The Economic Times reports that there is a profound shortage of scientists choosing to study climate change – that advanced Physics and Maths graduates are being attracted to more interesting fields, such as Cosmology.
According to the Economic Times;
The facts should speak for themselves. The Divecha Centre for Climate Change, at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, is organising a national conference on climate change in July. The deadline for submitting abstracts is just two weeks away, and the organisers have received too few quality abstracts of papers for the conference. The message is quite clear: not enough people work on climate change in India.
Till recently, Govindasamy Bala, a professor at the centre involved in organising the conference, thought this was uniquely an Indian problem. But a news story in the journal Nature early this month told him that it was not the case. The story talked about the shortage of good climate scientists in the world, and the efforts of some climatologists to attract more physicists and mathematicians to their field. “I was surprised to learn that shortage of good climate scientists is a global problem,” says Bala.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/why-not-enough-people-are-working-on-climate-change-in-india/articleshow/46965264.cms
The issue, in my opinion, makes perfect sense if you think about it. If you are a talented graduate, bursting with intellectual potential, would you like to work in an intolerant field of research, where new ideas are punished by name calling, ostracism and financial hardship, or would you prefer to apply your talents to a field where new ideas are welcome, and innovation is rewarded?
Once you move science over to the ivory tower section of academia it is not science anymore. i don’t know why somebody like Noam Chomsky publicly supports climate change propaganda given his education. The obvious conclusion is that the tower has gotten really high. Climate science would be a nightmare for any student that cares amount real science and needs a career in that field.
Noam is a communist, power and control..With the fall of the Berlin wall many moved into Greenpeace type things where their techniques work well. Noam appeals to those young easy to influence brains, he almost has to toe the line or lose half his potential readers..
You’d think a cunning linguist would have it licked.
Haha, Anthony in the headings near the top of the website (“Home” – “WUWT Stuff”) could we have another one please entitled “Smut”. Mike could be first entry!
The preceding sentence could be the second!
No, no. Now if his name were Michael Hunt…
Because it a useful tool for those who want all in the west to go around in sackcloth and ashes has a mark of the ‘guilt ‘ for crimes against the ‘third world ‘
Although to be fair Chomsky does believe that some , like themselves, should have a better class of sackcloth and ashes.
When dealing with the left the important thing to remember is for them , is not about who you are for , but who you are against.
I haven’t heard Chomsky comment on the topic for quite a few years. he is a cunning linguist. He has also been wrong on scientific issues and political predictions. I hardly see him as a philosopher but to each their own.
If you’d like to get the flavor of Chomsky’s prose without having to undergo the tedious task of making sense out of it, there is…The Chomskybot!! http://rubberducky.org/cgi-bin/chomsky.pl
‘Climate change’ is a psyops weapon designed to destroy individualism, private property, constitutional law, nation states, free markets, contracts, … in a word: capitalism.
Noam Chomsky is a psyops weapon designed to destroy individualism, private property, constitutional law, nation states, free markets, contracts, … in a word: capitalism.
Sometimes correlation is cause and effect…..
I had the opportunity to take a summer course in English phonology taught by Dr. Chomsky a looong time ago (about the time the forever forthcoming Sound Patterns of English was finally published). I also waded through his ideas about levels of adequacy in science. From Wikipedia (Sorry, folks, but this is pretty much boiler-plate reporting):
Observational Adequacy
The theory achieves an exhaustive and discrete enumeration of the data points.
There is a pigeonhole for each observation.
Descriptive Adequacy
The theory formally specifies rules accounting for all observed arrangements of the data.
The rules produce all and only the well-formed constructs (relations) of the protocol space.
“…the grammar gives a correct account of the linguistic intuition of the native speaker, and specifies the observed data (in particular) in terms of significant generalizations that express underlying regularities in the language.” [3]
Explanatory Adequacy
The theory provides a principled choice between competing descriptions.
It deals with the uttermost underlying structure.
It has predictive power.
.So Charlie, when you say, “ i don’t know why somebody like Noam Chomsky publicly supports climate change propaganda given his education, I not only concur, I would add, and given his philosophy. Current climate models completely fail to provide descriptive adequacy, and even observational adequacy in the surface record is highly suspect.
Philosophy from my point of view is the academic study, real life experience and then forming your own idea or ideas. I realize Noam has plenty of the first one. For me that is the least important. I don’t know how is is doing on the other two. When I read or listen to him i feel like he’s talking in an echo chamber surrounded by books. Maybe i just don’t get it. Of course I don’t have a graduate degree in philosophy. I don’t know many people that do.
back in college many decades ago I was a big Chomskyite. And I knew nothing about his politics. But I knew why he switched from “Syntactic Structures” to “Movements on Binding”, about the nature of grammar.
Years later, I think he just got lost. He tried to understand the West, got a little bit of it, but fell short, like a home-run hitter swinging and missing. Something about Dewey, and that he taught at MIT, not Harvard. He just could not really allow himself to think about scientists like they sometimes were.
Plus, once it gets down to anthropological level, there are right-wing taxi drivers who are going to understand things he can’t
I hope I haven’t offended anyone. Chomsky shouldn’t be ragged on like the McKibbens, Manns, Neil D Tyson’s and so on deserve. Chomsky has been big leagues.
I’ve gone into the Stanford library to check Chomsky’s citations — to see if people said what he claimed and were as he described. Anyone who’s read Chomsky’s books knows they’re heavily footnoted. Many footnotes include extensive commentary. Many of the footnotes are themselves footnoted. The overwhelming impression is that his work is thoroughly, impeccably documented and scholarly, and are thus almost certainly objectively factual.
I checked his work starting with his famous 1967 “Responsibility of Intellectuals” article, and spot-checked his work across 35 years. What I found is that he is a systematic misrepresenter. There’s a four letter word that condenses the trait, beginning with L and ending with R.
He took quotes out of context. He misrepresented what the author was trying to convey. He assassinated character. It was always the same: he made his targets look racist, hardhearted, callous, venal, war-mongering, greedy, and otherwise despicable. Chomsky is a smart guy. The misrepresentations could not be otherwise than deliberate. I came to believe Chomsky’s work is consciously meant to sustain the false political-social narrative that capitalism is structurally evil and inevitably produces racist, imperialistic, awful people, who sponsor endemic war, death, and destruction. The AGW narrative fits right into that myth.
It’s bitterly ironic. In his 1967 “Responsibility of Intellectuals” Chomsky famously wrote, “It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and to expose lies.” He has systematically done the opposite.
I didn’t mean to make a Chomsky side shoot. I wonder if any reputable climate skeptic has asked for a debate or live interview with Noam. i know Chomsky is known for his work ethic in replying to inquiring minds. He claims he is open to any question or debate. I think if Chomsky is pressed he will discuss this matter and come clean. Imagine a Richard Lindzen and Chomsky podcast or recorded transaction. It would be incredible. While I don’t quite follow Noam’s politics i do believe he is a man of virtue. If he took such a debate it could be a huge leap for this issue. This isn’t about science. We have to go for the big guns of elite liberal politics here.
Charlie, “i do believe he [Chomsky] is a man of virtue.”
He’s a first-class intellectual villain.
Wait, isn’t this the guy that invented the concept of the Anarcho-Syndicalist Commune (a phrase few of us would be familiar with were it not for Monty Python)?
Noam left the tower long ago and floats in his own pure ivory gondola suspended from the toes of a very, very large tortoise upon whose back there is a whole bunch of other stuff that Noam has little interest in.
Or something like that.
How about more Journalist Scientists with a major in BS? The pay can be fantastic with the money flowing like crazy.
Scott, That’s already a crowded field.
This seems to have the effect of concentrating the expertise in the hands of a few.
Or, on a positive note, limiting the number of climate village idiots…
‘Tain’t an ology. Ology is real science. It should be relegated to an “ography” and made to move into the backroom along with the geographers and photographers. Mind you, climatography would still be full of scaremongering grant whores.
/sarc
“Climatography” certainly has a resonance Brent. It perfectly covers the voiced over visual schlock we get in so much of the MSM.
Well done.
Can I generally recommend the widespread use of the term too all and sundry?
PS
NOT sarc.
I thought there would be a queue lining up to take the easy money.
As K.R. pointed out these are the marginal students who are required to get “better” results in their research. What else are they going to do??
“Graduates shunning climate studies…. being attracted to more interesting fields, such as Cosmology”
Generation of young WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particle)
Scared of us the older generation of us MACHOs (Massive Compact Halo Objects)
https://www.astro.umd.edu/~ssm/darkmatter/WIMPexperiments.html
I have to confess; I first read cosmology as cosmetology when I was going over a bump and laughed so hard I accidentally hit the emergency kill switch on my tractor and had to get it going again.
I could use a graduate or two to help get anhydrous disc’d in before it rains buckets again.
reading WUWT on your tractor?
watch out for rabbits …
don’t you mean ‘wabbits’ , Bubba?
Many went on to cosmetology.
Climate science: you get to work on so many interesting and exciting projects – as long as they begin and end with CO2 causes catastrophic global warming. The possibilities are endless.
I read a paper once, your actual peer reviewed and published kind, on the effect of the PDO on the mean sea level on the eastern seabord of Australia. The key data was the long tidal record from Fort Denison, a smally, rokky islet in Sydney Harbour , just downstream from the Opera House. It was useful stuff, evidence based and the cyclical variation in MSL clearly visible and readily related to the PDO indices. In short it was real science but obviously under the vast oversight umbrella that controls funding for ‘climate’ science.
The last phrase of the last sentence of the last paragraph of the discussion (i.e. immediately above the list of references ) read (as I recall) “including global warming”.
It seemed the necessary tug of the forelock to get funding and or publication. It was of course utterly irrelevent to the science in question which was about tidal records and the PDO or in effect of tidal records as a proxy for the PDO I suppose.
I’m guessing a climatology degree no longer lands you as good a job as it used too. There is a glut on the domestic market. And, like they say, “Dump, sir? I do not ‘dump’. I sell abroad at a loss in defense of the national interest.”
As others have mentioned, don’t celebrate this news too soon. The journalists in the left wing dominated media who report on science/environment issues usually don’t have any science qualifications (the UK’s BBC is one example). They don’t care who supplies the ‘science’ that backs up their scare stories just as long as they are pumping out the correct message. Merely quoting Professor so-and-so from the Institute of wherever is all that is needed; the quality of the scientist doesn’t matter.
Steve “the quality of the scientist doesn’t matter.” Too right, try website:
http://climatechangepredictions.org/ very tongue in cheek but all predictions and contradictions certainly make me smile and totally confirm my view that AGW is a pile of you-know-what!
To be more specific, if you have 2 post graduate degrees in math and statistics (like my son). Why would you want to work in a field where misuse is common and pointing out this flagrant misuse is frowned upon or even punished.
“…a profound shortage of scientists choosing to study climate change”
Well yea. Since the science is settled and there is no debate. With nothing left to study, why go into a dead end field?
Why spend 8 years getting a doctorate in a Climate Science when today’s “Climate Change” scientists are no better than…
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51T0DnfCflL.jpg
don’t need that trade tool anymore, do it on-line:
http://www.ask8ball.net/
I would have thought you an analog kind of fellow.
Not sure about eight years for a doctorate, given the standards which seem to be the norm for climate ‘science’ I think 8 coupons from cereal packets is closer to the mark.
I do believe you have just insulted Magic 8 Balls everywhere.
Graduates shunning climate studies …
Good news here. The fakers are not able to make the young people go into fraud for a living. Thank heaven. On the other hand, when will the undergrads start shunning the idiot climate-astrology courses?
that’s the chance for the wannabe scientist stupids here on WUWT. submit your abstracts….. maybe they accept blog posts now?
Daniel Kuhn,
You are such an unhappy guy, always denigrating readers of WUWT.
FYI: there are more scientists and engineers posting articles and commenting here than on all the alarmist blogs you visit, combined.
You need to start drinking more to help you forget your problems.
db I’ll drink to that!
He’s already drank the kool-aid.
Daniel,
A scientist practices the scientific method, ie stating a falsifiable hypothesis, then testing it empirically with repeatable results. “Climate scientists” thus are not scientists. Many who comment and post here are indeed scientists, with lots of publications to their credit, based on actual observational and theoretical science.
But one need never have actually practiced science herself to know that catastrophic man-made global warming has been repeatedly falsified (in both senses of the term). Indeed, it was born falsified.
Well, this may be your chance.
And here I was thinking the trolls were off this weekend.
Seems they have one of those special ed students covering the blogs part time seeking sympathy for his plight.
Kuhn: Grow up, get a real job!
conspiracy theory?
DK,
My goodness, have you lost heart?
It sounds like you are playing defense, now.
“FYI: there are more scientists and engineers posting articles and commenting here than on all the alarmist blogs you visit, combined.”
can you show me the numbers ?
Of course I can. But that’s doing your homework for you. I’ll answer your questions when you start answering questions. But you haven’t started yet.
I can also show that WUWT has more traffic than all your alarmist blogs. I can also show that WUWT has won more science awards than all your alarmist blogs. I can also show that your bogus “consensus” is nonsense. But the information is there for anyone who wants to do a search.
The real question is this: why are you such a hater, Daniel? If you don’t like WUWT — and it is clear that you don’t — why do you comment here at all? Why not post your comments somewhere more appropriate, like Hotwhopper, or SkS? Oh… you already do, don’t you? You say really bad things about us. Never anything good.
I undersatnd why you’re so unhappy, Daniel. You lost the science debate about eighteen years ago. So now all you’re left with is a political argument, and your constant hating on WUWT. But you know what? I like seeing it. It’s another indication that your side’s losing, because you’ve got nothin’ left but your hate.☺
“Of course I can. But that’s doing your homework for you.”
not at all. you made the claim. so you need to provide the evidence. not me.
so tell me, how many scientists are blogging on the blogs i read?
Danny Kuhn asks question #132:
can you show me the numbers ?
Of course I can. I told you that already.
From a guy who never, ever answers questions, I am amused by your impotent demand that I must keep answering your questions. Those days are over, until there’s a quid-pro-quo.
I’ve answered questions from you for weeks. Lots of them. It’s your turn now.
So answer a couple questions, Dannyboi:
Can you produce a measurement of AGW (I’ll answer that for you: ‘No.’ You can’t. AGW is only your religious belief.)
And: what is your CV? Do you even have any accomplishments? Do you have a degree in the hard sciences? If so, from where? If not… that explains a lot.
Answer up, Dannyboi. Yo’re behind on questions anout 20 – 0. Your turn.
(Snip. Anthony has warned you previously about your off-topic “pressure broadening” comments. There is a proper place for them. If you continue to post pressure broadening comments, your posts will be deleted. ~mod.)
So, you cannot answer the question, which is not suprising, considering the fact that you have not the slightest idea what blogs i read.
why do you make claims you cannot pssibly know?
@D. Kuhn:
Try to pay attention, if you can. As I explained to you repeatedly, I have no problem answering questions. I’m good at it, and I like it.
But you refuse to answer any questions. There is a quid-pro-quo here: I’ve answered a couple dozen questions over the last few weeks; but you haven’t answered any. It’s your turn now.
Either answer the questions I asked you, or you can go pound sand. When you’ve provided specific answers, I will be happy to continue answering your questions. But you are behind about 20 – 0. Time to step up and take your turn answering a few.
[Deleted.]
still no numbers to your claim, 🙂
you should not claim things you cannot possibly know.
Danny Kuhn has been instructed repeatedly that after answering numerous questions he’s asked, it is now his turn to answer a question or two:
I’ll answer your questions when you start answering questions. But you haven’t started yet… I have no problem answering questions. I’m good at it, and I like it.
How many times will Kuhn have to have that simple concept explained to him? I have no problem whatever providing the numbers he craves. He won’t like the answer. That’s because he’s on the losing side of the argument. But I have his numbers here, ready and waiting.
All Kuhn has to do is agree to answer a couple of my questions first. It’s been his turn to answer for a long time now. But I don’t think he can answer.
[[Snip. Per Anthony, please, no ‘pressure broadening’ comments. ~mod.]
Why would anyone with any ambition or any talent go into a field where “The Science is Settled”?
Sorry, but I doubt they would be interesting in a dissertation by me on flare steam control, despite being far more important to the environment than any CO2 nonsense ever written
The Divecha Centre for Climate Change –
http://www.dccc.iisc.ernet.in/
Plenty more material for Eric here, but put on your dark glasses. The flashy stuns.
That is terrible to look at. I wonder if they have subliminals hidden in there.
I only managed a few seconds before the flashing got painful and returned to somewhere calm and by and large well reasoned.
James Bull
I must say that I held some fears for the current generation of twenty somethings which includes my sons. I did fear that they had substantially fallen under the thrall of the feelgooder generation of leftard teachers and their empty headed PC curriculum approach. Of course at the centre of their catechism was a belief that the western economy was in some way evil and destroying the climate.
It would seem, hopefully, they now realise what a pack of tossers that cadre of PC apparatchiks were and are having a good look around.
Nephew obtained a BS in Environmental Science. Took over a year for him to finally land a job at a chemical company…reading meters and recording data to show that the plant met certain government standards. (Sounds exciting!) Laid off shortly thereafter following a merger with another company. Essentially replaced by a meter-reader with no college degree who was paid considerably less. Recently was able to find another job but I don’t yet know the details.
I suspect that a number of undergraduate jobs for individuals with such degrees exist only to demonstrate that certain government environmental rules are followed and that specified standards are met; i.e., basically industry equivalents of government bureaucrats.
Indian , perhaps
Now change that to the west you may find the bountiful research funding , lots of position thanks to the funding and the fact you really can get away with any old rubbish so it no even hard to work in, has long as it produces the ‘right results’ and I would bet its different .
Temperatures have not gone up in line with CO2 increases , but the number of people working in the area has certainly gone up , like a hockey stick, with the increase in scary claims and the usefulness of this area to those with certain political outlooks.
Ask your self this , given the ‘quality ‘ of the work seen from the Team , can you seen them ever getting a job , let alone tenure and professorships, in any other of science ?
Translation: “There are too few scientists who support the CAGW hypothesis, and too many who actually test it.”
You’re welcome!
“or would you prefer to apply your talents to a field where new ideas are welcome, and innovation is rewarded?”
Not cosmology, the forerunner and inspiration for climatology.
If we use the premise that it true, then we can ask why would there be a downward change in the trend of interest in a postgraduate career in climate science?
The reasons for the premised decline of interest in a climate science focused post graduate studies might be:
1) Currently in some countries in their elementary schools, in middle schools, in high schools and in undergraduate schools everyone is taught to accept belief that climate change theory is settled science and that is supported by the authority of good responsible governments. So they reasonably have lower interest in what they are told is a settled field
2) Young people are pretty sensitive to any lack of professional integrity in the vocal adult scientists publically making incredible statements about climate change. So young people might not want to associate with a field dominated by those scientists
3) Young people are pretty sensitive to the prospects of economic growth in their choice of an area to study. Since the area of climate science is virtually completely government funding dependent and therefore dependent on the political party in power and whimsical/populist fashionable political causes, then many choose to base their careers on less politically fashionable areas of study like hard physics.
4) Young people are simply rebelling against the excesses of their cult-like climate change believing parents
5) It might be that, in general, young people are actually much smarter than their parent’s/ancestor’s generations, as all rational parents hope they would be. So they are simply intelligently voting with their feet against stupidity like the observationally challenged theory of significant climate change
6) . . . any other suggestions for why?
John
John Whitman
6) . . . any other suggestions for why?
Yep!
Old people when they were young built things. They created things such a sporting clubs, organisations, opposition movements, new political movements, new industries and new sciences such as CAGW plus new societal mores and memes.
Old people when they get to that Old People stage expect and often demand that their kids, the next generation continue right on with those same institutions and clubs and movements and organisations that they built when they were young.
But the kids, the next generation is out there doing what their parents did.
They are building a world and the institutions and the society different to that of their parents and the previous generation, a world shaped to the image they will expect to spend the rest of their lives in.
And will make the same mistake and suffer the same angst with their kids as their parents did with them when it comes time to step back with the expectation the kids will takeover.
Sometimes the kids might even take up the old institutions their parents and the older generation put together but only if there is a very considerable personal benefit, mostly financial, in doing so.
But in doing so they will also reshape that institution in their own image and expectations to fit the world they are building for their future.
ROM on April 19, 2015 at 2:58 am
– – – – – –
ROM,
I see that as the ultimate optimistic view of mankind. Johnny likes it. : )
John
The story talked about the shortage of good climate scientists in the world, There has always been a shortage of GOOD climate scientists. In fact finding one is still a major undertaking.
Perhaps their in the deep ocean along with the ‘missing heat ‘ ?
My guess is that what is harder to find are mathematicians willing to perform circus tricks using over parameterized elephants. And without elephants, abstracts got nothin.
but don’t forget, this is post-normal math (and science) so
2 + 2 = whatever policy/agenda/economic goal you want
and that’s just arithmetic
Rabbits Pamela, opinion driven over parameterized rabbits according to today’s research…
I’m starting to think Pamela is a pachydermatologist.
Looks like a cross between an elephant and a rhino.
What’s that called? ‘Eliphino…..
Yes, it is a good sign that fewer students want to make money planning and supporting the mass murder of fellow humans around the globe. It probably helps their decision to see that this is a field that stifles all scientific research that doesn’t conform to an imaginary consensus. So, unless you prefer producing propaganda to real scientific discovery, where’s the fun in that?
What do math and physics have to do with climate science ?
I scanned Pierrehumbert’s manuscript on Planetary Climate for the quantitative equations showing how Venus’s surface temperature could be 2.25 times the gray body temperature in its orbit due to a runaway greenhouse effect despite the fact that no known material spectrum comes within an order of magnitude of the required solar heat gain , and the constraint of the divergence theorem limiting the interior temperature of a radiantly heated body to match that calculated for the surface .
Didn’t find any . And he’s University of Chicago .
So clearly an understanding of basic quantitative physics is not a requirement for a career in climate science .
Make that “… calculated for the spectrum as seen from the outside” .
Yet you can find that temperatures on Venus at altitudes where atmospheric pressure is equal to Earth’s at sea level, are consistent with what basic arithmetic predicts of a planet which is a little closer to the sun than our own.
Sounds like the original beings put too much trust in their computer models when geo-engineering their planet 🙂
We’ll get it right this time, trust them.
I have seen that contention . Please show us your equations which overcome the basic equations of radiative balance and the constraint of the divergence theorem which show it is anything other than a coincidence in the decline from an internally heated surface to the radiative layers of the atmosphere .
Well Peter Humbug once ran his X-box on a program where he removed every last water molecule from the atmosphere to show how CO2 keeps us warm and fuzzy.
Then he turned the real physics switch back on and he got every last drop of his atmospheric water back in just three months.
It’s all in the way he trims his broom; excuse me; that’s his beard.
G