Andromeda Galaxy.’
(Mods: I posted a reply to Frank Kotler at 2:16 pm earlier but it may have gone to the spam bin??)
[Sorry, I checked. Nothing in the spam folder. ~dbs, mod.]
Frank Kotler says:
November 17, 2010 at 2:16 pm
I agree with Frank, hugging trees is no more peculiar than loving kittens. Not to mention that many alarmists wear ties and suit coats. We don’t need scapegoats to blame, we need reality based science.
It’s right wing crap to discuss/expose biased instruction in universities? It was a science teacher at a major U.S. university telling his students that their opinion was going to lead to death of billions of innocent people. This was not a discussion, this was part of the question they were asked to answer after the lecture. Is it non-science to discuss science education?
I mean, I hesitate to insult you by asking, did you read the final paragraph of this post? Let me re-post it for you:
That’s what the students were given. Is it right wing politicized crap to question that kind of biased instruction? I mean, lets be frank here, a university professor was telling his students to estimate the probability that they and their children will be brutally murdered because of their opinion. Have we come to a place in history now where the idea of a human being forced to examine such a manufactured dilemma strikes you as right-wing/left-wing? Is that how polarized we are in this world that the first thing you thought of was assigning blame to a particular political ideology for exposing the blatant promotion of a political ideology in a public university?
Do you not find that action by that teacher so horrifically biased, regardless of where the truth in the science lies, to be a form of brainwashing? The false dichotomy he presents is so blatant it should be screaming at you.
..And yet, it is “right wing crap” to expose and discuss this. Interesting.
Don’t worry if you want to call me crazy. People tell me every day that I am the crazy person for telling everyone to vote out all incumbents, and promote new political parties beyond the absurd red-blue staged fight. Of course, I see now the hill I have to climb, you’ve made it very obvious to me.
Mandatory birth control. For us, not for him, I presume.
Garrett Hardin, the original American ecofascist, had five kids and waited until he was nearly ninety to off his Nazi ass. For the good of the planet, one supposes.
The good news here that students who are not already cowed and brainwashed by the “righteous” Gaian pseudo-religion will listen to this assclown and see him for what he is: a miserable ranting wannabe Stalin.
None of which makes Sarah Palin any less of an idiot, by the way.
Gentlemen
If I found a professor conducting a class in manner observed and treating my college-age child this way; then the dean, university president, the college board of directors, my elected representatives, and the State governor would be hearing from me within a day.
It’s been my experience, that when tax payers, people paying for the education, and parents set high expectations they tend to get results. Further, state administrations tend to take action when confronted with a respected professionals with gray hair and more than a few connections.
For example, one of my local college presidents was a fellow Rotarian. It would be a hoot to show this “film” during one of my may presentations at a Rotary. Can you imagine the “dust-up”? . Bet the “problem” would be solved within 24-hours.
Regards, Kforestcat
RichieP says:
November 17, 2010 at 2:45 pm
Frank Kotler says:
November 17, 2010 at 2:16 pm
Guys, don’t let this get your panties in a wad, the only one doing the left-right thing here is Brad. Apparently, he’s still got some butt hurt over the recent elections here. I happened to be a conservative, but my views are not representative of many of the people here. I’ve often stated that skeptics come from all walks of life. My view is, we can get back to the left-right thing after this abomination of science is put to bed. I think many here feel the same way.
[ryanm: did anyone in the media cover the Obama administration and NOAA misleading the public about the oil spill … did anyone see on NBC news discussion of how the peer review process was corrupted in justifying the Gulf oil drilling moratorium? Hypocrisy comes to mind especially with a certain president discussing how folks are not following facts and science…]
what an annoying speaker. He sounds very un intellectual espically for a college professor.
Wow. The first thought that occurred to me was this class would be a great one to prepare for by creating and employing ‘Logical Fallacy Bingo’ cards. I think he hits most of the most common ones just in this brief clip.
Well, put this “in context” for us. Whatever “science” he used to promote global warming would hardly seem to excuse the following:
Did he also shout derogatory questions at the students in the center and on the “no engines” side of the room, and ask them how they feel about the policies they advocate being likely to kill one billion people? Eliminating engines is a much more certain way of causing a billion deaths than a gradual increase in temperature in the northern and southern regions of the globe; in fact all the other policies beyond the US does nothing is likely to result in more deaths. If he did abuse the other students then perhaps the editing of the video is unfair, but from what we do see it seems unlikely that he did.
Brad is concerned with an alleged unfair depiction of the nutters who support AGW and inferring those nutters are representitive of AGW supporters; he should read this:
http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/39750.html
AGW nuttiness is the mainstream.
Ryan Maue says: “Just imagine if this were a professor ranting about evolution — the mainstream media would be cuing it up nonstop.”
Climate Evolution–an idea whose time has come?
lsu student says: “This is like the Shirley Sherod video. It’s an hour long lecture condensed into a few inflammatory sentences, each of which is taken out of context….”
I think the context is perfectly clear, given the seating chart.
At the very least, we will all get to witness science implode on itself.
Science has become the bad news predictors.
There is no good news in science. Scientists predict the next pandemic, earthquake,
asteroid, flood, virus, disease, famine, total destruction and the end of mankind.
global warming
and all of these ads on TV are immediately followed by another ad from some law
firm, saying if you fell for this crap or took that pill, call them.
People are sick and tired of bad news.
and science is doing themselves in…….
TomG says:
November 17, 2010 at 11:01 am
I kept waiting for the people on the “US should do nothing” side to suddenly blow up.
No pressure, after all.
Nice.
At least this school has the best coach on college football.
“Your professed policies have a substantial likelihood of leading to the death of a billion or more people.”
Dear Teacher, Before answering your questions: The United States Census Bureau currently estimates the world population to be approximately 6,882,200,000. How many of these people would you say are going to die at some point, regardless of the policies I choose to follow?
“(A) Estimate the probability that you personally will be killed in an ugly way because of your current decision?” The probability that I will die is 100%. As to “ugly,” are you referring to brain cancer, a car accident, or something out of “The Naked Prey”?
“(B) What is the probability that any children of yours will die in ugly ways due to your current decision?” At some point, all my children will no doubt pass on, same as me.
High narrow intelligence sometimes comes with low emotional intelligence (and oddly, weird language error patterns). This combination can lead to off the wall and often strident beliefs, sometimes to the point of needing to “do something about it”. If I were this man’s boss, I would put a red flag on his personnel file.
Suppose for moment this idiot is accidentally right and not doing anything would increase the probability of a billion people dying. Weigh that against the effect of collapsing western civilization and turning most of the world into Somalia.
And there are many more where he comes from.
Climate Change Indoctrination is becoming the standard in schools and universities all over the world.
Brad says:
November 17, 2010 at 11:33 am
“I am not offended by the post, I just don’t understand posting it on a blog that claims to be science driven. Is Wattsupwiththat about the science, or is it a political blog driving a belief, no matter what the science says?”
We love our chuckles. Lighten up. Enjoy the chuckles.
So why didn’t someone get up and switch off the projector on the white board and all the lights ?
Hey, it’s a start
The man is barely articulate.
I’d like to answer the questions please. A) less than one in a google. B) exactly zero (I have no children)
pwl says:
November 17, 2010 at 2:05 pm
Whoa, what kind of sick abusive teacher is this? If your teachers are like this it’s no wonder that people are so messed up. Has this guy been fired yet?
pwl, he is protected by his invincible tenure.
If tenure ended today, the streets would be flooded with raving, maniacal ideologues. This is something greatly to be desired, regardless of the temporary traffic problems. Today, tenure protects only statist ideologues. That is the measure of just how deep PC is.
Kudos to the young men and women who took the time to expose another FRAUD in the higher education system. Keep up the good work. I think what would be great…is for some of our more learned citizens on these topics to take these classes and challenge these professors at every level. Let’s see these professors who know so much defend what they have to say!!!
Resisted commenting on this one all day.
The style is obviously confrontational.
Was this style applied all over the students attending? We don’t know as this is heavily edited.
If there is video of the whole hour, I’d like to see it before making my mind up.
Part one of what might turn out to be the whole lecture is available on YouTube but having seen it, I fear it will be equally heavily edited.
I’m an AGW sceptic but this video looks like a smear campaign from what I’ve seen
DaveE.
“Also notice: the film doesn’t show him talking about the science behind global warming or the consequences of it. If they did, there would be less to blow out of proportion and get upset about.”
That has nothing to do with him using fear tactics to prove his point. I don’t care if he stated scientifically : “people will die because scientists say this.” and then states that their blood is on the students hands. No matter how you do it, there is some things that shouldn’t be said. Emotional arguments are not correct to use in science.
There is no way this language can be taken out of context, because face it, he is unhinged and instead of sticking to the science, he switched to emotional argument which has no place in a class-room.
At first blush this video is very troubling!
However without knowing the full video (no editing to put those comments in context) is it dangerous to go too far in condemning his “apparent” outbursts.
If he really believes what he is recorded saying, and typically acts that way there is a major problem, —- but there is a possibility he is doing exactly what was described in an earlier post and intentionally voicing a representative outrageous statement to see if any of the students would stand up and defend a more rational view.
Now to make clear, I am not defending his presentation, I am “being skeptical” about what the true agenda of this video is and what the full in context of his classroom presentation was.
I have no knowledge at all of this specific professor, but I did have a teacher in high school once that used the method of making totally outrageous statements periodically and then drawing out the students responses. At the end of the class period he would come back down to earth and bring it all together and point out how some of the students positions were logically inconsistent or indefensible.
I remember one day when he got some of the students so angry a few individuals were standing up and shouting at him. A few of us thought a couple of the jock students were going to go to blows with him until he revealed he had been playing devils advocate and had been getting them to examine their beliefs and how some of the positions they were trying to defend were logically inconsistent.
It was a very intense day ( he only did it a few times in a school semester) but I have seen that sort of teaching style used to get kids to actually think rather than just regurgitate pat positions.
I also worked in state government and learned from direct observation that video editing can totally mangle what actually happened, and to caution folks that without context this video could also be an angry student trying to make him look bad by exploiting his teaching style without any context pr intentionally editing it to misrepresent what actually happened.
It is even possible that he was actually trying to force the students to face just how ridiculous some of these extreme CAGW positions are, by taking them to the far edge. He might have been role playing, acting as a radical CAGW proponent rather than presenting a totally off the deep end lecture he might have been holding that sort of position up for examination, (even ridicule) and what the logical extremes are that comes from some advocates positions.
Bottom line — without context this is just a data point. It could be an example of a professor that is totally over the edge and needs serious attention from his dean, or it could be a creative teacher trying something outrageous to shock the students into being active participants rather than passive follow the herd non-thinkers.
That is what my physiology professor in high school did, so I must accept that it is at least possible he is being seen out of context, and the troubling issue here might be a gross misrepresentation by the video maker.
If we want to pride ourselves for being rational and “skeptical” we must consider that there are at least two possible explanations for the video.
In that high school class I mentioned, about 10% of the students saw through the role playing almost immediately, as it was too far out of character. About 50% of the students were taken in for a while but at the end of the class realized what was going on and what he was trying to accomplish. A small percentage fell for his act hook line and sinker and some never did buy his conclusion at the end of the day and for the rest of the year thought he was a lunatic.
It is a dangerous tactic for a teacher to try, unless he/she is really good.
I have had some absolutely terrible teachers too, so I could also fully believe he is a nut job and should not be teaching anyone anything.
I will wait for more background and context before I decide which case is most likely.
It would be interesting to see student evaluations from previous years to see if they show a pattern of lunatic rants or a dynamic and unconventional teaching style that forces students to defend their positions.
Larry
Brad says:
November 17, 2010 at 9:33 am
“More non-scienctific right wing crap being posted, Wattsupwiththat loses cred with each of these posts.
Stick to the science guys!”
=========================
Huh??? Stick to the science???
As far as I am concerned this IS science because it is about exposing the truth:
Here you have a nutbag basket-case “astronomer”….safe in his tenured position… completely wasting these students’ time (and their money) on a subject that has NOTHING to do with astronomy.
Oh….I forgot….James Hansen is an astronomer, too, but I digress.
This was well-posted and should be given the rightful derision that it deserves.
And if I were those LSU students….I would be demanding my money back.
Just WHO is the customer here??
The one who pays the tenured radical whack-box’s salary, with their tuition, that’s who!!
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
This video has been edited to show only part of the lecture.
http://chronicle.com/article/Professor-Rebuts-Charges-of/125426/
Ah, perfessor, so you say our Children will die? In unpleasant ways? where? a Socialist
Re-education camp? a Government Gulag? Freezing in a Siberian-like winter?
To do what you want, you need a Pol Pot or a Mao,Stalin, Castro….
I was thrown out of a sociology class as I dared to critique a novel “EcoTopia”
in a light that compared it to Cambodia under Pol Pot…
This looks staged. Could it be one of those ruses hidden in a a ruse that the media so often produce for us? Are they playing those who fall for it for fools?
There is no lunatic left or lunatic right, just those dedicated to leading their sheep from either direction towards the trap of totalitarianism. This type of stunt has been pulled before and sadly the sheep can’t get the wool out of their eyes to see the manipulation.
Pamela Gray says:
November 17, 2010 at 6:30 pm
High narrow intelligence sometimes comes with low emotional intelligence (and oddly, weird language error patterns). This combination can lead to off the wall and often strident beliefs, sometimes to the point of needing to “do something about it”. If I were this man’s boss, I would put a red flag on his personnel file.
Pam, as ever, your wisdom hits the nail on the head. The sadest (and possibly scariest) thing about this lecture is that the professor is a physicist. Admittedly the video was heavily edited, but it does appear that the Professor is a picnic short of a sandwich, and in desperate need of some rational thinking. Shame that none of the students were versed enough in the science to enlighten him with regard to the CO2 delusion. I would have liked to have seen some of the students ask him:
There is good geological, archaeological, anthropological and geo-physical (ice core) evidence for average temperatures to have been 2-3C higher (than present) in the Holocene Optimum and the Minoan Warm Period and around 1-2C higher in the Roman Warm Period, and around 1C higher in the Medieval Warm Period. Given than anthropogenic CO2 emissions in these historical periods were insignificant, and that these variations in global temperatures therefore must have been the result of natural longer term oceanic/solar-magnetic/orbital cycles, and that CO2’s contribution to the radiative forcing from ‘green house’ gases is only around 10% of the total (water vapour is responsible for around 80%), and that the relationship between CO2 concentration and the resultant radiative forcing is logarithmic, (i.e. any increase in CO2 concentation above 250ppm (0.025%) will have a negligible effect due to Beer-Lambert’s Law), explain how there can be any confidence in the IPCC’s AGW hypothesis that the 0.7C warming in the 20th Century was caused by the increase of atmospheric CO2 concentration from 0.028% to 0.038%.
Okay, I can dream on.
jcrabb says:
November 17, 2010 at 8:10 pm
This video has been edited to show only part of the lecture.
http://chronicle.com/article/Professor-Rebuts-Charges-of/125426/
==============================
Yeah yeah yeah….understood.
What I don’t understand is exactly what in the hell does his lecture have anything to do with…astronomy?
As I said earlier…if I were a student forking out thousands of dollars for this course….I would demand my money back.
I mean really…who is the customer here?
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
hotrod (Larry L) says:
November 17, 2010 at 7:50 pm
Lots of good points there, hotrod! At least his students dont fall asleep.
I think this is what they call preaching fire and brimstone… except this time it is from the Fundamentalist Church of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
savethesharks says:
November 17, 2010 at 9:06 pm
Yeah yeah yeah….understood.
What I don’t understand is exactly what in the hell does his lecture have anything to do with…astronomy?
I watched the whole video and that was my thought also. He talks about spending several previous classes discussing the ozone hole. Then launches into an ignorant rant on hurricanes and moves on to 250 feet of sea level rise. The edited version was mildly
distorted, but his whole presentation was filled with phenomenal BS. I guess he should get a few points for admitting that “Waterworld” was impossible, but generally comes across as someone who attended to many Algore seminars.
What struck me early on in Dr. Schaeffer’s rant was his intimation that India and Pakistan – which have demonstrated their respective abilities to assemble and detonate nuclear explosives – might some 50 years in the future come these United States and “nuke” Americans for having visited upon them the climate catastrophe caused by our Gadarene emissions of carbon dioxide.
I damn’ near succumbed to a hysterical fit of the giggles. This guy is supposed to be a professor of astronomy and astrophysics, and he credits a pair of military basket cases like Pakistan and India with a credible capability – even 50 years hence – to launch a nuclear attack upon these United States? Much less a national command authority disposed to undertake such a course of action in the face of long-established U.S. strategic policy which tripwires what’s been described as “retaliatory wargasm.”
Let us speculate how Dr. Schaeffer’s spew would have been received at a university like West Point or Annapolis or Norwich, where the students receive a solid grounding in military history, theory of armed conflict, and geopolitics.
Well, cadets and midshipmen tend to be well-disciplined, so the most I’d expect from such men and women would probably be that “silent insolence” that used to be punishable before the 1928 revision of The Manual For Courts-Martial.
Though I am disinclined to remotely diagnose people like Dr. Shaeffer, I’ve got to agree with those who have – laughingly? – suggested that he had in this astronomy class demonstrated evidence of what we used to call a psychotic break.
—
I suspect the young professor was subject to environmental alarmism from at least High School onwards. Many of the most zealous alarmists seem to live in a permanent state of quite severe anxiety about the future, and this must surely be harmful and likely to lead to personality and intellectual distortions away from the norm. My own idea of what that ‘norm’ is, is much more cheerful. I note how laughter and cheerfulness, and optimism, are so congenial to almost everyone I have ever met. It is not consistent with deliberately setting out to scare and depress people in order to win them over to your cause. My ‘norm’ also has it that most people scare easily, perhaps a carryover from our evolution during which even hints of some threats had to be responded to quickly, without pausing for analysis, in order to survive. That is my pop-science level explanation for the remarkable success of the ScareEveryoneSillyAboutClimate phenomemon. The evidence for alarm about CO2 is the air is very thin indeed. In fact, as far as I can tell, there is no unambiguous observational evidence at all that calls for alarm, that alarm being based largely on the projections of computer models programmed to illustrate the hypothesis that the radiative role of CO2 can lead to big effects on climate. So the phenomenon relies on emotive performances in order to get it out of the groves of academe, where in my opinion it largely belongs. The young professor may be as a much a victim as a perpetrator. He puts on quite a show.
Professor of Astronomy or astrology? The latter I think. This man is deranged and should join Holdren, Pelosi and Browner and live on a desert island and let the world get on and live.
I didn’t see the entire class. So he could be showing both sides. However, if I understand this correctly, Professor Schaefer is an astronomy professor. I assume this is an astronomy class. Not a debate class. What the hell is this man doing demanding that people defend their lifestyles in astronomy?
Maybe Professor Schaefer should defend his luxuries. As a heated and air conditioned class room and office. Maybe we should go to a simpler life where people died in their 30’s. And south Louisiana still fought with malaria and yellow fever. (Damn that horrid DDT.)
I assume LSU still has free speech alley. It seems the professor should go preach from the soap box there. And stop wasting his classes valuable time.
Kind of makes me ashamed I have both an undergraduate and graduate degree from LSU.
I’m with Hotrod, in that the video makes me deeply uneasy. Having once been accused of outrageously poor and inappropriate teaching by a young woman who had an agenda which was revealed later, which was to get the rest of the class to disregard the information I was imparting so she could top the school – a few years later she was found to be suffering a bipolar mental disorder – I had to face an enquiry and all the nastiness with goes with such proceedings. I was eventually exonerated fully, but bad feelings and suspiciions about me in the school community remained in evidence until the young woman’s young brother tried an almost identical scam with one of my colleagues the following year. At this, I was immensely relieved and as word of the brother’s behaviour filtered out, my reputation was fully restored.
For this reason, I hesitate to voice an opinion about the lecturer’s style, content and methods as the clip does not give suficient information or context.
this video says to me, we need to rethink our whole system of “higher education.” Given my experiences as a student and a parent, I see, it’s all about shaking people down for money. They run you through this gauntlet, more money, more money, more money, and all the while, you must “repeat after me…”
But try getting a job in this world without that piece of “sheep skin” – hah! It’s like extortion!
I have just about convinced my son to go back to college after he dropped out a year ago – because of teachers like this. Oftentimes, the worst ones give the best grades, as if they know what they’ve put you through and they want to keep you quiet. Why should a person have to sit through the kind of behavior exhibited in this video? The fact that his outrageous behavior was “taken out of context” – hey, some things don’t need any “context.” The idea that I would be paying for my kid to sit through this kind of behavior is absolutely sickening. Why not just send him down to the mental ward at the hospital?
This isn’t just about climate “science”. Some college teachers make everything political. Try telling your English teacher you don’t like Shel Silverstein! No more soup for you!
John Marshall says:
November 18, 2010 at 2:18 am
Professor of Astronomy or astrology? The latter I think. This man is deranged and should join Holdren, Pelosi and Browner and live on a desert island and let the world get on and live.
Add in the new head of Medicare, Dr. Letemdy.
I just watched enough of the unedited video to see that this professor knows much less about climate change issues than most commenters on this blog. He takes an incredibly sophomoric approach to addressing the issue of CAGW. He certainly needs more preparation before his next climate change lecture in order to retain a shred of credibility (I certainly think it’s possible to present CAGW theories in a credible manner, but he failed miserably in this attempt).
He was clearly biased towards CAGW. The only “balance” he provided was claiming that the group which wanted to do away with the internal combustion engine was going to starve the cities by cutting off their food supply. Again, this is a completely sophomoric response (I’m pretty sure that inner city starvation could be averted without the internal combustion engine).
jcrabb says:
November 17, 2010 at 8:10 pm
“This video has been edited to show only part of the lecture.
http://chronicle.com/article/Professor-Rebuts-Charges-of/125426/”
I watched the entire video………and it’s worse than the edited version………and worse than I thought it could be. I would be very surprised if steps aren’t taken to remedy the unfortunate situation.
So is the science.
At 10:22 AM on 18 November, wobble had written:
…
Er, yeah, the inner cities most assuredly would starve were the internal combustion engine done away with. Even railroad engines are Diesel-electric nowadays, not to mention the fleets of trucks which distribute foodstuffs and other consumer goods to the stores and eateries at which the residents of the inner city purchase what they need to keep themselves from starvation.
Yet again we see that the average global warming whackjob – by which I mean wobble – is as the beasts that perish when it comes to any understanding of the basic economics of a division-of-labor industrial civilization.
—
Having attended a similar ‘astronomy’ university lecture by the name of “Apocalypse Now”, afterwards I suggested to the visiting English barbarian that he should surely volunteer for the population reduction.
This has gone mainstream (Fox) and includes a link to the full video, which is supposed to be 40 minutes long. Have not had time to watch it yet but for those who would like to here is the full context.
http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/11/18/global-warming-blood-hands-prof-class-lsu/
Larry
Fixed, and you’re welcome.
What were the students supposed to be learning? I hope these students got a chance to experience this guys irrational behavior before the drop date for the class
I have just watched the entire video, so my earlier post expressing extreme caution about judging the professor is redundant. The guy spouts a lunatic mix of of Malthus and extremely bad science, proving that a little knowledge is indeed dangerous. I suspect he is capitalising on AGW to ‘big himself up’ to his peers, but his content and delivery are a disgrace. The college that employs him maintains that ‘no student has complained’ – if that’s true, why did a student make and post the video?
He is not a teacher, in my view, and should be retrained at the very least.
At 9:47 PM on 18 November, Steve R had written:
…
This was – if you can believe it – a class in astronomy. Might could be that it was an “idiot class” – one of those courses in the subject area open only to non-science majors. When I was in college many decades ago, such a course was offered for the first time by the Physics Department to non-Physics majors. It was immediately perceived by those of us in Biology and Chemistry as an “easy ace” elective. It could not count for the fulfillment of our respective Departments’ degree requirements in Physics, but a 3-credit guaranteed four-point-oh in our “squishy subjects” burden was nothing to be sneezed at.
Roughly half of the students in that first class were, therefore, people with acid stains on their shoes or the reek of formaldehyde on our clothes. The rest were English majors and similar incompetents.
And the class was graded “on the curve.”
We killed ’em. By the middle of the semester, the non-science majors in the course realized that none of them was going to come out of that Astronomy course with anything over a middlin’ “C.” The instructors had to make the tests (especially the mid-term exam) hard enough so that the Biology and Chemistry majors didn’t all of us turn in perfect hundred-percent performances, and that left the bewildered Sociology and Political Science majors slaughtered on the sidewalk.
So what did the Liberal Arts types do? Why, they did what “Liberals” always do. They whined to the government – in this case, to the college administration.
There came down unto the Physics Department an ukase from the admin building.
“Break up the grading so that the non-science people get evaluated on a separate curve.”
Next semester, the Physics Department closed that astronomy course to Biology and Chemistry majors as well as to their own students.
So let’s say that the lecture thus recorded – can we call that scientific-content-free insane rant a “lecture”? – was part of an “Astronomy for Dummies” course at LSU.
Just what the hell was Bradley Schaefer – a hot-shot astrophysicist doing what I’ve been told is cutting-edge work in gamma ray bursts – doing at the head of that classroom, anyway?
—
Looking at the full video I see no evidence of “creative instruction” or drawing out the students to examine their beliefs. In fact you can hear the students laughing at him.
He is a disgrace as a teacher and should not be teaching remedial reading let alone astronomy.
The University needs to have a long talk with this prof as he has seriously degraded the reputation of the University, and has certainly done his students a disservice.
I’d drop that class in a heart beat.
Larry
1. Then he should have proudly admitted his bias in his response instead of pretending that he was neutral about it.
2. The science is biased towards AGW. The science isn’t biased towards CAGW. Do you at least admit that there will be no C without positive feedback?
Er, no, there are plenty of options to prevent starving in inner cities in the event of an internal combustion engine ban.
1. Many people could (and most definitely would) move out of the cities. They might do this before the ban took effect or they might walk out as has been done for hundreds of years. They might live in refugee villages located closer to the food.
2. Gas turbine engines could probably be retrofitted for railroads. To prevent starvation, such projects could (and most definitely would) occur quickly.
3. Inner cities would like begin to tear up concrete and grow food in anticipation of the ban.
I never said that there wouldn’t be inconveniences and a devastating effect to the economy. I merely said that starvation could probably be averted. Surely, you understand the massive effort which would take place to prevent starvation, and the students on the left side never claimed that the ban had to occur immediately. Maybe they would suggest that it be phased in.
My point was that this professor was making specious, unscientific claims.
Yet again we see that the average global warming whackjob – by which I mean wobble – is as the beasts that perish when it comes to any understanding of the basic economics of a division-of-labor industrial civilization.
I’m not a warmist. I would best be described as a denier. Maybe you should reread my original comment.
I thoroughly understand basic economics and division of labor. I also thoroughly understand how people adjust to their circumstances to avoid death.
Maybe you agree with idiotic claims that millions of people will drown because the oceans are rising? Or maybe you agree that people would probably, you know, move away from the rising oceans even if it were to happen. This isn’t much different.
Fixed it for you.
And to think that as recently as 5 years ago still I naively thought that at least the hard sciences were safe from academic corruption, and still “self -correcting” (bitter, cynical snort): The self-righteousness, the deep, deep ignorance posing as erudition, the over-all cluelessness.
And for the self-coup de’ grace, he almost shouts, in the voice of a 14-year-old, that the seas will rise 250 feet.
I must still be a little naive & un-jaded, because I heard that and momentarily lost my breath. Anthony, there’s your climate craziness quote for next week.
BTW, I watched most of the un-edited version, and if anything, he looked even worse. Does anyone know exactly what the class was? Was it truely an astronomy class, or some general core science class?
At 12:58 PM on 20 November, PaddikJ had asked:
…
Best information available thus far is that it was, indeed, a class in astronomy – not “some general core science class” for non-science majors. I wouldn’t think that a known astronomy and astrophysics hot-shot like Dr. Bradley Schaefer would be assigned to teach the sort of “dummies”course that enrolls the kinds of students who confuse astronomy with astrology.
I repeat my sincere desire for access to the PowerPoint presentation used by Dr. Schaefer in that class session. I’d also like to know the extent to which the materials he’d spoken upon will be on the course’s final exam next month.
—