Guest “I couldn’t make this sort of schist up, if I was trying,” by David Middleton
Academics Demand Sabbaticals to Save World from Climate Change
by THOMAS D. WILLIAMS, PH.D. 31 Oct 2019
More than 1000 British professors have signed a letter requesting more time off from teaching so they can tackle climate change and “save all life on our planet.”
“Humanity stands at the brink of a precipice. If we do not urgently address climate breakdown and the ecological crisis, the very future of life on earth is in question,” begins the open letter published this week by the Times Higher Education magazine and addressed to vice-chancellors, Universities UK and UK Research and Innovation.
[…]
The academics note that they are particularly well suited to the task of saving the world from global warming, given their expertise and prestige among the common people.
“Universities are the bastions of wisdom and knowledge that are urgently needed to combat the climate crisis,” they insist. “Now is the time to increase our efforts.”
Occasionally straying into hyperbole and remarkably unscientific language, the letter asserts that “the crisis is at our doorstep” and that humanity now faces “an even greater challenge” than going to the moon in the 1960s.
[…]
Earlier this month, another group of academics published an essay urging institutions of higher learning to encourage climate scientists to cry in order to relieve some of the stress associated with climate trauma.
[…]
In requesting space for climate scientists, the authors compare them to those who work in disaster relief and the military.
“In these fields, well defined organizational structures and active strategies exist for employees to anticipate and manage their emotional distress,” they declare.As Breitbart News reported last month, a growing number of children in the UK are being treated for an overwhelming terror of “environmental doom” as climate alarmists spread fears of an impending climate disaster.
[…]
“A lot of parents are coming into therapy asking for help with the children and it has escalated a lot this summer,” said psychotherapist Caroline Hickman of the Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA), referring to the newly coined psychological phenomenon of “eco-anxiety.”
Brietbart
The letter is a fracking hoot! I bolded the particularly funny academic titles among the signatories.
Universities must act swiftly and independently on climate change
An open letter from academics and campaigners to sector leaders
October 29, 2019
By ContributorsDear vice-chancellors, Universities UK and UK Research and Innovation,
Humanity stands at the brink of a precipice. If we do not urgently address climate breakdown and the ecological crisis, the very future of life on earth is in question. David Attenborough has said “We cannot be radical enough” in tackling the climate crisis, and the people are listening. Universities are the bastions of wisdom and knowledge that are urgently needed to combat the climate crisis. Now is the time to increase our efforts.
[…]
Support fellowships, placements and volunteering for mitigation, adaptation and ecological restoration
We ask you to support scientists, academics and students to help address the climate emergency through a series of new programmes, fellowships, sabbaticals and voluntary placements to help the critical efforts needed to save all life on our planet. These will be hosted by a large partnership between universities, companies and NGOs working on solutions.
We need to be leaders. We need to transform our universities into action-oriented institutions.
Please help us make this possible.
Signed,
The World University Rankings
Mark Maslin, professor of Climatology, UCL; fellow of the Royal Geographical Society
Alice Larkin, head of the School of Engineering, Tyndall Centre, University of Manchester
Shaun Fitzgerald, director, The Royal Institution
Michelle Shipworth, associate professor in energy and social Sciences, UCL Energy Institute; director of ethics, UCL Bartlett School of Environment, Energy and Resources
James McKay, manager, EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Bioenergy, University of Leeds
Robert Falkner, research director, Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, London School of Economics
Claire Barlow, deputy head, department of engineering, University of Cambridge
Steve Evans, director of research in industrial sustainability, University of Cambridge
Alice Roberts, professor of public engagement in science, University of Birmingham
Jim Al-Khalili, president of the British Science Association, University of Surrey
Zamzam Ibrahim, president, National Union of Students
Mark Miodownik, director, UCL Institute of Making
Paul Ekins, director, UCL Institute for Sustainable Resources
Peter Smith, professor of soils and global change, University of Aberdeen
Hagan Bayley, professor of chemical biology, University of Oxford
Philippa Browning, professor of astrophysics, University of Manchester
Jim Lynch, emeritus professor of life sciences, University of Surrey
George Adamson, convenor of King’s Climate Research Hub, department of geography, King’s College London
And more than 1,000 others. For the full list of signatories, click here.
I looked up the lead whiner in LinkedIn and Dr. Mark Maslin appears to actually have some scientific qualifications…
Education
Cambridge University
PhD Marine Geology / Palaeoclimatology
Dates attended or expected graduation 1989 – 1993
Activities and Societies: Darwin College Student President, Darwin College Boat Club, Darwin College Drama Society, Cambridge University Shakespeare Society CUSS (Midsummer Nights Dream and Macbeth), Darwin College Football Club, Editor of Darwin College student magazine
His LinkedIn page gave us a foreshadowing of how these sabbaticals might be spent…
Solving Climate Change talk in Bristol
Published on January 14, 2019Mark Maslin
Professor at UCLDear All
I am giving a talk on climate change and how we can reverse it at the Hen & Chicken, in Bristol at 7.30pm on the 12th Feb. Saving the World hopefully with a pint in my hand! Would be wonderful to see you there and have a great discussion about solving the major issues of the 21st century.[…]
LinkedIn
The Climate Change Crisis Kegger!
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What a scam.
“I’d like to be relieved of my normal workload but continue to get paid the same so that I can engage in complete bull**** and look and feel good about myself among my peer group.
What a scam.
“Universities are the bastions of wisdom and knowledge…..”
To me, that is becoming increasingly debatable these days.
More like bastions of leftist dogma and indoctrination in many cases. And in the case of Ivy league Law, Economics, history, and Polysci, bastions for the training of connected government elitists.
They are conflating wisdom and knowledge. They are NOT the same. If they were, Hitler wouldn’t have had a chance. Starting in the 1890’s the ‘bastions of wisdom and knowledge’ taught that Germans were the end result of evolution and that other groups, especially Jews and Gypsies were not as evolved.
The prospect of that tipsy old blowhard, ‘preaching to the choir’ down at the Hen & Chicken about the so-called ‘climate crisis’ is truly offal.
Someone local ought to go down there and do some serious heckling.
More than 1000 gullible fools.
Both psyentists and politicos have been telling us for years – The Science Is Settled.
Now they tell us that they are not needed to do the job for which they are handsomely paid for a year.
Great. Sack the twats.
And just what do they think they will do that is not already being done (not that it needs to be done)? Spend more time in protesting? More time pounding on politicans doors. What a sorry excuse to get out of teaching. Come to think of it we might be better off if they weren’t in the classroom. Be gone with them all.
This should be in the nightly news to be ridiculed. It won’t, and that’s why it’s depressing.
If these PhD brainiacs in academia were so smart they wouldn’t propose to selfishly request extra time off to stop climate change. They would go to the root of the problem and propose oil company geologists and geophysicists have extra days off so their time is reduced and they can’t discover more evil hydrocarbons.
Oh wait! That won’t work because oil companies actually expect their employees to show up and do the job they were hired to do.
Can someone help this dear child? She went the wrong way! This is all wrong. She shouldn’t be here. She should be back in school on the other side of the ocean.
You have stolen her dreams and her childhood with your empty words. … People are suffering. People are dying. Entire ecosystems are collapsing. We are in the beginning of a mass extinction, and all you can talk about is money and fairy tales of eternal economic growth. How dare you!
https://twitter.com/GretaThunberg/status/1190290034131267591
Does anyone have a row boat, a balloon, that you could spare? Do it for the children… and don’t be like this rapscallion!
https://twitter.com/Tony__Heller/status/1190349783950450688
No, she does not need to cross the Atlantic, she *wants* to cross the Atlantic. My grandfather had to work hard for years before he could afford to go back.
It shouldn’t be a problem, if she can use a computer, she should be able to do schoolwork from anywhere.
I hear northern California is usually nice this time of year. Lots of wind power, lots of places to charge Arnold’s Tesla.
Why there is not another letter by various signatories that will state it is a propaganda-led agenda without any sound scientific basis. Submit those side by side and make people aware of the whole underlying mean motive.
‘..In these fields, well defined organizational structures and active strategies exist for employees to anticipate and manage their emotional distress,” they declare.’
Translation: There are shoulders available for employees to cry on.
Talk about making things more complicated than they need to be…
When I was in the military (admittedly a long time ago) emotional distress was dealt with by getting on with the job. My pilot was killed in an aircraft accident. I was lead mourner at his funeral in the morning, airborne with the boss immediately afterwards.
You can’t fix stupid !
“Andrew Cuomo: ‘We Didn’t Have Hurricanes’ Before Climate Change”
https://dailycaller.com/2019/11/01/andrew-cuomo-hurricanes-climate-change/
ROTFLMAO
Hold them to their words.
Give them their brief sabbaticals.
It their absence fails to attract notice because Academia doesn’t need them; can their butts permanently.
While reading this article, I had a brief image of the self described saviors being handed shovels to help build a sea wall; install a wind turbine; dig anchorages for solar arrays; dig trenches for solar heated sidewalks; whatever.
That brief mental image was of a bunch of egotistical dullards holding shovels they never intend to use.
In a high pitched voice, they’re saying; “Werk”!?
What they really mean is that they believe they are best at telling the rest of us to work, suffer, do without; while they plan to forever fly, drive, have warm homes in winter, cool homes in summer and well cooked meals.
It’s a crime that the Royal Geographical Society has declined to such depths.
“I couldn’t make this sort of schist up, if I was trying,”
Actually, you probably could, but you would need a sabbatical to get it done…
An admission that climate scientists are really anti fossil fuel activists.
https://tambonthongchai.com/2019/02/03/hidden-hand/
https://ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle556-20100207-02.html
Don’t have a mouth full of beer when you get to the end. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.
Well done, David. that one has aged well.
From the article: “Climate Psychology Alliance (CPA)”
Well, I laughed out loud when I read that. At first, I thought it was a little absurd, but I suppose there is a need for climate psychologists since there appear to be a lot of people who are very stressed out over human-caused climate change rhetoric, thanks to the efforts of the CO2 scaremongers.
There’s a lot of attempted brainwashing going on out there.
The fastest way to REDUCE a nation’s economic output and set it on a path to demise is to intentionally reduce the productivity of its workforce. Worker productivity (number of widgets produced per person-hour) is probably THE most important metric that economists use to study/make economic output projections by looking at changes in worker productivity.
Bill Conerly, PhD in economics, wrote this in Forbes 4 years ago:
“Productivity is the most important determinant of the standard of living of a group of people, a nation or a planet. Productivity in its simplest form is output per hour worked, and its recent slower growth rate is distressing. This article summarizes why productivity is crucial to our standard of living.
source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2015/05/19/productivity-and-economic-growth/#2c81ba785417
So yes, the Greens and the other socialist idiots who want to destroy Western capitalism love shortened work weeks and more sabbaticals and paid vacations. They are all for pushing lower worker productivity by government fiat.
Lower worker productivity –> lower economic growth –> lower energy use growth –> lower emissions + lower standards of living for the workers. Basically it’s an elitist’s set-up for, “Let them and their families go cold and hungry for their laziness.”
The working class has often had an answer for the “let them eat cake” elite. The elite never like the answer. In America right now, that answer is Trump. Other nations will find their unique answers. The elite will like none of them.
I recommend they spend their time at the beach where they can monitor the sea level rise first hand.
Distinction Rebellion?
Check out the lead cartoon.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/the-news-in-cartoons/ss-AAJ7oYd?ocid=spartanntp
They should be relieved of their responsibilities for the rest of their lives. So they could do something good for humanity in another field of work.
Every member of the global warming cult has earned a sinecure, and elected parliamentarians should be replaced 60% by nominees of universities (excluding geoscientists and engineers) and 40% by nominees of the national broadcaster.
,
It’s past time to cut Federal funding for the Academic Extension arm of the Deep State…where they use Group Oppression Studies and Climate Fraud Research…and Campus Censorship of any opposing views…TO DECONSTRUCT the country.
Many Universities are now doing more harm than good….AND ALL SOCIAL SCIENCES DEPARTMENTS do nothing but harm and are a danger to civilization.
What utter nonsense. As if our climate never changes but for our actions. This guy’s comments are proof, as if any were actually needed, that it requires very little actual intelligence to create and academic career.