NCSE Evolution and Climate Education Update for 2015/07/17
Submitted by Peter Burns on Fri, 2015-07-17 16:17.
National Center for Science Education
(by NCSE Deputy Director Glenn Branch)
Dear friends of NCSE, The latest on climate change education measures before the United States Senate. Sad news of the death of the paleontologist David M. Raup. And a preview of Mann and Kump's Dire Predictions.
UPDATE FROM THE SENATE Two of the three amendments concerning climate change education under consideration are out of commission as the United States Senate continues to discuss a bill to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965. A proposed amendment (SA 2176) to establish the Climate Change Education Act, which would have instituted a competitive grant program aimed in part at developing and improving educational material and teacher training on the topic of climate change, was rejected on a 44-53 vote on July 15, 2015. The amendment was proposed by Edward Markey (D-Massachussetts), who was quoted by the Washington Post (July 15, 2015) as saying, "The children of our country deserve the best scientific education they can get on this topic ... They are the future leaders of this country and the world. They must be equipped." Lamar Alexander (R-Tennessee), however, argued against the federal government's involvement in curriculum and instruction, warning, "Just imagine what the curriculum on climate change would be if we shifted from President Obama to President Cruz and then back to President Sanders and then to President Trump." Meanwhile, a proposed amendment (SA 2144) that would have directed the administrators of EPA and NOAA to provide state and local educational agencies with "balanced, objective resources on climate theory," proposed by Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi), was withdrawn without a vote on July 15, 2015. Wicker was the sole dissenter to a resolution "that climate change is real and not a hoax" that was before the Senate in 2015, as National Public Radio (January 23, 2015) reported, and among dozens of senators that dissented from a similar amendment that acknowledged human influence on climate change. Still under consideration is a resolution (SA 2175) that refers to the scientific evidence for human-induced climate change as "overwhelming and undeniable" and holds that "instruction in climate science is important for all students and should not be prohibited by any unit of State or local government." "Passage of SA 2175 would put the Senate on record as firmly supporting climate change education," NCSE's executive director Ann Reid commented. "I urge you to get in touch with your senators and express your support for the resolution." For the three amendments, visit: https://www.congress.gov/amendment/114th-congress/senate-amendment/2176 https://www.congress.gov/amendment/114th-congress/senate-amendment/2144 https://www.congress.gov/amendment/114th-congress/senate-amendment/2175 For the story in the Washington Post, visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/education/the-specter-of-president-trump-dooms-climate-change-ed-grants/2015/07/15/8a969df2-2b28-11e5-a5ea-cf74396e59ec_story.html For the story from National Public Radio, visit: http://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2015/01/23/379242432/senate-says-climate-change-real-but-not-really-our-fault And for NCSE's action alert, visit: http://ncse.com/taking-action/tell-your-senators-support-climate-change-education DAVID M. RAUP DIES The paleontologist David M. Raup died on July 9, 2015, at the age of 82, according to a press release from the University of Chicago (July 14, 2015). The press release explains, "Raup was widely known for the new approaches he brought repeatedly to paleontology, such as extensive computation, modern evolutionary biology, theoretical ecology, and mathematical modeling." Raup was also a pedagogical innovator: Principles of Paleontology (1971, 1978), his textbook coauthored with Steven M. Stanley, focused on paleontological methods rather than adopting a systematic or historical approach. To the public, he was famous for his popular books explaining his views on periodicities in mass extinctions: The Nemesis Affair (1985) and Extinction: Bad Genes or Bad Luck? (1991). A vivid and candid writer, Raup was often misleadingly quoted by creationists. For example, a supposedly antievolutionary phrase from a 1979 essay of his -- "we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transitions than we had in Darwin's time" -- is still in circulation, although in context it is clear that Raup was talking about such evolutionary transitions as driven by natural selection alone; in the same article, he writes, "This record of change pretty clearly demonstrates that evolution has occurred if we define evolution simply as change; but it does not tell us how this change took place, and that is really the question." Raup contributed a chapter on "The Geological and Paleontological Arguments of Creationism" to Laurie R. Godfrey's Scientists Confront Creationism (1984), in which he commented, "[Duane] Gish ... has popularized the notion that the rocks and the fossils say NO to evolution. As I will show here, the rocks and the fossils say YES to evolution!" Later in his life, Raup was apparently intrigued by the "intelligent design" movement, reportedly having a better opinion of Phillip Johnson's scholarship than did his colleague Stephen Jay Gould. Raup was born in Boston on April 24, 1933. He received his B.S. from the University of Chicago in 1953 and his M.A. and Ph.D. in geology from Harvard University in 1955 and 1957. He taught at Caltech and the John Hopkins University before becoming a professor of geology at the University of Rochester from 1966 to 1978. Returning to Chicago, he was curator of geology from 1978 to 1980 and dean of science from 1980 to 1982 at the Field Museum of Natural History. He also joined the Department of the Geophysical Sciences at the University of Chicago in 1980, becoming emeritus in 1995. His honors included the Paleontological Society's Charles Schuchert Award in 1973, election to the National Academy of Sciences in 1979, and the Paleontological Society Medal in 1995. For the University of Chicago's press release, visit: http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2015/07/14/david-raup-paleontologist-who-transformed-his-discipline-1933-2015 A PREVIEW OF DIRE PREDICTIONS NCSE is pleased to offer a free preview of Michael E. Mann and Lee R. Kump's Dire Predictions: Understanding Climate Change (second edition, DK Publishing, 2015). The preview includes brief chapters on "Taking action in the face of uncertainty," "Greenhouse gases on the rise," "How does modern warming differ from past warming trends?" "How to build a climate model," "How sensitive is the climate?" "The highway to extinction?" "Where do all those emissions come from?" "Geoengineering," "But what can I do about it?" and "The known unknowns & unknown unknowns." The publisher writes, "Dire Predictions is a must-read for anyone interested in understanding global warming and climate change ... Updated to include the latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Dire Predictions dives into the information documented by the IPCC in an illustrated, visually-stunning, and undeniably powerful way." A member of NCSE's Advisory Council and a recipient of NCSE's Friend of the Planet award in 2014, Mann is Distinguished Professor of Meteorology at Pennsylvania State University; Kump is Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University. For the preview of Dire Predictions (PDF), visit: http://ncse.com/book-excerpt For information about the book from its publisher, visit: http://www.dk.com/us/9781465433640-dire-predictions/ WHAT'S NEW FROM THE SCIENCE LEAGUE OF AMERICA Have you been visiting NCSE's blog, The Science League of America, recently? If not, then you've missed: * Minda Berbeco interviewing a middle school teacher about pushback to climate education: http://ncse.com/blog/2015/07/rethinking-climate-change-education-0016524 * NCSE intern Nikita Daryanani reviewing three elementary-level resources on evolution: http://ncse.com/blog/2015/07/classroom-climate-change-kids-0016521 * Stephanie Keep castigating NBC News for fomenting a misconception about evolution: http://ncse.com/blog/2015/07/say-what-nbc-news-hasn-t-read-this-blog-0016528 And much more besides! For The Science League of America, visit: http://ncse.com/blog 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 x303 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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