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The US. Darwin in the schools lobby is serious about climate change activism

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Not just a sideline. It is going after the Heartland Institute.

Readers may remember that the U.S. Darwin lobby, NCSE, recently decided to pursue climate change activism as well.

We wondered what the rationale was or how serious they were, but lo, it seems they are taking on the Heartland Institute. From Greg Laden:

That nefarious leech of an organization, the Heartland Institute, the one that put up the billboards implying that people who think climate change is important are mad bombers, has done something really offensive, again. They made a fake packet of information with fake stuff about climate change and sent it to teachers and other educators, as well as graduate students, to try to trick them into passing the lies and deceptions on to their students. According to the National Center for Science Education: …

Sounds like a job for superheroes, all right, at least to hear them tell it.

Meanwhile, our old University of Toronto friend Larry Moran takes issue with a Darwin lobbyist who demands that schools teach that “evolution by natural selection as a major unifying concept in science.” He suggests that they simply be taught “evolution” instead. Moran informs his readers that

The problem with leaving the phrase is that it eliminates evolution by random genetic drift and that’s definitely known to occur. This means that the statement from David Evans is actually incorrect and not what the vast majority of expert scientists believe.

No, but if the Darwin lobby is thumping headfirst into climate doomsaying, it may not have time to get memos out to its activists like “QUIT claiming that natural selection is evolution, period. Even our buddies aren’t backing that one any more.”

But then, is their house divided? Thoughts?

Comments
From your earlier post:
We’re not entirely sure why they did get involved in global warming activism because, however worthy the cause, they don’t have depth in the issues.
Well, the IPCC line on global warming has become the 'pro-science' shibboleth/cause celebre/battleground issue of the post-9/11 world, while other threats - ID, parapsychology, mass-market occultism, literary theorists - seem to be safely at bay for the most part. (The literary theorists have been loudly recanting, in fact.) So it's not too surprising that the NCSE would want to get itself involved with the hot issue, especially since, like the evolution battle, it strongly involves their area of specialisation - influencing school curricula the like. Plus, as you noted, there's a whole lot of soft money going around for climate activism/'outreach' at present. It's worth pointing out that many of the better regarded people on the 'other side' of the climate issue, such as Steve McIntyre, aren't too impressed with Heartland's treatment of the issue either. (And of course it has to be said that most of them bristle at being associated with ID or creationism too.)anonym
November 15, 2013
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"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." http://www.bartleby.com/73/1982.html
Along that line, this looks like a pretty good movie that will be coming out in 2014:
Noah - Official Trailer (2014) [HD] Russel Crowe, Emma Watson http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OSaJE2rqxU
Also of note, there is now mounting evidence, from secular sources, for global catastrophic flooding approximately 13,000 years before the present:
Humanpast.net Excerpt: Worldwide, we know that the period of 14,000 to 13,000 years ago, which coincides with the peak of abundant monsoonal rains over India, was marked by violent oceanic flooding - in fact, the first of the three great episodes of global superfloods that dominated the meltdown of the Ice Age. The flooding was fed not merely by rain but by the cataclysmic synchronous collapse of large ice-masses on several different continents and by gigantic inundations of meltwater pouring down river systems into the oceans. (124) What happened, at around 13,000 years ago, was that the long period of uninterrupted warming that the world had just passed through (and that had greatly intensified, according to some studies, between 15,000 years ago and 13,000 years ago) was instantly brought to a halt - all at once, everywhere - by a global cold event known to palaeo climatologists as the 'Younger Dryas' or 'Dryas III'. In many ways mysterious and unexplained, this was an almost unbelievably fast climatic reversion - from conditions that are calculated to have been warmer and wetter than today's 13,000 years ago, to conditions that were colder and drier than those at the Last Glacial Maximum, not much more than a thousand years later. From that moment, around 12,800 years ago, it was as though an enchantment of ice had gripped the earth. In many areas that had been approaching terminal meltdown full glacial conditions were restored with breathtaking rapidity and all the gains that had been made since the LGM were simply stripped away…(124) A great, sudden extinction took place on the planet, perhaps as recently as 11,500 years ago (usually attributed to the end of that last ice age), in which hundreds of mammal and plant species disappeared from the face of the earth, driven into deep caverns and charred muck piles the world over. Modern science, with all its powers and prejudices, has been unable to adequately explain this event. (83) http://humanpast.net/environment/environment11k.htm Various Catastrophic Mega-Floods 13,000 years before present from around the world https://docs.google.com/document/d/1sXjqFo9osUO4pWfxsx3Brb565KvqfVIaP1vtDGa95tg/edit
Verse and Music:
2 Peter 3:3-7 knowing this first: that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts and saying, “Where is the promise of His coming? For since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation.” For of this they are willfully ignorant: that by the Word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water, whereby the world as it then was, being overflowed with water, perished. But the heavens and the earth which now are, by the same Word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the Day of Judgment and perdition of ungodly men. Phillips, Craig & Dean - When The Stars Burn Down http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPuxnQ_vZqY
bornagain77
November 15, 2013
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Moran thinks it's greatly overrated, and on that account presumably, doesn't think it should be given the priority it is. One suspects that many agree with him who are not quite prepared to say so.News
November 14, 2013
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Meanwhile, our old University of Toronto friend Larry Moran takes issue with a Darwin lobbyist who demands that schools teach that “evolution by natural selection as a major unifying concept in science.”
Evolution by natural selection is a major unifying concept in science. That doesn't mean it's science and that doesn't mean it's not false.Mung
November 14, 2013
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