NCSE Evolution and Climate Education Update for 2013/09/06
Submitted by Peter Burns on Fri, 2013-09-06 15:21.
National Center for Science Education
(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 Check out NCSE's new blog, Science League of America: http://ncse.com/blog Read Reports of the NCSE on-line: http://reports.ncse.com Subscribe to NCSE's free weekly e-newsletter: http://groups.google.com/group/ncse-news NCSE is on Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter: http://www.facebook.com/evolution.ncse http://www.youtube.com/NatCen4ScienceEd http://twitter.com/ncse NCSE's work is supported by its members. Join today! http://ncse.com/join
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