In a bizarre and rambling response to a Vox piece on “The 7 biggest problems facing science,” Dr. Tim Ball writing at WUWT agrees with some points, disagrees with others, and ultimately blames immigrants and the middle class for pursuing higher education.
Vox heard from 270 scientists about what’s not working in academia, and the results are unsurprising for those who follow the ivory tower’s introspective efforts. As we know, money’s tight and not always well distributed, peer review isn’t perfect, etc. Nothing too outlandish.
Ball, on the other hand… gets outlandish. Many of his criticisms speak directly to problems created or propagated by pseudoscientist deniers like himself. He adds to Vox’s list of problems by calling out “the use of science for political agendas,” perhaps like when deniers are paid to present, unsuccessfully, in court their case for lowered climate sensitivity and therefore a lower price on carbon?
His next complaint is about scientists producing works for sake of political purposes. He doesn’t provide examples, so we will: Dr. Roy Spencer’s writing a gish gallop doc for a Koch-group, or Willie Soon’s coal-funded deliverables. Ball has other points in this vein, pointing out how “some scientists exploit” the bias of the media. He doesn’t explain that further, so we’ll just assume he’s referring to how deniers have exploited the false balance bias.
From there, he turns to the issue of funding in science. Ball suggests the real problem isn’t a lack of funding, but that there are “too many people going to university” which spreads the funding too thin. He says that “for a majority of students it is a socially acceptable form of unemployment. Students getting less than a B average should not even be in University.”
Then he gets even more elitist, claiming “Some of this over attendance is because immigrant or newly successful middle-class families want their children to attend university.” Because apparently the problems with science stem from immigrants and the middle-class wanting their children to have equal opportunities for education...
Is the answer then, to beef up our academic institutions to handle a world where it’s not just privileged class that attend higher education? Quite the opposite, according to Ball. He concludes that, “We can solve many of our problems quickly by closing down 75 percent of our universities.”
Let that sink in. While deniers often scoff at the “anti-science” label, here’s one that appears to embrace it, quite literally. Because a solution that involves shuttering three quarters of our institutions of higher learning isn’t a solution at all. Unless of course the problem is a public too smart to buy the denial you’re peddling.
Top Climate and Clean Energy Stories:
EPA Clears the Way for Greenhouse Gas Rules on U.S. Airlines | agency formally declares that emissions from airplanes cause climate change and are a threat to public health—and need to be controlled.
Extreme weather increases the risk of armed conflict in ethnically-diverse countries, a new study suggests. Around 23% of conflict outbreaks in these countries over the last three decades have occurred during climate-related disasters, such as droughts and heatwaves, the paper says.
For the first time, forecast predicts hotter-than-normal in every square inch of the USA | June was record warm both in the U.S. and around the world, and 2016 is on course to be the Earth's warmest year on record.
China's coal peak hailed as turning point in climate change battle | coal consumption peaked in 2014, much earlier than expected, and then began falling. The economists argue in a new paper on Monday that this can now be seen as permanent trend
