By Robert Bradley Jr.
“Lisa Sachs repeated refusal to address intellectual diversity and the need for balanced debate on open climate questions speak for themselves. It is climate propaganda at Columbia U.”
Yesterday’s post focused on Lisa Sachs, Director of Columbia Climate School’s Masters in Climate Finance. What is the course, and what is missing from a scholarly viewpoint? First, the parent’s Mission Statement:
The Columbia Climate School’s mission is to further knowledge and educate leaders to achieve equitable and just solutions to the changing climate and related sustainability challenges.
Education: The Columbia Climate School educates future climate leaders to address the urgent challenges facing our planet with graduate degree programs and offers other powerful learning opportunities for students, educators, and professionals.
Research: The Columbia Climate School nurtures and supports innovative research in the science, consequences, and human dimensions of climate change, including the methods of achieving a more sustainable and just world.
Impact: The Columbia Climate School translates its academic work into evidence-based analysis and advice to inform decision- and policy-makers in communities, governments, industries, and nonprofits in the US and globally.
Professor Sachs’ course is described on the Columbia Climate School’s website:
The Master of Science (MS) in Climate Finance is a one-year, 39-credit professional degree program offered by the Columbia Climate School in close collaboration with the Columbia Business School. This interdisciplinary degree integrates climate science with fundamental financial management practices that equip students with the financial decision-making skills to respond to climate change.
Equipped with a robust understanding of climate science, and the costs, risks and opportunities associated with climate change, graduates will be uniquely suited for senior positions in public, private, and intergovernmental institutions, navigating their organizations to success while supporting a more rigorous and coherent approach to climate finance more generally.
Comment
This all sounds reasonable, but where is the “first, check your premises” caveat? Greater speed to the wrong destination is not a virtue, as the late founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI), Fred Smith, stated. Path dependency and “the tyranny of the status quo” in climate research and understanding can ruin a student’s time and subsequent career path.
Lisa Sachs repeated refusal to address intellectual diversity and the need for balanced debate on open climate questions speak for themselves. It is climate propaganda at Columbia U.
Appendix: Climate Realism Resources
There is no substitute for a climate degree program to not have a critic of the narrative of alarm and forced energy transition. One or more such professors can both teach courses and be a resource for students who are taking activist/alarmist courses. The “power of opposites” is very effective learning.
A second recommendation is to have debates for students between CO2/climate optimists and pessimists. In person or on Zoom. This is not nearly as good as having opposing professors, but it is necessary to reduce the present bias.
Third, key books should be texts for climate courses, as well as ‘skeptic’ articles and websites (Climate Etc., WUWT, MasterResource ….). The websites of Alex Epstein, Robert Bryce, and Bjorn Lomborg are useful, as is Roger Pielke Jr.‘s Substack. The Modernizing the EPA project of the Competitive Enterprise Institute is research-worthy, as is the global warming work of CEI over the years and decades. Finally, many energy issues regarding the ‘transition’ are covered by the Institute for Energy Research.
Here are several books of note:
Judith Curry, Climate Uncertainty and Risk: Rethinking Our Response (Anthem Environment and Sustainability (2023)
Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas–Not Less (2022)
Steven Koonin, Unsettled: What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn’t, and Why It Matters (2021)
Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurkmak, Population Bombed!: Exploding the Link Between Overpopulation and Climate Change (2018)
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
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Yet more climate bolleaux
And remember…
Saying 2+2=4 is an example of covert white supremacy
https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/lilley-radical-teachers-claim-that-saying-224-is-white-supremacy
“but rather how a math fact along with its inherent social privilege of objectivity can be taken and weaponized to uphold bigotry and white supremacy ideology.”
Did Kamala Harris write that word salad?
WTF is an inherent social privilege of objectivity.
Definition of objectivity: the quality or character of being objective : lack of favoritism toward one side or another : freedom from bias.
Rubbish, we all know that 2+2 = 22
The science is clear: Space alien change is threatening our planet. We desperately need future leaders in business and finance who can adequately deal with this important and dangerous issue. Fortunately there are schools such as the one below who offering to train such leaders. To wit:
The Gobeemeup Space Alien School’s mission is to further knowledge and educate leaders to achieve equitable and just solutions to the invading space aliens and related spaceability challenges.
Education: The Gobeemeup Space Alien School educates future space alien leaders to address the urgent challenges facing our planet with graduate degree programs and offers other powerful learning opportunities for students, educators, and professionals.
Research: The Gobeemeup Space Alien School nurtures and supports innovative research in the science, consequences, and human dimensions of space alien change, including the methods of achieving a more spaceable and just world.
Impact: The Gobeemeup Space Alien School translates its academic work into evidence-based analysis and advice to inform decision- and policy-makers in communities, governments, industries, and nonprofits in the US and globally.
Professor Sarc’s course is described on the Gobeemeup Space Alien School’s website:
The Master of Science (MS) in Space Alien Finance is a one-year, 39-credit professional degree program offered by the Gobeemeup Space Alien School in close collaboration with the Gobeemeup Business School. This interdisciplinary degree integrates space alien science with fundamental financial management practices that equip students with the financial decision-making skills to respond to space alien change.
Equipped with a robust understanding of space alien science, and the costs, risks and opportunities associated with space alien change, graduates will be uniquely suited for senior positions in public, private, and intergovernmental institutions, navigating their organizations to success while supporting a more rigorous and coherent approach to space alien finance more generally.
So, take heart. The future of our planet will be in good hands!
“including the methods of achieving a more spaceable and just world.”
Yes, it’s got to be Just! And Equitable! And Sustainable!!!
And diverse and inclusive!
And spaceable?
I thought it made as much sense as the word “sustainable”, but then I looked the word up. It means: “A subset M of a topological vector space X is considered “spaceable” if the union of M and the zero vector {0} contains a closed, infinite-dimensional subspace.”
Um, ok.
Seems to apply, eh wot?
Just in case anyone is interested, I recall hearing on one of the news channels that tuition at Columbia is about $95,000 per year. So a 4-year bachelor’s degree should run you $380,000.
And I hope that includes room, board and a meal plan — at least it should.
Indoctrination clearly isn’t cheap.
Those Ivy League institutions are real money-makers.
The U.S. government starts giving out student loans and the schools raise their prices because they know the government is going to pay the bill (make the student loan). The Sky’s the Limit!
But, supposedly, Chinese students pay the full price- they come here, learn all our best science and technology, go home and work for the Chinese military. Because they pay the full price, American higher education loves them.
Yes, lots of foreign students in our schools, displacing American students.
Makes it even more difficult to not scream at the words “student loan forgiveness,”
I really disagree that my money (aka tax dollars) goes to promoting such idiocies.
A degree course even more useless than ‘media studies’. By the time you finish the course the whole concept of ‘climate finance’ has disappeared.
Sometimes you do need a degree.
“On March 18, the politician – seen as a powerful rival to long-ruling Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan – saw his bachelor’s degree revoked by Istanbul University. A day later, Imamoglu was arrested along with staff members and a district mayor of Istanbul.”
…
The revocation of Imamoglu’s 31-year-old degree was widely seen as an attempt to disqualify him from the presidential election”
https://www.sfgate.com/news/article/arrested-and-stripped-of-degree-twin-moves-to-20230681.php
Why was it revoked?
I have seen an account that a college degree is a requirement to be President, so it would disqualify him.
Yuh, I’m just curious what dumb excuse they used to revoke it. Maybe they had a legitimate reason- maybe not.
Found this in the above link:
In a statement on X, Istanbul University said the degrees of 28 people, including Imamoglu would be “withdrawn and cancelled on the grounds of… obvious error”. It did not elaborate further.
Answer is obvious: politics – eliminating the competition by whatever means.
Sure, but seeing what their excuse is might be interesting.
True and I have a six pack and popcorn at ready.
From this introduction it seem to me that the course work is based on the assumption that the “science is settled” and any opposition is refuted propaganda that has no place in this course. This approach is setting up the students for failure as their degree will be come outdated and useless as the assumption is proven wrong.
I think Columbia University is going to make a deal with the Trump administration so they can get their $400 million back.
The school will have to take some measures to discourage anti-semitism, such as banning the wearing of masks and a number of other things.
Columbia should be limiting access to the school grounds to students, and should keep the outside agitators outside, where the police can round them up.
Sadly, I’m afraid you’re right. It would be far better to cancel all Federal government grants to universities with more than, say, $100 M in their endowment funds. Further, universities should be taxed on their capital gains with perhaps a deduction for full scholarships to students from families with less than $100,000 annual income.
I’m OK with government contracting universities for specific worthwhile projects, but only with solid oversight and delivery of results.
“Further, universities should be taxed on their capital gains”
The Trump administration is considering taxing them if the schools don’t comply with common sense.
How much taxpayer monies are going to Columbia U for its climate programs? And it the university programs do not fairly teach the official position of the Federal government, why should these funds continue? Another reason for the separation of State and Education.
It’s the creation of a climate priesthood.
Does your child really need a Master of Science equitable financial degree?
Of course they do. Look how nice it is framed and hanging on the wall.
/sarcasm full bore
“Climate Finance” degree?
What are some of the courses?
Substance …er… Subsidy Abuse?
The art of selling snake oil to the masses?
I’ve decided that the word “Climate” should be added as an adjective or adverb to all activities and things that humans do.
So, if I pick my nose – dot dot dot
I have no respect for Sachs or her boss. Offering a graduate degree for bloodletting and how economical it would be compared to traditional treatments is equivalent. We know people have used it in the past, they may have encountered difficulties but this is a new time and we are better than those who tried it in the past. There is no need to cover old worn out skepticism of bloodletting done properly in our modern time.
I’ll see your “Climate Finance Degree” and raise one “Masters of the Environment” degree at University of Colorado.
https://www.colorado.edu/menv/
Should be easy to pass. So many climate projects are collapsing because the subsidies are not big enough to keep them going. Therefore, the sum total of climate finance is rapidly approaching its the limit of zero. Done it. Please send me my testamur so I can frame it and hang it on the wall in my bathroom.