"Academic Freedom" Bill in Colorado

Of all places, I did not expect this to occur in Colorado.  The NCSE has a piece on a new “academic freedom” bill that has been proposed. They write:

House Bill 13-1089 (PDF), introduced in the Colorado House of Representatives on January 16, 2013, and assigned to the House Committees on Education and Appropriations, would create "Academic Freedom Acts" for both K-12 public schools and institutes of higher education in the state of Colorado. If enacted, the bill would, in the words of the summary, "direct teachers to create an environment that encourages students to intelligently and respectfully explore scientific questions and learn about scientific evidence related to biological and chemical evolution, global warming, and human cloning."

This should be a reminder that the influence of the Discovery Institute is alive and well and that they will continue to employ useful idiots who can be easily convinced that “academic freedom” seems like the fair and just thing to legislate, not realizing that it opens the door to attacks on evolution. Some, of course, do realize exactly what they are doing and know that this is a backdoor way of getting creationism taught in the schools.  I don't know how well the legislation is going to fly at the higher levels.  I am betting the learned biologists and palaeontologists won't give it the time of day.

Hat tip to The Panda's Thumb.

New Fossils Confirm A Very Warm Earth During the Pliocene

Mollusks that have been found in Pliocene sediments indicate that the temperature may have been between 18 and 28 degrees Fahrenheit higher than today. The Pliocene was toward the tail end of the “age of the apes” in which there were large-bodied hominoids in just about every continent on earth. It was at the end of the Miocene that the ape fossil evidence begins to disappear in non-tropical areas. Kim DeRose, of PhysOrg writes:

“Our data from the early Pliocene, when carbon dioxide levels remained close to modern levels for thousands of years, may indicate how warm the planet will eventually become if carbon dioxide levels are stabilized at the current value of 400 parts per million,” said Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

The key word in that sentence is “eventually.” Admittedly, the Pliocene is not that far back and so it is clear that the climate can change somewhat quickly. It also seems clear that the earth is going to do what the earth is going to do and there is not much we can do to change it. The temperature got that high during the Pliocene without any humans around to help it do so. It is not immediately clear that humans are going to make a whole heck of a lot of difference this time.

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The Lack of Correlation Between Anti-Global Warming Advocates and ID

As of late, supporters of ID have argued that they have been persecuted for their positions and that the support of such is no different than the persecution that has befallen anti-global warming advocates. They (Casey Luskin in particular)have argued that both the supporters of evolution and those of global warming have things to hide and that they are both resorting to silencing their critics. Johnathan Pearce of Samizdata has a refreshingly clear-headed article on why this simply is not so. He writes, correctly:

AGW skeptics fall into various camps: those who simply want to trash any suggestion that AGW is a problem; those who say that AGW is a problem but who are unsure about its effects, and those who realise that AGW is probably happening but who debate whether it can be mitigated, reversed or adapted to, and who want to know about the pros and cons (think of the likes of Nigel Lawson, or Bjorn Lomborg, etc). A lot of AGW skeptics pore over immense amounts of data to highlight their doubts; and some of them, such as Lawson, employ powerful economic and related arguments that draw on known facts.

But ID advocates do not have the same kind of facts, as far as I can see, to conclusively press their case. What they have instead is a sort of "We cannot explain X so in the absence of a better idea, we'll assume a Creator got involved". Not terribly convincing, is my reaction. I accept that some scientists might be sympathetic to ID without losing any integrity, but what Booker's article signally fails to address is whether any ID advocate has given a plausible explanation, with proof and evidence, of how a particularly complex phemomenon of nature came to be "created". All they do, it seems from Booker's article, is to state that because there are "gaps" in fossil records, etc, that therefore the gap must imply that some outside agent (like a God), caused X or Y. But his article does not go beyond that to explain what sort of processes these ID folk imagine happened. And the reason for that is simple: they don't know.

This has long been a sticking point in the path that ID has chosen. There simply are no "smoking gun" tests that can be done to show that God created x in exactly that way. Consequently, ID supporters have resorted to attacking the science of evolution with programs to "teach the controversy," "cover all range of scientific views," and other seemingly tolerant academic ideas. The persecution link to anti-global warming advocates has only been the most recent attempt to gain legitimacy for their positions. Such legitimacy will not come in this fashion.

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The Nexus Gets More Heated

New Scientist has a story on the connection between global warming and creationism, which has everyone's dandruff up. Deborah MacKenzie writes:

SCHOOLS in three US states - Louisiana, Texas and South Dakota - have been told to teach alternatives to the scientific consensus on global warming. The moves appear to be allied to efforts to teach creationism in public schools. Such efforts have in the past been thwarted when courts ruled them unconstitutional, but those advocating the teaching of sound science may find it harder to fight misrepresentations concerning climate change.

Last week, South Dakota's state legislature adopted a bill which "urges" schools to take a "balanced approach" to teaching about climate change, because the science is "unresolved" and has been "complicated and prejudiced" by "political and philosophical viewpoints".

I can't tell if this is the "teach the controversy" ploy, the "teach the full range of scientific views" ploy, the "critical analysis/thinking" ploy or the "strengths and weaknesses" ploy. Who is telling them to do this, you ask? Why, those bastions of scientific learning, the state legislatures, of course. There is a concerted effort here that becomes plain later in the article:

Bundling warming with evolution in calls for "academic freedom" may make it harder to challenge these laws. Steve Newton of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California, observes that the US constitution restricts the teaching of religious ideas in state schools, but not the teaching of bad science. A study last year found that evangelical Christians, who account for most creationists, are up to three times as likely as other Americans to deny that warming has human origins.

If this is the case, then contrary to what the Moderate Voice has to say, evolution education in this country may be in for the battle of its life. Much depends on whether the courts view the connection favorably or whether they will see this as grandstanding on the part of organizations promoting the watering-down of evolution education. It may be that if court cases arise, the plaintiffs can focus on the fact that the bill covers evolution and, therefore, is religiously-based. Hard to tell how this one is going to go.

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Anti-Evolution/Global Warming: Jay Richards Doesn't Help the Cause

Jay Richards of the Enterprise Institute has written a column implying that the connection between those espousing anti-evolutionary views and those that are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming has been manufactured out of whole cloth by the New York Times. He writes:

Now when I read anything on the environment in the New York Times, I try to keep a couple of deconstructionist qualifiers running in the back of my head: “This is what the New York Times wants me to believe about the issue” and “What are they trying to accomplish with this piece?” I know it’s cynical, but when it comes to environmental stories, I just don’t trust New York Times reporters to keep it straight. Some things they want to accomplish with this piece: (1) Divide and conquer skeptics of global warming orthodoxy and Darwinism, by painting the latter as ignorant religious zealots, in hopes of starting a fight among conservatives. No doubt they’re hoping that, say, Richard Lindzen will have to explain why he agrees with those nefarious creationists on the global warming issue, and that he’ll have to spend his time issuing statements of agreement with evolution. (2) Make it harder for official bodies to encourage critical thinking on global warming, since attempts to do the same with regard to evolution have, in recent years, met with fierce resistance and only modest success.

Now here's the bad thing. I agree with him whole-heartedly about the New York Times. In fact, I don't read the rag, such is the level of my disgust with it. Having said that, Mr. Richards goes on to say to some questionable things about the link between the two anti-science movements. He writes:

*Both issues suffer from “semantic creep,” which tends to prevent rational discussion.

So a vague word like “evolution” can range in meaning from the trivial and tautological—change over time and survival of the fittest—to the uncontroversial—certain organisms share common ancestors and natural selection explains some things—to the questionable and ideological—everything is the result of a purely impersonal process, we don’t exist for a purpose, we’re just carriers for selfish genes, natural selection and random genetic mutations explain everything interesting, and so forth. If you doubt the latter, you get lumped in with doubting the former.

Biologists don't have any trouble defining evolution. This semantic problem is only a problem for the media and organizations that support the teaching of intelligent design or creationism in the schools but don't seem to know much about evolution. There are numerous of these. He continues:

*If you doubt either idea, you’re accused, not of doubting that one idea, but of doubting science itself.

*With both issues, we hear a lot about consensus.

*Both have a way of surviving at the theoretical level even when individual pieces of evidence bite the dust.

*They’re both deeply embedded in the worldview of what David Brooks, perhaps with tongue-in-cheek, has called the “educated class.”

You hear a lot about a consensus in evolution because that is what there is. The number of biologists that don't accept evolution is vanishingly small (although I would love to see the Discovery Institute come up with a list of them). He writes about individual pieces of evidence biting the dust when no supportable evidence has been shown to do that. He suggests that they are supported by the "educated class." It is not clear that this is an insult. The focus and goal of education is to do just that: educate.

It is no mystery that the more people learn about and understand evolutionary theory, the more they accept it. This is the sum take-away message from just about every poll done on the subject. It just so happens that folks who are less educated about evolution also tend to support climate change skepticism. The Times is drawing a parallel by suggesting by way of correlation, that the two are linked in some way to an anti-science movement among conservatives. It is not manufactured out of whole cloth in any way. It is a persistent connection that begs investigation.

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On the Other Hand..."Checkmate?"

Moderate Voice has pointed out that this anti-global warming/anti-evolution connection banner that the conservative movement is so willing to march to will backfire rather badly on them. The author writes:

This is pretty darned handy. Now, if somebody is skeptical about whether humans are causing global warming, or whether data is being gathered in hot spots, they can just be shot down as anti-intellectuals who don’t believe in evolution, either.

Kinda like this.

What a godsend (pun intended) for the AGW believers. Now, instead of haggling about science, they can just lump questioners into the same category as the anti-evolutionists.

Checkmate?

Up until this point, anti-evolution promoters did battle only in the public school and church arenas. The global warming debate includes EVERYONE! They're profile just rose 100%. Oh joy. It always gets darker just before it gets pitch black.

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Another AGW/Creationism Analogy

Mark Lynas, writing for the New Statesman, argues that the recent "climate gate" scandal may cause a permanent rift between scientists and the general public. He likens this to creationism:

The danger here is that a permanent gap may open up between the general public and the scientific community, distorting policy and damaging people's understanding of the world around them at a basic level. An analogy might be the debate around creationism in the US, where (according to a Pew Centre poll conducted in June 2009) just 32 per cent of adults believe in Darwinian evolution, compared to 87 per cent of scientists.

This may be a politically incorrect thing to say, but it is true nonetheless: climate-change denial, like belief in creationism, is largely (though not entirely) attributable to ignorance. Surveys show that the more a person knows about the subject of climate change, the more likely they are to agree that "human activity is a significant contributing factor in changing mean global temperatures".

It is true that poll after poll reveals that as a rule, the percentage of less-educated people that believe in creationism is higher than among those who have more education, certainly here in the United States.

He makes another point, though, that is often glossed over in the debate between those supporting creationism and ID and mainstream biological scientists:

One study, published in January 2009 in the American Geophysical Union's journal Eos, noted that while less than half the general public agreed with the above point, an overwhelming majority of scientists did. Specifically, 82 per cent of climatologists agreed that climate change was real, while 97 per cent of actively publishing climatologists (those involved in generating the latest data) supported this conclusion.

I accept that a sceptic might cite this as evidence of group-think. But surely the chance of statistically trained experts (whose work involves constantly examining real-world climatological data, and each other's work) getting their entire discipline wrong is vanishingly unlikely.

Evolution is accepted by a similar percentage of biologists the world over. The other question, at least to those who espouse ID is this: how is that scientists the world over got physics, chemistry, geology, medicine and engineering absolutely right and managed to get biology crashingly wrong? If you are a creationist, on the other hand, all of the above disciplines got it wrong. All of those scientists, working for hundreds of years, still got it wrong? Not likely.

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New Dinosaur Burrows in Australia

The Hindu News has an article on dinosaur burrows that have been discovered in Australia. Quoth the article:

On the heels of his discovery in Montana of the first trace fossil of a dinosaur burrow, Emory University paleontologist Anthony Martin has found evidence of more dinosaur burrows – this time on the other side of the world, in Victoria, Australia, says a press release from EurekAlert.

The find, to be published this month in Cretaceous Research, suggests that burrowing behaviors were shared by dinosaurs of different species, in different hemispheres, and spanned millions of years during the Cretaceous Period, when some dinosaurs lived in polar environments.

"This research helps us to better understand long-term geologic change, and how organisms may have adapted as the Earth has undergone periods of global cooling and warming," says Martin, a senior lecturer in environmental studies at Emory. Martin is also an honorary research associate at Monash University in Melbourne.

Cool.
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