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"We'd like to think that doctors are somehow immune to the influence of advertising, but turns out they're human after all.
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Baylor U. Regents Fire President, Citing Failure to Unite Campus
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January 31, 2008
Louisiana State U.'s John Lombardi Blocks Chancellor's Bid to Sign Climate Pact
The newly appointed president of the Louisiana State University system, John V. Lombardi, has blocked plans by the departing chancellor of the system’s flagship campus to sign a carbon-neutrality pact, the Associated Press reported today.
Friday is Chancellor Sean O’Keefe’s last day on the job at the Baton Rouge campus. He had planned today to sign the American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, the goal of which is to eliminate campus contributions of greenhouse gases. Four hundred and eighty-two other institutions have signed the commitment, but several have refused to do so.
Mr. Lombardi said he wanted to assess the cost of signing the agreement, and would also consider the involvement of the system’s nine other campuses.
The change in plans, said Mr. O’Keefe, is another example of the philosophical differences that led to his resignation, on January 16. Mr. O’Keefe has suggested that he lacks the full support of Mr. Lombardi or LSU’s governing board. —Paul Fain
Posted on Thursday January 31, 2008 | Permalink |Comments
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How easy of Mr. O’Keefe to sign the agreement, knowing that he won’t be around to make any of the difficult and unpopular decisions to enforce it.
— J. Ward Jan 31, 04:28 PM #
It has been thoroughly discussed on campus and had the support of faculty, students and they system’s former president. Lombardi is an over bearing fake. He is just looking for show off opportunities. Poor LSU.
Lombardi signed the agreement at UMass too. So what does that tell you…cave dwellers.
— doug fredrick Jan 31, 05:17 PM #
LSU does not owe that group of colleges a signature on an open ended (or even a closed ended) feel good commitment.And LSU is owned by the people of the Sovereign State of Louisiana. Not the faculty, the students, nor even the former president. Good for the new President. Geaux Tigres!
— Joseph F Foster Jan 31, 09:20 PM #
Of course, most people in Louisiana might not believe in Global Warming. However, remembering Katrina and it’s devastation, President Lombardi might reconsider. Play to the crowd that’s what they hired you for.
— Elizabeth White Jan 31, 10:24 PM #
Remembering Katrina? Let’s also remember retired National Hurricane Center director Max Mayfield and William Gray, the country’s most-prominent hurricane forecaster, both of whom dismiss the idea that global warming caused Hurricane Katrina (assuming that “carbon-neutrality” even has anything significant to do with global warming). Data collected by the NHC shows hurricane frequency and intensity rising and falling in a regular pattern over the last 150 years.
While we’re at it, don’t forget Michael Griffin, Sean O’Keefe’s successor as NASA Administrator, who told National Public Radio that to assume global warming (whose existence he does not deny) “is a problem is to assume that the state of earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change.”
“First of all,” he went on, “I don’t think it’s within the power of human beings to assure that the climate does not change, as millions of years of history have shown, and second of all, I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”
Griffin’s unusual slant caused much controversy, and he later apologized for entering into “an issue which has become far more political than technical,” but he did not withdraw his remarks.
It’s too bad his predecessor doesn’t take an equally skeptical, more typically scientific attitude, but O’Keefe was often criticized at NASA for not being a strong technical person.
— S. Britchky Feb 1, 02:24 AM #
Well this tells one about the nature of LA and that is still Huey Long dumb. It is true that nothing LA does or does not do will affect the world..nothing at all. So who cares about those cave dwellers let them go their way and the oil company way both will be extinct before long.
— doug fredrick Feb 1, 06:04 AM #
As a side line observer of Lombardi since his days at the University of Florida, it is quite evident to me that his problem is that he always assumes he knows best, presumably because he is convinced he is smarter than anyone else. His arrogance will eventually bring him down at LSU, just as it has everywhere else he’s been.
— CW Feb 1, 12:08 PM #
Re: The comments of CW about Lombardi always knowing best, I second that thought. Never a need to waste time on consultation! Time is the enemy, as I believe he says.
— JB Feb 1, 01:36 PM #
Why are we in higher ed so quick to criticize leaders who choose to make the difficult decisions! And this decision by Lombardi is hardly an ill-advised one at that. A desire for consultation and further review of such an important commitment which OKeefe is not in a position to make makes nothing other than good leadership sense to me.
— md Feb 1, 02:06 PM #
When are all the Gorenolias going to start throwing young warriors and virgins into volcanoes to appease the Global Warming Gods. “Global Warming” is not science, it is a metaphysical religion. All they can do is attempt to lay guilt trips on us all by mentioning “Katrina” to end any viable dialog. What happened to all the predicted hurricanes in 2007!?! Pretty soon Al Gore, his fellow travelers and assorted running dogs like Michael Moore and the Nobel “peacenik” committee will be calling for Salem style witch trials and burning anti-orthodoxy heretics at the stake. Oops! That will contribute to “Global Warning.” But the contrails left by their world hopping G5s never stopped them from their non-stop flights over the pole.
— Alan MacNutt Feb 1, 03:08 PM #
Alan,
Your vitriol makes your argument (that people who are working against climate change are idealogues who will create “witch trials”) laughable. Who’s ranting here?
— J. Kaszynski Feb 1, 05:32 PM #