Republicans, who were already much less positive than Democrats about higher education, have turned very negative on the role of colleges in America. True to form, this worries some liberal commentators, who are calling for outreach – universities should examine their implicit biases, make an effort to hire more conservative faculty, etc..
.. After all, among college professors 59 percent identify as Democrats versus only 13 percent as Republicans; senior faculty were even more liberal, with very few identifying themselves as conservatives.
.. Oh, wait – that wasn’t a survey of college professors; it was a 2004 survey of the military, and the 59-13 comparison was of Republicans versus Democrats.
.. The point is that your political orientation isn’t something handed to you, like your race or ethnicity. It’s a choice, reflecting your values – and those same values are likely to influence your choice of profession
.. But hasn’t the anti-conservative lean of academics gotten more pronounced over time? Yes – but surely that has a lot to do with the changing nature of what it means to be a conservative. When denial of climate change, and for that matter the theory of evolution, become tribal markers, you shouldn’t be surprised to find academics, very much including those in the hard sciences, decline to be identified as members of the tribe.
.. But there used to be at least some pretense of taking facts and hard thinking seriously. Now anyone pointing out awkward facts – immigrants haven’t brought a reign of terror, coal jobs can’t be brought back, Trump lost the popular vote – is the enemy. In fact, I’d argue that anti-intellectualism was, in its own way, as big a factor in the election as racism.
.. America basically invented the modern, educated society, leading the way on universal K-12 education, building the world’s finest and most comprehensive higher education system; this in turn was an important factor in how we became leader of the free world. Now a powerful political movement basically wants to make America ignorant again.
New report shows just 100 companies are source of over 70% of emissions
Groundbreaking ‘Carbon Majors’ research finds 100 active fossil fuel producers including ExxonMobil, Shell, BHP Billiton and Gazprom are linked to 71% of industrial greenhouse gas emissions since 1988.
- Carbon Majors Database is the most comprehensive dataset of historic company greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions ever compiled;
- 100 active fossil fuel producers are linked to 71% of global industrial greenhouse gases (GHGs) since 1988, the year in which human-induced climate change was officially recognized through the establishment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC);
- Almost a third (32%) of historic emissions come from publicly listed investor-owned companies, 59% from state-owned companies, and 9% from private investment;
- Over half of global industrial emissions since 1988 can be traced to just 25 corporate and state producers;
- Fossil fuel companies and their products have released more emissions in the last 28 years than in the 237 years prior to 1988;
- Over half (52%) of all global industrial GHGs emitted since the start of the industrial revolution in 1751, have been traced to these 100 fossil fuel producers;
Trump’s Defense Secretary Cites Climate Change as National Security Challenge
James Mattis’ unpublished testimony before a Senate panel recognizes a threat others in the administration reject or minimize
“Climate change is impacting stability in areas of the world where our troops are operating today,”
.. Mattis’ statements on climate change, for instance, recognize the same body of science that Scott Pruitt, the new Environmental Protection Agency administrator, seems dead-set on rejecting. In a CNBC interview last Thursday, Pruitt rejected established science pointing to carbon dioxide as the main driver of recent global warming.
.. European officials pushed back on demands that they spend more on defense, saying their investments in boosting resilience to climate hazards in poor regions of the world are as valuable to maintaining security as strong military forces.
.. “[Y]ou need the European Union, because when you invest in development, when you invest in the fight against climate change, you also invest in our own security,” Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, said in a panel discussion.
Who’s Still Fighting Climate Change? The U.S. Military
Flooding will only worsen as the seas rise and the planet warms. Sea level at Norfolk has risen 14.5 inches in the century since World War I, when the naval station was built. By 2100, Norfolk station will flood 280 times a year, according to one estimate by the Union of Concerned Scientists.
.. “We don’t talk about climate change,” Capt. Dean VanderLey told visiting journalists in a tour of the base before the election. “We talk about sea-level rise. You can measure it.”.. The Defense Department operates more than 555,000 facilities on 28 million acres of land with a replacement value of $850 billion.. In the Arctic, the region warming faster than anywhere else on Earth, the combination of melting sea ice, thawing permafrost and sea-level rise is eroding the Alaska shoreline enough to damage several Air Force radar early warning and communication installations. At one base, half a runway has given way to erosion, preventing large planes from using it. Damage to a seawall has allowed waves to wash onto the runway at another base. Thawing permafrost has also affected access to training areas... An Air Force radar installation to help track space junk, built on an atoll in the Marshall Islands, at a cost of $1 billion, is projected to be underwater within two decades, the Associated Press reported... “Timing is critical,” he says. “Just like timing for sorties out of Norfolk in advance of a hurricane is critical—if you wait too late, you can’t get the ships out because the seas are too high. The same kind of thing is going on with sea-level rise. You can’t wait for a certain yes, it’s going to be here or not. You’ve got to make decisions in advance, based on the uncertainty that you have.”