A sure sign of warmism in decline: Yale closing down its ‘Climate and Energy Institute’

Peak warmism has already hit, and the global warming movement is now on its long glide path through loss of government funding, budget and hiring cuts, less media attention, on the way to unfashionability, embarrassment, and eventually obscurity, a historical footnote like phrenology (which was once the rage in elite academic circles). In retrospect, the December 2015 Paris Climate Accord, which was still able to draw heads of state but which could accomplish nothing substantive other than promise money, may well be seen as the definitive moment at which the movement began its official decline.

Now elite institutions, which always have their antennae attuned to the ebb and flow of the concerns of the world’s power elite, are acting out the consequences of decline. If you are a university president responsible for raising mega-donations by convincing the holders of wealth that they can achieve prestige and maybe a little immortality by funding your Good Works, then you have to be aware of their changing concerns.

It's come to this:

After a University decision to cut all its funding, Yale’s Climate & Energy Institute will close by the end of June.

The loss of the institute, which for the last eight years has conducted research related to issues of climate change, leaves a hole in climate and energy studies at Yale. 

The announcement came in a Monday afternoon email to the YCEI community from institute co-directors and geology and geophysics professors David Bercovici and Jay Ague, and follows years of cuts to the institute’s funding, according to students involved in the organization.

“While not all good things have to come to an end, sometimes they just do,” Bercovici and Ague wrote. “The YCEI will stop activities and close up shop as of June 30, 2016.”

The YCEI was founded in 2008 with the backing of then-University President Richard Levin. Since then, the institute has hosted conferences, fostered collaborations across science departments and between universities outside of Yale, as well as supported scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships that address the changing climate. The institute also supplied undergraduates with a database of energy-related internships. Bercovici and Ague wrote that the YCEI was founded with “overwhelming enthusiasm from faculty and students across campus.” Bercovici and Ague declined to comment Monday night, citing time constraints.