Evolution and climate change in NCSE's mission

In fact, the Heartland Institute started out as a cigarette smoking/lung cancer denialist institution and has since morphed into a climate change denialist institution. It is heavily supported by the Koch brothers and includes such notorious deniers as Pat Michaels and Fred Singer (who also is a smoking/lung cancer and CFC/ozone depletion denialist).

I just ran onto a U.S. Senator decrying another Senator's "magical thinking" about global warming. I don't endorse the religious arguments, and it's pretty weird to listen to one Senator reproving another with multiple Bible verses. What ever happened to Thomas Jefferson?

A quote from that Senator: "... we're going to bet on a miracle? That's the plan?"

Darwinism is based on an a priori commitment to materialism, not on a philosophically neutral assessment of the evidence.

Regardless of the Lewontin matter, while climate denial may piggyback off of anti-atheism/anti-naturalism, IDiots are more like YECs on climate science, pretending that real science is against it, not that there is something wrong with science per se.

For clarification of what Richard Lewontin was up to (and no, he's no postmodernist), see the nice EvoWiki page on the quote, here.

I started out Creationism-watching in the early 2000s, but since Dover most of my attention has gone to the somewhat more thriving community of AGW denialists. The similarities were not only apparent, they are what drew me to them in the first place. The dishonesty, the inability to own up to demonstrable facts, the character attacks on those who deliver the bad news, and the funded "grass-roots" campaigns to veto the findings of science by popular vote from the community level to the national and international stage.

Ideology motivates both groups of denialists, I think. Both are wedded to a quote-unqoute "conservative" view of the world that can't handle disruptive findings, which threaten their comfortable preconceptions and beliefs. There are those who have a foot in both worlds, of course. I've written up my thoughts on AGW denier and ID believer Roy Spencer before. It contains some of my thoughts on how he embodies the worst of both positions and how that affects his ability to actually practice science.

Science literacy is important for combating both of these threats. However, I feel that the climate issue is more immediate and more pressing due to the timelines we're looking at. If something isn't done within the next two decades or so, we could be looking at a rapid climate shift that's a different from today's regime as today is from the last glacial maximum, when Chicaco was buried under a mile of ice. Meanwhile we're pouring CO2 into the oceans at a rate that's far too rapid for organisms to comfortably adjust their biology to, acidifying the oceans about ten to fifteen times faster than during the Permian-Triassic extinction event. All of this is happening on top of the other worldwide stresses we're placing upon the seas and land in terms of exploitation and pollution, while our population balloons rapid and demands a higher standard of living than "dirt farmer." We need solutions in place yesterday to avoid the worst.

Because of this urgency, the reactionary opposition to a change in policy has been a wealthy and well-coordinated mobilization of PR, harassment, and targeted law suits designed to shut down communication between the researchers studying this problem and the public that might listen to them. Scientists working directly for the government have been censored or had their reports altered before publication without notice, and those working in universities that receive any government funding have been subjected to vexacious Freedom of Information requests, fishing expeditions, and lawsuits demanding any and all correspondence a climate researcher might have had with the media. The message is clear and unambiguous: if you work on this problem and go public with the findings, we're going to make life difficult for you.

Fully one half of the political machinery in the US has locked itself into a corner of public denial and derision of the problem in a sad display of partisanism, not only refusing to participate and find answers palatable to their constituents but refusing to even acknowledge the problem exists; or worse, to accuse those calling attention to the problem of being outright frauds that abuse public funds for their own gain. The well has truly been poisoned, and public discourse in the US is unbelievably still mired in a conflict of denialism and acceptance that makes the push by Big Tobacco look like an honest debate in comparison. It's no accident that some of the same lobbyists and talking heads from that fight migrated to the climate change denial camp.

The situation is, as far as I'm concerned far more intolerable than the waning influence of the ID movement.

As for the two points raised at the final NABT Board meeting, let us analyze them in some more detail. The words "unsupervised" and "impersonal" were taken as miscommunicating the nature of science. Not really. Science is based on a fundamental assumption: that the world can be explained by referring only to natural, mechanistic forces. Johnson is quite right in affirming that this is a philosophical position. He is wrong when he suggests that it is an unreasonable and unproven one. In fact, every single experiment conducted by any laboratory in any place on Earth represents a daily test of that assumption. The day in which scientists will be unable to explain natural phenomena without referring to divine intervention or other supernatural forces, we will have a major paradigm shift - of cataclysmic proportions.

It may be a bit “meta” in some sense, but I wouldn’t call it metaphysical, just a kind of encompassing “assumption” that is very much justified, but not in a strictly “scientific” manner–at least not as normally understood.

Well besides thew obvious similarities between science deniers of every strips and the obvious shared strategies involved in denying scientific realities, the two issues are not unrelated. One of the major effects of anthropogenic climate change will be that evolution might not be fast enough to track such rapid environmental change. This will mean that many extinctions will occur and the ecosystem will be drastically affected. Of course that would't necessarily be the case if evolution is all wrong, but this is microevolution we're talking about and even the most ignorant creationist admits that that happens, right?

DS said: Well besides thew obvious similarities between science deniers of every strips and the obvious shared strategies involved in denying scientific realities, the two issues are not unrelated. One of the major effects of anthropogenic climate change will be that evolution might not be fast enough to track such rapid environmental change. This will mean that many extinctions will occur and the ecosystem will be drastically affected. Of course that would't necessarily be the case if evolution is all wrong, but this is microevolution we're talking about and even the most ignorant creationist admits that that happens, right?

Somewhat ironically, I'm not sure the NCSE has chosen a good example of a straw man argument. (It's really more of an argumentum ad consequentiam -- equally fallacious, but not the same thing.)

NCSE is certainly correct in seeing that inadequate science eduction (and sometimes outright science denial) is a common link in debates about evolution and about climate change, but their move into the climate change arena originally worried me. That's because, unlike evolution, the climate change issue also involves discussions of political action to bring about changes in industrial practices, and whether such changes make economic sense.

Then the debate morphs into political arguments about, oh, things like whether the UN should control the world's economy. Such topics are usually terra incognita for science blogs. I was concerned that NCSE would get dragged into that stuff. But so far they've avoided talking about policy, and they stick with the science. Most admirable.

I've noticed that there's an even closer connection between evolution deniers and Big Bang deniers (they often refer to all of it as "evolution"). That's not surprising. Unlike climatology, both biology and astronomy clearly conflict with a literal reading of scripture.

Because of that, and also because of the perils of drifting into arguments about economics and politics, I would have preferred for NCSE to move into cosmology rather than climatology. There are no political screaming matches involving the origin of the universe. Also, I find it more fun to blog about cosmology than climatology, about which I know very little. But NCSE seems to know what they're doing.

SensuousCurmudgeon said: I've noticed that there's an even closer connection between evolution deniers and Big Bang deniers (they often refer to all of it as "evolution"). That's not surprising. Unlike climatology, both biology and astronomy clearly conflict with a literal reading of scripture.

SensuousCurmudgeon said: I would have preferred for NCSE to move into cosmology rather than climatology. There are no political screaming matches involving the origin of the universe.

KENT HOVIND: There is surprisingly little if any proof of global warming. It may be warming, I don't know, but the evidence is really shaky. What would happen with global warming is probably the ice caps would melt raising the ocean level maybe, I don't know, thirty feet. That's perfect. We are in Pensacola, Florida, sixty feet above sea level. If the ocean came up thirty or forty feet we might get beach front property. I mean by the time the waves are done eroding everything away. Do you know what the value of this property would become if it was on the beach? [....] ASSISTANT: You know, I've thought of this already. But there is one big problem, floating dead bodies in your front yard. HOVIND: You would have floating dead bodies [but] only for awhile. [...] Oh yeah, I'm in favour of global warming. Go for it. Start the car, just let it idle. Burn the fuel. Heat up the ozone or whatever they are going to do to it and let's have it. Increase the value of my property. [Truth Radio 17 May 2006 @ 47:00; http://kent-hovind.com/quotes/ethics.htm]

SensuousCurmudgeon said: NCSE is certainly correct in seeing that inadequate science eduction (and sometimes outright science denial) is a common link in debates about evolution and about climate change, but their move into the climate change arena originally worried me. That's because, unlike evolution, the climate change issue also involves discussions of political action to bring about changes in industrial practices, and whether such changes make economic sense. Then the debate morphs into political arguments about, oh, things like whether the UN should control the world's economy. Such topics are usually terra incognita for science blogs. I was concerned that NCSE would get dragged into that stuff. But so far they've avoided talking about policy, and they stick with the science. Most admirable. I've noticed that there's an even closer connection between evolution deniers and Big Bang deniers (they often refer to all of it as "evolution"). That's not surprising. Unlike climatology, both biology and astronomy clearly conflict with a literal reading of scripture. Because of that, and also because of the perils of drifting into arguments about economics and politics, I would have preferred for NCSE to move into cosmology rather than climatology. There are no political screaming matches involving the origin of the universe. Also, I find it more fun to blog about cosmology than climatology, about which I know very little. But NCSE seems to know what they're doing.

I'm with harold. Here's the NCSE's self-description:

"The National Center for Science Education (NCSE) is a not-for-profit, membership organization providing information and resources for schools, parents, and concerned citizens working to keep evolution and climate science in public school science education. We educate the press and public about the scientific and educational aspects of controversies surrounding the teaching of evolution and climate change, and supply needed information and advice to defend good science education at local, state, and national levels. Our 5000 members are scientists, teachers, clergy, and citizens with diverse religious and political affiliations."

This is an irreducibly political mission statement...as it must be. You can provide all the information you like, but if you want to stay above the political fray then you WILL lose to those who are willing to fight politically. One can argue about whether the expansion to include climate science is a good idea on strategic grounds (personally I'm all for it), but the idea that it is making the mission too political is IMHO just plain wrong.

SensuousCurmudgeon said: I was concerned that NCSE would get dragged into that stuff. But so far they've avoided talking about policy, and they stick with the science. Most admirable.

harold said: The NCSE was already, and obviously, political. It is opposed to illegal insertion of creationist science denial dogma into public school curricula. This is a 100% political struggle.

As for the two points raised at the final NABT Board meeting, let us analyze them in some more detail. The words “unsupervised” and “impersonal” were taken as miscommunicating the nature of science. Not really. Science is based on a fundamental assumption: that the world can be explained by referring only to natural, mechanistic forces. Johnson is quite right in affirming that this is a philosophical position. He is wrong when he suggests that it is an unreasonable and unproven one. In fact, every single experiment conducted by any laboratory in any place on Earth represents a daily test of that assumption. The day in which scientists will be unable to explain natural phenomena without referring to divine intervention or other supernatural forces, we will have a major paradigm shift - of cataclysmic proportions.

asa3.org/ASA/education/origins/openletter.htm How post-modernist does that sound (ok, I know it’s not exactly philosophical post-modernism, more the mumbo-jumbo of people who don’t think very precisely, but think it’s profound and vaguely post-modern)? I mean, besides the contradictory nature of saying that “naturalism” is a philosophical assumption as Johnson claimed–and it can be and is tested every day. What?

SensuousCurmudgeon said:

harold said: The NCSE was already, and obviously, political. It is opposed to illegal insertion of creationist science denial dogma into public school curricula. This is a 100% political struggle.

Yes, that's true. The issue is usually something like "Should the state teach creationism in the public schools?" Arguing about that in the legislature is definitely a political act. But it's one narrow issue. The only "political" question is: to teach Topic X or not to teach it. For a legislator, his response is ultimately limited to "yes" or "no." We all know how furious the debates over that single issue can be. My worry (which seems to have been unnecessary) was that defending the science of climate change would immerse NCSE in a much wider range of political and economic issues. What issues would those be? You know -- issues like "What should government do to fix the problem?" Nothing like that ever comes up in the context of evolution vs. creationism.

When comparing denial of climate change with denial of biological evolution, it's useful to note that the Bible is not nearly such a big obstacle to acceptance of the science. Creationists like Ken Ham claim that Genesis 1-3 necessarily contradicts evolution. He's wrong. But a sizable portion of the American public agrees with him. The most that James Inhofe and Rick Santorum can do is to float a couple of bogus biblical interpretations about the fixity of climate in Genesis 8:22, and claim that the planet earth is for our benefit. They don't have a generation of fundamentalist tradition to draw upon.

Yes, it's bizarre to hear a U.S. Senator refute their statements about what the Bible says. But somebody has to do it. The scientific research labs are not in the business of biblical interpretation, so it has to be the mainstream churches and religious scientists. And others: I note with appreciation that a number of people at Panda's Thumb have identified themselves as not religious, but have a good handle on how to read the Bible and understand what it says and does not say. Fortunately those refutations require only a blog post, not an entire book.

Science journalist Chris Mooney says that climate change (denial) is no longer an education issue - it has passed beyond that. I think harold has diagnosed the problem correctly: climate change denial is not an issue of biblical interpretation, nor a religious issue. The denial of AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warming) comes from taking the entire platter of Fox News/Tea Party/Limbaugh positions en masse.

At my research laboratory we wonder if scientists should be content with publishing peer-reviewed scientific papers, or should we move into advocacy? I saw the difference vividly when I heard a very professional and respected scientist lose her usual cool at a meeting and sputter with disgust how ridiculous it was to even consider some of the geoengineering schemes being proposed for mitigation of CO2 increase! The National Center for Science Education has decided that they must go beyond their title and address the political issues as well. I agree with that decision.

I mean, besides the contradictory nature of saying that “naturalism” is a philosophical assumption as Johnson claimed–and it can be and is tested every day. What?

Richard B. Hoppe said: Glen wrote

I mean, besides the contradictory nature of saying that “naturalism” is a philosophical assumption as Johnson claimed–and it can be and is tested every day. What?

To expand on that a bit: I see no (necessary) contradiction there.

If philosophical assumptions have implications for our conceptions of how the world works, they are surely testable against the veracity of those conceptions.

The scientific leadership cannot afford to disclose that commitment frankly to the public. Imagine what chance the affirmative side would have if the question for public debate were rephrased candidly as "RESOLVED, that everyone should adopt an a priori commitment to materialism." Everyone would see what many now sense dimly: that a methodological premise useful for limited purposes has been expanded to form a metaphysical absolute. Of course people who define science as the search for materialistic explanations will find it useful to assume that such explanations always exist. To suppose that a philosophical preference can validate a cherished scientific theory is to define "science" as a way of supporting prejudice. Yet that is exactly what the Darwinists seem to be doing, when their evidence is evaluated by critics who are willing to question materialism. [Bolding added]

We can assess their logical coherence, their fruitfulness in leading to new knowledge, and their consistency with what we already have good grounds for believing.

If philosophical assumptions about the nature of reliable knowledge and how we justify our knowledge claims are not testable in at least those ways they're just so much noise, serving only to keep philosophers and IDists occupied with irrelevant verbiage.

I'd note that just about any issue can be transformed into a religious issue. People have a nearly limitless ability to find support for their cherished beliefs in their religious tradition, whether that's a written text like the Bible or an oral tradition or a result of thinking things over.

TomS said: I'd note that just about any issue can be transformed into a religious issue. People have a nearly limitless ability to find support for their cherished beliefs in their religious tradition, whether that's a written text like the Bible or an oral tradition or a result of thinking things over.

Marxists don't want there to be an innate human nature, particularly not one that smacks of selfishness, greed, and aggression. They always say that a person's science can't be divorced from his politics, but they never apply this argument to themselves." In the case of Lewontin, at any rate, this charge is often made. "There's almost no scientific subject on which he's positive," says Bill Hamilton. "I can't understand how such a good mind can be so negative about science per se. The politics always comes first. He doesn't admit it, but that's the case."

Even if God were to descend on Cambridge and part the waters of the Charles River at Lewontin's feet, it would still be unthinkable to imagine the skeptical biologist embracing religion.