Climate change: real controversies

Like any other field, research on climate change has some fundamental gaps, although not the ones typically claimed by skeptics. Uncertainties remain regarding regional climate change, regional precipitation patterns, aerosol and black carbon impacts, and precision of paleoclimate proxies. A recent article in Nature explains these in detail:

The real holes in climate science

Vulgar Careerist Views, Grad School and the Scientist Glut

For most people, grad school is a bad idea. No, really. At the moment we (the universities) are training far more scientists than the system can support. This is especially true in ecology and evolution, where there are few opportunities for disciplinary employment outside of an academic institution.

Think about this in terms of demography. I will likely be in my current position for 30-35 years. When I retire, one person will replace me. Maybe I should take only one student over my entire career, instead of many. This would be the equivalent of replacement rate fertility. "But wait..." you argue. "Surely some of your students will go on to teach at 2- or 4-year colleges." True. So maybe I should train 3-4 students. One will teach in a graduate program, the others will teach at 2- or 4- year colleges. Yet everyone in my position is expected to have a steady stream of students going through. I have 2-4 students each year, and projecting trends, I expect 60 or so will graduate from my lab before I retire. Where will all of these students go?

One person on the internets posted this:

We do not need more scientists, but academic science as practiced depends on a large surplus of expendable trainees (grad students and postdocs) who have to believe that a career in research is an attainable goal. This creates an overtrained, underemployed workforce, but the alternative is to make "trainee" type research positions professional positions, which would be expensive. First, because you would have to offer real salaries and benefits, and second you could not create the illusion that working 80 hour weeks for 40,000 a year is going to someday get you your own lab, meaning less work out of each employee.

Or should there need to be twenty times as much basic scientific research going on in this country than there is? Probably not. Link.

To the extent this observation is correct, there are serious structural problems in graduate education. Come to grad school if you must, but be aware of the employment outlook on the other side.