The Righteous Hypocrites in UBC's Ivory Towers

Dear UBC divestment twerps. I will not take your statements seriously until you practice what you preach. Please submit your next proposal in a suitable manner. Carved in stone or pressed into clay.

the old expression, "let the bast ards freeze in the dark" comes to mind.

Their ... list of already observed impacts is substantial: is just a pack of lies.

The name ubcc350 is suggestive. Is this just a branch of Bill McKibben's 350org?

To be taken seriously, the faculty members in the Divest UBC movement should first demand that all petroleum-related investments in their pension plan be liquidated immediately. Let's see how much support they really have...

I've always believed that universities should be run by their professors. What's that you say? "Typical professor; thinks the asylum should be run by the inmates." That would be true for many of my colleagues, but I suggest that our current system encourages the type of nonsense contained in this fossil fuels proposal, namely, the assumption by professors of power without responsibility, what British Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin called "the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages".

No, professors who run their universities would also be responsible for making them work; for attracting and retaining students; for seeking and winning research money; for making sure that the rain doesn't pour through leaky roofs onto their lecture notes or "transgressive" power-points. They would be expected not to strike, or demonstrate before the legislature, but to set their own salaries and benefits and then try to find a means to pay for them. Perhaps by selling all of their endowment investments in fossil fuels and other "immoral" industries and services, as well as any business that does business in or with Israel, etc. etc., they will be better able to provide for their retirement ... or maybe not. Either way, they make the call; they reap whatever benefits that call may yield.

Of course, being professors, we don't really actually want to do this work ourselves. We just want to tell other people how we want it done. You can do that when you own the shop. If we don't like the Public Affairs Office's new recruitment video, we can stop it being shown, maybe fire the employees who thought it up (although most of us would want to ensure that our employees have full union benefits and protections, wouldn't we?).

We could grant ourselves and our colleagues the fullest measure of academic freedom to say and do what we please (unlike those nasty Boards of Governors or that repressive Harper government), but most readers would not be surprised that in short order, some academics would be eager to shut down any speech with which they disagreed. But that's fine, too. If anyone would really want to attend such an institution, why should they be persecuted (in the same way my colleagues are eager to persecute the students at Trinity Western)?

No, turn the universities over to the professors. In a few short years, we will have far fewer of them. Not all of them will be good, but there is always a niche market for quality.

Set the professors free! Free to choose! Free to succeed! And free, if they so choose, to wind up selling pencils in front of the public library.

I know it sounds like just another anti-communist rant, but "ubcc350" is just another cover name for a group whose real aim is the undermining of our liberal democratic society. This groups is not made up of misguided fools and they know exactly what they are doing.

Any pedagogue who is enthralled by the false narratives of climate disaster and who accepts the fraudulent science of CO2 catastrophe should have their teaching permit yanked.

I read as much as I could stomach of this insipid guilt-pedaling, luddite pamphleteering. It is obvious the Alinsky false narrative and Agenda 21 are in full swing at UBC - send the kids to trade school or community college so they are not made into non productive useless drones in quisling incubators like this.

Skimmed until I saw footnote 1 referencing IPCC...immediately decided to divest my time from reading the proposal.

Actually the bigger question, and the one that needs investigation is if any of the authors hold stock or business interests in green energy. If so they are in clear violation of conflict of interest guidelines, correct?

The 'nay' side is a bit foggy here as well:
'someone deeply concerned about global warming may sincerely believe that running cars that burn fossil fuel is less moral than providing the fossil fuel that runs those cars'
Um no. The nay side might better listen more closely to the crypto commie Malthus story. Anything whatsoever and in any way that offends mother earth is immoral. The end result will be 'back to the cave' for we but not for thee, the morally superior people.

Yes, no problem, please diversify. But leave the addresses of your homes so that a giant windmill can be placed on your property to replace the power lost by the reduction of fossil fuels, which you say is your goal. Also, your energy use should be limited, regulated and allocated to the per capita norm. While we are at it , let the government regulate the square footage of your home, the size of your pension and benefits, the car you drive, the health care you use, etc. I mean while we are being moral and fair and all.

So glad I sent mine elsewhere . . . places like Trinity Western U.

I don't think any of their staff even spent time littering Burnaby Mountain.

I have this little documentry THE GREAT GLOBAL WARMING SWINDLE it features evedence that climate change is normal and it show some jerk calling Industrialists as CLIMATE CRINIMALS has the usial Useful Idiots lding their demonstrations one idiot is pushing a stupid bicycle with a stupid sign reading TRAINS NOT PLANES I wonder if the jerk realized that trains use diesel fuel

Having just returned from a week-long scientific conference at which real scientific studies and real data were presented and discussed, I can only roll my eyes at what passes for "climate science". Most of the authors of the studies cited in the reference screed would have been laughed out of the room if they'd tried to fob off their nonsense as science. The fact that UBC professors and so many others in academia swallow whole and regurgitate unprocessed the nonsense that they do effectively means that we've passed the end of the age of reason and have regressed into an age of emotion and mysticism, if not entirely in society at large, then certainly within large segments of academia.

Fifteen pages of pseudo-academic drivel complete with 48 footnotes. Contrast with Kevin Milligan's short, reasoned statement for opposition.

Still, I hope all these fools follow through with their divestment proposals; all at the same time if possible. The rest of us can buy the distressed stock for our retirement portfolios.

How about this swill from the divestment dweebs:

"Some are concerned that divestment might reduce the income UBC receives from its endowment, but this need not to be the case."

It is the case though it apparently need not be; anyway, are green fuels going to replace fund income?

"Concern that divesting would hurt the performance of portfolios is not supported by the best available data.." which we haven't identified or footnoted but you can trust us.

Oh I forgot, the dangerous "carbon bubble:"

"Indeed, there are increasing concerns, from the likes of the Governor of the Bank of England and major pension funds, that a “carbon bubble” could pose a significant threat to fossil fuel investments."

What the heck is a carbon bubble? Is that something that gets in yer fuel line so yer truck don't werk no more? Laughable. These are some of the people who are going to help the "progressives" win the next election.

These so called intellectuals live in a bubble that is sadly devoid of reality. Do they even know that their groceries and all consumer goods are delivered by diesel powered trucks which is made possible by fossil fuel powered trains, planes and ships ? That without fossil fuels feeding the economic engines we would immediately achieve the 3rd world status they seem to advocate ? That green energy is a failure in every sense of the word when compared to conventional power generation ? Even worse is their acceptance of science that has been largely debunked and can be verified with even minimal research. To these fools we entrust a generation of young air heads who will completely brainwashed before the end of the first semester. I can't believe this ignorance and stupidity by so many leftist professors, in so many universities is random. Perhaps it's time to follow the money and see if it leads to the UN and agenda 21's door step. To anyone that actually works for a living, these so called intellectuals must seem very dumb indeed. Or is it simply a matter of the brainwashed perpetuating the brainwashing ? There's just too many of them to be random.

Should have added that Hydro electric and geothermal is exempt from the inefficiency label. Thinking bird shredders at the time.

I'm rooting for them.
Divest by all means, the soonest UBC goes bankrupt the better for all BC taxpayers.
The old assuage of learning those basics, Reading Writing and Arithmetic and having access to a decent public libruary would start you toward an education.
(F**8 spellcheck)
The universities have sure made a mockery of the concept of "higher education".
Greater indoctrination being apparent to most all, except these inhabitants.
I am sick of funding this parasitic overload with my taxes.
I guess if income tax was introduced to pay for World War One, one must deduce that we lost.

This is a sermon from the inquisitors of the green theocracy masquerading as academics involved in the pursuit of knowledge, their robes of tenure making them untouchable and unaccountable for anything they say and do. These social parasites are now the vanguard of the anti-industrial revolution. A burger flipper is infinitely more productive than these assholes.

Privatize education and let these intellectual poseurs sink or swim.

Tell you what. Maybe UBC can run itself on the back-end wind and methane being issued by the so-called ubcc350 group, resulting in a veritable perpetual motion machine!

You can see why going to college is so expensive these days. There must be an endless supply of free time for staff to concoct mindless drivel. Some of the "diversity" stuff makes the divestment movement look almost sensible by comparison:

--UW-Madison’s diversity guidelines state that if a course, major or program is in high demand, special status must be given to ensure the make-up of the class (and thus those taking the major) is racially and ethnically diverse with “just the right percentages.” Meaning, it would be justifiable for a placement in hard-to-get-in classes and prerequisites for specific majors be awarded to students based sole on their race.

But it may be worse than that.

Especially shocking is the language about “equity” in the distribution of grades. Professors, instead of just awarding the grade that each student earns, would apparently have to adjust them so that academically weaker, “historically underrepresented racial/ethnic” students perform at the same level and receive the same grades as academically stronger students.
--
In short, the new diversity requirements seem to say that campus commitment to diversity is so important that the grading system itself must be sacrificed.--

http://eagnews.org/report-university-of-wisconsin-madison-mulls-diversity-based-grading/

"Governor of the Bank of England"....now would that be the same commie who ran the Bank of Canada? And belives carbon,which is NOT the same as CO2, was our greatest threat, next to too many brown people in Africa? Nah.

The heck with this mumbo jumbo,

I just want to see the hand carved wooden keyboard they wrote this report on. Must look really cool in a Tiger Maple with a Cherry-wood inlay.

Please ubcc420 post a few pics.

Do you want to meet the dude who is the "faculty co-ordinator" for this initiative?

http://www.politics.ubc.ca/about-us/faculty-members/bfont-color-blue-associate-facultyfontb/george-hoberg.html

http://greenpolicyprof.org/wordpress/