Lady Darwin

stfuconservatives:

goodreasonnews:

Griffith claimed a “new ruling by the EPA would force dairy farmers to comply” with strict regulations for spills and leaks. He said the rules were the same as those enforced on oil and natural gas companies.

In fact, these regulations have been in place for 38 years and are not new at all. The “new ruling” from the EPA, announced in 2009 and taking effect in a few weeks, actually excludes milk from the spill standards, giving dairy farmers fewer regulations to meet. That’s the exact opposite of what Griffith claims.

Hm, well there ya go. Too bad, it was a good joke.

-Joe

Although the organization’s title [National Center for Science Education] refers to science education generally, evolution has been the primary area of science that has been under attack for reasons that have nothing to do with the latest research. But over the last several years, that’s changed as more and more bills have been introduced that target both evolution and climate change. With times changing, the NCSE is changing with them. Today, it’s announcing that its support of students and educators will be broadened to include climate change. We talked with the NCSE’s executive director, Eugenie Scott, about the decision.

Scott said that the NCSE’s work with teachers on evolution made them aware that teaching climate science was becoming controversial. “It’s been a growing realization of ours that, just as teachers get hammered for teaching evolution, they also are getting hammered for teaching global warming and other climate change topics,” she told Ars. “They’ll start talking about global warming and a student’s hand will shoot up, ‘teacher, my dad says global warming is a hoax.’ We’ve had accounts where students would get up and walk out of the room.”

What they found were some clear parallels between evolution and climate science. Just as the controversy over evolution takes place within the public and not among scientists, Scott said, “There’s not a debate going on within the science community about whether the climate is getting warm and whether people have a great deal to do with this.” There were also parallels in terms of motivation. “The basis for antievolution is ideological,” Scott said, pointing to its religious nature. “There’s also an idealogical basis for anti-global warming, it just happens to be a political and economic ideology.”

But there will be some distinct challenges. “We’ve always argued ‘do what’s best for the kids, teach good science.’ The nice thing about evolution is that we can also say ‘and by the way, if you try to teach creationism/intelligent design, you will be sued and you will lose, because all the case law is against you,’” Scott said. “There’s nothing comparable with climate change. There’s no constitutional protection against bad science. What we have to do is persuade people, help them understand what is good science, and why their kids should learn good science.”

She called politically controversial scientific topics the group’s “ecological niche,” since the group’s goal is to try to keep the politics out of science education: “Our big concern is that science education not be politicized. We see it happening with climate change science. We’d like to do what we can the help teachers from keeping it from getting worse.”