Kim Cobb, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, is one of a small but growing minority of academics who are cutting back on their air travel because of climate change. Travelling to conferences, lectures, workshops, and the like—frequently by plane—is viewed/has been viewed as important for scientists to get together and exchange information. But Cobb and others are now questioning that idea pushing conferences to provide more chances to participate remotely, and changing their personal behavior to do their part in dealing with the climate change crisis. On a website called No Fly Climate Sci, for example, roughly 200 academics—many of them climate scientists have promised to fly as little as possible since the effort started two years ago.

上面的材料来自2022浙江卷1的语法填空题，不明白其中 growing minority of academics是什么意思？