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?
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.
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.
Along that line, this looks like a pretty good movie that will be coming out in 2014:
Also of note, there is now mounting evidence, from secular sources, for global catastrophic flooding approximately 13,000 years before the present:
Verse and Music:
From your earlier post:
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.)