Story submitted by Eric Worrall | 
The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) has published a critique which expresses deep concerns about the latest McGraw Hill Education, World Cultures & Geography [Teacher Version] (Grade 6) school textbook. According to the critique;
“This book has a deeply concerning section comparing the Heartland Institute with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in relation to climate change.
This misleads students as to good sources of information, pitting an ideologically driven advocacy group (Heartland Institute) that receives funding from Big Tobacco and polluters against a Nobel Peace Prize-winning scientific body (IPCC).
The IPCC reports utilize hundreds of scientific experts and reviewers, as well as thousands of peer-reviewed articles. The Heartland Institute has no such expertise nor do they utilize the depth of research available in this area. Independent of the content area, this is a completely inappropriate presentation of the information or comparison of sources.
Specifically; “This entire section is misleading. Scientists do not disagree about what is causing climate change, the vast majority (97%) of climate papers and actively publishing climatologists (again 97%) agree that human activity is responsible.”
Source: http://ncse.com/files/Texas-social-studies-report-2014.pdf
As support for this claim, the NCSE cites a paper which references Naomi Oreskes, who is a well known objective activist scientist, and a deeply flawed paper whose lead author was John Cook, the cartoonist who runs Skeptical Science.
The link to the Cook paper is broken, the link they were trying to provide is this one. http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article
My thought – this effort by the NCSE deserves an “F”. Not only did they not bother to proof read their own paper, they also obviously didn’t perform any serious background research on the activist sourced material they provided, as the supporting evidence for their critique of Texan education policy.
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Mikey, this is one of your best insanely incorrect, horribly biased, and egregiously misspelled pieces of leftist screed ever! I’m so very proud of my little man! In fact, we’re gonna put it up on the fridge, right next to the Nobel Prize we printed out in celebration of you finally being potty trained. Momma’s so proud!
It’s Texas Schoolbook Time, when the most pig-ignorant people on the planet descend on Austin in order to compete to see who can be the biggest and loudest and most ignorant jack*** on record in order to try to drag thousands of unsuspecting schoolkids into their mire. Between the Trotskyites, the Creationists, the “of course American history only has one legitimate point of view” crowd, it’s enough to make me want to gargle gasoline.
It’s a profound embarrassment to my state.
“It’s a profound embarrassment to my state.”
That it is. I say this as a Texan in exile. I used to love that state. But something has gone seriously wrong there in the past 20 years. I voted for Clements. I despised Molly Ivans and Ann Richards. I almost long for them now. As contentious and wacky as politics was back then, at least the state seemed to have its head screwed on straight.
“they also obviously didn’t perform any serious background research on the activist sourced material they provided”
NCSE is a political campaign group whose self proclaimed mission is
http://ncse.com/about
They clearly have no idea “good science” does not include rebutted and retracted papers.
Rather makes a mockery of thier efforts.
On the other hand they did pick up a very careless error that attributed the ozone hole to deforestation and fossil fuels. They were not partisan enough to ignore it and pointed out this was CFCs, not coal burning power stations.
The same food fight at the Graudian. I am amazed at how people in a different country, 5000 miles away, think they need to be involved in the writing of single paragraph, in a Grade 8 text book. There are some aspects of globalization that I do not agree with, and this would be one.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/16/texas-proposes-rewriting-school-text-books-to-deny-manmade-climate-change?commentpage=1
Hearthand is an ideologically driven advocacy group. There’s no doubt about that. The IPCC is too. They just try to hide that fact. Nevertheless, both the NCSE and the Texas State Board of Education deserve an F. Political issues should be no part of a high school geography class. Geography class should stick to geography, not science, be it physics, chemistry or climate.
Except that geography determines climate.
Sure, geography class should mention Antarctica is cold. It shouldn’t get into the business of predicting how cold it might be in 100 years.
Yes, and geography courses should educate students on all the factors that determine climate: latitude, altitude, proximity to oceans and ocean currents, rain-shadows, etc. This will help innoculate our youth against the refrain of the propagandists that CO2 determines climate.
Donjindra;
I think you are confusing Political Geography with Physical Geography. Obviously, you have never had a Physical Geography class.
Here in BC the schools bring in the High Priests to educate the kids in “stewardship of the environment”. They end the day with a personal life pledge.
I just got a very unsavory mental image of David Suzuki looking on, beaming at the freshly indoctrinated children reciting the personal life pledge…
Alx: “Climate science is no where near as well supported as Evolution science.”
Yes. But that is not saying much. We can each jot for ourselves what science is: developing a hypothesis, making it testable by some observation, determining what data would support or fail to support in that observation, then going and making that observation.
What new species have we observed evolving?
None.
Evolution is a theory of where the various species came from. It accounts for a lot of observations, and sounds plausible, in some ways, as long as you accept simultaneous flukes coming together to make incredibly complex, interdependent biological systems within an organism and between organisms.
The appeal of evolution, its support, is by argument/reason/induction. Not by scientific verification.
It seems to me that bacteria and viruses must be evolving, otherwise they would not be developing into strains resistant to antibiotics and vaccines.
Bacteria and viruses are evolving – into different types of bacteria and viruses. The information required for the intra species changes is already there. The whole “macro” vs “micro” evolution thingy that’s has been bantered about.
As a Catholic Christian , I really don’t have a dog in this fight. The Big Kahuna can do whatever he wants. I DO know that because I believe God exists, I, and the rest of humanity is very, very special. Whatever the details of how I came about, I am not a result of completely natural, random processes that “just happened” . And, therefore, I am of great value. Peter Singer claims that “the life of a newborn is of less value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee”, and while that statement is repulsive to me, I give Singer credit for actually boldly stating the logical consequence of a random, unguided, everything-happened-by-chance universe. And, make no mistake, those at the top of the CAGW movement consider humanity to basically be just another species that “just happened”, and give it no special elevation. And, they also do not consider all of humanity to be of equal value. With those attitudes, a whole host of evils can and will come about. One of the reasons why sites like this one are so crucially important.
“What new species have we observed evolving?”
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/061201_quietcrickets
Some food for thought.
I read through it, lots of questions. I like this line too: “what is probably a single mutation affecting wing shape in male crickets.” Probably…good term. I had to read it again though because the thought occurred to me of the possibility that the “silent male” was just another type of cricket that either already existed in smaller numbers until the flies started killing off the chirping crickets, or came over by boat/plane to the same affect. This is finally hinted at later after all the “nature fixed it stuff”. There is also a lot of personification of crickets that is just hearsay (how the females become “lax” on what males they choose). For all we know there is no “new” species here, just inbreeding. Once again I feel evolution (in the vague sense with no definition of macro vs micro) is the “who done it” when you could have left the term out altogether and it wouldn’t have changed anything.
Obviously evolution by natural selection operates at some level, i.e. fruit flies, viruses, etc. It may also operate at higher levels to some extent. However, when you stop to consider that Darwin advanced his theory in 1859 and that in the 155 years since that time no decent intermediate forms have been uncovered, despite all the digging that has gone on, you wonder how much longer evolution by natural selection can continue to stand as the sole explanation.
There seems to be some good evidence that evolution also occurs by rapid mutation. Even so, you don’t want to say that too loudly, since the topic of evolution seems to be just as emotional as CO2-driven climate change.
No decent intermediate forms of what, exactly?
The human species for starters.
Cold in Wisconsin: “And yet there is a range of views on evolution as there is on climate change, based on the level of proof and how far you take the evidence that exists. Can one believe in evolution without believing that men evolved from the primordial soup? Yes, and that does not make you an idiot.”
Of course we did not evolve from the primordial soup. That theory ruled for a long time, despite counter-evidence. Now, it has largely been abandoned.
Now, the correct belief is to believe our primordial foundation fell to earth from outer space. Much more wiggle room there.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-24174656
Yeah, that is a step, but not all the way yet. Even skirting the origin of life question eventually won’t be enough “wiggle room”. As life here on earth is found to be more and more complex and interdependent (as you state above), then unguided “natural” evolution, even starting from a point of simple life from outer space – will be found to be statistically untenable – of course this will likely take many decades before it is finally acknowledged by the scientific community. Five billion years won’t be enough time, 50 billion (longer than the current estimated age of the universe) won’t be enough , 5 trillion won’t be enough. At that point, the meme will be that intelligent aliens seeded the planet with primitive but “encoded” life billions of years ago as a science experiment , and we evolved from that. How did the aliens evolve themselves? Not important.
And I’m not saying some kind of evolution did not occur. I DO know that the earth is billions, not thousands of years old, and that we did not evolve completely through random, natural, “unguided by intelligence” processes. Both notions are equally absurd to me.
The evolution theory has a little more scientific support than global warming caused by CO2…
Humans share at least 98% of their DNA with chimpanzees and the related bonobo’s. Seems quite unlikely that we were dropped in from outer space with so much in common with these apes…
From out of the European view it is still surprising that so many in the USA still don’t believe in evolution. That seems an extinct species in Europe…
Even for Christians here, there is no contradiction between evolution and the Bible, after all the miracle is not that Someone did take earth to create a human being, but the fact that the element carbon is so extremely versatile that it could form life in all its forms… Who or what created carbon is the real Creator…
“Who or what created carbon is the real Creator…”
I understand carbon is created by stars (along with all other elements; to the best of my knowledge, those above Atomic Number 92 are too unstable to be found in earthly deposits).
From a religious viewpoint, the creation of a set of physical, biological, and mathematical laws and processes to arrive, over time, to intelligent human life seems a much more elegant method than brute force creation of millions or billions of lifeforms which then remain static and unchanging forever.
Sorry, didn’t read the BBC link before answering, even if the original microbes did come in via asteroid impacts (and weren’t burned during the passing of the atmosphere), that doesn’t explain how they evolved on the extra-terrestrial planets. On the other side, all building blocks currently found in microbes to humans can be formed under certain circumstances like in the primordial soup, be it that the possibility of getting together in the right order to form something like “life” is very, very small…
This story parallels (in my mind) the activities of the Communist Apparatchiks during the build up of the Soviet “Block” nations during the 50’s and 60’s. Specifically, it (the NCSE assertion) appears to be an attempt to influence leadership using the Russian born “science” of disinformation. Specifically, the process and procedures of the KGB and similar agencies (e.g. Romanian DIE, East German STASSI, etc…) used to control the populace, as described by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa.
Here is a link to a video for the federal DoED Green Schools Coalition on how they intend to use K-12 to create sustainability natives. http://www.garrisoninstitute.org/2013-09-16-15-39-23/cmb-video-presentations/cmb-video-2011/919-rachel-gutter-discusses-climate-behavior-issues-at-the-garrison-institute
Seriously! ! Great. First off after Al Gore and Obama won the propaganda prize that “credential”is now worthless. Secondly as someone has already rightly pointed out what has IPCC ever correctly predicted with respect to climate? They have to be the only entity on the planet that can’t even predict the past correctly. Lefty is fantastic. Always trying to silence reality while claiming to be the only “tolerant” ones.
Why should a book on geography and culture even talk about the science behind global warming? Last time I checked this is neither geography nor anthropology.
Because the focus in all these courses is on systems. Geography and anthropology are both treated now as learning about human systems. The human systems are supposedly impacting the climate. In comes Climate Change as a problem created by current human activities. Therefore the activities themselves need to change.
It’s also what the most recent IPCC report called Adaptation. No need to wait for actual damage. Assume it is true and force changes prophylactically since as Roy Spencer said about next week’s summit, it’s all about wealth redistribution anyway.
Orestes is a ‘scientist’ now? I think not. last time I looked, a few days ago, she is a historian. Last week I saw Jeffrey Sachs described as a ‘scientist’. He is not; he is an economist. One wonders how many more of those 97% of scietists are actually scientists….precious few from what I can make out.
Oreskes sorry. Freudian slip there. But Orestes wasn’t a scientist either.
The UN is a purely and very extreme political organization…. for anyone to expect SCIENCE to be done at the UN is laughable. The UN does politics… not science. The NCSE contention that the IPCC is unbiased science is flat out wrong.
Yep all the real experts agree, this is why we have 3 or 4 dozen different explanations for the fact it is not warming as we were told it would.
The National Center for Sciencey PROPAGANDA (NCSE)
>>…pitting an ideologically driven advocacy group (Heartland Institute) that receives funding from Big Tobacco and polluters against a Nobel Peace Prize-winning scientific body (IPCC).<<
Uh huh.
Should the IPCC or the Nobel Peace Prize committee be given any credibility for anything they say? When you stop to consider that in the last 20 years Nobel Peace Prizes have been handed out to the European Union, Barack Obama (for peace making he was expected to do but hadn't done yet and still hasn't done), Al Gore who has been caught in any number of lies while promoting the UN's global warming agenda, the United Nations itself, and Yassar Arafat, a known terrorist and responsible for uncounted deaths, you have to wonder why anyone gives them any credence what-so-ever. Future recipients of good conscience should begin turning down their prizes from this purely political "Peace Prize" pretender.
“the vast majority (97%) of climate papers and actively publishing climatologists (again 97%) agree that human activity is responsible”, they obviously don’t read WUWT or they wouldn’t use the 97% consensus argument.
Homeschool.
All other is abuse.
You can either teach science or indoctrinate dogma. If climate, or even creation evolution are “science”, the process of science should expose the truth.
In a different meme, someone noted that when someone cuts out a man’s tongue, it is rarely because they fear he will tell untruth.
For all those who are under the (mis)impression that the NCSE’s foray into CAGW advocacy represents a departure from its careful, reasoned, objective stance on all things science-related, let me be the one to break it to you that this is not a departure. It is simply another example of the NCSE’s modus operandi. The NCSE exists, is funded for, and has as its purpose to be a “consensus” science advocacy group. And they are willing to pull out the big guns for anyone who dares question that consensus.
Like good scientists, science teachers should be observant. There are Nobel science prizes. Why would a ‘scientific’ body like IPCC win the Nobel Peace Prize? That prize is for political advocacy. Pupils, answer the bonus question. And Al Gore says earth’s interior is hotter than the sun. He would flunk the Grade 6 science quiz. No wonder he became a politician.
http://evolution.berkeley.edu/evolibrary/news/061201_quietcrickets
What a great read!
Creationists can continue to win evolution-versus-creation debates with this kind of muddled thinking.
Why hasn’t anyone posted the study of the bacteria that have “evolved” to be a bacteria that can digest plastic, or whatever it is?