The Executive of Cambridge University, England, which was originally founded in the year 1231, has rejected a demand by academics to divest from fossil fuels, because they are worried such divestment will impact future ability to fund teaching and research programmes.
Cambridge clashes with own academics over climate change
University executive refuses to implement governing body’s carbon divestment motion
The University of Cambridge has become embroiled in an internal battle after executives at the UK’s richest educational institution clashed with academics over proposals to divest from fossil fuels.
Last month the university’s governing body, which is made up of senior academic and administrative staff from its 31 colleges, passed a motion to divest Cambridge’s £5.8bn endowment from fossil fuels.
The decision came amid investor concern that fossil fuel companies will suffer large losses as governments around the world seek to tackle global warning.
But in an unprecedented break from university tradition, Cambridge’s council, its executive arm that sets policy, has said it will not follow through with the governing body’s calls for divestment within the next 12 months.
The council is reluctant to cut investments in fossil fuel companies without assessing how this would affect funding for its teaching and research programmes.
…
Read more: https://www.ft.com/content/ee5200c0-e972-11e6-967b-c88452263daf
According to the Cambridge Zero Carbon Society, the following is the text of the divestment motion;
“That the Regent House, as the governing body of the University, resolves that none of the University’s Endowment Funds should be invested directly or indirectly in companies whose business is wholly or substantially concerned with the extraction of fossil fuels, and requires the Council to publish a Report to the University within twelve months setting out how this is to be achieved”.
Source: http://zerocarbonsoc.soc.srcf.net/?p=4146
Cambridge is the university which brought us the irrepressible arctic ice alarmist Professor Wadhams.
While I acknowledge the effort by the executive to protect the integrity of the research and teaching fund against pointless virtue signalling, I believe in democracy. People in a cooperative institute like Cambridge should be free to vote their own financial self destruction, even if the institute in question has lasted almost 800 years.
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I had a good friend in the 1970’s who shared an office with me in the Middle East for some months. He was gay but quite discreet for obvious reasons. He was the first president and founder of the Cambridge University Gay Society. His stories were outrageously funny.
Some years later, I met him in London’s High Street Kensington. He looked quite downcast and would not tell me why. A few months later, his photo was on the cover of the Sunday Times Colour Supplement. He was interviewed and essentially complained dreadfully about how the doctors were letting him down as he was dying from a mysterious disease and that he had no idea how he caught it. I did not really understand what it was all about till some time later but did think that he was being disingenuous.
Moral of this story: not all wisdom comes from Cambridge University.
PS
I was offered a “reserved place” at Cambridge but chose to go to Imperial College
“University’s keenest minds”
Those who can do! I think one of the prerequisites for teaching is spending some time doing first.
The other problem I have with the over educated is that they are often under educated in most everything else. Even worse are actors and journalists. That is not what I mean by doing.
WELL SAID! They live in prole-supported Ivory-Towers, immune to those lackeys who fund their privileged existences
Ooops! “…. immune to those lackeys” shd read “immune to the basic needs of those lackeys “
I see no reason for them not to do this, assuming everyone concerned agrees. If not, then they should let people choose a fossil-fuel-free fund if they wish (I’m not sure she’s funds these are or how they are managed and used, TBH). I also think everybody should take control of their own pension fund investements, and ignore fossil fuel investments if they wish.
In fact, as far as I am concerned, anyone who bangs on about CAGW (or really just GW, because the CA is always implied), and who has not divested their personal pension funds of fossil fuel investements, buys anything except renewable energy, drives anything except electric vehicles, wears clothes made from plastics, should shut up about it until they have done this. I cannot stand being told what to do by people not prepared to do it themselves first.
And all of these things I suggest should be possible, they are where I live. If enough people believe in CAGW, then doing these things should solve the problem (real or imagined), so there is no real argument against it unless your motivations are purely political. My admitedly meagre research tells me that the average Joe will do as well as a professional investor, once the massive cut for the professional investor has been sliced off the top. BMW and Lambo sales may drop a bit, so don’t invest in those 🙂
It’s about time these people took responsibility for their own actions, according to their beliefs, before trying to force others to do what they preach.
(Source: wikip.)
(Source: http://www.oregonlive.com/rajneesh/index.ssf/1985/07/rajneesh_followers_amass_fleet.html (July 12, 1985))
AGW is a cult.
CAGW has enough followers to qualify as a religion.
IIRC, the formerly mostly-excellent TV show “60 Minutes” exposed Rajneesh in a documentary.
Now that they are bought and paid for by the enviroprofiteers, I doubt 60 Min. or any other show will expose the Mass Hysteria Cult of AGW. — And that’s fine. Now that we’ve got rational, liberty-loving, people in Wash., D.C., we will be rid of those thugs before too much longer.
Heh. “There’s the door, pal. Oh — wait….. CATCH! ….. your ‘supercomputer.'” {Trump appointee tosses a handheld calculator at him or her}
Who did YOU think of when you saw the above photo?
I thought of Al Gore.
Janice, I love the “enviroprofeteers” label, it fits perfectly. I didn’t think of Al Gore. To me a lot of hollywood phonies would fit the bill. Streep comes to mind and what’s his name ? The private plane guy that thought a Chinook wind was the “end days” a few years ago while running around in a bear suit? Lord, Canadians were LOL for weeks!
Strangely enough an old friend of mine with a double first from Cambridge is almost certainly in that line of people waiting for the Rolls to pass…
Good comments, Janice – as always.
My grandson started his course in the Natural Sciences at CU last October. Over the years he is well aware of my views on the GW/CC fraud and also realised that you could only answer exam questions on CC the “right” way. No doubt he will meet some of these academic charlatans and it will be fascinating to hear his observations.
If the current generation of Veterinarians is anything to go by, I am prepared to be disappointed in how his beliefs develop.
Michael Oxenham
A similar topic was posted here 2 years ago:
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/16/divestment-ethics-and-realities/
“The Executive of Cambridge University, England, which was originally founded in the year 1231, has rejected a demand by academics to divest from fossil fuels, because they are worried such divestment will impact future ability to fund teaching and research programmes.
Cambridge clashes with own academics over climate change.”
Realistic scenario – the old boys at Cambridge network aren’t interested in WHAT to teach – but in getting paid for teaching.
It’s amazing how people’s feelings regarding climate change activism are modified when the impact on the financial bottom line is considered.
It seems to me the alarmists face be classified into six groups:
1. Academics competing for government funding against such hairy perennials as health and education. How better to bolster their case than predicting disaster if action is not taken (read money is not doled out).
2. Bureaucrats with supranational aspirations (read cushy U.N.jobs, conferences, 5 star hotel, the list goes on but you get my drift).
3. Hardwired anticapitalists who, since the implosion of the U.S.S.R. in 1989, have been looking for some other stick to belabour the capitalistic beast. How better to strangle it than by raising the cost of energy by government fiat.
4. Snake oil salesmen flogging windmills and solar panels neither of which can ever supply the energy requirements of a modern economy.
5. Merchant banks who can see a dollar two being made by trading carbon credits, short positions of course.
6. Finally, misguided idealists who can’t resist pointing out to others the errors of their ways.
.
As Cicero put it 2000 years ago, cut bono.
“Cut bono” >> “Cui bono”??
I would love to see the Cambridge Union debating society debate the motion “this house believes that “Until Climate science has been externally examined in open court any restrictions based on it are immoral.”
We have been found guilty and heavily fined by a detective force, a prosecution counsel, a judge and a jury all pre tested to establish they believe that we are guilty. Any defence is dismissed as amateur, no matter they are way better qualified in some aspects than any climate scientist. Amateurs are not considered worth listening to but the fact that no funding is available for defence so only amateur is possible is not treated as relevant.
It is poorer future students that will pay the price for misguided failure to invest in viable fuels in the future in favour of what already is proven to be a more wishful thinking than practical future energy source.
If the ‘academics’ don’t like it they can find employment elsewhere. Oh my God what am I saying? Give up tenure ?
Big Carbon are quivering in their boots.
http://ichef-1.bbci.co.uk/news/624/cpsprodpb/13E18/production/_92923418_tillerson.jpg
Big carbon, whatever that is, gave you the technology that enables you to post your drivel. Save the planet, disconnect from the interweb.
I think the quivering is happening with big government.
Money is dirty, no mater who handles it.
Right at the top we get a discussion about ‘stupid’
Yeah, Right, Absolutely.
But why? Why are the supposed cream of the cream of educated folks behaving as they are. That they believe in ‘trapped heat’, honestly think they know what Climate is.
Oh yeah, climate is an average of 30 years of weather.
Right then, what’s the answer – what is the number that represents 30 years of weather. get out into the real world and see it has very little to do with temperature and that there are probably 7 billion, and counting, different climates on this planet.
CO2 doesn’t trap heat, it shreds long wave infra-red into even longer wave IR and those long wavelenght photons do not join together again. Cold cannot heat warm.
So why do they believe that – all these super clever people.
Because their doctors, advisers, the media and everywhere say ‘you have to eat carbs, to get energy’ and even worse ‘its OK to drink alcohol’
Those 2 things switch your brain off, they slow your thinking and make you lazy. And that’s what we’ve got here.
Consider we dodged a bullet this time. Are universities not the (or a truly major) sign of Civilisation. See when Cambridge was founded, just coming out of the Dark Ages.
And what if these folks had succeeded, divested from fossil fuels and bankrupted the university?
There goes a major pillar of your civilisation..
Think on, next time they may succeed…..
“Peta from Cumbria, now Newark February 6, 2017 at 3:14 am
‘its OK to drink alcohol’”
Tell that to the French.
Wrong, Pete, … Climate is an average of 30 years of weather, averaged over an entire globe within a precision of hundredths of a degree. I forget which fairy tale I read that in.
While it might make sense to divest if they believe the stocks will suffer, fossil fuel companies have nothing to do with global warming. No one burns oil to make power anymore – the price of oil long since stopped that. And if natural gas were restricted, what will replace it in this anti-nuclear world that is reliable? Even wind/solar systems depend heavilly upon natural gas. A large portion of oil is used to make plastics, and plastics aren’t likely to be replaced anytime soon. So the fossil fuels they provide to run our cars and trucks and planes can’t be replaced en mase at this time either. Probably soon, given the drop in battery prices, but the current crop of gas powered cars are not going to be thrown away anytime soon. At best divestiture may lead to the loss of competition and the amalgamation of the business into fewer hands, not a good thing. I would love to hear one of these divestiture proponents explain exactly what they expect to happen. I don’t believe they have any logical defense, only an emotional, ignorant desire to be an Earth hero.
Thought experiment: how about determining the amount of income from fossil fuel investments and deducting it from the departmental budgets of those voting for divestment? The virtue–signalers can wallow in self-righteousness and nobody with a mature perspective is harmed.
It is very interesting and strange that so many of us call “scientists” stupefied policy and did not know the power relationship of the sun and planets, according to what we Avak weak stimulate the energy, we can change in relation to climate.
I have to repeat, climate change and global warming on the planets, to the consequences of mutual relations of the planet, each other and the sun.
I’m interested in why you are in your newspaper do not have any interest to publish prove to refute all previous stupid ideas and theories on climate change, and on this idea is in vain, spent several tens of trillions of dollars, why?
Is there any tool that will influence to awaken those who believe in the truth.
The final paragraph contained this text ………
“I believe in democracy. People in a cooperative institute like Cambridge should be free to vote their own financial self destruction, even if the institute in question has lasted almost 800 years.”
A democracy assumes informed decisions by an informed electorate . Since when are those opposing
global warming hysteria allowed to speak freely and debate the issues .
“Oh yeah, climate is an average of 30 years of weather.”
Now I understand my confusion. I checked wiki. A group of weatherpersons have defined a climate change in such a way that the ‘climate’ is always changing. Of course that is ‘local’ weather.
That is a circular argument.
Oh wait, it is now global warming. Still confused! Not by science but what is politically correct.
As has been mentioned many times before in these pages, the USA is not
a democracy. Our framers were very much against mob rule.
Anyone who has not studied the outcome of investments in alternative
energy in the Carter era is doomed to repeat it.
Never ever invest in anything which competes with hydrocarbons
as a portable fuel.
“Easy to vote for divestment when it isn’t their money that is affected.”
Yes, one can imagine the actual conversation:
Divesters: We need to divest away from oil.
Cambrige: Ok, we’ll just start cutting professors…
Divesters: NOT SO FAST!!!!
Organic black blob vs Artificial green blight
Economics and people prefer the former.
Founded in 1209 and given royal charter status by King Henry III in 1231 (from Wiki link but I think that’s right since we had a big 800th anniversary fundraising campaign recently). Taking all the negative comments into account but you should look at these numbers too.
Nobel Prizes
Cambridge 96 (Trinity College 32)
Oxford 58
USA 338
UK 119
Germany 103
France 59
Sweden 29
(the rest nowhere!)
“Cambridge 96”? Not the magical ’97’?
So what? Nerdiness doesn’t beget Worldliness, nor Common-Sense.
Also Wiki:
“The Stanley Cup is a trophy awarded annually to the playoff champion club of the National Hockey League (NHL) ice hockey league. It was donated by the Governor General of Canada Lord Stanley of Preston in 1892, and is the oldest professional sports trophy in North America.”
My hometown team (but not MY team), the Toronto Maple Leafs have won 13 Stanley Cups. Only the #!$%#!!@ur momisugly$# Montreal Canadiens have more.
However…the Leafs (yes, not Leaves, don’t ask) haven’t won since 1967. In fact, they haven’t even been in the finals since then, and have only made the playoffs once in the last 13 years.
So, long story short: past performance is not an indicator of future results.
Cambridge is coming to resemble another famous British school, Hogwarts. We don’t need no stinking fossil fuels to turn electrical generators, heat our homes or power our vehicles. We’ll use MAGIC!