NCSE Evolution and Climate Education Update for 2013/09/06

(by NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch)

Dear friends of NCSE,

What do Coloradans think about climate change? Plus a preview of Janin
and Mandia's Rising Sea Levels, and NCSE's Eugenie C. Scott is
profiled in The New York Times.

POLLING CLIMATE IN COLORADO

Seventy percent of Coloradans accept that global warming is happening,
according to a new report from the Yale Project on Climate
Communication. But less than half accept that human activity is
responsible for global warming, and half think that there is no
consensus among the scientific community whether global warming is
happening.

The poll defined global warming as "the idea that the world's average
temperature has been increasing over the past 150 years, may be
increasing more in the future, and that the world's climate may change
as a result." Asked, "Do you think that global warming is happening,
or not?" 70% of respondents answered yes, 19% answered no, and 10%
were not sure.

Asked to assume that global warming is happening and asked why, 48% of
respondents said that it was caused mostly by human activities, 28%
said that it was caused mostly by natural changes in the environment,
12% volunteered that it was caused by both, 7% said none of these
because it isn't happening, and 5% volunteered other answers or were
unsure.

Asked about what most scientists think, 41% of respondents said
(correctly) that most scientists think that global warming is
happening, 50% said that there is a lot of disagreement among
scientists about whether or not global warming is happening, 4% said
that most scientists think that global warming is not happening, and
5% were unsure.

The poll was conducted among 800 adult Coloradans by telephone from
June 19 to June 26, 2013. According to the report, "the survey was
administered to respondents reached on traditional landline telephones
(480) as well as to those reached on cellphones (320). The average
margin of error for the total sample [was] +/- 3 percentage points at
the 95% confidence level."

For the YPCC's report (PDF), visit:
http://environment.yale.edu/climate-communication/files/Climate-Change-in-the-Coloradan-Mind.pdf 

And for NCSE's collection of polls and surveys on climate change, visit:
http://ncse.com/polls/polls-climate-change 

A GLIMPSE OF RISING SEA LEVELS

NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview of Hunt Janin and Scott A.
Mandia's Rising Sea Levels: An Introduction to Cause and Impact
(McFarland & Company, 2012). The preview consists of chapter 12, "A
Range of Options to Cope with Sea Level Rise," in which Janin and
Mandia look "at two highly-developed countries which will increasingly
be faced with a rising sea" -- the Netherlands and the United States
-- in order "to learn what steps they may take to deal with this
problem."

Michael E. Mann writes, "if you're looking for a comprehensive
discussion of one of the most pressing issues on the planet ... the
threat of global sea level rise ... then this is the book for you,"
and the reviewer for Choice wrote, "Janin and Mandia are to be
commended for their impressive writing skills, intelligent
presentations, and unusually intensive information-gathering efforts."
Hunt Janin is a writer on a number of scholarly subjects; Scott A.
Mandia is a professor of physical sciences at Suffolk County Community
College.

For the preview of Rising Sea Levels (PDF), visit:
http://ncse.com/book-excerpt 

For information about the book from its publisher, visit:
http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php?id=978-0-7864-5956-8 

NCSE'S SCOTT PROFILED IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

NCSE's executive director Eugenie C. Scott was profiled in the
September 3, 2013, issue of The New York Times. Scott, the Times
reported, "is nearing the end of a 27-year stint as executive director
of the National Center for Science Education, which despite a
relatively skimpy budget has had an outsize impact on the battles in
courtrooms and classrooms over whether creationism -- the idea that
the universe was devised as it is by a supernatural agent -- or its
ideological cousin, 'intelligent design,' should be taught in public
schools."

Kenneth R. Miller, a professor of cell biology at Brown University and
coauthor of a widely used high school biology textbook, told the
Times, "There is no single organization in the United States that has
been as important in the battle over evolution as the National Center
for Science Education,” and Ralph J. Cicerone, the president of the
National Academy of Sciences, was quoted as saying, "Eugenie Scott has
worked tirelessly and very effectively to improve the teaching of both
the nature of science and the science of evolution."

Beyond its participation in such high-profile incidents as the 2005
trial in Kitzmiller v. Dover, in which teaching "intelligent design"
creationism in the public schools was found to be unconstitutional,
Scott explained, NCSE is constantly active aiding activists at the
grassroots level. “Working with local groups, we have stopped a lot of
really bad resolutions and policies at the state level,” she said. She
emphasized that a diversity of approaches is needed to resolve such
problems: "You do not solve the creation-evolution issue just by
throwing science at it."

Scott told the Times that when she retires, by the end of the year,
she plans to write a memoir and help NCSE to organize its records,
which the newspaper described as "possibly the most complete archive
of the evolution wars in the United States," adding, "Already,
scholars have been delving into the files. Often they are people from
other countries struggling to understand why a scientific theory that
goes virtually unchallenged in every other developed country causes
such uproar in the United States." Scott commented, “It is going to be
fun for me, digging through this."

The profile was part of a special issue of the Times's Science Times
devoted to science and math education. Also included was a story with
the headline "Young Students Against Bad Science," in which two of the
three students were fighting against efforts to undermine the teaching
of evolution or of climate change: Zack Kopplin, who is working toward
a repeal of the so-called Louisiana Science Education Act, and Esha
Marwaha, who successfully petitioned against a plan to remove climate
change from the 11-to-14 geography curriculum in the United Kingdom.

For the profile of Scott, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/science/eugenie-c-scott-fights-the-teaching-of-creationism-in-schools.html 

For the story about the student activists, visit:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/03/science/young-and-against-bad-science.html 

Thanks for reading. And don't forget to visit NCSE's website --
http://ncse.com -- where you can always find the latest news on 
evolution and climate education and threats to them.

--
Sincerely,

Glenn Branch
Deputy Director
National Center for Science Education, Inc.
420 40th Street, Suite 2
Oakland, CA 94609-2509
510-601-7203 x305
fax: 510-601-7204
800-290-6006
branch@ncse.com 
http://ncse.com 

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