[chrisweekly]

Speaking of PhD's, a little more than 20 years ago I was an undergrad at the University of Virginia (the top-ranked public university at the time, top-20 overall in the US). I took a class on atmospheric environment, and the instructor was (he claimed, and I had no reason to doubt) the first and only person in the US with a PhD in the subject. I remember being a bit disenchanted with his take on anthropogenic global warming; he seemed to take it as a given that the students all believed AGW to be a real and serious problem, and all semester long espoused a very fossil-fuel-industry-friendly perspective. I was unhappy to learn that funding for his position came in large part directly from said industry. (What's that quote about people having trouble understanding something if their livelihood depends on not understanding it?)