After reading this I asked myself: Is it any wonder college students get sucked in to emotionally based eco-causes/NGO’s that spout claims based on questionable science? This troubling press release comes from Michigan State University. A link to the full paper follows below, which is well worth reading because it gives insight into the questions and answers given. It is quite an eye-opener. – Anthony
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Most college students in the United States do not grasp the scientific basis of the carbon cycle – an essential skill in understanding the causes and consequences of climate change, according to research published in the January issue of BioScience.
The study, whose authors include several current and former researchers from Michigan State University, calls for a new way of teaching – and, ultimately, comprehending – fundamental scientific principles such as the conservation of matter.
“Improving students’ understanding of these biological principles could make them better prepared to deal with important environmental issues such as global climate change,” said Charles “Andy” Anderson, MSU professor of teacher education and co-investigator on the project.
The study was led by Laurel Hartley, assistant professor at the University of Colorado Denver who started the work as a postdoctoral researcher at MSU. Co-researchers include Anderson, Brook Wilke, Jonathon Schramm and Joyce Parker, all from MSU, and Charlene D’Avanzo from Hampshire College.
The researchers assessed the fundamental science knowledge of more than 500 students at 13 U.S. colleges in courses ranging from introductory biology to advanced ecology.
Most students did not truly understand the processes that transform carbon. They failed to apply principles such as the conservation of matter, which holds that when something changes chemically or physically, the amount of matter at the end of the process needs to equal the amount at the beginning. (Matter doesn’t magically appear or disappear.)
Students trying to explain weight loss, for example, could not trace matter once it leaves the body; instead they used informal reasoning based on their personal experiences (such as the fat “melted away” or was “burned off”). In reality, the atoms in fat molecules leave the body (mostly through breathing) and enter the atmosphere as carbon dioxide and water.
Most students also incorrectly believe plants obtain their mass from the soil rather than primarily from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. “When you see a tree growing,” Anderson said, “it’s a lot easier to believe that tree is somehow coming out of the soil rather than the scientific reality that it’s coming out of the air.”
The researchers say biology textbooks and high-school and college science instructors need to do a better job of teaching the fundamentals – particularly how matter transforms from gaseous to solid states and vice-versa.
It won’t be easy, Anderson said, because students’ beliefs of the carbon cycle are deeply engrained (such as the misconception that plants get most of their nutrients from the soil). Instructors should help students understand that the use of such “everyday, informal reasoning” runs counter to true scientific literacy, he said.
The implications are great for a generation of citizens who will grapple with complicated environmental issues such as clean energy and carbon sequestration more than any generation in history, Anderson said.
“One of the things I’m interested in,” he said, “is students’ understanding of environmental problems. And probably the most important environmental problem is global climate change. And that’s attributable to a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And understanding where that carbon dioxide is coming from and what you can do about it fundamentally involves understanding the scientific carbon cycle.”
###
Michigan State University has been advancing knowledge and transforming lives through innovative teaching, research and outreach for more than 150 years. MSU is known internationally as a major public university with global reach and extraordinary impact. Its 17 degree-granting colleges attract scholars worldwide who are interested in combining education with practical problem solving.
The full study is here (PDF) and is well worth the read.
h/t to Indur Goklany
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“The researchers say biology textbooks and high-school and college science instructors need to do a better job of teaching the fundamentals….”
=======================================================
But then they wouldn’t be so easily swayed by the psuedo-science advocates.
_Jim says: Wrote
January 8, 2011 at 10:39 pm
Michael says:
January 8, 2011 at 9:28 pm
“Do you have an authoritative link to an E.O. (Executive Order)?”
Jim, I believe this will help. (EO 12986)
http://www.bitterroot.com/grizzly/EXECUTIVE%20ORDER.HTML
Doesn’t splitting atoms “magically” make matter disappear?
In my view, a couple of generations since I was at school, this is a strong indication that the teachers themselves are, unwittingly, to blame, having themselves been taught (or not, as the case may be) the fundaments of physical science erroneously. I would hazard a guess that the main culprit is that body of ‘jobsworths’ whose erstwhile mission was to improve educational standards. There was nothing wrong in the way we were taught, except perhaps the time lag between what was deemed to be factual, and the changing reality of modern physics, as is the case today.
I will refrain from any remark concerning propaganda, except to say that it is rife, more especially in teachers’ training colleges.
Oh hell. let me just copy and paste this so people can easily read it.
Note the part that says;
“alternative model for sustainable communities and lifestyles, based on ecospiritual practices and principles.”
“One of Bill Clinton’s most insidious executive orders was EO 12986, which was issued on January 9, 1996. The decree extended immunity from lawsuits to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, IUCN, which is an accredited scientific advisory body to United Nations. The IUCN has more than 880 affiliates in 133 countries, including scores of state and federal governmental agencies and non-government organizations in the U.S. that seek to promote “alternative model for sustainable communities and lifestyles, based on ecospiritual practices and principles.” Toward that end, the IUCN created the “Wildlands Project,” a scheme to transform at least one-half the surface area of the continental United States into a vast “eco-park” purged of modern industry and private property.
The Wildlands project was to be incorporated as part of the United Nations Convention on Biodiversity, which was signed by Bill Clinton in July 1995. One month later, the Environmental Protection Agency issued a directive instructing “Natural resource and environmental agencies” to develop “a joint strategy to help the United States fulfill its existing obligations (e.g. Convention on Biodiversity, Agenda 21 ). Agenda 21, it should be noted, is the Mammoth blue-print for global eco-socialism produced by the United Nations at its 1992 “Earth Summit” in Rio de Janeiro. In September 1994, the Senate refused to ratify the Biodiversity treaty when it was discovered that its “binding Protocols,” which had been devised by the IUCN, mandated the implementation of the Wildlands Project in order to conserve “biodiversity.””
http://www.bitterroot.com/grizzly/EXECUTIVE%20ORDER.HTML
I posted this in an earlier thread and it puts two and two together with my last post.
It mentions the ecofascist religion they started. It’s a new RELIGION.
Note the last two paragraphs in this post.
“An influential professor who worked as an assessor for the United Nations IPCC has called for democracy to be replaced with an eco-dictatorship where enslaved masses are ruled over by an “elite warrior leadership” and forced to adhere to a new green religion, in yet another shocking example of how prominent global warming alarmists are revealing themselves as dangerous eco-fascists.
Professor David Shearman, MD, is Emeritus Professor of Medicine, University of Adelaide, and a Visiting Research Fellow at the University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Sciences and Law School. Shearman was an Assessor for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Third Assessment Report and the Fourth Assessment Report.
In his writings, Shearman, who labels humanity a “malignant eco-tumour” and an “ecological cancer,” says that “authoritarianism is the natural state of humanity” and that in order to save the planet from man-made climate change, an “elite warrior leadership” needs to be formed that will “battle for the future of the earth”.
Part of this battle involves replacing traditional religions like Christianity and Islam with a new green religion that would fit better with an authoritarian government.
“It is not impossible that from the green movement and aspects of the new age movement a religious alternative to Christianity and Islam will emerge,” writes Spearman. “And it is not too difficult to imagine what shape this new religion could take. One would require a transcendent God who could punish and reward – because humans seem to need a carrot and a stick.””
http://www.infowars.com/ipcc-professor-calls-for-elite-warrior-leadership-to-rule-over-eco-dictatorship/
Boy I would love an edit button. Please add this to the executive order post to Jim.
“Mr. Clinton, as his custom, simply ignored the Senate’s refusal to ratify the treaty. Through EO 12858 he created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, which coordinates federal efforts to “Harmonize” environmental regulatory practices with UN directives. His subsequent decrees regarding “roadless areas” and new “national monuments fit perfectly into the Wildlands frame-work, which is built around a net-work of existing “core .protected areas” – such as the Grand Canyon – which are surrounded by “buffer zones” and then connected by “wildlife corridors.” Former Earth First! eco-terrorist Dave Forman, helped concoct the Wildands Project, urges ecoradlcal groups to “look for gaps between wild lands or public lands” for future acquisition “by public agencies or private groups like; the Nature Conservancy.” In this way, private lands abutting federally designated “protected” areas can be pried out of private hands, until (in Foreman’s words) “the matrix, not just the nexus is, wild.” With two strokes of his proverbial pen, Bill Clinton has placed millions of property owners in the path of the Wildlands juggernaut – and through EO 12986, he placed the IUCN beyond civil accountability for any injuries sustained by private property owners.”
“more than 500 students at 13 U.S. colleges in courses ranging from introductory biology to advanced ecology.”
Advanced ecology courses?
Hmmmmmmmm.
I bet those guys and gals will be really down to earth, practical, level headed types.
Anderson himself fails to understand the principle that co2 absorption is saturated. He needs to be taught that contrary to his belief, this is a non linear system and increases in co2 at the stage have no impact on temperature. Rather, they will help to feed us.
What do you expect when all they been told is that co2 is a toxin, it will overheat the planet etc.? I think improved “scientific literacy” might have some unintended consequences for the Warmists. ;o)
“Most students also incorrectly believe plants obtain their mass from the soil rather than primarily from carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.”
I leaned this the hard way. My father was proud of his brick and timber fence, mostly covered in climbing ficus. As a child it was my job to keep the ficus trim with hedgeclippers.
One day I accidentally cut through the single root of the ficus, and I thought it would die. But no, it carried on growing as if nothing had happened. I then realised that the ficus grew from the CO2 in the air and the rain that fell on it and the fence, and got a few needed minerals from the bricks and mortar of the fence.
Since then I have had a huge macadamia tree. The soil under it has built up several feet over the years from the falling leaves. Where has this come from? – the CO2 from the air.
Over the years I have eaten and sold many thousands of macadamia nuts. And the soil keeps building up – from the CO2 in the air.
Try reading this.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/8248108/Dambisa-Moyo-without-change-US-will-almost-certainly-become-a-socialist-nation.html
To “deal with climate change” one does not need to be scientifically literate at all. Just babble about “increased greenhouse effect”, “warmest evah”, “floodsdroughtsheatwaves” and “we have to act now”.
Have faith in the young.
Here’s the reason, for these kids came up with smarter answers than we ever did:
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Fail%20a.jpg
http://www.geoffstuff.com/Fail%20b.jpg
One of the striking differences between this test and the ones that I used to do as an undergrad physiology major was that all of our exams were short answer or essay questions in which diagrams were allowed and generally calculations were needed. Some of the questions are quite ambiguous or just plain wrong such as the one about eating a grape and how the glucose molecules could provide energy to move your finger. The answer is either through glycolysis, a rather inefficient anaerobic process or through the Krebs cycle and oxidative phosphorylation. In both cases glucose is broken down into smaller molecules with lactate resulting in glycolysis and glycerol phosphate entering the Krebs cycle. I would have chosen a wrong answer and the rationale of the authors that “simpler molecules will not contain more energy than complex molecules” is simply wrong. Back in my undergrad days I had all significant biochemical pathways memorized (along with reaction mechanisms). One of the first things I do when I move into a new work area is put my biochemical pathways chart on a large area of wall. IMO, an exam of this type tells one very little about the knowledge of the students given some of the bizarrely worded questions. It does, however, give a lot of information about the fallacious assumptions of the individuals writing the exam.
Still, despite the horrid nature of the exam, the assumptions of nuclear transformations occurring routinely in plants and rotting vegetation make one wonder about how good a grounding these students have had in elementary chemistry and physics. The inability to comprehend that CO2 comes from the air is just shocking and it reflects a general dumbing down of science. I guess the concept of spontaneous generation has been resurrected also.
When I was in school this type of exam would be given in a grade 9 science class and even then it was short answer/essay format. By the time I got to university and my ecology course, we did detailed numerical calculations looking at mass flows of CO2, H2O and minerals through plants and animals. I wrote programs to simulate these but that wasn’t part of the course. Incidentally, that was a first year ecology course.
I’d be very interested in how the same students would fare on a test where they were required to write out the chemical reactions of photosynthesis and actually do some calculations on the concentrations of reactants given the rate constansts of the various reactions, or have to answer a question with an essay. What I find quite shocking in the climate “science” area is an incredible ignorance of what should be fundamental bedrock knowledge of a field with the assumption that it doesn’t really matter as someone has incorporated it into a model. It’s the medical analogy of a surgeon attempting to perform an operation with just a superficial knowledge of anatomy and no knowledge of the common anatomic variants that people have.
Matter can be turned into energy. So its conservation of energy, not matter isn’t it?
You know that E = mc^2 equation.
to me most of the students need to stop smoking pot, don’t tell them the more Co2 in the atmosphere the quicker and stronger the pot plants will grow, when they learn of this I bet that will change their view on Co2
[Dupe ? Robt]
There is no doubt, in the example above, that the harvest of eating matter from soils does remove soil and therefore its level will drop (unless it is being renewed faster by a replacement mechanism such as heavy mulching). For example, the soil seen on unwashed potatoes must lead to a depletion in the first instance, as does that internal part of the potato not constructed from material from the atmosphere and hydrosphere.
In this context, I have photographed several Camellia reticulata trees in west China, whose ages are mostly over 400 years (from preserved written records). Those trees growing within enclosures such as the walls of a temple, have an ordinary appearance of ground level. Conversely, those growing in crop fields often have a stonework support built around them, for their immediate surroundings are about a half meter above the crop areas. It is a reasonable assumption that cropping here has reduced the ground height by about half a meter in 400 years.
The problem resembles that of sea level change – what does one use for an invariate datum point?
The example of food gaining weight from photosynthesis would be better made if some figures were attached for popular crops like the potato. X% from the ground, Y% from the air.
[Your calculation/discussion is ignoring soil erosion on the exposed and plowed soil for those 400 years. Robt]
“And probably the most important environmental problem is global climate change. And that’s attributable to a buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. And understanding where that carbon dioxide is coming from and what you can do about it fundamentally involves understanding the scientific carbon cycle.”
Or to put it more reasonably: Probably the most important problem is a lack of understanding as to what is global climate change. Climate change is attributable to a whole range of factors: the behaviour of the sun, the composition of the atmosphere, clouds, cosmic rays, the wobble of the earth’s axis – and many unknowns. Understanding where carbon dioxide is coming from fundamentally involves understanding the carbon cycle. Understanding where clouds come from fundamentally involves understanding the water cycle, the sun, and cosmic rays. Understanding climate change fundamentally involves the study of climate cycles going back millions of years, rather than the last 150.
Not a surprise at all. Only a fraction of the students care to even learn the sciences. And of that fraction, it’s surprising how little they can learn and still receive a degree. When I was in graduate school, I saw Ivy league chemists finish PhDs who didn’t know what “DNA” stood for. I work with chemists in big Pharma that don’t know what the letters “DNA” stand for! I learned this in 9th grade physical sciences.
A society of ignorant, gullible people are at risk of manipulation and control. History has shown this repeatedly.
Robert Wykoff January 8, 2011 at 11:15 pm Doesn’t splitting atoms “magically” make matter disappear?
Only very slightly. See:
Mass-energy equivalence
P.G. Sharrow says:
January 8, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Students that can’t grasp science and mathematics take liberal arts classes and become teachers, teachers that can not teach science and mathematics, teachers that put down the “nerds” that understand science and mathematics. No one that is “cool” would even try to understand math and science…”
You’ve hit the nail right on the head!!! I too felt this was a reason our society lacks science understanding. To a larger extent than you’ve described, I feel it’s somewhat of an anti-intellectual society. Teachers, students, and society at large label you as a “nerd” or “geek” if you not only have a passion for learning, but simply retain knowledge. To get along in school, I found myself pretending not to care or to not know information, especially in the sciences or mathematics, else I would get criticized. Playing dumb was required. It’s okay to know all the football or baseball players and their stats, and to discuss ad nauseum about sports, but let-on that you know some math or science let alone wanting to discuss it with others and you’re an outcast.
And now it’s these same anti-intellectual ignoramuses ” all growd up” that will decide political courses of action based on science? The same science they felt was too “uncool” to learn back in school? What a joke.
my initial thought was ‘Nothing new here’
Unfortunately, apart from my eldest in his second year at uni – I don’t have much experience of the modern student – but I stick to the principle that I was always taught, in that if you get confused or ‘lost’ you shoulds always go back to the start and work it through again.
One of my biggest beefs with AGW (and I suppose ‘modern science’ in general) is that this never really seems to happen – It is always, using so and so’s results and based on this paper and this data, etc, etc. I don’t know if its laziness or simply that the modern trend is to ‘accept’ what has been done before (perhaps to enable stuff to be published?). I feel sure if the ‘raw’ data was properly available and the workings were shown, ‘fresh’ or ‘open-minded’ scientists may be able to work though some of the AGW ‘base’ data and give us a second opinion!
This is something I can absolutely relate to. Being in my honours year we only have about a dozen students taking business enterprise. We have studied together for 4 years and there was a debate on new disruptive technology that can help reduce CO2. All the mainstream tech was discussed such as wind farming or tidal wave energy, the general consensus was to go towards nucleur energy as it was too costly to maintain a high output of energy from tidal energy and investors may find first generation technology unappetising due to low returns and so on.
However during the questions session I proposed, much of which has been discussed on sites such as these and I have to say I borrowed some quotes, that CO2 was infact food for plants and if we try to force a nation to become carbon neutral it would harm rather than help that nation.
One student asserted that it was soil not CO2 while the rest pretty much went with what I said “oh yeah I remember reading that somewhere.” Further discussion surprised them that there was plenty of information out there that our fear of CO2 is baseless and we should be harnessing it instead. Only person that said let’s not get into the science of it was the lecturer hah.
The die hard students who really want to make a difference follow an idea such as AGW are completely blindsided by the data or journals out there countering it. That’s why I agree with people that say it looks like its becoming a religion based movement rather than trust -based on knowledge, learning and research.
I have to say though that I was incredibly indoctrinated into the AGW movement in school however joining uni at 17 my earlier lecturers always said we don’t care what your views are, base them on data and facts and we’ll mark you on your evidence. I’ve applied that to most interests in my life and well, I’m following WUWT now at 21 and glad that I am not simple shouting for a cause but continually researching it.
Apologies for the long post on a sunday, 😉
Boris Gimbarzevsky January 9, 2011 at 2:06 am
I’m glad to see your message. I had been wondering if something was wrong with me for thinking that some of it was, as you say, bizarrely worded, and that, perhaps, some of it was wrong.