Thread by @AgathoniaMedia

#ClimateCrisis: "Undoubtedly the enormous lobbying power of the global #fossilfuel industry & vested financial interests endemic throughout the political #class – that is to say, #corruption – are in large part responsible...

braveneweurope.com/dan-calverley-… #democracy #science #academia

... for the deadlock in achieving effective policy responses."

"Our, ostensibly independent, #scientific advisory committees and agencies dispense policy recommendations in impressive & bewildering detail. They suggest that by a #subsidy here and a #technology substitution...

... there we can reach ‘net-zero emissions’ in a few decades give or take,without any major upheaval to business as usual. Any #overshoot of emissions budgets,we are assured, can be mopped up by removing #CO2 directly from the atmosphere, once that #technology becomes available."

"What were once considered fringe policies for their riskiness and highly-speculative nature are now a mainstay of the mitigation scenario and policy landscape, despite the continuing lack of evidence that they can be scaled up in time."

"Digging deeper into the AR6 WGIII mitigation suites, of 311 scenarios for a 67% or better chance of limiting warming to 2°C, 294 (95%) included a significant quantity of carbon dioxide removal (CDR)."

"Playing devil’s advocate, one might question why, if unproven #CDR is to be included, should there be not even a single scenario including nuclear fusion – scarcely more embryonic in its readiness for use at scale than planetary #BECCS and #DACCS."

"Part of the #responsibility for such weak, dilatory and delusional political responses and popular accounts must reside with the expert scientific community of mitigation researchers – our native community, speaking as the authors of this blog."

"Funded calls for research typically exclude #inquiry into #policy responses unlikely to align with the incumbent economic paradigm. Moreover, research outcomes that don’t support the paradigm seldom, if ever, achieve policy impact."

braveneweurope.com/dan-calverley-…

... Good luck getting funding for #research that questions the groupthink, or even for work that isn’t obviously corroborative of it."

#science #academia #politics #wisdom #freedom

"Perhaps even more insidious than funding bias is the gagging and wing-clipping of early career researchers (doctoral candidates, post-doc researchers and some lecturers) by senior academics. ...

... We’ve heard many first-hand, confidential accounts of intellectual suppression meted out by supposed academic mentors and ‘superiors’; a saddening and invidious state of affairs for an ostensibly honest and rigorous academic sector."

"Essentially what we are witnessing is a form of self-censorship by the mitigation community. Collectively and individually, we have serially underplayed the implications of our research findings in communicating them to policymakers, the wider public ...

braveneweurope.com/dan-calverley-…

... and sometimes ourselves."