Only at Columbia University – Watt?

from masterresource

Robert Bradley Jr.

“Lisa Sachs repeatedly refuses to address intellectual diversity and needs a balanced debate on open climate issues.

Yesterday’s post highlighted Lisa Sachs, a master’s degree in climate finance from Columbia Climate School. What is the course and what is it from an academic perspective? First, parents’ task statement:

The mission of Columbia Climate School is to further knowledge and educate leaders to achieve equitable and impartial solutions to changing climate and related sustainability challenges.

educate: Columbia Climate Schools Education Future Climate Leaders, address the urgent challenges facing our planet through graduate degree programs and provide other powerful learning opportunities for students, educators and professionals.

Research: Columbia Climate Schools cultivate and support innovative research on the scientific, consequences and human dimensions of climate change, including ways to achieve a more sustainable and just world.

Influence: Columbia Climate School translates its academic work into evidence-based analysis and recommendations to inform decision-makers in the U.S. and global communities, governments, industries and nonprofits.

Professor Sax's course is described on the Columbia Climate School's website:

The Master of Science in Climate Financing (MS) is a year in which Columbia Climate School works closely with Columbia Business School, with 39 degree professional degree programs. This interdisciplinary degree combines climate science with basic financial management practices to give students financial decision-making skills to respond to climate change.

With a strong understanding of climate science and the costs, risks and opportunities associated with climate change, graduates will be uniquely adapted to senior positions in public, private and intergovernmental institutions, browsing successfully within their organizations while supporting a more stringent and coherent approach to climate finance more universally.

Comment

This sounds reasonable, but where is the warning “check your home first”? Fred Smith said the speed at which to reach the wrong destination is not a virtue. Path dependence and “tyranny of the status quo” in climate research and understanding can ruins Student time and subsequent career paths.

Lisa Sachs repeatedly refuses to address intellectual diversity, and the need for a balanced debate on open climate issues. This is climate propaganda in Colombia, USA.

Appendix: Climate Realism Resources

There is no alternative to climate degree programs, no narratives of criticizing alerts and forced energy transitions. One or more of these professors can teach the course and become a resource for students taking the activist/alert course. “The power of opposition” is very effective in learning.

The second suggestion is to debate students between CO2/climate optimists and pessimists. In person or zoom. This is not as good as there is opposition to professors, but it is necessary to reduce current bias.

Third, the key book should be texts used in climate courses, as well as articles and websites of “skeptics” (Climate et al., Wuwt, Masterresource…). Alex Epstein, Robert Bryce and Bjorn Lomborg's website and Roger Pielke Jr.'s substitutes are also useful. The modernization of EPA programs at competitive enterprise colleges is worth studying, and so has CEI’s global warming efforts for years and decades. Finally, the Institute of Energy Research covers many energy issues regarding the “transition”.

Here are a few books:

Judith Curry, Climate uncertainty and risk: Rethinking our responses (National Anthem Environment and Sustainability (2023)

Alex Epstein, Fossil Future: Why Humanity in the Global Moving Needs More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas, Not Less (2022)

Steven Koonin, Uneasy: What Climate Science Tells Us, What Not, Why It Is Important (2021)

Pierre Desrochers and Joanna Szurkmak, population bombing! : The link between excessive explosion population and climate change (2018)

Related