ANTIEVOLUTION BILLS DIE IN MISSOURI
Two antievolution bills died in committee in the Missouri House of Representatives on May 17, 2013, when the legislature adjourned.
House Bill 179 would have, if enacted, called on state and local education administrators to “endeavor to create an environment within public elementary and secondary schools that encourages students to explore scientific questions, learn about scientific evidence, develop critical thinking skills, and respond appropriately and respectfully to differences of opinion about controversial issues, including biological and chemical evolution” and to “endeavor to assist teachers to find more effective ways to present the science curriculum where it addresses scientific controversies.” “Toward this end,” the bill continued, “teachers shall be permitted to help students understand, analyze, critique, and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of the theory of biological and hypotheses of chemical evolution.” HB 179 died in the House Rules Committee.
House Bill 291, dubbed the Missouri Standard Science Act, would have, if enacted, required “the equal treatment of science instruction regarding evolution and intelligent design,” according to the legislature’s summary of the bill. The equal treatment provision would have applied to both public elementary and secondary schools and to “any introductory science course taught at any public institution of higher education” in Missouri. About 3000 words long and with a glossary providing idiosyncratic definitions of “analogous naturalistic processes,” “biological evolution,” “biological intelligent design,” “destiny,” “empirical data,” “equal treatment,” “hypothesis,” “origin,” “scientific theory,” “scientific law,” and “standard science,” HB 291 was the latest in a string of similar bills beginning with HB 911 and HB 1722 in 2004. HB 291 died in the House Elementary and Secondary Education Committee.
In all, eight antievolution bills were introduced in six states (Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Missouri, Montana, Oklahoma) in 2013; none won passage.
For the text of Missouri’s House Bills 179 and 291 as introduced, visit:
http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills131/biltxt/intro/HB0179I.htm
http://www.house.mo.gov/billtracking/bills131/biltxt/intro/HB0291I.htm
And for NCSE’s previous coverage of events in Missouri, visit:
http://ncse.com/news/missouri
NCSE’S SCOTT HONORED BY CHAPMAN UNIVERSITY
NCSE’s executive director Eugenie C. Scott received the honorary degree of Doctor of Science from Chapman University in recognition of her “work … in advancing the public understanding and acceptance of evolution.” She accepted the honor, and gave a commencement address, at the university’s College of Educational Studies commencement on May 18, 2013.
The citation for the degree told Scott, “Your career in defending the integrity of science education exemplifies a combination of scholarly rigor, civic concern, and tireless devotion, all qualities that we hope to nurture in our students and to practice in our own lives,” and concluded, “Whereas evolution’s tenacious defender Thomas Henry Huxley called himself Darwin’s bulldog, you like to identify yourself with a different domesticated canine—one which the Kennel Club’s breed standard describes as ‘kindly, friendly, and confident.’ We take tremendous pride in bestowing this honorary degree upon ‘Darwin’s golden retriever.’”
The honorary degree is Scott’s ninth; she received honorary Doctor of Science degrees from McGill University in 2003, the Ohio State University in 2005, Mount Holyoke College and the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, in 2006; Rutgers University in 2007; the University of New Mexico in 2008, and the University of Missouri, Columbia, and Colorado College in 2010.
Video of the ceremony is now available. Brian Alters, Professor of Education at Chapman University and president of NCSE’s board of directors, introduces Scott—describing her as “arguably the most effective defender of evolution education and the integrity of science education living on the planet today”—at 34:40, and Scott delivers her commencement address at 40:10.
For a press release from Chapman University about the honor, visit:
http://blogs.chapman.edu/happenings/2013/05/16/science-educator-eugenie-scott-to-be-awarded-honorary-doctorate-at-ces-commencement/
For the video of the ceremony, visit:
http://ibc.chapman.edu/Mediasite/Play/71854da772184fa399ccfe2fae036d021d
QUANTIFYING THE CONSENSUS ON CLIMATE
A new study of the scientific literature confirms that there is a robust consensus that humans are causing global warming. The paper—
John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli, Sarah A Green, Mark Richardson, Bärbel Winkler, Rob Painting, Robert Way, Peter Jacobs, and Andrew Skuce’s “Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature,” Environmental Research Letters 2013; 8(2):024024 — is freely available on-line.
The study examined almost twelve thousand abstracts of scientific articles published between 1991 and 2011 on the topics “global climate change” or “global warming,” and found that “66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.” The study confirmed, as well as refined and extended, previous work by Naomi Oreskes and James Lawrence Powell investigating the consensus in the scientific literature; it is also consistent with surveys of climate scientists, such as William R. L. Anderegg, James W. Prall, Jacob Harold, and Stephen H. Schneider’s paper (in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2011), that show a similar percentage accepting the consensus position.
In contrast, polling suggests that the American public is largely unaware, or unwilling to acknowledge, that there is a scientific consensus about human responsibility for global climate change. In 2012, for example, a Pew Research Center poll asked (PDF, p. 3), “Do scientists agree earth is getting warmer because of human activity?” A slight plurality of the respondents, 45%, answered yes, while 43% answered no and 12% said that they didn’t know.
The study’s lead author John Cook commented, in a May 15, 2013, press release, “Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary. … It’s staggering given the evidence for consensus that less than half of the general public think scientists agree that humans are causing global warming.” The Consensus Project website contains a wealth of further information about the study.
The study was widely applauded. Naomi Oreskes told the Guardian (May 15, 2013), “It is a nice, independent confirmation, using a somewhat different methodology than I used, that comes to the same result. It also refutes the claim, sometimes made by contrarians, that the consensus has broken down, much less ‘shattered’.” And as the Sydney Morning Herald (May 17, 2013) noted, President Obama drew it to the attention of his 31-million-plus audience on Twitter.
For the paper by Cook et alia, visit:
http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/
For the cited work by Oreskes, Powell, and Anderegg et alia, visit:
http://www.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.full
http://www.jamespowell.org/PieChart/piechart.html
http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2010/06/04/1003187107
For the May 15, 2013, press release, visit:
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/iop-srs051313.php
For the website of The Consensus Project, visit:
http://theconsensusproject.com/
And for the articles in the Guardian and the Sydney Morning Herald, visit:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2013/may/16/climate-research-nearly-unanimous-humans-causes
http://www.smh.com.au/environment/climate-change/obama-gives-aussie-researcher-31541507-reasons-to-celebrate-20130517-2jqrh.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
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