A Higher Education Embarrassment
A Brown University Offshore Wind Report is a Disgrace
On the 19th of December (2023) I received an email from an editor of a national media outlet, asking for my comments on a Brown University Report regarding offshore wind energy. I found that this was put out by CDL self-described as: “The Climate and Development Lab is a student-faculty think tank informing a more just, equitable and effective climate change policy.”
Note: even though I was “prominently mentioned” in this report (16 times!), no one from CDL/Brown bothered to contact me to verify what they wrote about me was accurate. Not surprisingly, most of it was irrelevant, misleading, or false. Their likely defense is that they just copied what they found on the Internet. Clearly, double-checking would be an unreasonable burden. Worse it might reveal that some of their underlying, unscientific narrative might crumble.
Not surprisingly, this report is rife with errors of omission and commission — way too many to go into in a commentary of this length. To keep this digestible, let’s just briefly look at the assignment itself…
It appears that the Brown Pied Piper professor instructed the children to do something like this:
1 - Get the names of all the main US people opposed to offshore wind.
2 - Guess who they connect with regarding offshore wind.
3 - Speculate about any funding involved, and where it may come from.
4 - Cast aspersions willy-nilly, to try to undermine their credibility.
The first question is: let’s say the neophytes do a competent job fulfilling the oracle’s commands: What then? What meaningful bearing on the offshore wind energy issue would this have? None. Zip. Nada.
A second question is: did the high priest direct his acolytes to do a similar report about offshore wind proponents? Not surprisingly, there is no evidence of that. Does that sound “just and equitable”?
I’m only a physicist, but if these were my students, an assignment I’d give them on this topic would be:
1 - Get the names of all the main US people opposed to offshore wind.
2 - Carefully document each of their objections to offshore wind (e.g., mine are here).
3 - Equitably assess the merits of each of their objections.
4 - Comprehensively and objectively determine whether offshore wind is a net societal benefit.
Now the students would be: a) producing a report that has real value, b) getting educated about a national energy issue, and c) learning how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Such an assignment is designed to undermine cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias — rather than reinforce these (i.e., what this “report” does).
Put another way, in my recommendation the students would actually be doing Critical Thinking about the offshore wind issue — whereas there was zero Critical Thinking in the CDL/Brown assignment they were subjected to.
As readers know I’m extremely concerned that our education system is annually producing millions of non-critical thinking lemmings (e.g., see my Education Report). This sad story is just one of many solid pieces of evidence that this is continuing to happen.
PS — I sent the Big Cheese and his entourage a polite but pointed email about this travesty. So far no response.
PPS — After reading the above commentary, an experienced associate sent me the following short video, that makes clear the effect our progressive education system is having on students —who will soon be voting citizens…
Here are other materials by this scientist that you might find interesting:
Check out the Archives of this Critical Thinking substack.
WiseEnergy.org: discusses the Science (or lack thereof) behind our energy options.
C19Science.info: covers the lack of genuine Science behind our COVID-19 policies.
Election-Integrity.info: multiple major reports on the election integrity issue.
Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2023 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time - but why would you?
Thanks for reading Critically Thinking About Select Societal Issues! Please pass a link to this article on to other associates who might benefit. They can subscribe for FREE to receive new posts (typically about once a week).
You are far too logical John. The simple weighing of the facts and data available that is foundational to rational decisions are not the approach of your critics - nor so much of the systemic movement to undermine traditional America and common sense. Our work for 20 years has been in all forms of energy from the renewables to nuclear as we work toward secure microgrids for the military and our Country at large, and offshore wind benefits vs costs does not in general make good sense today - except politically. We have lost almost two generations of our young people who were misdirected to be ignorant of the essential critical thinking and personal judgment needed in free people, and even many of their seniors fall into the lazy following of what the compromised media and social version are dredged with today. Please continue your good efforts toward a return to sanity and freedom of thought in our now beleaguered Country. And vote in November. - John D, PE
The truth is, there has been global warming recently – but it started around the time of the Revolutionary war, and today we are still BELOW the average of the past 3,000 years. And this is not just for Europe, Greenland and North America, yet another red herring that has recently been thrown out by the desperate global warmers. The universality of the Viking and Mediaeval climatic optimums is written about by Kegwin, who wrote in Science, 1996:274:1504-1508, https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.274.5292.1504 the mean surface temp of the Sargasso Sea (which lies roughly between the West Indies and the Azores), which was obtained by readings of isotope ratios in marine organism remains in sediment, shows we are, today, below the three thousand year average, and far below the Medieval Climatic Optimum, albeit far above the LIA. Civil Defense Perspectives, Mar. 2007, Vol. 23, #3, p. 1, notes that evidence for this climatic optimum has been found in all but 2 out of 103 locations where it was examined for, including Asia, Africa, South America and the western U.S. The following graph of temperature in the Sargasso Sea tells you all you need to know (note: that big horizontal line running across the page is the 3,000 year average!), Interestingly, the warmer times coincided not only with the best harvests, but also the least amount of major storm activity.
Or let’s put it another way, from the Dansgaard & Johnson study, here on ResearchGate: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Average-near-surface-temperatures-of-the-northern-hemisphere-during-the-past-11000-years_fig5_313127868 shows the same