Failing climate science 101

NYT: 52% of Americans flunk Climate 101, including 43% who believe that “if we stopped punching holes in the ozone layer with rockets, it would reduce global warming”. How well do you understand the basics? And where would you go to find out more?

CP: Big oil goes to university. Corporate interests and public research - the oil and water are mixing.
As an aside, one detail that jumped out at me from this report was the fact that in the US, R&D funding for national defence is greater than all other forms of R&D combined.

What is going on at Middlesex?

Death by managerialism
Philosophy has long been part of the heart of western universities. The rise and rise of universities run by a managerial class as a for-profit business over the last few decades is clogging the arteries. Many universities now employ more administrators than academics. The closure of the philosophy department at Middlesex University shows one institution that has gone into cardiac arrest. The department has an excellent reputation and recently was given the highest RAE rating of any department in the university, recognising the national and international significance of its research. When students and staff engaged in non-violent protest against this decision, they were harshly penalised by the university administration. Letters of support for the department have come from scores of academics around the world (including my own philosophy supervisor, I was pleased to note) and from a wide range of national philosophy societies.

A world without philosophy is a world without thought. Philosophy departments are not the only places for thinking, but this move represents the creeping suppression of profitable thought by thoughtless profit.

Read what is happening.
Sign the petition pledging academic boycott (especially if you are an academic or research student).
Most of all, think.
H/T Ben Myers.